First clerk

Minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marriage was legal for same-gender couples in the entire United States, Barb Byrum had a couple before her who wanted to be married. The 37-year-old clerk of Ingham County hadn’t even finished reading the ruling, but she was game to marry them. That move put her in the history books as the first elected official to marry a couple after the ruling. The marriage was performed so quickly, there was no media present.

“The couples had waited long enough,” Byrum said.

Byrum no longer keeps track of how many same-sex couples she has married "since they are equal," but she figures at least 100.

She speaks of “my families.” Those families are couples Byrum has married since the Supreme Court ruling, but also during a brief window in March 2014, after a federal judge in Detroit struck down Michigan’s marriage ban. In the day before that window closed, she married the first couple in the state as well.

Byrum will serve as the grand marshal for this Saturday´s Michigan Pride March. See schedule on Page 13.

City Pulse sat with Byrum in her offices located in the downtown Lansing Veteran’s Memorial Courthouse. Her top aides were in the room for the interview, and before the interview she gave a tour of the operation. Banter, jokes and laughter abound with Byrum and her staff.

But she warned that the fun house veneer covers up a hard-driving boss and an equally committed team of public employees.

In March 2014, after Judge Bernard Friedman ruled that Michigan’s marriage ban was unconstitutional, Byrum was flooded with text messages and social media queries asking her to open the courthouse and issue marriage licenses on a Saturday. She wanted to but wasn’t sure how to bring in staff on an unscheduled day.

“My biggest struggle on that day was — I can open, yeah my key will open the door, but how will I actually process those marriage licenses?” she said. “I couldn’t sleep with the thought that I might be standing in the way of loving couples joining together in marriage.”

She thought it over for hours, she said. And finally at about 3 a.m. she texted her team of eight employees that she planned to open the office in five hours.

“They didn’t respond right way, which was really upsetting,” she said with a smile. “We’re still dealing with that,” she quipped, her staff laughing along with her.

But by 6 a.m. the staff did start responding. All of them were in, and the office was opened at 8 a.m. March 21, just like it were any regular business day. She brags that she even processed a concealed weapons permit request that day, between marriages.

For Byrum it was a matter of “doing what was right.” She noted that many couples she married that March had been together for decades and had been waiting “long enough” to have the same rights and responsibilities attached to their relationships as she had with her husband, Brad Delaney.

She and Delaney have been married for 12 years. They have two sons, Bryce, 5, and Blake, 7. The boys are better known in Byrum’s prolific social media presence as Boo- Boo and Buggie, respectively. The family attends East Lansing’s All Saints Episcopal Church. Delaney is a detective with the Ingham County Sheriff’s Department.

Byrum is the daughter of Jim Byrum, a former Lansing Community College trustee and Diane Byrum, who served in the state House and then the Senate before returning to the House after losing a U.S. House race. She grew up in Ononadaga, a tiny agricultural enclave in southwestern Ingham County. Children in the area attend the Leslie Public Schools.

She acknowledged there is a perception that rural residents are less accepting of the LGBT community, but Byrum said that has not been her experience. She noted that many families she has married have lived in southern Ingham County, where rather than being involved in pride parades and other visible actions, they have lived their lives as out members of a rural community. Their sexuality is not a secret or an issue for their neighbors.

How did Byrum go from Leslie Public Schools and the Onondaga “homestead” of her youth to vocal and national leader for equality? She said she had no distinct memory of when equality suddenly made sense. For her, it’s always just been the way it is supposed to be.

“For whatever reason, I am an ally,” Byrum said.

During her youth, she worked at the family hardware store in Leslie, good preparation for eventually running her own hardware store in Charlotte. And during high school, while her father was on the LCC Board, she attended high school during the day and classes at the community college at night. When she entered Michigan State University in 2000, she was a sophomore.

“That’s just what I knew that you did,” she said of the dual enrollment at the community college and high school.

That “that’s just what you did” mentality is what has driven her over the years and something she learned from her family.

She credits the strong role models of her mother and grandmothers. Her paternal grandmother was a nurse. Her maternal grandmother, after her husband passed away, took over the family gas station.

“I remember she used to get up really early in the morning and she would pump gas,” Byrum said. “It was a full service gas station. I remember her jumping in the wrecker with like an 18-year-old kid because she was worried about the kid that was going to pull someone out of a ditch.”

She pauses as she thinks about the women in her life.

“These are the women I grew up with,” she said. “I have had amazing people — that whether they know it or not — have played a very important role in my life.”

She is told by her mother, and vaguely recalls in her own memories, of an incident in third grade. At the time, only boys were invited to hoist the U.S. flag in front of the school. The young Byrum — who would later be at the center of a firestorm of controversy in the state Legislature over women’s reproductive rights — didn’t think that was fair.

So she wrote a note to the principal. Next thing she knew, the principal had agreed with her, and she was selected to be the first girl in the school to do so.

“I didn’t want to be the girl raising the flag,” she said. “I wanted to see another girl do it.”

That is not the only example of her early advocacy efforts. She recalled walking out of a government class in the ninth grade because the substitute teacher was quoting the Bible. “I was never in trouble,” Byrum said “I never walked out of class.”

So like the good student, she walked to the office and reported her walk out — and her reasoning — to the principal. She was ordered back to class, which she dutifully did. But words spread in the small school, and other students followed her lead that day and walked out on the same Bible-touting substitute. By the end of the day, she said, the assistant principal pulled her from one of her last classes and apologized to her. And said the substitute would not be returning to school.

“I guess that shows I was an advocate before I even know I was one,” she said. Her mother was in the state Senate at that point.

Despite that early advocacy, she said she had no intention of becoming a politician. She was happy running her hardware store. But she was also fascinated with learning. She holds a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness management with an emphasis in crop and soil science.

“I know how to grow crops, kill weeds and run a farm,” she said. “Then I have my law degree from Michigan State College of Law, otherwise known as the Detroit College of Law.”

But she has never practiced. She said she got the law degree because “I love to read.”

“I went to law school without having an intent to ever practice law,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it.”

She has no interest to this day in arguing in court, but she said she does “love” arguing.

In 2006, with her mother term limited, and the 67th House District seat up for grabs, Byrum said she was encouraged to run. She said supporters liked her because of her background in agriculture and as a small business owner.

Her interest in the race was more about adequate representation.

“All of the people, the names I heard, that were going to run, were older, male individuals,” she said about her decision to go for it.

Her mother, said was not surprised. She said her mother knew she was destined for a life in political office since she was young and the incident with the flag raising happened.

That first race, she said, thickened her skin. She had a primary, which she won. And her general election opponent was Don Vickers, a Republican who had been her middle school principal. During the race, Vickers, Byrum said, referred to her by her long abandoned childhood nickname — Barbie. That nickname is incongruous with the reputation she has since gained as a fierce advocate, she acknowledged. And while she gladly accepted the label then, it rankles her to hear it to this day.

She prevailed in that general election and went on to win re-election twice.

Her accomplishments in the Legislature included legalizing onsite sales for local brews and distillation, which opened the floodgates to the brew pubs and distilleries popping up all over the state.

But it’s a floor fight in June 2012 for which she became known statewide.

During a contentious fight over abortion-related legislation, Bryum and Rep. Lisa Brown, an Oakland County Democrat, challenged the GOP leadership. Both were ordered silenced because of their words. Byrum had used the word “vagina,” and Brown had reminded her GOP colleagues that “no means no.” GOP leadership told Democrat leadership the two were barred from speaking on the floor.

The situation erupted into a national fiasco for the GOP and resulted in a staged reading of the play “The Vagina Monologues” on the steps of the Capitol. Playwright Eve Ensler flew to Michigan to participate, and both Brown and Byrum read from the play. Thousands attended.

Term limited in the House, she decided to seek the post of Ingham County clerk, winning easily. She said she loves the job and plans to seek another term in 2016.

“I was very happy I was in the right place at the right time,” she said, referring to her role as a gay ally. “I am very lucky to have had a small impact on people’s lives.”