The Confession of a Whistle Blower

By Mary Anne Yost

The Year of Whistle Blowers - 2002
In it’s special 2002 year-end issue, TIME magazine named not one but three “Persons of the Year.” All three are women, ordinary women who saw a wrong in their workplace and quietly attempted to right that wrong - Sherron Watkins of Enron, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Coleen Rowley of the FBI.
We all know their headline stories. Sherron Watkins wrote a letter to Enron’s Chairman Kenneth Lay in the summer of 2001, warning him that the company’s bookkeeping methods were improper. Cynthia Cooper exploded the WorldCom bubble when she informed its board that the company had covered up $3.8 million in losses through phony bookkeeping. Coleen Rowley caused a sensation when a memo, concerning a suspected terrorist, was brushed off by FBI director Robert Mueller when it should have been investigated.
(TIME, December 30, 2002/ January 6, 2003)
I, too, confess to being a whistle blower. The year was 1984 when whistle blowers were not in fashion and did not make the cover of TIME. As a confessed whistle blower, I join Sherron, Cynthia and Coleen as one who risked income, respect, reputation and credentials in following others in an unpopular justice issue without ever regretting the resulting consequences.
Throughout 1984 I worked in turmoil. Should I follow the popular lead of those I worked for - those who provided my bread and butter? Or should I follow the unpopular path and my best instincts in fighting lies and deceit? In January 1985 confusion was settled when I was called to the office of Bishop Kenneth R. May ( with Synod Secretary Donald Anderson and Treasurer Howard Rectanus present for a show of unanimity in mind and purpose) where I was told, bluntly without preamble, “We are reorganizing and we no longer need you. Do not report for work Monday morning.” A ten -year stint as Coordinator of Planning and Communications ended that abruptly. This came as a jolt but not as a surprise.
I offered no reaction or rebuttal, but I knew without a doubt that my dismissal for reorganization was a blatant lie. Why not state the truth? I was being fired, not laid off, because I had allied myself with DMS, the Denominational Mission Strategy, a group of church leaders, both pastoral and lay, who were using non-violent tactics to expose corporate greed and corruption as they led demonstrations for the unemployed. My church backed off from supporting DMS when tactics, given negative press coverage, enraged pastors and congregations.
As I left the bishop’s office. I heard him mutter, “I gave you a job when you needed it.” What a revelation! No wonder, in working with the bishop as my boss, I had been burdened under feelings of obligation. I later did my own muttering, “And I gave you a good worker when you needed one.” I had little support in those ten years, working without call or contract with staff assignments but never staff status. I was the token female and the token layperson.
As I walked back to my office to collect some personal belongings, I was dismayed to discover the custodian had been ordered to lock me out. I had to search for him and ask that he disobey orders so I could retrieve my purse and car keys. That was all that I retrieved. The office had emptied so there were no good-byes.
That evening I received an unexpected phone call from a member of synod’s Executive Board, a pastor I knew well and had worked with for years on board committees. He had been delegated to warn me that no appeal to the board for its consideration would be sanctioned. A conference phone call had ruled out any appeal possibility. I had not thought of appealing. Within a month the “reorganization” was complete when two ordained males were hired to replace me. I, the form, was gone, but all my assignments, the functions remained. My position had simply been put through a shredder.
During the year 1984, I had gone through interviews and written assignments in seeking certification as a lay professional on the roll of the Lutheran Church in America. I was preparing for a coming merger in 1988 when I would be seeking placement somewhere within the new church structure. The month following my firing, I was informed by the Church Vocations Committee that my pending certification would not be granted “since I no longer worked for the church.” My future in the church was cut off. Even THE LUTHERAN, magazine of the Lutheran Church in America, perpetuated the lie when a brief news item quoted the bishop as saying I “had been let go for reorganization reasons.” One of my assignments had been synod correspondent for THE LUTHERAN.
If it sounds like firing, feels like a firing and the results are those of a firing, it is a firing. Lies do not destroy truth. A layoff for reorganizational reasons should merit words of regret and compassion, and, in the best of situations, a farewell luncheon with accolades and a gold watch. Following that day of firing, I never heard from any co-worker. A wall of silence was erected.
How had this happened? Why the lying? How had I let myself in for this treatment? Was I a fool? My background and experiences give some answers.
I was born and raised in Johnstown, a town much like Pittsburgh but a fraction of Pittsburgh’s size. When first out of high school, during the worst months of World War II when women were recruited for jobs typically filled by men, I was offered a job in the newsroom of the Johnstown Tribune. Six days a week I reported for work at an early hour, and rode an ancient trolley gathered no passengers other than mill workers with lunch pails, loud greetings, lots of joking and much camaraderie. All these men were headed for the 7 a.m. shift at Bethlehem Steel Company in the Conemaugh or Franklin car shop, where railroad cars were produced in peace times. Before the great Johnstown flood of 1889, Johnstown produced more steel than Pittsburgh. In Johnstown you can stand on Westmont hilltop and look down on two small rivers meeting at a point with steel mills along those rivers. I am rooted in a steel city, now vastly devastated. The scenes are not what I remember from my early years.
Much later, in 1972, when working as executive director of the Greensburg YWCA, I was sent to New York headquarters for two weeks training in confrontational tactics to polarize and draw reactions. The YWCA issue at the time was the “elimination of racism.” Ten years later, DMS tactics did not seem alien to me. While attending the 1973 national convention of the YWCA in San Diego as a delegate, I found myself leaving the convention center with hundreds of other women as we marched six-abreast, closing streets and stopping traffic as we went, as a witness in support of Wounded Knee. In February of 1973, 300 members of the American Indian Movement seized Wounded Knee, South Dakota, symbolically, since it was at Wounded Knee in 1890 that the U.S. Army had massacred some 200 Sioux. In 1973 at Wounded Knee, Native Americans were demanding that the U.S. Government grant them sovereignty over their tribal affairs and improved conditions on reservations. Eleven hostages were held for 71 days until the site finally surrendered. If you were a YWCA delegate at that convention, you marched! That was my first experience in demonstrating as the YWCA took action to support its program imperative and Native Americans.
At the same convention, Cesar Chavez was a featured speaker as he represented another minority - migrant farm workers. Chavez recounted the many battles waged to gain union representation for the farm workers in California’s Central Valley. Chavez Spoke of “learning to celebrate defeats.” Through protest marches, the plight of migrant workers was brought to national attention in the 1960s. A five-year boycott in the grape industry ended in 1970 when farm workers gained bargaining leverage through the United Farm Workers who had affiliated with the powerful AFL-CIO. Chavez, a former fieldhand himself, knew personally how miserable conditions were for migrant workers in the vineyards and lettuce fields of California. At a later date, I met Chavez at a YWCA event in Pittsburgh and was privileged to shake his hand. I never have fancied myself above the laboring class and always, intuitively, have found good reason to side with them.
Any wonder then that my ears perked up one day when Charles Honeywell walked into a synod staff meeting to begin training on the DMS unemployment issue. “Business as usual is no longer an option” was a battle cry to those who protected the status quo of image, offerings and numbers. Honeywell had been hired by DMS to train pastors and key congregational lay leaders in leadership skills that would awaken “stuck” congregations. Pastors had been targeted for leadership training since they had been identified as the key factor in determining the success or failure of most congregational ministries.
Under the leadership of Trainer Charles Honeywell and the Theologian Philip Long, who later became my pastor, a number of devoted and dedicated pastors were embattled in depressed areas where steel jobs had been sent overseas. I was impressed by the role female clergy in DMS. There were only three female clergy in the Pittsburgh area and all three were active spokepersons in DMS. Dr. Long’s words in an article, printed in PARTNERS, magazine of Lutheran Church in America professionals, were especially meaningful to me as I began to learn of DMS involvement in the unemployment issue in the Mon Valley.
Dr. Long wrote:
“How did DMS get involved in nerve-racking confrontations, provocative tactics, arrests, jail terms, and the polarizing of communities? “Forced” is the best word I can come up with: forced, compelled, driven by some gut-wrenching, life
altering experiences.
“The foundation for our development of prophetic ministry was laid as we each in our own parishes came to experience human suffering of apocalyptic proportions. We began to see thousands of families in our communities broken not only physically by lack if income but also spiritually by false hopes and calculated deceptions... The scope of human misery around us and the political complicity we received struck us as appalling. It is hard to believe of you have not seen it.”
The history of DMS is well known. DMS had exposed corporate greed and corruption as a false god back in the 1980s. Now we have come full circle when three women, exposing the same corporate greed and corruption, are praised by a leading magazine as “Persons of the Year.” In the past several years, the media have been quick to join in those exposures and the public has been informed. In the early 1980s, only bad press was given DMS.
When did I break ranks with other members of synod staff? The climate became intolerable when I saw a church body, rooted in the Augsburg Confession, rely on temporal or secular power rather than spiritual power. I protested when a legal firm - law not love - was called upon to advise the running of the synod. Decisions were made without theological reasoning, and, as law took over, arrests began . My friends were serving jail terms! Often I had suggested that Bishop May turn to the LCA’s Court of adjudication for debate on theological terms. My voice was not heard and the Augsburg Confession became a useless document. I protested by remaining silent and boycotting staff
meetings. The office staff answered me with games of shut-out and ostracism. I was labeled a “spy for DMS.”
My story began with my firing at the end if a working day - Friday, January 4, 1985. That same day began when riot police surrounded the church in Clairton, broke in on Bible study underway and arrested eleven members. The church was seized, eleven were jailed and I was fired.
I am certain that Sherron, Cynthia and Coleen have their stories to tell. My story had its ending when in February of 1985, one month following my firing, I became a signer of AN EVANGELICAL CONFESSION, PITTSBURGH 1985.
Following that signing, I wrote friends throughout the church who were wondering if I had gone mad in challenging the church’s authority.
In a letter, dated February 19, 1985, I wrote:
“ Being empowered by the Holy Spirit, I can testify that the confessional stand, adopted February 16 in Pittsburgh, following two days of intense theological discussion among a group of evangelical Christians of Lutheran, Episcopal, United Methodist, Church of Christ and Presbyterian backgrounds from across the country and Canada, is where I want to place my witness. We dare to turn critical of our church only because we see a crisis of such significance that we fear the “dangerous expressions of alien Gospel.” We stand to protest secular authority in the church where our One Lord reigns as the only effective authority. This authority must not be usurped!
“So we protest! In speaking boldly or in ways of silent witness, we all have risked consequences we would have risked consequences we would have wished to avoid. I have not heard any person complain that the consequences were more than he or she bargained for. The loss of my job is a consequence I willingly accept without regret.”
Those words,addressed to dozens of friends in all arenas of church life, drew no responses. I have heard to this day from close friends. So much for friends!
Today DMS is alive and doing well as the Confessing Synod Ministries. Those of us who sere engaged in confrontations, tactics and arrests in the 1980s, often reminisce and we laugh when we recall those years. However, at the time we lived with butterflies in our stomachs, prayers for those in jail and always hope for our church. We had answered as imperative when we “went against society for the sake of justice and against the church for the sake of the church,” and our church’s leaders had not supported us.
Surely there are more whistle blowers who see a wrong and want to fight that wrong. Or are most immobilized by a comfortable status quo? Speaking out on justice issues can send messages and ripples far beyond our own feeble efforts. Let’s hear it for all whistle blowers!

Mary Anne Yost was employed as Coordinator of Planning and Communications for the Western Pennsylvania-West Virginia Synod, Lutheran Church in America, from the fall of 1974 until her firing January 4, 1985. She is a member of East Liberty Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh.