June 30, 3017--Lady of Forest Trace

Two days ago would have been my mother's 109th birthday. Tomorrow is the second anniversary of her death.

My emotions this week have been saturated with thoughts of her. And memories. Memories including  her days as an elementary school teacher. She was from that generation of great teachers, talented women for whom teaching was one of the few available professional paths. Those of us who were among their students were more than fortunate.

I know I am not objective, but she stood out even among her remarkable colleagues. Even today I am frequently asked by someone about my age who learns my unusual last name if I am, perhaps, related to Ray Zwerling. Ray Zwerling, who was their first grade teacher, they tell me, and who through her gifts and caring changed their lives.

Mine was affected as well. Daily. Even today.

And now, with her no longer here, in reflection and advancing age, I am reminded about one of her stories. How in her day, if a women became pregnant, she was required to reveal that to her principal (all men) and immediately go on maternity leave.

I have been rereading this week Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, a progressive alternative to the rosy history we all were taught in public school. In the 13th chapter, "The Socialist Challenge," he turns attention to the limited role of women as late as the early 20th century. To illustrate, he quotes from a year 1900 list of "Rules for Female Teachers" posted by a school district in Massachusetts. A list my mother likely still largely found to be enforced when she began to teach in Brooklyn in the early 1930s--

1. Do not get married. [She married shortly after she began to teach.]
2. Do not leave town without permission of the school board.
3. Do not keep company with men. [I know she ignored this one!]
4. Be home between the hours of 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. [Ditto.]
5. Do not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. [Another rule I am certain she ignored--ice cream was one of her passions.]
6. Do not smoke. [She smoked Chesterfields.]
7. Do not get into a carriage with any man except your father or brother.
8. Do not dress in bright clothes. [She loved bright clothes.]
9. Do not dye your hair. [She did so in the late 1940s when my brother asked, as her hair began to turn gray, if she was "going to die soon."]
10. Do not wear any dress more than two inches above the ankle.

The constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote was ratified in 1920 when she was 12 years old.

When I left the Ford Foundation, in my farewell comments, I said the reason I became an educator was so I could help all children have my mother for a teacher. If only that could be.

Mom at 102

June 28, 2015--Lady of Forest Trace: My Mother at 107

My mother turns 107 today. She is doing pretty well for someone her age. Mainly resting now, but she is still living in her apartment where she feels and is secure and comfortable. I think she is determined to get to 108. I'll keep you posted.

June 17, 2015--Schmoozing With Congress

Again on Sunday, Maureen Dowd (who my 107-year-old mother calls Maureen Shroud) in the New York Times castigated Barack Obama for his unwillingness to deal directly with Congress. To work them, schmooze with them. How he has disdain for them, remains aloof, and thus is unable to get even widely-supported legislation passed, including last week to give him and future presidents more flexibility in Asian trade policy.

She wrote--

The president descended from the mountain for half an hour on Thursday evening, materializing at Nationals Park to schmooze with Democrats and Republicans at the annual congressional baseball game.

It was the first time he had deigned to drop by, and the murmur went up, "Jeez. Now? Really?" 

Obama has always resented the idea that it mattered for him to charm and knead and whip and hug and horse-trade his way to legislative victories, to lubricate the levers of government with personal loyalty. But, once more, he learned the hard way, it matters.

I am reading James Patterson's Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, and a large section of it is devoted to Ronald Reagan and his presidency.

Reagan may not have been the sharpest tack but he was among the most effective presidents in getting his agenda enacted by Congress, even though during his eight years in office, for the most part, both houses were controlled by Democrats. Fiercely partisan ones at that. Tip O'Neill, for example, was Speaker of the House during Reagan's tenure and there was no stronger partisan than old Tip.

He disagreed with almost everything the president stood for, but made many deals with him when they met regularly at the White House after office hours, trading stories and sharing a bottle of fine Scotch.

No fan of Reagan, Patterson reports that during his first 100 days in office, even while recovering from a very serious assassination attempt, Reagan amazingly met 69 times with 467 members of Congress, in addition to lobbying many more on the phone.

No one yet has added up Obama's meetings with members of Congress, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that during his first six-and-a-half years as president he has had fewer than 69 meetings and met with and spoken personally with fewer than 100 members.

Patterson writes that--

Though Reagan rejected major changes in his [legislative] plans, his actions indicated . . .  that he was far from the inflexible ideologue that critics had described.

Yes, the tax cuts he enacted with bipartisan support added exponentially to the national debt, tripling between 1980 and 1989 from $914 billion to $2.7 trillion, in many ways he was a successful president--the economy improved and he proved adept at foreign policy, very much including getting along famously and doing serious business with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Clearly schmoozing works.

July 1, 2013--Ladies of Forest Trace: Do Unto Henry Cross

When visiting with my mother on Friday to celebrate her 105th birthday, I did one of those silly things one is inclined to do on such occasions.

Rather than asking her which invention or technological development that occurred during her lifetime was, in her view, most consequential--electric lighting, radio, TV, airplanes, the Internet--instead, I asked what single lesson she learned that she felt was most important in guiding her.

Without missing a beat, she said, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you."

"I totally agree," I said, once again amazed by her mental acuity and what she chose to offer as her guiding principle.

"I think, without your preaching it to me, that by your example, I learned that Golden Rule and hope I also have been at least partially inspired by it."

She smiled at me as if to say, as I hoped she would say, that she feels I for the most part have been a good person.

To test that, I asked if I could tell her a story about something I had never before revealed to her that has been troubling me for more than 60 years.

She continued to smile at me.

"A few years after I was born, you returned to teaching and needed someone to care for me during the day. You hired Bessie Cross to do that. You remember her, don't you?"

She nodded and said, "Of course I do. She was wonderful. And do you remember she had a son, Henry, who was about two years older than you?"

"Yes. Of course I do. In fact, my story is about him. Henry Cross. And it is relevant to mention that he was black.

"One summer," I continued, "because Bessie Cross had to return to South Carolina to take care of her mother, who still lived on a plantation where she and Bessie as a young girl had picked cotton, Henry came to live with us.

"And since at that time I was an only child and our apartment had only two bedrooms, he slept on the daybed in my room. At night, lying side-by-side, we shared stories while waiting to fall asleep. He became like a brother to me. I liked to hear about his family, especially his Aunt Sis and Uncle Homer who tended the coal-fired boiler and steam heat system in the basement of an apartment house not far from where we lived. They lived in that basement too, and I loved to visit them with Henry. Aunt Sis would make us chocolate milk and pecan cookies that I can to this day still taste. They were that good."

"I remember your bringing some home for me one day. I had them with a cup of tea."

"After his mother returned from South Carolina, for years Henry continued to stay with us on weekends and the two of us would join our friends in street games. Since he and I were good athletes we were among the first to be chosen when it came time to choose up sides.

"When we were done playing the whole gang of us would go to one of our mother's houses for milk and cookies. This went on for some years. But then a terrible thing happened."

"What was that darling?"

"What I never told you about." I took a deep breath. "One Saturday, after a stickball game, we were invited to Stanley Shapiro's house for milk and cookies."

"I remember his mother. She was such a nice woman. I wonder if she is still alive."

"That was about 60 years ago. Well, all of us, including Henry, walked over to her porch where she had set up a card table with pitchers of cold milk and stacks of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies.  As we were passing these around, Mrs. Shapiro came over to me and to say she had something to tell me.

"'In the house,' she said.

"Puzzled, I followed her inside where her 14 year-old daughter, Rosalie, was hovering. Mrs. Shapiro leaned close to me and said, 'It is of course all right for you to stay. You are always welcome in my house; but your friend, he has to leave.' Protectively, she glanced over at her unhappy-looking daughter."

"That sounds terrible," my mother said.

"That's only half of it," I said. "I went outside again and saw Henry waiting his turn to get a glass of milk. I took him aside and told him what Mrs. Shapiro had said.

"Henry did not look back at me nor did he say a word in response. Rather, he turned and raced down the steps and then down East 56th Street toward Church Avenue."

I heard my mother sigh.

"I never saw him again," I said, tearing up. The memory of that sweltering summer day rushed over me as if it were yesterday.

When I gained control of my emotions, I confessed that I did not follow after him because I chose to stay behind with my neighborhood friends. I had trouble continuing the story.

"Here's what I've wanted to ask you about," I managed to say to me 105-year-old mother. "If I had asked you later that day what I should have done after what Mrs. Shapiro told me to do, what would you have said?"

Again without hesitating, this time in her most loving voice, my mother said, "You should have gone with Henry."