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Today's date is the 30 30th. The date is January 30th, 1978. I'm Bruce Kuiper with the Radical Elder Oral History Project, and today we are beginning the first interview uh with Alice Quitman. Alice, uh, when and where were you born? I was born in New York

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City. Uh, October 8th, 1913, and uh what part of New York, the Bronx, near the Bronx Park. Our father always made a point of living near. Something that was resembling a forest or nature or something like that. So we lived near the park, yeah where were

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your parents born? My mother was born in Hamburg and my father in Mannheim were born? That I really don't know. Well, uh, my father was 74 when he died and he died in 55, so that's. 20 years ago. So, so he was born at 18 now.

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8 Let's see, 1884 something like that and my mother was probably born about the same time within. Uh, when did they immigrate to America? I don't know that exactly, uh, my father was um. I guess in their twenties, early twenties, I would think. And uh what

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do you know the date? No idea. Was it around the turn of the century? Do you know the time period generally? Well, I was born in I would say it was around the turn of the century, yes. OK. Do you know why they immigrated? No, I

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guess I have a better life, although my, the, uh, you see, I know very little about my father's history as a child, he avoided. For some reason that none of us can understand to this day telling us anything at all about his family. I don't know

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what his father did. I don't know anything about him at all as a child except a few stories that he told, you know, about pets that he had and things like that. Uh, he, he left home when he was about 12 or 13 and wandered all

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over Europe working in northern part of Africa and worked uh. You know, is everything, farmer, building work and worked at Marseille on the waterfront for quite a while and uh I guess came here. I, I think we would knowing him as much as an adventure. As

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for anything else you think I don't know. We, we never, we never could find out. It could have been, but we thought maybe political. We even postulated that possibly he had been in trouble with the law except that at the age of 13. It's hard to,

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uh, now they may have had universal conscription and he may have done it to avoid that. See, we, he would never, I don't, none of us know why he avoided talking about it. He, he really, because about everything else he was very open and, and, you

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know, talked freely, but we don't even know if he had any brothers or sisters. So he, he's quite a mystery. Once when I asked him about religion because he was a, a strong atheist, uh, and he would get very angry and once when I pressed him,

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he said that his ancestors were among the Huguenots. Oh yes. Which were a rebel, uh, sect in the Protestants, but that's about the only thing that he ever really, you know, told us. Now what my mother's from what she told about her childhood, it was not

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terribly, I mean they were not very poor. I mean they weren't well to do, but they weren't, uh, her, her, her mother owned a little shop, I think a kind of dry goods shop or something and um. So I don't know why she came here. She

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never said either except that I think maybe she was adventurous too. I don't know. I know they both were, and when she came here, she worked as a governess for the Stern family who was the head of the American Tobacco, the Lola Tobacco Company and uh

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worked taking care of their children and when. And my father and she met each other and we were going together. He would, you know, visit her there, and he became very close friends. The Stearns really liked him very much so that they remained friends after my

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mother left and got married and when I was a child, you know, I would play go there to play with their. Daughter who was my age and there was a whole strange world, you know, with with I didn't like it, interestingly enough, I sensed I remember

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that it was a big event, you know, like I was going to spend the summer. They had a lot, but they had one of these large apartments on 5th Avenue facing the park, you know, at things that were to me like a museum situation, and then

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they had this tremendous house up in White Plains. Where I was going, I think primarily to keep their daughter company although you know it was supposed to be a big thing and I remember vividly that I hated it because the parents were never there. They were

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always traveling and going out and we were there with the servants, the whole staff of servants, uh, and I, I was very lonesome and told my father and mother I wanted to go home and they couldn't understand it. He was all this luxury around, you know.

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Uh, chauffeurs and maids and whatnot, and, uh, I didn't like it. I didn't, you know, I felt that it was a real, uh, distance between the parents and the children, and that, you know, they, they were all these surrogates around, but no one who was real,

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you know, really caring. I mean, I don't know, probably through an agency. Now did you, when she first arrived here, was did she immediately go for that sort of work, I mean, uh, governing work or? That's the only work she ever told me about, so I,

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I would guess that was the only job she had because she was with them for quite a number of years. Her English was never very good. Uh, she always spoke with a very, very heavy accent which I must say I was very ashamed of, but when

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she would come to school, I was very embarrassed, and then I would be very guilty that I could feel ashamed of my own mother, but I really was because of her heavy accent, whereas my father went to school at night and he, his English, I mean,

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he had a slight accent, but it. It was very, you know, it kept improving and he was speaking publicly and so forth, so that he made a big point of of learning to speak English properly and write in it as much as as well as he

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could and so forth. Did he? I don't think so. Yeah. So when your father arrived, did he ever talk about what he did, yes, he first, his first work was at Lenox Hill Hospital. He worked as a um. Nurse's aide or attendant or something and he

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would tell a hilarious story. He thought they were hilarious. They used to bother me a great deal about the morgue, which so I would assume that that was where he was first assigned. And the tricks that the interns would play on each other in the morgue.

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I mean, you could imagine what some of them were, and yeah, one of them particularly just came to my mind where they play that in other words, the second year medical students would play, you know, in order to break in the new medical students play all

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sorts of tricks on them, and I remember one of them that he told us where they they severed an arm from a corpse. And uh had it coming up on the side of this guy's bed and he thought it was one of his friends, you know,

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and he, and he took the hand in order to pull it and, and got the and got this arm and they thought that was hilariously funny but he would tell that to us as children. I don't know how my brother and sister felt, but I was

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very, it used to upset me very much, but I wouldn't let my father know because he was telling it and laughing, you know, that he thought it was really hilariously funny. So, um, that kind of, you know, that, that kind of story. I don't know, but

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it's interesting that when he was dying, um, he pleaded with me to get him back to Lenox Hill Hospital. He felt that if he could get to that hospital, that he, they would save his life, and he always had his whole life he had a very

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strong. Kind of sense of of being connected to them in some way. I, I don't know how long he worked there, but he, uh, he really had a feeling for working with people because when he, when he was older, he went back to working in a

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hospital and he worked up until his retirement he was working in the veterans hospital up in Kingsbridge Road and there he was carrying, you know, I mean he would carry um paraplegics in his arms up until. He was at least 65 or 66 and the doctor

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told him that he'd have to stop, you know, doing that kind of work, but he loved it and he used to talk about the men with a great deal of love and would write letters for them and read to them and of course politicalize them as

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much as he could and uh that was the last work that he did and then after that he, you know, he, he was not well and he was developing problems with his legs and. So the doctor said that he really didn't feel he could continue that

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work. It was too physically difficult. Now, when he first arrived here, he worked in the hospital, how long? I don't know how long. I would guess several years from the way he talked about it, and then he went to work in the shop in the garment

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industry, yeah, and he worked as a presser. that I mean what uh that I remember because I, he took me there. I mean, he used to take me every once in a while to the shop to see it and uh. He always, I mean, he always

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had a sense of enjoying even though it was very hard work and in those days, you know, they would work if they were busy 10-12 hours a day on his feet because of what he was working in men's clothing, so he was pressing men's suits and

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things with steam steam irons and uh he he never seemed when he came home he was always full of stories and he never seemed to be overwhelmed by. Fatigue or you know like I've seen so many other people and even the way I feel after a

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day's work, he would come home and I remember we, we would wait for him at the subway station and he was always uh the just seeing him come out of the station, you know, we would all light up and he was always had a story. Of

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someone in the shop who was funny. There were a lot of Italian uh workers who worked there, and he would imitate their accent and tell funny stories about what happened in the shop or something he saw on the subway or you know something like that and

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then of course later they started organizing it and then it got rough. Very rough and uh there were many periods there we really had nothing to eat and my mother would who was very, they were both very controlled in terms of protecting us from any kind

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of negative feelings or anything like that, but I could tell that she was worried because there were goons, you know, the, the bosses hired goons to beat up. The guys and then sometimes he wouldn't come home till all hours late, late at night and I could

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see that she was very worried about what you know what was going on. Well, now that he was, how was it set up? Did you ever, I visited one of them, yeah, one of them in the Bronx that I visited, uh, that was, uh, it must

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have had about. I'm trying to think of how many, maybe 20 or 25 workers. Now that was only in the pressing department. I don't know about the rest of it. It was a, you know, building with many floors, but in the floor of the room that

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he was in that place, I would say had about maybe between 20 and 30 workers. And uh Now I think that was one of the last shops that he worked in. I think that before that he worked in larger shops down downtown in Manhattan in the

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garment district, but gradually he was. Uh, how old were you when I was about, I would say about 7 or 8 in the industry for many years prior to birth, yes, because he, uh, let's say you were born, how many years after his arrival here, do

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you have any idea? Well, he was 33 when I was born. And uh so I would guess that he was here at least 10 years or more. Um, And now I think that that that he was beginning to go into smaller shops because he was gradually

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being blacklisted and uh I remember vividly when I, when I was, I must have been about 10. Uh, he took me with him. I, you know, as an adult now when I look back, he hung on to me a great deal for support since I was

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the oldest because why he would have taken me on this particular trip, you know, it was his last hope for getting a job in the industry, and I can see that as clearly as as as ever. It was under the L there there was a 3rd

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Avenue L at that time before that it was blown before it was torn down. And I waited down, he told me to wait downstairs, and he seemed rather hopeful that this, that he would get this, and I saw his face when he came down and I

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knew it was almost like a death mask. I mean, he was white and frightened and I suddenly, even though I was a kid, you know, this is my big strong father, I was very intensely aware of how frightened he was. And it, and also the power

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that you know that some outside forces had over him. That even though I saw him as this very physically and mentally strong person parent, I was also aware that that some that what he said was the bosses because he would tell us about it were very

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have had control over him, had an awful lot of power over him, and uh I don't for a long time after that, then friends would try to give him work, you know, all kind of work. He arranged we they arranged to move into an apartment. In

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a private house that belonged to a dentist and in exchange for instead of rent because they couldn't have, they didn't have money to pay rent, my mother cleaned up the dentist's office and kept his instruments sterile and did all that work for him. And my father

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took care of the house and the garden. They had a large garden and he did in the Bronx, yeah, and he did all the gardening there and that was now what what money came in for food then at that point I was not aware of. I

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think. That must have been lending him money. That was, uh, well, that was, that was around when I was 8 and 10, so I would say between about 2021, 1921 to 28. Now my mother died when I was 10.5 from an abortion. She got pregnant and

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I, you know, I could, I think the whole idea of having another child when they didn't have money to feed us. Was, you know, just impossible, so she went for an abortion, which in those days was free. Tricky thing and developed blood poisoning and died. Oh,

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that must have been, yeah, no doctors did that then. And it was very fast, happened very rapidly. I mean, we didn't, you know, we didn't know what hit us because she wasn't ill or anything, you know, like one day she is here and then it was

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something very mysterious why she had to go away for a day or two and she never came back. So my brother to this day is. I hate, I, I was the oldest, so I think that I am. It was easiest for me because I kind of

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had so much to do, I had to take over her role that uh it it kind of uh. Gave me, I guess some kind of anchor in a sense, but my brother still is, is, uh, when he talks about it even now it's almost as fresh

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as when it happened because he was only 6 and uh also they separated us then which was not a good idea for a while and I went with some people and they went with someone else and that was a big mistake. yeah. Now my now there

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were times where my, my father had this positive attitude towards life where when we had nothing to eat, he would go all the way down to the Lower East Side and somehow come home with a great big corn bread. And uh and something that we used

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to call Genza schmaltz, which was goose fat. And he would come home and that would be a feast. I mean, he would present it like we're having this special feast that nobody else even knows how great it is and we, you know, we enjoyed it that

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way. It was very it was an important experience because I realized then because later I work with children, that children react in the direct proportion to how the adults around them are, are experiencing something. So that when I meet people who tell me how poor they

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were, I don't know, we, we were about as poor as you could get and we never felt poor. We never felt, um, you know, my father made us feel it because we were, we, we knew about political things that other kids didn't, and we knew about

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music and we knew about nature and we had all these wonderful riches which he said were riches so that we used to, we, we never felt poor at all ever. And uh You know, whatever they provided for us, we felt it was in some way a

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good thing or, you know, it was a was a riches that that they were presenting us with. Well, he sounds like a very perceptive person like he really understood human behavior during the situation of duress. I mean, he knew exactly what to do in order to

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bring the human spirit back to the forefront. What was your mother like? Well, you know, I it was hard to tell because she was always working. She was, uh, well, that isn't true because a lot of what I do, I know I got from my mother,

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and that is my mother, well, uh that's the way I could best describe her is one day when I must have been about 9, and she went to the store shopping and she came home with a big collie about this high limping. And uh, you know,

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like I, I remember I said, you know, whose dog is that? She said, I don't know and don't ask questions, just put on hot water to boil. He's got a sore foot. So I said, but you don't know anything about him, he could bite us, or,

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I mean, it was the monstrously big dog, beautiful, but. She said, look, he's not gonna bite us, and we have to fix up his foot. And uh PS we he she laid him down on the floor and she she bathed him and bandaged him and fed

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him and he stayed with us but that was her so that that I got from her being human just you know like being human means caring about other people. And you don't ask questions. They don't have to be nice people necessarily. They're human beings, and I

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remember there were kids, uh, a few houses down from us whose the parents had been divorced or something, and the mother was never around. I don't know whether she was working or what, but the kids were very neglected, dirty, and they always seemed hungry, and we

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used to make fun of them, all the kids, because they, they, you know, I mean one thing all the kids were was neat and clean and they never were. And when my mother heard that one day, she was outraged and she called us in and she

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said. You know, like she, how hurt she was that her children could be doing that and that if children are not clean or neglected, you don't laugh at them, you help them and she said you go right out there and invite them in for dinner, and

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she did and and after that she would clean them up and but not in a way to make them feel there was anything wrong with it just like this is the way we do before we eat and frequently they were and then we became friends with

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them. But that was a thing that was like it it was not something she made a fuss about. It was just like, you know, that's the way it is, and I feel that now and I often am taken aback like, well, the funny thing happened this

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weekend like I, this woman whose husband is, is has cancer and I don't know, he may make it or he may not, but she is not one of my favorite people. But she's in terror, and so I canceled uh several. I had a dinner party for

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Saturday night and I had a concert yesterday and I saw it when I was there that her children, her children who are all adult now are not just don't, no one was there. They came 2 minutes and left and this woman is in a panic, so

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I just felt I have to be with her. Someone's got to be with her. So I stayed with her and when I called my friends who I whose dinner party I was supposed to go to and I said, you know, I explained it to them and

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I apologized, but I said I really felt that, you know, that was more important, and he said, oh, that's very nice of you. Can you, you're reacting. I couldn't believe it. I said, what do you mean nice, you know, it was such a funny way to

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put it, and it was just like, and I, and then, you know, I think of my mother every once in a while. I mean that that's the way a human being behaves and if you don't know about that, well then, you know, like, but that was

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the way and my mother worked very, very hard. But another important thing that I remember was the way my parents were always supportive of each other. For example, my father, and, and it was all they never made a fuss, and my father told us this story

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about my mother years later, not when she was alive, but he, when he would tell us about the kind of woman she was, he said, you know, she had no political background in terms of when she came here, he said, but when I was organizing the

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first big shop, he said the boss came to the house to talk to mother while I was at work. And he said he offered her a large sum of money. He said that money like we would never expect to see in our lifetime, if she would

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convince me to stop the organizing and she said, and he said, and she threw him out of the house. He said, I, we just, I just want you to know, you know, the kind of a woman that she is because she would never talk about that.

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And another time I recall when uh since we never had much money for clothing, so we used to get hand me down clothes. Now the sterns would give us all the hand me down clothes from their children, which I never minded. I was matter of fact,

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delighted because we could never afford to buy that kind of stuff, but, uh, some, so one morning I remember my father said, you know how late your mother was up last night to 1 or 2 in the morning, whatever. And he said, you know what she

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was doing, she was embroidering dresses for me and my sister. And he said, you know, that sounds like, well, what you would somebody might say, well, why should she bother doing that, you know, the dresses don't have to be embroidered, he said, but that is how

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your mother shows her love for you. And he said, you know, it's easy. People walk around using words like they love, they love, but he said that isn't what you, what counts. It's easy to say it. He said she doesn't say it. She finds it hard

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to say, but I I want you to know that she does it in very many ways, and that's one of the ways that she does it. And since you aren't up, you're sleeping, I want you to know about what happens, well, you know, so that they

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so that they always. We're very, very supportive and validating of each other like my mother would tell us how, you know, of all the things that my father was doing and that we should be proud, you know, that he was organizing, uh, the workers and so

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that they could have better conditions and he would tell us about her. But uh she was a very essentially uh nourishing um person just was, I mean, you know, like it was like that's the way so we, I mean, I particularly, I was the closest to

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her, I think, uh, grew up with the sense that that's the way people are and I'm I'm still like I'm I'm constantly amazed that. When I come across situations where I have to confront the fact that that's not how they are, that's true. Well, how did

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your, uh, what other virtues did your father say in your mother that he publicly proclaimed. What were her strong qualities according to your father? Well, you know, that she worked hard, which was a virtue in our house, um, no. Did he ever talk about her intelligence?

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No. No, it was mostly in terms of her, her feeding, um. Although I don't know that, you see, she, he was always the one who talked about these things, so I don't really know. I do know that she gave me a set of Shakespeare that had

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been hers when I was 10 years old, these miniature, a complete set of all leather bound a beau. I still have it, but I mean the leather, oh yes, um. And she also would read with if and Oscar Wilde's the stories, fairy tales, and uh so

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I don't know, but mostly the intellectual occasionally he took her to the opera but the sense that that uh we had was mainly that it was he who who was. Very self-educated rather than my mother and that my mother kind of went along with him, but

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that her main role was feeding us and and kind of nurturing us. It was, I think, fairly well clearly delineated. Did your mother ever ask for things for herself? Not that I can remember her. Yeah. Yeah, but you see that was characteristic of all the people

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that we knew. I mean that was a virtue and the and and it was a very important thing that I still, you know, find difficult. I find it difficult to accept the current thing of of loving oneself and making nice to yourself because that was like

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among the people that I grew up with a real no no I mean you cared for other people and and not yourself but you know I mean that seems like a. You know, like in my field it would be called masochistic or something, but it really

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isn't because when you're, if everybody's caring for everybody else, then you're getting your share from the others too. It comes around that way, you know, everybody's getting it and, and I, you know, I experienced a tremendous amount of loving and caring among the people that, that,

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whereas they were doing it for, for every, you know, for each other. So in that sense then you're getting and uh to give to yourself somehow is. I don't know. I don't, I don't find it a even now I don't, I don't say anything much anymore

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because it's so much a current thing that, uh, but it bothers me and I, I don't know, I would not find it a gratifying. Uh, activity, frankly. Well, now your, would you consider your uh parents at the time in which you first remember them, uh, were

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they class conscious? Oh yeah, in what way? How did, how did they convey it to you? Well, I mean, I was, we were all, I was always recall from as long as I can remember being told that um that we're part of the international working class,

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and I know that later when I got to like school and kids would talk they always would feel if I would say that I was not part of any religion this was particularly in college, not so much in well didn't you don't you doesn't that make

00:30:17.770 - 00:30:34.939

you feel kind of isolated or, or, you know, out of things. And I thought about it very much and I didn't because I very strongly felt part of an international working class. And uh you know, like if I heard the Mase yes my god, that was

00:30:34.939 - 00:30:50.540

like I still I still get chills when I hear it and the and the international, I mean, you know, like that was we I got teethed on that and uh so that that was a very strong sense that I had the sense when I was a

00:30:50.540 - 00:31:02.650

kid that I could go to any country in the world and just announce that I'm a worker and the other workers would say, well, welcome. That's all I mean that was, you know, the way. The way it was and that was the way our experience was

00:31:02.650 - 00:31:09.849

as children here because um in among the uh uh first of all, our house was always full of people and they.