Grandma Baker liked men — but she didn’t. Her rules don’t apply to all men — but they do. Women don’t want to believe these rules — but they will. Men swear Grandma Baker is wrong — but she isn’t. And, you will vow not to repeat Grandma’s rules to your daughters, nieces and granddaughters — but you will.
This is the opening forward of Sedona resident Maudelle Terry’s booklet, “Grandma Baker’s 22 Rules for Understanding Life and Men” — an ode to her grandmother’s pearls of wisdom.
Terry shared stories about her Grandma Baker, who she says was very religious but could curse like a sailor, and people didn’t want to mess with her. However, she was very generous and would help anybody.
Baker was born in 1892 in Lovelady, Texas, a little town with a population of 300 back in 1885. Her mother was black and her father was half Cherokee.
Terry says that Baker didn’t finish high school because her mother died, and being the oldest, she had to help raise her brothers.
“She is the wisest most intelligent person I ever met. She knew life and was very open about her feelings about life,” Terry said.
Terry was born and raised in San Diego, Calif., and at the age of 3, her parents divorced. Her grandmother became the legal guardian for her and her two older brothers.
Baker lived in Chicago but called her husband to tell him that she wouldn’t be coming back to Chicago and that she was going to stay in California and raise their grandchildren. She proceeded to tell her husband that he had to buy her a house. Terry’s father, grandfather and two aunts bought a six-bedroom home in San Diego for the family.
In 1945, Terry and her family moved into a predominately white neighborhood. She said that they were the first black family to live there, and the neighbors were far from pleased.
“They sued us. The neighborhood sued us because there was a feeling during the ’40s that blacks would bring down the property values. But my father was a masonry contractor and the home we bought had a wooden staircase and a wood fence and my father tore them down and put up a beautiful brick staircase and a brick wall. By the time we went to court, my grandmother showed the judge the before and after pictures and he said, ‘They [residents of the neighborhood] claim you were lowering the property values, and I see where you have improved it. Case dismissed.’”
Even though they won the case, Terry said she endured racism and racial slurs.
“We would be playing in the neighborhood and all the parents would come to the door, and say get away from those [n-words], and the kids would say they wanted to play,” Terry said. “After about four or five months, things slowly changed and my grandmother won the whole neighborhood over. When she died, people who moved away came back for her funeral.”
Terry’s father was an activist but labeled as a communist. During the Red Scare of the early 1950s, many accused of communist sympathies were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not belong to any communist political party.
“My father was on the front page of the San Diego Tribune along with a Jewish lawyer, both fighting for civil rights,” Terry said. “It was nothing like the South, but still it was racism. My father fought for that and taught us how to stand up for what is right.”
In 1958, Terry’s father married a white woman. Because of anti-miscegenation laws, they got married in Tijuana, Mexico, and moved to San Francisco, which was more liberal than San Diego.
“My grandmother taught me to love myself, love being a girl, love being black and get a good education. She drummed that into my head — to get a good education.”
Grandma Baker’s Rule No. 5: Get a good education so if you marry a fool, you can leave him. If he leaves you, you can take care of yourself and your children. If he becomes an invalid you can take care of both of you and if he dies, you can survive.
Baker died at the age of 65 when Terry was in the 10th grade. She moved to San Francisco to live with her father and stepmother only to return to San Diego to finish high school. She then attended Bennett College, in Greensboro, N.C.
“It was an all-girls black college. That was so strange to me — to wake up and see nothing but black girls all day long and to be in the South and experience racism.” Terry returned to San Diego to finish college and graduated from California Western University in Point Loma in 1964.
After graduating from college, Terry married and had a son. The nine-year marriage ended in divorce.
Grandma Baker’s Rule No. 12: The things men marry you for are the things they want to change after they marry you.
“You learn from your mistakes,” Terry said.
Terry’s career began at San Francisco’s Urban League in 1968. The Federal Communications Commission mandated all television and radio stations had to hire minorities and women and the Urban League was tasked with finding qualified candidates for broadcasting jobs. As head of the Broadcast Skills Bank, Terry sent about 30 people to audition for job openings with no hires. Her boss suggested she apply herself — to be a spy — and see what was going on. Terry was hired as a reporter for ABC-TV 7 in San Francisco.
“I called my boss at the Urban League and told him that they wanted to hire me,” she said. “I was making $750 a month in 1968. My starting salary at the TV station was $1,500, so I said, ‘why not?’”
Working at the television station was not easy for Terry. Once again, she dealt with racism and coworkers who wanted her to fail.
Her broadcast career led to a few stints on the television show, ‘The Streets of San Francisco,’ where she played a nurse, and in commercials. She worked for Levi Strauss and IBM, and it is there she met her future husband Len.
“When we were engaged we both worked for IBM,” Terry said. “Several women would ask me what Len’s parents think about me being black. Why don’t you ask me what do my parents think about it [marrying a white man].”
“My husband told his mother he was going to marry me and she said if you marry her, I will disown you,” Terry said. “He said, ‘Well, mom, it’s been nice knowing you.’ We got married and she waited about a month, and sent us a wedding card with a check in it.”
Terry didn’t see mother-in-law for 18 years, but as she was dying, she asked to see her daughter-in-law again, but died before they had the chance to make amends.
In her will, she named Terry as the executrix of her estate in the event that her son preceded her death.
Grandma Baker’s Rule No. 15: Marry the man who likes your children — not the man your children like. Terry’s husband adopted her son from a previous marriage. As a family they traveled the world, living in the Netherlands for three years and in England for one year.
The Terrys have been together for 42 years, retired and happily married. Just a few of Grandma Baker’s Rules have come into play, but not many. Terry says that she wants to reiterate that these rules do not apply to all men, but to most men.
Grandma Baker’s quips have become a part of Terry’s vocabulary and character. With a calm demeanor, instead of defensive retort, Terry said she was taught one of the best pearls of wisdom from her grandmother — how to catch someone off guard and diffuse a volatile situation with humor and grace.
“I didn’t appreciate her until after she died and then all the things she taught me started slapping me in the face,” Terry said. “I remember telling my grandmother when she wouldn’t let me do something that I was going to run away. She said, ‘Honey, don’t run, walk. I don’t want you to be tired, wherever you are going.’”
