Getting to know Laura Wharff by Randy Huth

“We took advantage of chaos, and did our laundry.” This was not what I expected to hear from our new pastor’s wife, when I conducted an interview a few weeks ago. Laura Wharff, who has lived with her husband Mark in Modesto for twenty-five years conducted me through time and space as she told me of her life.

Laura, whom you can meet at coffee hour most Sundays at our church, retired recently from being an educator. “I haven’t figured out retirement,” she said, but with their full lives together, I suspect that having a retirement as fulfilling as her career will not be a problem.

Laura started college as an international studies major, which reflects her interest in travel. She and Mark have taken eleven trips abroad since 2004, beginning with “London, our first foray across the pond, as they say.” The list goes from Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and most recently France, where the Turlock FUMC managed to have her and Mark kidnapped and brought back for Mark to serve as our interim pastor for eight months.

“I knew I wanted global perspective,” Laura observed about herself at age 18, “but I had no options, almost.” Laura was born in Madrid, Spain, her father serving in the U.S. Air Force. “I was speaking Spanish when we left, just under age three.” Years later, she picked up Spanish quickly and was “immediately paired with new exchange students in high school in Atwater.” About college, Laura said, “I knew I wanted a global perspective to the extent that I feel the connectedness of the globe, that what we do here matters, across the world. What we do locally, at the state level, and as a nation has the ability to impact the world favorably.” But, Laura succumbed to the family tradition and became an educator. “My grandmother, mother, and aunts were all educators.” Laura ended up as an Assistant Superintendent in the Sylvan Union School District in Modesto, having raised four children together with Mark, currently with five grandchildren. Along the way, there were “no pets.”

As a retired educator myself, my first conversation with Laura was to ask her what she thought about the recent challenges to public education to introduce the Common Core. In my experience as a teacher, we were frequently subjected to elaborate outside training that often seemed burdensome and alienating. Laura’s statement about meeting test expectations test for a school site was heartening for me: “All you need is a set of teachers who know their content well and like kids.”

Her comment may seem simple, but evidently the strategy worked for her. “I got to be principal of a brand new school as my first principal job. The building wasn’t done. Teachers (22!) and classes were spread out at five different sites, some year round, others on traditional schedule. This was literally the worst way to open a school. I had just finished a master’s degree and an administrative credential.” The school thrived, and “grew huge . . . a thousand students in five years!” They won a California Distinguished Schools award for elementary schools for 2006.

Through the struggle as a principal, Laura learned “flexibility, patience, and not to take myself too seriously.” She also believed in three r’s: “Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships.” The term “Relevance” is regarding the students, “to the world they’ll step into.”

“I learned the importance of Relationships when I was principal for a middle school. By middle school, time, schedule, competing interests, and kids trying to figure out who they are” make school especially challenging. “Students know if you care about them.”

Rigor is, of course needed, but apparently by “Rigor” Laura does not mean just that the curriculum should be difficult for difficulty’s sake. “We’re not training kids for today, we’re training them “to be ready for tomorrow. Not dumbing down. No crayola curriculum.”

Laura was teaching when Mark and Laura first married. “Our honeymoon was in Disneyland. We both worked for the company. I worked in the stores in 1994-5, in retail.”

Laura also worked as an administrative assistant in a Conference Office in the Glide Memorial Methodist Church building in San Francisco. The “full time gig” involved grants, loans, and various new congregations. “Ethnic congregations,” “social justice divisions,” and “emerging congregations” were some terms to describe the church work Laura was involved with in the 1990’s, terms which have apparently “morphed,” she said.

One of the couple’s travel adventures happened in Venice, Italy in 2007. Venice, of course, is a city where the streets are water. Problems can occur at “aqua alto,” when the water level rises at high tide. In 2007, they found themselves in a rain storm, with a full moon, and a Sirocco Wind blowing from North Africa up the Adriatic Sea. The Venetians have had the sea level rise “three and a half feet,” Laura told me. “They put up walkways on planks. They know it’s coming two hours before. A siren warns them.

“A guide explained to us that the water emerges from drains. There is basically no shore in Venice. We walked on planks, which was crazy. We took advantage of chaos, and did laundry. We went over bridges and across canals, trying to read Italian directions. A woman told us, in three different languages where the laundromat was. This was the best laundry experience I’ve had.

“We meet people in laundries. We’ve met Vietnamese people in French laundries. Laundry is something mundane. We all have to do laundry. In Bristol, there was a laundry in a café! For me, those are the stories I will never forget.”

Travel looms in the eyes of Laura. She describes herself as “a voracious reader” of, especially, historical fiction and biographies. Laura likes gardening (she has been pruning their fruit trees lately). She and Mark “like to cook together, experiment with different kinds of foods.” In answer to my questions about what is important in life, Laura responded with two references, one from Michah 6:8 and one from The Lord of the Rings: What the Lord requires is simply to practice justice, kindness, and to walk humbly with the Lord. And what the wizard Gandolf said: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

For now, Laura and Mark will be rooted in their home in Modesto, gracing us with their presence. After Mark re-retires (from being our minister) in June, they plan to continue with travel abroad for a few years, then through the U.S.