Sister Doris Faber's First Election Experience

 I grew up on a Michigan farm, the last of twelve children.  We were not

poor, but we lived off what we produced from a yearly harvest.  My aunt

married a Detroit businessman, who had a more lavish lifestyle.  Once

a year she visited my mother and the conversations turned to politics.  

She was Republican and my parents were all for Delano Roosevelt, who helped

farmers around us keep their land from falling into debt.  At a young age,

I was not interested in politics, so I was happy when she returned to the

city and our home was peaceful again.  President Roosevelt's policies surely influenced my future voting choices.

 

I graduated at age seventeen and entered Central Michigan College.  Since

the voting age was twenty-one at that time, my first presidential vote was

for John F. Kennedy when I was in my third year of teaching high school at Catholic

Central in Alpena. The first Irish Catholic to be elected president, the young Kennedy filled me

with hope for a better America. Tragedy struck too soon with his death by an assassin

in Dallas, Texas.  The bitter Chicago Democratic Convention in the late 60's influenced

my decision to vote for Richard Nixon, my first and only vote for a Republican president

in my eighty-four years.

 

I have registered and voted in several states while in ministry:  New Mexico, Alaska,

South Carolina, Idaho, West Virginia, and Montana.  Whether "blue" or "red",

states, my vote counted so I appeared at the polling sites, large and small.  When I returned to

Michigan in 2012, I volunteered to work at the polling sites for state and national

elections.  Very few young voters appeared; sometimes we workers even clapped in

appreciation for their presence.  Since Covid, I cannot work the polls, so I vote by

mail.  It is my sacred privilege and duty to vote along with all eligible voters in the USA