LeBaron: How things have changed for Sonoma County moms

Sunday is Parents’ Day. The last Sunday in July was so designated, officially, in 1994 by President Bill Clinton. South Korea is the only other nation that has such an observance.

I would not have known this - would not have looked up its history - if Jeanie Lombardo had not seen the holiday listed on her wall calendar and called it to my attention.

I had never heard of this quasi-celebration. And neither had Jeanie, but it brought to her mind a 45-year-old “incident” that should be noted in any discussion of parenthood. Or women’s rights. Or, in a broader sense, local history.

In 1970, Jeanie was the executive secretary to Sheriff John Ellis. And she was pregnant with her first child.

She had worked for the county for 12 years, advancing from the personnel department to what was considered a significant position as aide to one of the most important elected officers in county government.

She assumed she could use her 60 days of accrued sick leave when her child was born. The personnel department thought otherwise, pointing out that there was no such provision in the general plan.

Now, if she should need a cesarean procedure, that would be different. That was surgery. Natural childbirth? Not a chance.

(Reminds me of an old saying of my father’s: “What’s natural isn’t wonderful.” I have pondered that often.)

From this point, Jeanie’s story gets truly weird.

An examination of the personnel section of the 1970 Sonoma County general plan shows us that, indeed, there was no provision for extended maternity leave. I’m not sure, but I don’t believe the words “maternity leave” ever appear in that document. Nor was there the option for new mothers to use paid sick leave time.

However, it does include a provision saying clearly that (wait for it!) a male employee could take his accrued sick leave to extend his paid time off when his child was born.

Mommy, on the other hand, had no option other than using her precious vacation time.

Jeanie and Jerry Lombardo (he was a deputy sheriff) consulted a lawyer. Attorney Ron Cates asked a Superior Court judge to rule on the matter, but the response was that the court had no authority to do that.

This is where attorney Rex Sater - later a distinguished Superior Court judge himself ­- called the American Civil Liberties Union. And it came to the attention of Press Democrat reporter Bony Saludes, who covered the courts like a blanket in those years. He kept local readers informed while San Francisco’s star columnist, Herb Caen, chronicled the case in an item that began with his customary three dots.

“… Exceedingly odd: Did you know that Sonoma County grants maternity leave to male employees but not to females? Neither did I till the ACLU’s Paul Halvonik filed a suit on behalf of Mrs. Jean Lombardo, who had to use her vacation time to have her baby. ‘This,’ muses Halvonik, ‘has to be the most bizarre maternity leave law in history.’?”

Sacramento-based sources subsequently reported to Caen that pregnant women working for the state “had to take unpaid leave, but men get a day off with pay when their wives have babies and another paid day off to take her home from the hospital!”

We live in a different world today, although with much still to be done in terms of employment equality - pay scales come to mind.

Sonoma County’s medical leave policy, based on hard-won state and federal laws, is too complex and far too big a subject for this space today.

Christina Cramer, the human resources director for Sonoma County, summarizes, saying that:

“County of Sonoma employees have job protection under California’s Pregnancy Disability Leave, and eligible county employees are further protected by the Family and Medical Leave Act. In combination, these laws may provide unpaid protected leave up to 17?1/3 weeks. Additionally, under the California Family Rights Act, all eligible county employees - both men and women - may take an unpaid ‘bonding leave’ up to 12 weeks after the birth, foster placement or adoption of the child. … County employees receive sick and vacation accruals, both of which may be used while the employee is on leave.

“May I also mention,” writes Cramer, “that departments are encouraged to allow flexibility with schedules for employees who have recently had babies. For example, allowing employees to phase back into a full-time work schedule.”

All this makes Jeanie Lombardo feel like a pioneer woman. In 1972, her lawsuit ended without a decision in the California Court of Appeals and the ACLU offered the option of taking the case to the federal courts. But the Lombardos decided against it. It would have meant more time and travel, and they now had a 2-year-old son and a second child about to be born. Jeanie resigned from county employ, ending her chapter in the pursuit of equality. But not before an indication that change was on the way.

In his budget memo to the Board of Supervisors that year, the county administrator noted, with implied urgency:

“The male maternity leave has to be eliminated.”

Done and done.

_____

There is another story appropriate for Parents’ Day from our county’s rich history, about the birth of a child a whole lot earlier.

This would be Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, considered by many to be Sonoma County’s “first citizen” by virtue of his assignment from the Mexican government to establish a pueblo at the site of the St. Francis Solano Mission in Sonoma and to act as the military governor of La Frontera del Norte in 1832.

Vallejo did his job as prescribed by the government in Mexico City, not always happily because he was among the proud lot that called themselves Californios, born here under Spanish rule and not always pleased with governance from Mexico after the War of Independence in 1822.

He admired George Washington, foresaw the future of the Pacific Coast as American, helped write the California constitution and served as the first state senator from Sonoma County.

So what’s this have to do with parenthood on Parents’ Day?

Well, you see, General Vallejo’s father delivered his mother.

There’s a sentence you don’t see written in many history books. But it’s true - and even understandable, knowing the scarcity of marriageable women in Spanish California in the late 1700s.

Our General Vallejo’s father, Ignacio, had trained for the priesthood in Mexico before joining a company of “leather-jacket” Spanish soldiers dispatched to California. That training included some medical procedures, including childbirth assistance.

In 1776, a year in which he was part of a company that escorted Father Junipero Serra northward, he visited friends, Fernando Lugo and his pregnant wife, at their San Luis Obispo rancho. When the time came, the 28-year-old soldier delivered a healthy baby girl.

When her parents offered to pay, Ignacio declined. Instead, he said that when she was old enough he would take her hand in marriage as his payment.

It was not an idle promise. When Antonia Lugo turned 14, her “family doctor,” Ignacio, now age 42, was on hand to claim his bride.

They were married for more than 40 years and had 13 children - a “poster couple” in two cultures.