A pproaching her fortieth birthday in 1990, Etta Worthington felt torn between an urge to do the right thing with family obligations, and her need for a more personally fulfilling career path. She had been laid off from her management job in educational publishing, and needed to support her teenage daughter and help care for elderly parents. Having been a freelance writer and features editor in her twenties, only to give it up when she got divorced at thirty-two, she found herself missing writing and the literary community.
"I was raised to be responsible," Worthington says. "My father was a fundamentalist Baptist preacher. Right and wrong were really clear. Back when I got divorced, I realized writing wouldn't pay for my apartment. At that time, my daughter was eight, and I became very serious about being a responsible adult. I had to think about what I could do for her and her future, not what I wanted.
"My mother always said, 'If you give your word, you do it.' And when I was getting divorced, which of course is not doing what you said you were going to, I felt an even stronger pull toward that family conditioning. I felt that guilt. I became a project manager in publishing, and got my MBA at night. Then suddenly I was turning forty and had lost parts of myself. I realized my writer self had been left behind.
"Facing forty I said to myself, 'I'm so together, it won't be a problem.' But a couple of my friends died of cancer, and I had lost my job. I realized I was unhappy in my life, and I started asking, 'What's meaningful? I'm going to die sometime. Will I have spent the time well?'
"My daughter was a senior in high school, getting ready to go off to college, and I knew there would be major changes in my life - like not having to go to the grocery store all the time! I realized I didn't want to go back to the corporate world. I started asking myself, 'What is meaningful work?'
"I grew up in a very religious family. And I grew up believing that you were supposed to help other people, to share, and give back. Meaningful work for me has to do with being soulful, life-affirming. And I felt, 'I'm not going to be at the end of my life regretting how I spent my time.' I had to decide to take care of myself too.
"It came to me while writing in my journal that the only meaningful thing would be to build a cathedral. A community project that would outlast the architect. Something that when completed took people to a more spiritual level. This idea of the cathedral came to me, only I had no idea what it meant."
After being laid off in 1990, and with no firm alternative in mind, Worthington tried self-employed occupations like print brokering and teaching management seminars, eventually turning to teaching part-time at several local colleges which she continues to do, while working on her own plays, poetry, and fiction. In 1993, Worthington started River Oak Arts, an organization offering writers groups, workshops, open mics, a literary magazine, readings and lectures.
"After a few years of experimenting with different jobs, eventually I was able to let myself do what I wanted to do," says Worthington. "I started River Oak Arts because I'd lost touch with my writer self and lacked contact with other writers. No one else had created this writers organization I wished for, so I did it. Earlier I had begun hosting Sunday afternoon literary teas to talk about writing, and this made me want to have more contact with other writers. Turns out it was a need many others had too. It was only after I had started R.O.A. that I realized it was the cathedral."
Worthington started small, initiating a monthly meeting for writers at a local library, and searching out funding for her center wherever she could. She had not-for-profit experience volunteering with her daughter's dance company which came in handy.
"My first step was calling up the head of the Oak Park Library and asking for a meeting room once a month for a writers center," Worthington says. "Then I handed out notices to all the writers I knew. Our first meeting was in March of 1993."
R.O.A. started out with just a handful of members in 1993, and has grown to include over 250 today. It's Worthington's philosophy that R.O.A exists for anyone who cares about literature or wants to write, not only for established writers.
"R.O.A is about helping people find a voice and tell their stories," Worthington says. "It's about people rediscovering or discovering the joy of literature. People starting to write who have not written before, or who have not written since college.
"It's about sharing their stories, whether it's through open mic, a workshop, a literary magazine, or just one other person. Not everything deserves to be read by thousands of people, but every piece of writing deserves to be acknowledged by someone else.
"Sometimes the literary world can be elitist or snobbish. I'm into creating an inclusionary not exclusionary environment. Anyone who's ready, who's writing, or who likes literature is welcome at R.O.A. Just because you've never published anything, why can't you sit next to a person who's published lots of books? Because in the end, we're all struggling with the same thing. We're all alone in front of a computer screen trying to make something from nothing."
Once the writers support aspect of R.O.A was up and running, Worthington began work on the concept for a literary magazine, "River Oak Review." Her experiences in publishing helped her estimate the costs, and she approached the Oak Park Area Arts Council.
"All I had to show was a mock up of the cover, and a dummy book," Worthington says. "River Oak Arts had just incorporated (as a non-profit,) and here I was asking for money. They gave us $551, our first grant. Then I wrote a letter to 150 of my friends, asking them to become members of R.O.A for $20, or to make a contribution. We got $1000 that way, and with our first $1500, we got the magazine going. It all started out as a way for me to connect with other writers, but it has mushroomed into an experience for lots of people, not just me."
R.O.A. now also offers a writers center, a literary reading series featuring authors such as Jane Hamilton and Kathleen Norris, a kids summer story arts camp, and even a small press.
"After the first year, once it became clear it wasn't just a little hobby thing on the side, I started doing up five year plans," Worthington continues. "As R.O.A. programming has grown, we've grown in different directions. We're planning a major three day poetry festival for the fall of 1999. We now have a playwrights group with plays read and semi-staged. We've connected with theaters and actors and directors. It's a chance for writers to see works and hear them read aloud in order to develop them further."
Yet creating and managing R.O.A. hasn't always been easy for Worthington, especially since all work is done by volunteers.
"It's exciting when people get involved and volunteer and help a lot," Worthington says. "It makes it so much easier. Then sometimes people aren't there when you need them. Staying up late at night by myself putting labels on mailings - that's the time when it's not so fun."
Yet the benefits far outweigh the negative moments for Worthington.
"I feel like a proud grandmother," she says of the people who have come to R.O.A. professing not to be "real" writers, only to find themselves continuing with workshops and open mics, eventually getting works published.
"Writing is a way to make sense of life," she says. "To make life meaningful, to get your bearings. There's a need in every person to create. Everybody should be doing art, and I think of writing as accessible. This may sound simplistic, but if everybody did some kind of art, I think we'd have fewer social problems. I tend to have this point of view that everybody should write, but I haven't been able to nag everybody into writing just yet."
River Oak Arts can be reached at 708-524-8725.
published in January 3, 1999 in The Chicago Tribune
copyright 2003 Ellen Nordberg . all rights reserved .
ENordberg@mindspring.com