One Family's Bankruptcy

The following letter, written this summer by a woman whose family farm was facing foreclosure, was addressed to the court-appointed trustee in the bankruptcy proceedings. Time's Gregory Jaynes received permission to publish the letter, and he visited the family to report on the outcome of their case.

Mr. William L. Yaeger

Durham, N.C.

Re: Case No. B-86-00887C-7,

Ernest C. & Margie M. Brauer

Dear Mr. Yaeger,

I suppose that bankruptcy is intended to be a "cut and dried" business decision, and in the final analysis perhaps that is the end result. However, with first hand knowledge, I do know there is a far greater involvement, especially the emotional traumas of seeing the upheaval and disposal of a lifetime of very hard work.

My husband and I are from farm families of many generations. Except for brief periods of our lives, we have always farmed and know little of any other way of life. Ernie, at 69 years of age, was off the farm during the years of 1939-1945 while he was in service during World War II with 30 months overseas. When he returned in 1945 we were promptly married, having known each other for many years. In early 1946 we bargained for a very run-down piece of land on which we spent $800 to build a two-room cottage without the amenities of plumbing or electricity on a rural unpaved road. Conditions eventually improved -- the road was paved and we did get electricity and running water, but no bath facility for 16 years.

Our two daughters were born while we lived in that little house -- one was nine years old and the other three when we moved into our modest FHA-financed home. The intervening years were good because we loved the work of clearing those rolling hills and turning red clay into beautiful green pastures and fields -- grabbing up roots and stumps and hauling off endless rocks. It should have mattered that we never had any money at the end of the year, but we always felt the promise and the hope of a better year next year. I worked off the farm at a local bank, an insurance company, a truck line (some of the time at two jobs) along with canning and freezing fruits and vegetables to make ends meet. I sewed for the children and if I needed new curtains or a bedspread, I made them. So much of what we made from the farm went back into the farm, but we didn't require a lot for family living and we simply plowed everything back to the farm. Out of it all, we raised two very special girls -- not extremely beautiful or extremely intellectual, but attractive and smart -- pretty stable, and altogether satisfactory. Through work-study programs, loans and scholarships, they both acquired a fairly good basic education. One teaches, the other is a health educator with our local health department. Both have apparently solid and satisfactory marriages. The older one has two little girls, the younger has a new little daughter.

I am not sure why I am writing you this except that perhaps I need to reaffirm to myself that our dilemma is not the result of high and riotous living -- that we are and always have been a plain, hard-working farm family. We've had a few health problems, none of which were very expensive, three or four really bad drought years that really set us back, perhaps some bad business decisions and maybe some management weakness. Actually we were not in bad shape until the years with the terrible interest rates and the grain embargo -- it seems in retrospect that was the real beginning of a long, painful decline to this sorry state of affairs.

I think I want to tell you that, faced with the certainty of Federal land bank and Farmers Home foreclosure, we came to the conclusion that Chapter 7, with its inherent finality, seemed the preferred route out of the morass of worry and debt. We are trying to maintain our self-respect and a degree of dignity (all honor & pride have gone by the way), trying to get through this most difficult of times with our sanity intact and see what we can do to maintain a livelihood so that we need not resort to public assistance or dependence on our children. At Ernie's age, it will be difficult to find work; his knees are worn out, too; but his Social Security of $296 monthly will help. I was able to get work at a nearby hospital at $4.10 hourly as a ward clerk -- completely out of my past experience of bookkeeping and accounting but it will pay routine bills, if we are very, very frugal.

Mr. Yaeger, we are very ignorant about bankruptcy, never having had anyone in either of our families or any of our associates involved in bankruptcy. We believe that when this is over, we will be relieved of all our holdings and of all our debts in their entirety and we will be left with our household goods and clothing. I would like to know if it would be possible for me to get a new pair of glasses (mine have not been changed in four or five years and the bifocal is no longer right for my vision). This would probably cost one half of a cow or about $130. I also have two teeth badly in need of repair -- one needs a cap in order to save it and the other is in pretty bad shape also -- will probably cost two cows or about $500. Also electric bills are continuing for the poultry house and will need to be paid soon. How will the auctioneer be paid? How will you be paid? Is there anyway that we can come out of this with even a few hundred dollars? We have nothing. We have acquired and accumulated nothing -- with the 40 productive years of our lives down the drain. How long can we remain in our house?

Our oldest daughter and her husband own a mobile home into which we will move. This has to be relocated since it now is located on a part of the bankruptcy property. Would it be possible or reasonable to request that we be allowed to live in our house perhaps as long as 60 days from probable discharge or until late September or October?

If you do not have the time to dictate a letter answering these questions, perhaps you can call me. Thank you for your time in reading this rather long letter. Perhaps it will establish that we are real flesh and blood people with very real problems and not merely a case number. I pray that the agonizing we have done in order to accept the inevitability of this decision has been the worst part of it and we will greatly appreciate anything you can do to ease the finalizing technicalities and to enable us to pick up the fragments of our lives.

Sincerely,

Margie M. Brauer

William Yaeger, the trustee appointed in the Brauers' bankruptcy proceedings, responded immediately that he had "never received such an eloquent description of the financial and economic plight which you, and so many of your neighbors, are presently enduring." He arranged a meeting to answer Margie's questions, and he wrote in closing: "I hope that we can work together to reduce the pain of the bankruptcy."

& Of her letter to Yaeger, Margie says, "I didn't cry when I wrote it, and I haven't cried since I wrote it, and I don't intend to cry because if I started crying, I never would stop." As a legal matter, the Brauers were declared bankrupt on Tuesday, July 29. Their house, their 228 acres outside Norlina, N.C., and their 111 head of cattle will be sold shortly. At the end of last week they were still living in the house, hoping they might be able to rent it from the buyer, whomever that turns out to be. Failing that, they will move into their daughter's trailer on a flat, treeless lot down the road.

"It's degrading," Ernie was saying in his kitchen the other day. "It puts a person down to nothing."

"We no longer own anything," Margie said, removing a tuna casserole from the oven. "We're just squatting in this house."

"Remember when we had to carry our water?" Ernie said. "And that old outhouse? We went into the hole right from the start. I've been in debt all my life except right this minute."

The bank had just taken Ernie's car and pickup truck. He was driving his son-in-law's sedan. "My teeth still need fixing, and I still can't see out of my glasses," Margie said. "I'm 69 years old now," Ernie said. "I have worked all my life from day one -- well, day seven. I started plowing when I was seven behind a double team."

"I was 60 last Wednesday," Margie said. "If you can sleep with it, you can stand it," Ernie said. "I have to sleep with this bear I've got by the tail here and let it come out like it will."

"What we're trying to find out here," Margie said, "is whether there's life after bankruptcy."

"There is," Ernie said, and anyone hearing him would have wished for all the world that Ernest C. Brauer had an ace up his sleeve.