She was born in Chicago around 1914. She would be over 100 now had she survived brain trauma from blows to her head. Dad said it was due to falling in the shower. I saw the scans while she was on life support. She must have fallen a lot. It was hard to get Dad to consent to pulling the plug. Every time a muscle twitched he thought she was coming out of it. Finally I went to the Priest with him and he gave in.
Mom was special. She was the fourth child of Lithuanian peasant immigrants. Grandpa was illiterate and Grandma could only read Lithuanian. Like the many Lithuanian immigrants to Chicago he worked in the Chicago Stockyards. In Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle we learn about that mess:
Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities.[2] However, most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, greatly contributing to a public outcry which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair famously said of the public reaction "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rootedcorruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."[
Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicagostockyards for the newspaper. He first published the novel in serial form in 1905 in the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason and it was published as a book by Doubleday in 1906.
Things had improved by he time she was born. My grandparents had a nice brick bungalow on Chicago’s South Side which we converted to a kind of duplex when we moved in with them when I was in first grade.
In the 1940 census we lived on Komensky Avenue. I was 4 then. Mom worked as a housekeeper/cook/babysitter for middle class Jewish people. I remember one place we lived where I was the only Goy kid in the neighborhood.
Mom was very good to her only child and much of who I am came from her unrestricted love. She went beyond her peasant parents and finished eighth grade. She was Catholic but we only went to Church on Christmas and Easter. I eventually heard the Priests tell us again and again that we needed to do more so I became very active as a child.
Mom was a FDR lover. We went to the movies a lot together and on her birthday when we came out of the movie theater the newsstands were full of the headlines announcing FDR’s death. She cried like a baby.
Dad wanted me to go to college and become an engineer. She distrusted education. When I resorted to signing up in the NROTC in order to get the needed money to go to college, she cried again. She did not want me to be in the military.
I left home at 17 to go to college in Chicago and getting away from home changed my life completely. My contact after that was visits.
I broke her heart when I left the Catholic Church and married an Evangelical. She really never forgave me for that.
During the years that followed her mental health deteriorated and she underwent a couple of electric shock treatments and one Insulin shock treatment. She was not the same after that. When she died from the head injury it might have been for the best.
One of my strongest political motivations comes from thinking about her. I was into women’s rights early on. I was aware of the fact that she was very bright and never allowed to be herself. I vowed I would never treat a woman that way if I could help it.
So I find myself strongly supporting a presidential candidate who is a champion of women’s rights and working people and other causes that come natural to me. Bernie was at the University of Chicago when I was doing my PhD in the early sixties. I became a charter member of the Democratic Socialists of America in the 1980s even though by then I was far to the left of them.
So I think about my mother and wish she could be alive to see Bernie do so much that she would have cheered for. Meanwhile the revolution marches on.