May the Spirit Be Unbroken: Search for the Mother Root

By Maxine Louise Michel De Felice

This story is about the resilience of the human spirit,
following three generations of activist families and the author as child
and adult in the context of radical change movements of the twentieth
century.
The constant chant from the authors mother, When all the
children in the world are happy, only then do you have a right to be,
was character defining, as were her many traumatic experiences
growing up during the McCarthy era witch hunts of the
1940s and 1950s. History of her grandparents participation in an
educational commune, alternative living styles, and researched labor
union history provides an exciting backdrop.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477210796

Maxine Louise Michel De Felice

Maxine De Felice, was born in 1938; her parents, Clara and Henry Fiering were in St. Louis at that time: young, dedicated activists, involved organizing the electrical industry, Century andEmerson Electric, CIO, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, (UE), and the Communist Party. Th e author is a trained psychotherapist with more than fifty years of experience, providing her with the tools to understand the impact of trauma, neglect and deprivation on the personal lives of activists and their children. Th e book attempts to convey both an appreciation for the accomplishments and devoted hard work of the activists and perhaps some lessons that might be learned as a result. Ms. De Felice is one of approximately three million “Red Diaper Babies,” children born to left wing or Communist Party members during the first half of the 20th century. She is one of forty contributors included in the anthology: Red Diapers: Growing Up In the Communist Left. She also has an essay printed in the magazine, Spectacle, Vol.4, No. 1, “Th e Ferrer Colony.” Maxine De Felice lives in Northern California with her husband. Her two children, two stepchildren, and four grandchildren live nearby.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Introduction

There Once Was A Union Maid

Moving To Manhattan

Clara

Clara’s Roots

Henry

My Shapings

The Times They Were A’changing 1930-1946

Southern Discomfort

My Summer In New York

A Safe Place For Some

Big Red

Who Said Nothing Ever Happened In The Fifties?

Summer 1955

1955-1966—Political Upheaval In The American Left

Traveling The Dream

May The Spirit Be Unbroken

Still Hoping For A Family

Clara And Henry—1966-1973

Clara’s Funeral

Epilogue

Shtarke!

(Yiddish For Strong Spirited)

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

About The Author

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my sister, Roberta Segovia, brother Fred Fiering, and my children: Erik Auerbach and Danielle Kelmar; also to my parents, Clara and Henry Fiering and grandparents: Dora Cheskis Wernick and Max Wernick: to all of us who have done our best to live our dreams.

You can’t turn off the darkness but you can turn on the light.

Old saying

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E. B. White

INTRODUCTION

When all the children in the world are happy, then, and only then, do you have a right to be! This statement, made to me by my mother, if I ever expressed a wish or a complaint of any sort, became the defining metaphor for much of my life. Deeply imprinted in my brain, it framed the many traumatic experiences of my childhood as a Red Diaper Baby, a child whose parents were both devoted, activist, union organizers and Communist Party members from the early 1930s until the late 1950s.

My mother, Clara Fiering, who repeatedly chanted this mantra to me, died in 1973, at the age of 59. I hardly had a chance to know her as a child or as an adult and my haunting yearning for a connection with her set me on a journey to find her.

In 1985 I decided to take advantage of Amtrak’s All Aboard America plan for an around the country trip to interview people who had worked with my parents organizing for the unions and the Communist Party from the early 1930s through the 1960s. With this train fare special I could target three destinations both east and west, getting on and off any time in a three-month period. I was able to leave from Los Angeles and return home to San Francisco. Greyhound bus filled in for getting to the in-between places. The following is some of the story of my six-week journey, the beginning of the process of writing this book.

*    *    *    *    *

The train I’m riding for the last leg of my journey home to San Francisco is twenty cars long. As it winds its way up the Rocky Mountains, the thin light of dawn spreads its flattened fingers of light across the horizon and I am awestruck! The cobalt blue sky surrenders to the sun’s reflections; shafts of light glint on the purple, rust and golden layers of rock along the more than one hundred year old cut through the gorge that allows these trains to snake through the stacks of mountains stretching as far as I can see. The train hovers hesitantly over the deep canyon, clinging to the edge of the mountain.

As the first to arrive at the dining car at 6:00 A.M., I have my choice of seats, and sit by the window at a table in the middle of the car. From this vantage point, near the end of the train, I can see the loop of the train as it horseshoes around the bend. Pachobel plays on my Walkman when the waiter stops at my table to take my order.

Just a bowl of oatmeal with some milk on the side and a cup of coffee, I tell him: my usual train fare. The coffee arrives quickly and as I sip the coffee I’m suffused with the beauty and the warmth of the dazzling sunrise; the clickety, clacking along the tracks and gentle, rocking motion are womblike.

Like all the other cross country train trips I’ve taken, I’m comforted by the sight of the bud vase holding one white carnation, with a pink satin ribbon tied in a bow around the middle, sitting on the table right by the window. I’m hoping that I’ll be alone for a while on this last day of my six week, information gathering journey around the United States. I’ve been crisscrossing the country by train and bus and though I am eager to get home, I feel so weary of being on the move and yet I want to make this day last.

I see myself last week when I was caught in Penn Station on a four hour long layover in the early morning hours, waiting for a train from New York to Pittsburgh. After settling myself on one of the large wooden benches, my two suitcases tucked under my legs for safety, I noticed the station was filled with throngs of people milling about, lying on benches, sitting on the floor, obviously homeless people trying to find shelter from the cold.

Suddenly a police officer walked by the bench I was sitting on, banging the edge with his nightstick, close to the heads of the sleeping people. He yelled, Tickets, only people on these benches can be those with tickets; hold those tickets high in your right hand! I did so, frightened, watching as one after another, people staggered to their feet and joined the parade shuffling in one large circular motion around and around the station. One old woman stood out: wrinkled flesh drooping from her cheeks, vacuous eyes, wispy, stringy grey hair protruding from an old maroon stocking cap pulled over her head, shuffling along in shoes held together with rubber bands. It was an exhausting night as I vacillated between being conflicted by my own fears of being robbed, and overwhelming feelings of compassion for the struggle of the homeless.

Well, I’m high up in the Colorado Rockies now; the waiter delivered my oatmeal as I had picked up my Walkman, inserted a Kate Wolf tape that my friend John Yannotti gave me before I left California, and taken out my journal containing the Dear Mom letters I’ve been writing each morning and evening, attempting to save as much of my experiences and reflections of the journey as I can. The longer I’ve traveled the greater I feel the intensity of my loss of her.

Are you with me on this trip, Mom? I write, feeling a sense of her presence in this cocoon I’m in, rocking along through space and time. I keep writing this dialogue because at least it feels like some sort of connection to her. I listen to the music as I write, while gazing at the sunrise striking the jagged peaks, its rays of light bouncing into the deep canyons, and suddenly, the heart touching, soul embracing, lovely voice of Kate Wolf sings her song:

Across the Great Divide

"Well, I heard the owl calling

Softly as the night was falling.

With a question, and I replied

But he’s gone across the borderline.

"I’ve been walking in my sleep,

Counting troubles ’stead of counting sheep.

Where the years went, I can’t say;

I just turned around and they’ve gone away.

Chorus

"Gone away—in yesterday

And I find myself on the mountainside,

Where the rivers change direction,

Across the Great Divide.

"I’ve been sifting through the layers

Of dusty books and faded papers.

Tell a story I used to know;

One that happened so long ago.

Chorus

"The finest hour that I have seen,

Is the one that comes in between

The edge of night and the break of day,

When the darkness rolls away."

Written by Kate Wolf, © 1980

Printed with permission of

Another Sundown Publishing Company

Amazingly, we really have just crossed the Great Divide, as the dark sky has yielded a breathtaking sunrise. I’m returning home from my search for Clara Fiering’s story that has brought up so much of my own. Goosebumps prickle my arms.

In the summer of 1981, as an activist in the peace and social justice movement in Northern California where I live, I participated in a blockade (a nonviolent protest, sit-in), of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, California. I was arrested and incarcerated for four days in a state prison near that city. The conditions were scary and intense; 700 women were held in a gymnasium, the entire floor covered with thin, bedbug infested, mattresses for sleeping. My first, very fitful night, I woke from a dream in which I was visited by my maternal great-grandfather Pesach Cheskis telling me that he was very proud of me and the work I was doing to carry on the traditions of our family to fight for peace and justice on earth. My grandmother had told me about her father, Pesach, but only minimally, when she related stories about her life. I have a picture of him on my kitchen wall: a pleasant face, wearing a yarmulke on his balding head, with a full white beard hanging down to his belly, the long black coat of the Chassids of the Ukraine covering him, holding a thick, black bible in his lap.

1.jpeg

Pesach Cheskis, 1932, arrival in U.S.

I started, then, to think about my mother and my place in relationship to her, and to myself in my life. I was searching to understand my own state of mind; what were my experiences, or lack of perhaps? What formed my perceptions that related to the degree of perpetual feelings of internal isolation, and lack of any particular person or community to identify with, or with whom to be connected? I had been so out of touch with what had shaped me growing up, holding a certain feeling of drifting, floating aimlessly inside of myself while capable of appearing to be directed, as any given moment might require of me. I hoped somehow to map the geography of my soul, to gain some sense of essence.

Belonging nowhere, to no one in particular, placed in a variety of foster homes as a toddler, (approximately a dozen), whenever my mother had to go underground, (hiding out from possibly being arrested as a Communist), moving to so many different geographical locations in addition, formed me as always feeling like the outsider. In that place I grew to learn well how to disconnect from myself, to respond to the expectations or definitions of others first.

Most of my childhood memories are of feeling lost, lonely, frightened, or of a stifling nothingness. In spite of this though, I know myself to have a very strong spirit, to be an independent person and a survivor. It’s been a lifelong effort to imagine what it’s like to have a sense of entitlement, entitlement to even some joy of experience. I do know that I can be pleased simply if I take a moment to consider what does please me: a cloud, a breeze, a sweet smell, a warm smile, direct forthcoming eyes that search mine wanting to know me. I understand the struggle not to get caught gliding along in the slipstream of another’s activity and the need to keep watch for any bit of life force calling for me to claim my own.

So I embarked on this project to get to know my parents’ story, their times. Their commitment to the work of union organizing and fulfilling their duties as Communist Party activists grabbed all of their attention. I was hoping to understand that passion; the passion that seized the dedication of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people from the early 1900s through the early 1950s, to be part of what was a momentous time of change in the United States, a time to believe that change was imminent, that a Socialist Revolution that would improve the lives of working people could be possible.

‘Who was my mother?’ I often thought, as I watched her struggle between actualizing herself in her work, her very difficult marriage, and as she always told me, her wish that she could be more of a mother. I know from my own experience as a working mother that it is always hard to find the balance between meeting financial need, wish to spend time with one’s children, personal needs, and then frustration and guilt about even having the conflicts. What I came to realize was that I needed to find a way to accept my mother, Clara Fiering, as the truly good person that she was, and separate that somehow, from the perpetual unlovable, unwanted feelings that lived inside of me and drove me throughout my life.

I wrote to many of my parents’ old friends; some had known them from the early 1930s through the 1960s, some for only a few years during some part of that period. My father, Henry Fiering, along with trying to answer my questions, even the painful ones, as honestly as he could, gave me his encouragement and emotional support for writing this book. He helped me locate these people. He had been searching himself for the meaning of it all—that what’s it all about?—in his own life. I was received by all those that I contacted with incredibly warm, open responses.

On this trip, in 1985, people who never knew me, or maybe had met me briefly when I was a small child, invited me into their homes, picked me up at train stations, bus stations, made me feel like part of a family, their family. There was a family out there of people who had lived the optimistic dream of changing our society, improving the quality of life for the working class, the disenfranchised. They had worked to bring together the many varied cultural and ethnic groups that had emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s; so many people gave their time, and some, like my parents, their lives, for the belief that they could create a better world.

Millions of people were involved, with varying degrees of activism. There were those like my parents who felt their single life purpose, their calling, was to devote every available minute, every ounce of energy to organizing the masses, the unions, the communities. Some of this work began in the South in the early 1930s with the Sharecropper’s Union in Arkansas, The Nutpickers, and into the 1940s, post World War II Dixie Drive which laid the groundwork for the beginnings of the school integration fight of the 1950s and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Some of the politicization that grew into the great force those movements became, began with the union drives.

There was always certain fallout—personal lives were devalued and the children of these people suffered a great deal of neglect, fear and isolation. My siblings and I were a few of those children—When all the children in the world are happy, then, and only then do you have a right to be!—my own particular chant.

A common bond for many of these people were their shared beliefs and struggles during the various witch-hunts of the 1900s, (the times the Communist Party was outlawed, individuals hunted down by the FBI). I treasure the time spent with each person and gratefully thank them for all they gave me. I slept in their spare bedrooms, they made me home cooked meals. People like Joe and Bea Turkowski, sweet, warm and sincere, who picked me up at the train station in downtown Boston. They called to me when I woke in the morning, Come on down to the kitchen; we have fresh blueberry pancakes with maple syrup waiting for you.

I remembered a few people from my childhood. Some freely told me stories about themselves, and many anecdotes about my parents. Some were still fearful, willing to talk to me but not with the tape recorder on, a few looking at me with fear in their eyes, not sure they could trust me, their fear a remnant of the McCarthy time. Some were protective of my parents, careful to say only positive things, clearly stopping themselves when a negative feeling might come up. A sentence that might start with, Your Dad was such a lady’s man, a womanizer . . . .

Tell me more . . . I’d ask.

Oh, you know, men out on the road are trying to charm all the women. They were vague, smiling or winking. Ernie DeMaio gave me a picture of my father on a picnic with several couples and a girlfriend he had in 1940. It was during one of my parents’ separations when I was a toddler, living in one of the foster homes (homes of Party members or friends—all strangers to me) where my mother left me when she was in hiding from the FBI. I hungrily stared at the picture, trying to glean some information, what I didn’t know, except that I could see he looked happy. He had one arm around the girlfriend; in another he was relaxing, eating a big piece of watermelon.

72529.jpg

I have written this book with contradictory feelings and great trepidation. My intention is not to malign my parents, rather to give credit to them and the many, many thousands of people who gave selflessly during the late 1800s through the first half of the twentieth century, for their values, with great integrity, and breadth of vision. I certainly hold the work my parents did in high regard, know that it had great value and, in immeasurable ways, improved the lives and consciousness of many thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

As I’ve said, my mother died before I had the opportunity to know her as an adult. I made assumptions about the pain I observed her experiencing in her marriage and the joy she received from success in her union work. Of course, I know that looking through a child’s eyes is often skewed. Through searching for our connectedness, I thought that perhaps the reasons for the deprivation, neglect and loneliness of my childhood would become clear. At the very least I wanted to discover why I had tolerated two abusive marriages as a young woman, when I had grown up in a supposedly feminist home teaching equality for all as the prime value.

As I searched out my mother and father’s stories, my own memories bubbled up. I’ve often wondered, why bother putting all this down, who cares and why do I care if it’s written? I’ve met other ‘Red Diaper Babies,’ children of left-wing parents, who have also suffered greatly. Some of those stories are in a collection of forty contributors, (I am one of those): Red Diapers: Growing Up In the Communist Left, edited by Judy Kaplan & Linn Shapiro, published in 1998.

I’ve heard that there’s a significantly higher suicide rate among ‘Red Diaper Babies’ as well as a higher rate of chronic depression, illness—there has been a great deal of research in the last decade such as that reported by Bruce McEwen, neuroendocrinologist at Rockefeller University, also, research by neuroscientist Frances Champagne, at Colombia University, showing that repeated stress experienced in the formative years of childhood (0-6 years old) can lead to deep physical changes in the DNA of the brain, as well as state of chronic inflammation in the body. I have personally had to deal with serious autoimmune issues. Other deleterious effects reported result in under-achievement, difficulty trusting others and one’s self. This is as has been told to me in conversation, and studies of the field of psychoneuroimmunology through the course of my own career. Some of this is also reported in a paper titled, Trauma Survivors: Adult Children of McCarthyism and the Smith Act, a Doctoral Dissertation by Kathryn Alice Jackson, December 1991, researching the small group (fifty) of children of those who spent time in jail, indicted under the Smith Act in the early nineteen fifties and sixties. Most of these issues I have shared personally and taken many years of my own psychotherapy to understand and change.

My own therapist suggested that my growing up was similar to having been in a cult. My experience was likened to having been brainwashed, even though it was for positive ideals. This always seemed a bit extreme for me but I was able to relate some of it to my addiction to deprivation, a sense of pride I grew up with in how little I needed of material things or emotional sustenance. This made sense in many ways though at the same time I know I gained a strong sense of the importance of being an independent thinker and always speaking my truth no matter how much fear I might feel or how different from the group I might be. I, also, have always greatly valued having learned at an early age to think analytically, dialectically, to take apart an issue from every angle. This is a split that I think many other ‘Red Diaper Babies’ have shared.

I imagine this could be translated to children of any people who are in the limelight, who are committed to some cause at the expense of their family. Who knows what kind of developmental environment gives birth to these dedicated people who feel they have a mission, a calling? Certainly the confluence of the times: the Utopian movements pre-World War I, the Communist Revolution in the Soviet Union, the Great Depression, World War II, were major factors among many.

The great traumas the children of the 1940s and 1950s suffered during the McCarthy period, were especially difficult—the idea that parents were underground or in hiding, sometimes for years, or that one’s parents could be imprisoned or executed, like the Rosenbergs. Many of us generally felt we were ‘the outsider,’ unable to fit in anywhere. Do I think of myself as survivor or victim? As many other survivors have reflected, I feel equipped to always look beyond the surface, to question, to withstand just about anything and to use my experience of grief for compassion and the need for personal empowerment and I value this.

I hope this story that I’ve written sheds some insights.

THERE ONCE WAS A UNION MAID

Union Maid

There once was a union maid, who never was afraid,

Of goons and ginks and company finks and deputy sheriffs who made the raids;

She went to the union hall, when a meeting it was called,

And when the company boys came ‘round she always stood her ground.

Chorus

Oh, you can’t scare me I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union; I’m sticking to the union,

Oh, you can’t scare me I’m sticking to the union,

I’m sticking to the union, ‘till the day I die.

This union maid was wise, to the tricks of company spies,

She never got fooled by a company stool; she’d always organize the guys;

She always got her way when she struck for higher pay,

She’d show her card to the company guard and this is what she’d say:

Chorus

You gals who want to be free, just take a little tip from me,

Get you a man who’s a union man and join the Ladies’ Auxiliary.

Married life ain’t hard, when you’ve got a union card.

A union man has a happy life when he’s got a union wife.

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

WGP/TRO© Copyright 1961 (Renewed), 1963 (Renewed) Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, NY

Administered by Ludlow Music, Inc.

International Copyright Secured Made in U.S.A.

All Rights Reserved Including Public Performance For Profit

Used by Permission

This song represents my mother, a union maid in every cell of her body, for her entire life. When one thinks of the chorus, Oh you can’t scare me, Or the lines Wise to the tricks of company spies, organizing the guys, marrying a man who was a union man,—these descriptions fit her to a tee!

This and the following chapter were told to me by my mother, Clara Fiering, her mother, Dora and her cousin Ann Gelman who were with her at the march.

As Clara would say when she told the story: Chills ran up the back of my neck and over my scalp. I beamed and felt so exhilarated, as I carried the American flag, my right hand holding the center of the pole, and the other clutching the base, as I marched in the front row of the May Day parade in midtown Manhattan. The parade started heading up Broadway towards Madison Square Garden for the culminating rally. When I looked back at the throngs of people behind me and at those running from the sidewalks to join in with us at every corner, I realized, with great excitement, that there were many thousands of people participating in this parade. More than any march I had ever been in!

Celia would remember how Clara turned to her, her bright hazel eyes shining, and said, look at how many people there are. We are strong!

She always made me smile. I loved Clara’s energy, her exuberance and self-confidence, and felt excited when I thought about our moving in together within the following month. Celia said.

It was May 1, 1931: a sunny, breezy, blue-sky day. Clara was sixteen, almost finished with her first year of premed studies at New Jersey College for Women. She had grown up in the radical, Anarchist,