We love celebrating at The Conflict Center! Birthdays, new arrivals, holidays, restorative justice cases… all receive their due celebrations. Recently, we had the privilege of celebrating our Director of Development, Ronnie Weiss, for her 35th anniversary working at The Conflict Center! Just for fun, we did a little trip down memory lane with Ronnie to commemorate her and learn about her journey with TCC over the years!

1) Ronnie, what did you do before you started working at TCC? Why were you initially attracted to working here?

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Beth McGrath’s connection to The Conflict Center (TCC) began when she was a child, then grew stronger when she was a contract instructor in her thirties. Now, after 30 years and a move to the Western Slope of Colorado, the Conflict Center remains a powerful force in McGrath’s life.

“I will always be directly connected with The Conflict Center because it never leaves your heart, it never leaves your soul,” said McGrath, a professional development coordinator in Grand Junction and a Conflict Center donor for more than a decade. 

McGrath’s introduction to The Conflict Center was unconventional. Family friend and Conflict Center founder Liz Loescher would sometimes practice curriculum and strategies with her own children and McGrath. 

Loescher would ask: “How can we handle that conflict, how can we solve that?” said McGrath, who described herself as an angry child with struggles at home. “It meant the world to me to grow up with her family.” 

After finishing graduate school in the early 2000s, McGrath began working with young people who were often homeless or who had other acute problems. She remembers telling Loescher that many of these kids were angry and didn’t have positive ways to deal with their strong emotions. It was then that Loescher suggested McGrath  volunteer at the Conflict Center, teaching classes on addressing conflict and anger. 

McGrath taught classes at TCC for more than a decade. She knew her students weren’t “bad kids,” but rather  kids who were making bad choices, often because they never learned positive ways to handle conflict or never had anyone in their lives who could model those skills. 

She remembers one teen, who had been beaten up on her way home from school. Her mother gave her a piece of chain and told her daughter that either she fought back or she couldn’t return home. “The mother told her daughter to go do this. She really didn’t have a choice,” said McGrath, who added that the girl did successfully complete her class.  

What makes the Conflict Center so special, she said, is that it is a safe space for people like that teenager — a place where they can share the realities of their lives and  learn skills and strategies with instructors who believe in them. “What if just once that they try something they learned at the Conflict Center and it keeps them out of trouble?” McGrath said. “Why wouldn’t you donate to a place that gives these kids these skills?”

McGrath continues to donate to The Conflict Center, despite her move to Grand Junction, because she believes the lessons taught and learned there extend far beyond the organization, the Denver metro area or even each student.“If we teach them those skills, then they teach them to their children and it keeps going on and on,” she said. “It really is an endless donation. It’s an amazing place to be a part of.” 

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Talking about me now without mentioning The Conflict Center, means not telling the story at all – it has been part of who I’ve become.

It was indeed a place for meeting, exchange and a big learning point for me.

I met wonderful people willing to give up on their owns plans when it came to helping others.

We were culturally different but inside was the same heart that beat and loved in the same way. Hence the same passion that brings us together in this part of the globe.

I came to TCC excited to learn and left enriched, matured, confident and more convinced than ever about my passion.

I learned how to manage my own anger, and improved myself through the different classes. Now I am able to help others with the same need to understand and overcome the struggles in their own lives.

I am more than grateful because this experience has had a significant impact in my life as I begin to trust myself and my interpersonal relationships.

Since I have returned to Burkina Faso, I can’t wait to share this acquired knowledge.

In fact, starting in February, I will begin facilitating the Anger Management classes in my small community church.

Jacob Sankara was a full-time intern during the 17-18 school year as part of the MCC international intern program.  He lives in Burkina Faso.

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I continued to value the work TCC does, but from a distance for many years. In 2016, with the obvious growing failure of American’s to treat one another civilly, it became clear to me that I need to actually do something to support TCC in its efforts to promote peaceful, civil interaction among us. This knowledge led to my commitment to spend time weekly at TCC, helping with the administrative chores required to keep the organization thriving. This has turned out to be primarily bookkeeping chores.  The much appreciated side benefit is the interaction with members of the TCC community — staff and volunteers.  I am looking forward to helping the coming year (which really starts in September) unfold with new efforts from everyone.

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After meeting Liz and becoming enthralled by her passion and practical wisdom regarding dealing with conflicts, my life literally took a change of course.

I became a Conflict Center volunteer, board member, educator and advocate.   I have incorporated the lessons learned from The Conflict Center in my behaviors, bringing peace to my life and to my family members, friends and colleagues.

An early lesson was to “own my part of a conflict” … I was my most difficult person!  This was one of my earliest discoveries.  Happily, I also found out that I could change my choices of words, body language and intention to get that difficult person in a better place.  The ripples of my behavioral changes made me a better mother, friend and co-worker.  I learned how to directly approach another person without blaming them.  I learned how to use I Statements to explore my concerns.  Many times I don’t need to share what I discover when I ask myself “What am I feeling threatened by?”  I simply need to know about it and figure out a strategy that addresses my concerns/fears.

Because of my many years of practicing sincere and meaningful conflict management, I have become a very curious person.  I know now that I want to find out what is going on with the other person whenever a conflict arises.  I often say: “Tell me more” and I really mean it.  I don’t waste much time on snide or “gotcha” comments.   I work to stop myself from guessing about another person’s intentions or actions…. I simply ask them.

My curiosity and intention to find viable solutions is genuine.  As a result, I am much less fearful about the outcome of any situation.  I trust that I have the heart and skills to embrace conflict as an opportunity to learn. This trusting confidence serves me well in reducing drama and stress.

The courage it takes to directly engage another person is a surprise to me.  I often have to take time to figure out the problem and what would actually be a good next step.  It certainly helps to have a trustworthy friend or two, who can hold a confidence, to help process what I think I might do before I actually put a plan into action.

Some of my favorite Liz Loescher quotes/lessons:

• Conflict is Inevitable, Violence is Not.
• What a concept!  (When brainstorming and a good idea emerged.)
• There are no intractable problems; there are intractable people.

Meeting and being mentored by Liz led to a deep learning of gentle confrontation.

The path my life took after I became involved with The Conflict Center included:

• Becoming a much better parent and improving all of my personal and professional relationships
• Interacting with the finest colleagues I could possibly have imagined for the last 30 years
• Presenting hundreds of hours of presentations about conflict and anger management and creating curriculum for many audiences: homeless, young, seniors, well-educated, parents, students, faculty, business teams, under-served populations, and more
• Promoting Conflict Resolution Month in Colorado that started in 2005. It is the only one in the entire country.  Without TCC, there simply would not be such a campaign….   All Coloradans are invited to participate and Talk. Work It Out!  www.conflictresolutionmonth.org
• The creation of the photo and story exhibit: Talking It Out: Getting to Agreement that has been traveling in Colorado since 2012
• Starting my own mediation and facilitation business
• Co-producing a quarterly Conflict Resolution program on KGNU radio for the past 10 years
• Hosting conferences for educators in Colorado, supporting others in their conferences and programs. Working with various universities and colleges.
• Introducing Madame Solutions to the community
• Becoming a mentor for others in fundraising skills
• Creating a home that is literally a “Violence-Free Zone” with a wall plaque that reminds us
• Marching in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Marade each year with my son, dog and others from TCC

Yes, The Conflict Center has impacted my life as well as the lives of my children and grandchildren.  We are all reasonably open-minded listeners, trusting that we can find solutions when we work together.

It has been my honor to celebrate our Ambassadors of Peace as they received their awards and my pleasure to invite others to become members of the Friends of The Conflict Center.  Over the years, I have been incredibly proud of TCC’s corporate commitment to “walking the talk”, use of consensus decision making, bold transparency and insistence on maintaining a culture that encourages us all to be our best selves.

I am grateful beyond words for years of practice, as well as the wisdom and the opportunities offered.

Mary Zinn

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At the start of my Alternative Dispute Resolution certificate program at The University of Denver, I took a class from Myra Isenhart, one of the first volunteers at TCC. During that class she mentioned its work to me and said, “We have a wonderful Reading for Peace program in which we work with children in schools.” She then went on to describe this program and its sponsor, TCC, suggesting that I might want to consider an internship with them and perhaps a place on the board. At the time I thought, “Oh, no. I want to do mediation. This sounds like much of the volunteer work I’ve done for years.”  Well, the best internship possibility I had was at TCC with the wonderful Jane Schmitz. I found that TCC was even more special than I had been led to believe and I loved Reading for Peace. As they say, the rest is history. And yes, I did serve on the board – for 9 years.

Many of the other memories come from the Reading for Peace program. Here are just a couple:

In one case a group of us were walking through the cafeteria on the way to set up our books and start the day when a little voice rang out, “Oh look! Here are the old ladies that read!”

A second one was the day that the five fifth grade boys in my group introduced themselves by telling me that their name was the same as the first boy who had spoken. During the discussion I called them all by this same name. Finally, the pressure became too great for one little boy. He cracked and told me that they hadn’t been truthful. Of course I was enormously surprised!

Many recent memories involve my age. One boy told me it was his teacher’s birthday and the year she was born. He asked me what year I was born. I told him I would tell him when we finished. When I did, he shouted to the teacher in utter disbelief “She was born in 1935!!” I’m sure he thought, “No one is THAT old!”

Sue Mitchell

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Hillary H., LSW

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Linda Campbell

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