In America with a Disability: A Journey to Equality

By Stanley Schmulewitz

This is a story which, in the broadest sense, is a story of any man or everyman. It deals with a person who finds himself in trouble because of an error, not of his own doing, that keeps being compounded.

Specifically, the story begins on a day when a civil servant learns that his job of long standing, due to a base closing, is being moved from New York City to San Diego, California. To avoid such a drastic relocation, he finds a job in Washington at the headquarters of his then agency, the Navy Department. He is followed through the usual steps of arriving in a new city: finding an apartment and moving in; exploring the area; making new friends. On the job he feels there is something amiss. He does not get the promotion he was promised. He is shunted around the office. Since this is his first job at headquarters, he is not sure whether his treatment is normal. He wonders whether he is a victim of some sort of discrimination: religious, geographic, political or most disheartening, disability due to a visual impairment that he felt he had long since overcome.

His worst fear is realized when after a failed attempt to remove him in a layoff , he is told he must accept an early disability retirement or face dismissal. This seems totally unreal and illogical. How can he be retired for the same disability he was hired with years earlier. He survives this episode but in the pattern of such stories there are further twists before the final denouement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781462053902

Stanley Schmulewitz

Stanley Schmulewitz grew up in New York City: his father was a baker; his mother, a homemaker. Upon graduation from CCNY he went to work for the Navy. A base closing brought him to Washington. There he encountered discrimination due to a long-resolved disability. He overcame this, continued his career, and is now retired. Author welcomes e-mail comments at [e-mail]. Tell how you learned of this book.

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Chapter 1

Steve Samuelson awoke alone in his apartment to the sound of an alarm clock as he had done for the previous five months. The events of the most recent years had resulted in giving the conditions of his life an air of unreality. After shaving, dressing and having breakfast he made his way to the nearest subway station, at Avenue X and McDonald Avenue. He took the ‘F’ Train and later a bus. This dropped him off at the gate of the Naval Applied Technology Laboratory. He worked there as an electronic engineer. It had been his only place of employment since graduating from college twelve years earlier. Despite changes in other aspects of his life this employment had been the one unifying factor of his adult life. This day there was a buzz going around the office. Someone mentioned that he had heard on WINS, an all-news station that the Lab was designated for closing. No further details seemed to be available. Every office thrives on rumors. The smallest suspected event; a resignation, a reorganization, an act of favoritism or antagonism could give rise to endless conjecture, discussion and argument. Curiously this piece of news by far the most portentous was met almost in silence. Perhaps it was the lack of detail or the state of shock engendered by the initial report. In the afternoon Steve attended a meeting of his group. In a rather terse message, they were informed that the Lab, which consisted of several diverse divisions, would be closed, with each division being moved to a facility (or center of excellence) which specialized in the function of that division. Thus, a machinery division would be moved to a machinery facility in Pennsylvania, a sonar office would be moved to the underwater sound laboratory in New London, Connecticut and so on. Steve’s electronics division would be moved to the Naval Electronics Center in San Diego. San Diego! The other side of the country. Not even Los Angeles with its large metropolitan, cosmopolitan image but San Diego, not known for anything a New Yorker would be interested in. It was a Navy town, a border town and had a sunny climate but otherwise was unknown as a place to live. Many of the employees had traveled there on business, but that was not the same thing as living there. Years earlier there had been a rumor of a move to San Diego but that had died down. There had also been an ongoing rivalry between NELC and the Electronics Division of NATL. Well, the rivalry was over and NELC had won. The question remaining was How would they treat the prisoners?

Steve had started work at NATL in January 1957. Then it was called the Material Laboratory, which was part of the New York Naval Shipyard (Brooklyn Navy Yard). The Shipyard closed in 1966. Steve’s first impression of the Shipyard was of a large, gray, dirty, impersonal place. However, he soon came to understand that human beings have a way of breaking down the largest most impersonal environments into something of a human dimension. Most of his first day on the job was spent in the Yard taking a physical and going through other check-in routines. He then reported to the personnel office at the Material Laboratory. There he was sat down and given a short explanation of the rules of Civil Service and how they applied to that facility. Hours from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM with a half-hour for lunch. There were thirteen days of sick leave per year and thirteen days of annual (vacation) leave. Religious holidays were to be taken from one’s own annual leave. Life insurance was optional. There were no health benefits except for hospitalization insurance, which the employees alone paid for and collected among themselves. Information about retirement went in one ear and out the other, as one would expect of a 21-year old on his first day of work.

The cast of characters in Steve’s new home soon unfolded and characters they were. His immediate supervisor was named Maury Goldman, an engineer, 29 years of age who was seen to be successful in his career and who had a family but who typified the sophistication of the time when he referred to condoms as condrums. There was Robert Sablinsky, a man of some Central European origin who was married to a woman considerably younger than himself and who was permanently in debt. He would receive a steady stream of dunning phone calls from doctors, lawyers and a variety of merchants. Each time he would enlist a debt consolidation or personal loan service for help, it would merely add one more creditor. When Steve got a ride home with Bob, it began with a stop at the gas station for a dollar’s worth of gas, which at that time meant three gallons. Working with Steve and Bob under the supervision of Maury was Fred Whitman. Fred was a gray-haired roly-poly man who, like Bob, was in his forties. His combative and crude manner of speaking reflected his background as a Jewish New Yorker who grew up in the Lower East Side in the twenties and thirties, a background not likely to encourage the gentler side of human nature. He had recently joined the postwar move to the suburbs. His choice was one of the simple but sturdy homes in the community called Levittown in Nassau County, Long Island. His loquacious nature afforded him the ability to ramble on and on about the joys of suburban life as lived in Levittown, and the central place of Nassau County in world geography.

The expression good-natured slob could have been invented to describe Eddie Zangari. He was a huge hulk of an Italian man with a wide open face and a loud voice. New York multi-culturalism (before the term became fashionable) could be illustrated by Steve’s first encounter with Eddie. Eddie invoked the Hebrew greeting Shalom Aleicham to which Steve gave the appropriate response Aleicham Shalom. Eddie remarked that Steve was the only one who gave the right answer. If one asked Eddie for help with a mechanical task he would do it and then respond to an expression of thanks by an expletive such as shove it up your ass! Steve came to realize that this was simply his way of saying You’re one of the boys. Eddie also had strong, generally conservative and patriotic opinions. For the first time Steve heard a challenge to the position of FDR on his pedestal. Eddie would use expressions about FDR, such as I spit on the milk of his mother and would blame him for everything from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the loss of Eastern Europe. There was hardly any credit for the reform of the New Deal, which oddly Ed attributed to Norman Thomas, the American socialist icon. Patrick Rooney was a man of ambiguous function in the organization. His position was that of technician, but it was hard to discern any technical abilities or achievements on his part. He was one of those people who survive by staying on the right side of those in power. This included being an enthusiastic participant in the bowling league and buying drinks for the right people at the games. Patrick was Irish and a prodigious drinker and proud of both. He seemed to believe he still lived in the twenties, as he would walk through the various areas, bellowing such songs as Bicycle Built for Two.

Ralph Jackson was a black man with an interesting background. He came from Tampa, Florida and studied engineering at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical, a school that Steve would later learn had a certain prominence in the black community and was known colloquially as A&T. Ralph would regale his colleagues from more sheltered backgrounds with stories of rampant stealing and promiscuity at A&T. He had also served a hitch in the Air Force with a tour in Alaska. Somehow he had found his way to the Lab. He acquired a family and lived in an apartment in Brooklyn until buying a house in the more suburban environment of Queens. He was overweight, a condition which tended to arouse suspicion in Steve. To add to that suspicion was the manner in which Ralph would relate a story or express an opinion. He seemed to communicate sincerity and at the same time give the appearance of holding back, that he was not telling the whole story. Despite all that, Steve developed a fairly good relationship with Ralph. Hal McDougal was another black man. He was from Spartanburg, South Carolina. He was of a very outgoing, even a loud nature and would speak with a deep Southern accent. He made frequent references to his southern background and spoke often of his church, though more as a social than as a spiritual institution. His effusive nature may have been a cover for deeper and more disturbing thoughts. Steve got on well with Hal except for a period when he was under his supervision. Steve had difficulty understanding this phase as he had not experienced such problems with other supervisors. It may have been due to a transition the Lab was going through at the time or to some personal problem Hal was having or some combination of the two. Ralph and Hal, among others, were the first black people Steve had encountered in a middle class context. Previously, the only black people or Negroes as they were then known that Steve had met were those that his mother brought home to clean the apartment. It was edifying and surprising to find blacks concerned with taxes, schools and property values as other middle class people. This was a new discovery which Steve soon internalized. He was impatient when he found others had not.

John Win was a Chinese-American who perceived himself as being under a constant state of siege. His nationality surely contributed to that but so too did his status relative to his two brothers. They had college degrees, which he did not, and had gone further in their careers than he had. For these reasons, John was very sensitive to the lack of respect he received. He often brought up the imprisonment of the Japanese-Americans in World War II and asked, What about those German and Italian Guys? Steve tried to explain that there were too many of them to imprison. He later realized that that was not the answer John was looking for. John told the story of how his Chinese-Canadian bride was detained at the border and told she would have to immigrate under the (non-existent) Chinese quota rather than as a Canadian. It was assumed she eventually made it across. As another example of multi-culturalism, he would tell of how he played with a band in the Catskills where he would describe himself as a Chinese Jew.

Andy Fox was a pathetic soul. He was the archetypical Jewish mamma’s boy. He not only lived with his mother into his forties and fifties as did many of the men at that place, but he also went on vacations with her and worse yet talked about it. This brought endless derision from his coworkers. While he could function in the relatively sheltered (physically and otherwise) environment of the Lab, that situation ended when his job was abolished. He was given a job in the Navy Yard. Word came back that he quit the first day. He evidently couldn’t deal with the noise, the confusion and the crudity of the Yard. He then proceeded to have a nervous breakdown. But by having quit, he was not eligible for disability retirement. Eddie Zangari reported that he later contacted Andy and was able to get him his disability benefits by claiming that the resignation was done while mentally incompetent. Andy’s treatment by his peers at the Lab was similar to that given John Win. At one time John was brought to complete anger by being tricked into believing that a worker of lower rank than he had a badge designating a higher one (who cares?). In short, the men Steve worked with could be described as a great bunch of guys but if you displayed any vulnerability, they would not let up. The appropriate response was keep your weaknesses to yourself.

The Lab was in many ways a cross-section of New York City. Some, with a negative attitude toward both, would say that that was the cause of its downfall. Ethnically, the Lab consisted primarily of the three major New York ethnic groups of that time: Jews, Italians and Irish. There was a sprinkling of Blacks, Greeks and others. Relations between the members of the different groups were on the surface congenial and in some cases better than that. However, as in all human relations, no one was ever certain of what lies below. Degrees of religious commitment, which were usually Roman Catholic or Jewish, ran to all levels. Jews could be totally secular (which is not to say uninvolved with Jewishness); affiliated with a Reform Temple or quite orthodox. The last was illustrated by an employee who while driving to Washington on a business trip was killed in a freak accident. His funeral was held at his old religious school on the Lower East Side. It was attended largely by his circle of friends from that area but also by many people from the Lab. The service included many speeches in English, Yiddish and Hebrew with much weeping and wailing. Steve saw the Captain who was the military head of the Lab seated behind him expressionless. He could only wonder what sort of impression this outpouring made on a man whose values were most likely of the Anglo-Saxon stiff upper lip variety.

While some of the Jewish workers were quick to assume the worst about their colleagues in terms of anti-Semitism, Steve did not consider himself among them. There was however at least one man, a technician named Sal, who provided good reason for suspicion. He expressed very strong right-wing opinions particularly with regard to the Cold War. During the Cuban missile crisis, his opinion was, Let’s have it out now while we still have a chance. A chance for what? To get incinerated? He even quoted Mussolini’s statement, Better to live a day as a lion than a lifetime as a lamb. Sal would make a point of deriding liberals and bait Steve and others by questioning support for Israel. Steve enjoyed neither the McCarthy-like demands for professions of loyalty nor the barely concealed anti-Jewish sentiments.

Steve’s tenure at the Lab spanned a time—from the late fifties to the late sixties—that was to become increasingly political. In succession, there were the first rumblings of the civil rights movement as the torpor of the Ike era drew to a close; the exciting 1960 election with its hair’s breadth outcome; the challenge of Castro; the Berlin Wall; the JFK assassination; the Great Society; urban riots; the Vietnam War, and finally 1968, which was as much a summary and a comment on all of the above as a number on a calendar. Political lines were drawn and hotly discussed among the personnel during all of this. While it may be politically incorrect to say so by later standards, the politics were often defined by ethnicity. The Jews and Blacks generally favored civil rights legislation; Government aid to the disadvantaged and at least a cautious approach in foreign policy. Nobody of course wanted to be accused of being soft on communism. The Catholics—Irish and Italian—tended to be more conservative, favoring a go-slow approach on civil rights, an antipathy to welfare and a simplistic hard line approach to those who threatened us whether in Berlin, Cuba or Vietnam.

The Lab was not only a cross-section of its locale ethnically but also socioeconomically in a way that no other of Steve’s workplaces would ever be. This condition arose from the distribution of occupational types. There were blue collar workers, such as mechanics, electricians, carpenters and painters. There where white collar workers, the engineers; and technicians who were somewhere in between. The ethnic and social cross-section provided an easy way to take the political pulse of the city. This was illustrated by the evolving negativity toward John Lindsay, a (perhaps significantly) Protestant mayor of New York who was seen by the middle class, both Jewish and Catholic, as sacrificing their interests for the Black and poor. The Lab could also be looked upon as a microcosm of lower middle class life in New York and probably in America at that time. The bowling league was a mainstay of life there. Teams had names such as the Wheels and the Electrons. The bowling season would be concluded by the bowling dinner where trophies would be awarded for such achievers as most improved bowler. Steve never joined the league, feeling that that would constitute an act of selling out. He thought it was appropriate when someone posted a cartoon from a local newspaper on a bulletin board. The cartoon showed a bemused man saying, Job security in this place begins with a 200 bowling average. Right! Another mainstay of life in that place was the retirement dinner. The retirement dinner or luncheon is an American ritual, where a departing employee can exchange farewells and often insincere compliments with coworkers and supervisors. Thus, a usually mediocre career is eased into a hopefully pleasant retirement. Interspersed with the formalities are teasing comments and inside jokes about shared experiences delivered in the accents of the particular region. While Steve usually eschewed such events, he did attend one that was held one evening to honor several people. It was in the Bay Ridge section at the opposite end of Brooklyn from the Lab and almost the opposite end of the city from where Steve lived at the time. While the event was open to both sexes, a woman who signed up wisely withdrew when she found out she would be the only one there. The event turned out to be an uninhibited affair with the liquor flowing freely and many songs sung. Particularly memorable to Steve was a rendition of I don’t know why I love you like I do, I don’t know why I just do. This was a typical expression of the nostalgic nature of the Lab employees.

As mentioned, the period from the late fifties to the late sixties was a time of great change and evolving politics. This evolution was reflected in the attitudes of the workers at the Lab. The Jewish employees started in their role of historical supporters of civil rights. It has never been clear as to how much of this support comes from Jewish traditions and values dictating support for the underdog and how much comes from the experience of Jews with ethnic oppression and their continuing vulnerability to it. The latter influence is obvious. The former can be and often is debated. Whatever the motivation, the support slipped as the sixties wore on and the issues changed: Integration of southern schools; integration of southern lunch counters; removal of barriers to the voting booth—no problem. School busing in the north; affirmative action in the civil service; urban riots—problems. The situation wasn’t helped by manifestations of Black anti-Semitism, which the New York media took joy in exaggerating. Appearances by Malcolm X on TV, where he would trivialize the Holocaust did not help. The so-called Black-Jewish split seemed to be most defined by a teachers strike in the fall of 1968. The strike resulted from the firing of many Jewish teachers during an experiment in community control of schools in a Black neighborhood. Since most New Yorkers are either the children or grandchildren of immigrants, a frequent expression heard from whites, Jewish or otherwise, was My grandfather (or father) came here with nothing and carried bricks (or salt or cement) and provided for his family. The implication was that Blacks should be willing to work as their ancestors had and not ask for handouts and special favors. The white ethnics also had a problem with the concept of national obligation to Blacks for the centuries of deprivation. The attitude put simply or simplistically was, My ancestors didn’t own slaves. Why do I owe anything? The answer of course is that all Americans are happy and proud to enjoy the political legacy of America and can benefit from the economy inherited from past generations, Black and White. In short, it can be said that during the sixties liberals became less liberal and conservatives became more conservative.

While the attitudes of the white people were changing, Blacks in the Lab were beginning to express feelings they had hitherto kept to themselves. Ralph Jackson and another complained that if a Black man was seen in the hallway speaking to a white woman, a white man walking by would do a double take, that is, turn around to make sure nothing unacceptable was transpiring. Steve searched his soul and his memory to determine whether he had been guilty of such behavior and frankly could not be sure one way or the other. It was also related that when two Black men were seen conversing openly, a white man coming upon them might remark, What are you guys cooking up? Steve was sure he had not done that as that was behavior worthy only of a redneck. A complaint that left Steve with a particularly ambiguous feeling was one about a Jewish male supervisor who would at times put his arm around the shoulder of a Black female secretary while using words of an endearing but non-erotic nature. The complaint was that a black man could not get away with doing that to a white woman. Perhaps so, but Steve was certain that the behavior of the man was meant to be avuncular, not sexual. Of course it could be argued that such behavior even if avuncular was still patronizing. Steve was certain he had done nothing of this nature nor would he since he was not one to express such intimacy with a stranger.

Thrust into the cauldron of the sixties like an intrusion was the Six Day War. While America was deeply mired in the Vietnam War, at the other end of the Asian Continent, another conflict was reawakened. President Nasser of Egypt suddenly called for the removal of the UN Peacekeeping forces in Sinai, which Israel had been forced to accept in lieu of their own presence or a peace treaty after the 1956 Sinai campaign. This was followed by the Egyptian blockade