Lynn ZIMMERMANN

Lynn Zimmermann

Lynn's 2021 Autobiography

I attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison where I majored in comparative literature. I was set to enter the Peace Corps in Thailand after graduation, but my parents discouraged that plan by giving me $500 to travel in Europe for three months. Upon my return, I briefly worked in Manhattan at the library of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, commuting from our home in Westport. Realizing that city life was probably not for me, and influenced by my recent travels in rural parts of Italy and Greece, I set off to visit California.

I received a teaching degree at UC Berkeley where I met my husband who was finishing his doctorate. He then took a position at Stanford and I taught kindergarten in Palo Alto. At the same time, I worked with a group of women to establish the Sojourner Truth Childrens’ Center, still in existence more than forty years later. After my marriage ended, I accepted a fellowship in community development at the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. I married Don Willis, and our son, Anton Willis, was born two weeks after the completion of my degree.

Our small family moved to a ranch in the coastal mountains two hours north of San Francisco. As Anton grew older, I returned to teaching, working for a time on the Cahto Tribal Reservation. When this marriage ended, my son and I moved to the county seat, Ukiah, where I have lived ever since. I taught almost every grade at a small public school in a neighboring agricultural valley: a good set-up as my son was on the same campus throughout his early years.

In the year that my son left for the East Coast to attend Brown University, I became the principal of the public elementary school in Anderson Valley, a beautiful wine-growing valley sixteen miles east of the coast and close to the historic village of Mendocino. Half the students were children of farm workers who spoke Spanish and little or no English. Developing a school culture and a strong literacy program for all students became the focus of my work over the next twelve years. Our schools were twice recognized as High Performing High Poverty schools by the California Department of Education. My final position in public education was as Director of Curriculum for the largest school district in the county. I also became an adjunct instructor at Dominican University of California.

During these same years, my son returned to California to attend graduate school in architecture at UC Berkeley where he met his wife, then founded a successful startup based on his engineering and architectural interests. Also during this period, I received an out of the blue call from Bill Harrar, whom I had been friends with during junior high school. Bill was living in Winnipeg, where he’d married, raised his daughters and was now divorced. A correspondence ensued, and after a few visits, he moved here.

Bill and I have been together for eighteen years, though he currently lives in Winnipeg with one of his daughters, whose husband died suddenly, leaving her with two very young sons. His other daughter and her family live close by. Several of Bill’s plays, all based on historical events, have been produced in Canada. His last play, Bolshie Bash, was produced in 2019 for the centennial of the Winnipeg Labor Strike. We are currently at work on a collection of six stories for young readers, each depicting an era of ancient history.

I remain in the 135 year old house that Bill and I brought back to life. I am close to my son, his wife and their sons, ages 6 and 3, who live in Oakland. I chair the Mendocino County Library Advisory Board, bike country roads and garden. Among great memories of travel are time spent with my mother, driving from Cuernavaca to the Guatemala highlands in her Volvo wagon; living in Hamburg where my husband was teaching at the university; biking in the Dordogne to explore cave art: crewing on a small sailboat from Zihuatanejo to Huatulco; in Paris with my son, his wife and her parents: and a few times in both Canada and Italy with Bill.