RESOURCES:
League of Women Voters of Washtenaw County
Joan Sampieiri Obituary + Celebration of Life
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU. I'm Caroline MacGregor. And as part of Women's History Month, today, we are talking with Jennifer Fairfield. She is the daughter of Joan Sampieri, who sadly passed away in January. Joan was the former president of the League of Women Voters for Washtenaw County and a well-known advocate for civil rights and a role model to many. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today!
Jennifer Fairfield: I'm happy to! Thanks for having me!
Caroline MacGregor: The more I read about your mother, it's just astonishing what she accomplished over her lifetime. And we've only got 10 minutes, so we're going to do our best to highlight some of the main things. She obviously made a very positive impact on most of those who came across her path.
Jennifer Fairfield: She did! And I think one of the things that I sometimes forget to tell people about her is that she was a woman of faith in many ways throughout her life. And her faith in her belief system really is what led a lot of what she did. She was very much someone who believed in peace and justice and equality. And she taught all of us to be people who cared, who made it a positive difference in other people's lives and in helping other people and community and all of that.
Caroline MacGregor: I know that one of the things you stated about your mother is that she was really your role model, your beacon of light, your hero. And that you've said that the world needs more people like her, and we do.
Jennifer Fairfield: I absolutely believe it! I really believe that more people who believe in the value of others and in the value of helping others and in being a good steward of this world, of this planet, I don't think we can have enough of those sorts of people. And that's really what she was. First, she was a mom. She was the mother to four of us. She raised us almost entirely on her own with some help from family. My grandparents and aunts and uncles were a big part of our lives as well, and that was important to her and to all of us. But she was a single mother at a time when it was really, really hard. We were children of the '60s and '70s, and being a woman trying to make it in the world on your own, that was tough. You know, that was the time when women were just sttarting to be able to work outside the home in things other than menial jobs. It was a time when women were just starting to get their own credit cards and that kind of thing. And that's a lot of what drove her, all of the inequalities that women faced.
Caroline MacGregor: And just for our listeners' sake, Joan Sampieri was a fighter for women's rights, civil rights and human rights, and actually instrumental for many advances for women.
Jennifer Fairfield: She did an awful lot for other people. She ran the campaigns for George McGovern in Gloucester County, New Jersey. I like to joke that George McGovern's campaign was the first campaign I ever worked on, and I turned eight years old nine days after that election. She had us out knocking on doors and putting on door hangers for him, all of us kids.
Caroline MacGregor: Really!
Jennifer Fairfield: Oh yes! Absolutely! We put stamps on envelopes and licked envelopes and all that stuff. She didn't have much daycare, so she had to do something with us. But she did things like the police would call her in the middle of the night when they had a rape victim who needed an advocate, and she would go in and help the woman get through the process. It was just at that time in the early '70s when rape kits were starting to be used and care was being taken to maintain the evidence and that kind of stuff. But a lot of times, it was done in a very clinical way, and the dignity of the woman was totally ignored. And she was there to advocate for that woman and to help her get through that process. And we'd often wake up in the morning, and there'd be a battered woman on our living room couch who needed a place to be for a little while. And mom would be like, "All right, I got to go to work. This is Jeri. Say hi." And sometimes, we'd make her breakfast. One of the things I don't think I mentioned is she authored with another woman, a lawyer, one of the first do-it-yourself divorce kits in the country. They had it copyrighted. And then, they were investigated by the State Bar Association and the State Supreme Court Division on Unauthorized Legal Practice. They weren't allowed to practice law, but they could give people information on how they could get a divorce without a lawyer if they met certain circumstances. It was uncontested, there weren't children involved, there wasn't a lot of property involved, that kind of thing. But back then, you needed a lawyer for any kind of divorce. And now, you don't. If you've got a simple divorce, you can do it yourself. And it's because of people like her.
Caroline MacGregor: I know that she became very well-known and respected here in Washtenaw County for her work with the League of Women Voters, but also for other things. She moved here in 2012. Is that correct?
Jennifer Fairfield: She did. So, I was living here in Michigan. And unfortunately, my husband passed away in late 2011. And my mother, being my best friend, my biggest advocate, picked up her life in Florida and moved here to be with me. And I am extremely grateful for that and extremely fortunate for that. It didn't matter where she was. She was always going to be someone who worked to fight for other people and to help where she needed. And she wrote federal and state grants for nonprofits. But along with that, she continued her business, but also then got involved with the League of Women Voters. Her catalyst for that was the 2016 election. But also at that time, 2016, 2017, started to be the big push for the gerrymandering in Michigan. She got really involved with the League on that and on that petition drive. After the 2016 election, the League of Women Voters of Ann Arbor saw this astronomical growth in their membership. They went from something like, I don't know, 60 or 70 people to over 300 members.
Caroline MacGregor: That's a huge jump!
Jennifer Fairfield: It was immense! And it went from being a small group of very intent women focused on what was going on in the Ann Arbor area in politics and voting to a much larger mission. And one of the things that she did when she became president was she pushed for a name change because it had grown so much that it wasn't just about Ann Arbor anymore. There were people from all over the county. They voted to change the name in 2020 or 2021 to the League of Women Voters of Washtenaw County. So, it better reflects the fact that it is the League for the entire county. That was actually her thing.
Caroline MacGregor: I believe she also was on the board of the Ann Arbor chapter of the NAACP, and she served as treasurer of the Western Washtenaw Democrats.
Jennifer Fairfield: Absolutely! She was very much involved in the Ann Arbor chapter of the NAACP. Some of her greatest friends are in that group. She was a catalyst to bring the two groups together. She pointed out to them that there's a lot we can do if we join forces. And so, they did work on a number of things together because of her push with both of those groups.
Caroline MacGregor: She must have had a tremendous amount of energy to be involved in all of these different interests.
Jennifer Fairfield: I don't know where she got all of that energy. She did apparently have it all her life because I'm not kidding--chasing four kids around and doing everything she did, took a lot of energy. And she was a very dedicated mom. So, it wasn't even that we were neglected or anything. We did all kinds of things together as a family. So, for her to have that kind of commitment to both her family and the community was pretty stinking amazing. And shortly after she became president of the League of Women Voters in Ann Arbor, she was diagnosed with cancer. In late 2019, she diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is a blood cancer, and went through chemo and a stem cell transplant in early 2020 and still managed to keep...I know--
Caroline MacGregor: Still was out there doing her thing.
Jennifer Fairfield: She needed a little time off to recuperate from the stem cell transplant, but she had really good timing because the stem cell transplant was March 6th of 2020, and you might recall what was going on in March of 2020.
Caroline MacGregor: Good gracious, yes!
Jennifer Fairfield: She, along with everyone else, had to stay home, but she did not let that slow her down a whole heck of a lot. She picked it back up as soon as she could and kept going with it. She was President until 2022, and they worked during her tenure on the petition drive for the 2022 Prop 3, the Proposal 3 that changed the state Constitution to ensure women's reproductive rights. She worked on the gerrymandering petition with the League of Women Voters. They worked with Voters Not Politicians together to help to try to get that passed while she was doing everything else and, oh, by the way, I had cancer.
Caroline MacGregor: And I also heard that she successfully sued the Carpenter's Union to become an apprentice when she was told that women could not be carpenters. Tell me more about this.
Jennifer Fairfield: So, technically, her suit was for age discrimination. She would have been 27, 28 years old at the time, and the excuse they gave was that she was too old for the apprentice program. Now, everybody knew that that was the excuse. There were no women in the Carpenters Union in our area. I don't know if there were in any other parts of the country at the time. So, she sued. It took two-and-a-half years, but she won. And she became a carpenter's apprentice and she worked on one of the big malls in South Jersey. She worked on this high-rise in Camden. I mean, yeah, it's pretty mind-boggling! It really is! When you take in the entirety of her life, it's amazing. And I've said a million times--my mother was not perfect, and she'd be the first one to tell you that. But, man, she tried! I think the one thing to sum her up is that she taught us, everyone she came in contact with, especially her children, to fight for what we believed was right, to fight for people who couldn't fight for themselves or to fight for protecting everybody's rights, to fight for your community and to not give up, to care about others and to take whatever privilege you have in life and extend that to others.
Caroline MacGregor: Well, thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining us today! We really appreciate you sharing a little of your mother's legacy with us here on WEMU!
Jennifer Fairfield: Thank you, Caroline! It's been my great pleasure to share my mother with your listeners!
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti.
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