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Little Mike testing a little. This is Harvey Schwartz. Um, I'm in, um. Berkeley, California, and I'm with Madeleine Mixer today. Today is the 10th of March 1998, and this is part of the Labor Archives and Research Center's Oral History Project and um Madeleine I was gonna

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just ask you a few questions about background, uh, when you were born and where you were born and where you grew up and things like that. All right, I was born in 1928, uh, in San Diego, California. And um My mother and her her Swedish father

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and uh. Uh, other relatives had moved there in, uh, 1896 I think and so they were long term residents of San Diego. Where, where was your dad from? What country do you know? Uh, actually, he was born in um. In Needles California his father was uh

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English Canadian and was operating a store there because something like a railroad was being built in that area and that was a good retail place his mother was Pennsylvania Dutch or came from a German colony in uh Philadelphia she was born in Philadelphia so. Uh, 3

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out of my grandmothers and grandfathers were born on this continent, and the other came from, was a Swedish immigrant. I see, um, OK, so, um. It's in San Diego. Uh, what was your dad doing in San Diego? He his father had moved from Needles to San

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Diego and established uh a uh a retail a hardware store um a department store actually a small and in those days department stores were smaller there was a dry goods size hardware size and my father uh for the years that I knew him managed the hardware

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side and and uh when his father died he he uh inherited that. And um what what was your actual birth date you said the year, but April 6th, 1928. OK, so you're growing up in San Diego um. Tell me a little bit about your childhood, a

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little bit about your mom. I think my surmise your mother figures pretty importantly in your life, very important. She was, um, she had been a teacher. And um She, by the time I was able to know what was going on, uh, I was the youngest of

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three daughters, and, um. Uh, by that time she had divorced my father. And that was a great shock to him in those days uh one didn't do that but um but she did and and we knew my father well enough to know why. OK, so uh

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that was was uh definitely very uh helpful to know that. OK, do you care to go into that? Well, uh, he was a very different personality and um uh we saw him from time to time and. And uh it was evident that the two didn't go

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together. And so that was uh but my mother was a was a great um. Uh, self study, she, she learned a great number of things she had in her work, uh, as a, as a teacher she had had a course in, uh, small magazines and so

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the rest of her life she read the the small magazines of opinion she she took the nation uh she read The New Republic she read The Progressive and uh. A lot of different uh economic and political opinion makers. Can, can you place the progressive for me?

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That one I don't remember. Um, that was probably in the maybe 50s and 60s and it was out of uh. Um, the territory in Wisconsin, yeah, uh-huh, and, and it was, and her only argument about that was it had very long essays, very long articles, and

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she found it difficult to to get it, to get it read and came out every week or two, and so she was uh. I got one question. Uh, what, what year or approximately what year were, uh, your parents divorced? Just to place this in time. I

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think right around probably, um, 1930. OK. Um, And you're born in 28, so you were quite young at that at that time. So your mother's basically, she's sort of a La Folle uh New Republic liberal. It sounds like. Was she involved in politics? Well, she, she

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was not opinionated about politics I think until uh FDR came in Franklin Roosevelt, and she and that made a Democrat out of her. And she was a lifelong Democrat. She was very active in the Democratic Party and in her later years in Kensington. And uh She

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also, she was well known to a lot of the politicians in California like uh Pat Brown. Because she was one of those people who went out and sat in front of supermarkets and registered voters, and she would often say to me that the the the level

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of of economic um capabilities that the people that she was registering she was really shocked when some of them, uh, registered Republican. Because she thought they ought to be Democrats, but of course she couldn't tell them that she had to be registering anybody who came to

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the store. Um, just for the record, she, she died in what year at the age of. She died at 101, uh, in, um, 1993. OK, what was your full name? Vera Martin Holcombe. OK. How do you spell Holcomb? H O L C O M B. And

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your dad's name was? Was, uh, Frost Holcomb. OK. Samuel Frost Holcomb the third. OK. Do you have any, um, Sense of why your mother moved in this direction, um. Teachers aren't necessarily politically. Um Democratic activist liberal types necessarily do you know why she moved in this

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direction? You mentioned it well she was, she was always very interested in economics and she, that's, that's, that's where she studied on her own and um. She uh has said a number of times in my hearing that that you can read these very thick academic uh

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famous economic tomes on economics and in the middle of it you come upon a section that says well we don't really know why this happened but it just happened this way you know all the theory is has to be put down. By academics and uh so

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but but that's not the real reason that things had to happen that way and I think that particularly interested in her her in. The, the obvious, um. Uh situation under Hoover who, who didn't know what to do in the face of a terrible Depression and uh

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FDR came in and did some things and of course the fact that FDR had a very activist wife Eleanor Roosevelt. Uh, was, uh. Um, very supportive of my mother's ideas. Because my mother was very proud of her Swedish heritage and felt that um that Sweden knew

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more about doing things in the right way and uh. As she said once her her father was was really completely divorced from the Swedish colonies in this country, so she was never exposed to anybody saying, well, you know, she's just a dumb Swedish working uh you

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know, maid in the family. Uh, a blockhead Swede, I think she, she never heard that until, uh, many, many years later. So, um, and I, and I think the independence of Scandinavian women probably, uh, rubbed off, off on her too, did, um. The, uh, depression have

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an impact economically on the family, on your mother? Yes, it did, uh, uh, one of, one of the things that contributed to was, uh. When she got a divorce, she did not get a good settlement. And uh and the depression was used as an excuse for

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that. And my father had uh. Had separate bank accounts she didn't know about. They had the same lawyer, which was something one learned at the at the. In your earliest years, uh, get yourself a good lawyer if you're going to need to do something. And um

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So it's uh and and that was a long term I think that was her worst worst regret was that she did not uh tie up the the uh. Assets that the family had for for the benefits of her daughters even and of course in the interim

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she worked and. She had thought that she would be able to go back to teaching, at least being a, uh, substitute teacher, because of course in those days when you had a baby you had to quit teaching. I mean I don't think you could be seen

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as being pregnant, um, and so she'd had 3 daughters and um. But she felt she could go back to to uh being a substitute teacher and if she had been able to do that, she would have eventually gotten a teacher's pension. But she was right at

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the beginning of that program. And uh But with the depression. And And not taking into account, I mean, as far as the society was concerned. Uh Divorce didn't mean that you needed the money, it meant you were still. Married as far as the society thought or

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else they thought well you've done this and so. And of course there was no welfare then. Yeah, um, there was no minimum wage. There was no, none of the things that we know of now, yeah, yeah, and a teacher's pension was just coming in, uh, to

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California at that point. So, uh, what did she do basically? I mean she. Was she substitute teaching? What kinds of work was she doing? No, she couldn't substitute teach. They wouldn't, uh, hire her. Well, she stayed home with her three daughters and, and suffered. The, the

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problems of, of not having enough money and uh. At one point it was very fortunate because my mother and my two sisters were all the same size and so between the three of them they had 3 outfits one brown, one navy blue, and one black and

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they traded off wearing the same clothes. My sisters were in high school at that point and it was, was quite difficult on them. The one thing that she knew would happen was that her daughters would go to college and that they would graduate and there was

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never any question about that in in our family I mean that that was a given and whether we went to San Diego State which my eldest sister did. Then my second sister persuaded my father to send her to Stamford. So he was fair enough to say

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well if she goes to Stanford then the older sister gets to go away to college too so she went to UCLA. And just about that time was World War II. And a friend of my mother's who had been um who lived here in Berkeley and had

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been married to a Standard Oil engineer and they had lived on Bahrain and uh his three daughters had all been married and and he had died uh she lived in a house here in North Berkeley by herself. She had been a teacher with my mother in

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San Diego and she wrote to my mother and said in 1942 she wrote and said you and Madeleine should come and live with me for a year or two while the war is on so that the Navy people who need housing in San Diego can have

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a have a place to live and all that. Well, as soon as we moved to Berkeley. We knew we weren't going back to San Diego. It was compatible and I started Berkeley High and uh so uh we just eventually sold the house in San Diego and

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how now how did how did um. You How did your mom get any money at all during that that period from 28 until she moved up here? Well, she had, um, there, there was a settlement. She had to get something, yeah, and, and the judge had

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even asked her if that was adequate and, and not knowing. Enough about what the economic situation was she agreed so that made it that much worse that much more painful and she worried about it the rest of her life sure yeah did um. Your dad's, uh,

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any of your dad's money ultimately go to the, to the daughters in the long, long run? Some, uh, we each, we each had a bequest, uh, of, uh, uh, I got a used car lot. In his will, but by that time he had married again and

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um. And was being sued for divorce by his second wife and so that. That it was all a. Very difficult situation. Sure, sure, sure. So, um, But uh he did, he, he paid for my going to Cal. And um and so each of us was. Educated

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in college uh with. By my father's uh. Willingness to do that. A sense of fair play, I think would probably be called. OK. Well, you're Well, we're on this particular vein, uh, especially on your mom's, um. Background I had in my notes that uh. She was

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a feminist. Did she consider herself a feminist way back in the 30s? Um, there, there really was not any talk about feminism at that time. Yeah, I, I know. I, I, I'm trying to get it how I think that I can tell you this, that, that.

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When I Um When I came to be giving speeches I would occasionally say and when I was working for the Women's Bureau I would occasionally say that uh my mother forgot to tell me that I was a second class citizen. And therefore I didn't realize it

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until the first time I was married. And that always evoked a sense of recognition from the female audience. They got that point of view and, and I, I realized that. Totally after the fact because it never occurred to me when I was in college and I

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was taking economics and then then I went into labor economics and I was the only woman. The 40s at Cal. Uh, majoring in a combination of labor, economics, industrial relations that, um. It, it, it really didn't strike me. And um that you know that it was

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such a a strange thing to be doing or that I was I was not uh just as good at it as. I think one of the advantages I had was I was neither the best in the class nor the worst in the class, so that I

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was in that great middle group of people. And just because all the people in my classes were men. Young men, some of them older men who had come home, come back from the war, um. Uh It, it really, uh. I, I didn't discover that until later,

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till I was about 22, 23, 24, 25. Even though I was told that as a woman I would never be able to get a job with a um. An industry in an industry in a uh um a big company in industrial relations because they didn't hire

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women. And I would, I probably wouldn't be able to work for a union because they not only didn't hire women but they didn't hire college graduates they were afraid of college graduates and uh so Clark Kerr told me that uh but he thought we could probably

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get he could probably get me he and I could get me a job with a research organization. Uh, of which they, you know, he worked with a number of them. Or with the government I think. Yeah, they're so But even then I didn't realize that. You

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never quite got the message. I didn't get the message until much later when I went to work for the Women's Bureau and began to hear. All of these personal stories. So that that's a good way to kind of characterize your mother's influence, you know. And and

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and we were a family of women. So there was, there was never a talk about what women did. Versus what men did. Uh We were, we expected to graduate from college. I expected to work. I expected to marry and have children. And you know, I just,

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it's everything was fine up to that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why question it? Exactly. Well, um, OK, do, do you have any, any particular memories of San Diego, anything, uh, of the period before you got up to Berkeley that you've not kind of filled

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in? Well, I went to, uh, My sisters went to a high school that was a junior high junior and senior high school in Point Loma. That's a 6 year junior senior high school and so when I got ready to go to junior high, I, I went

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to the same school. And uh so I had two older sisters and they were they were juniors and seniors I think at that time when I was starting in. And uh Uh There are, there are two things that I remember particularly from my work there. May

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have been because of my sisters cause the teachers like my sisters, but I remember taking uh Uh, 9th grade Latin. Course and having absolutely no problem with it, straight A, you know, all that. When I got to Berkeley High, I had the 2nd year of Latin

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and the teacher at Berkeley High was a completely different situation and um so I I that was sort of a contrast for me between schools far away from university or college. Uh, relationships and those that were a few blocks away like Berkeley. How was, how, how

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was the one at Berkeley Berkeley High School. I had, I had I had problems with translating uh into Latin because since my mother had been a teacher she spoke English perfectly. And therefore I always knew the answers in English. I never had to study English that

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closely to know all of the parts of speech and that kind of thing that you then had to to translate into uh. To Latin and and that was a big study for me in uh in the 10th grade. And, and she was a really tough teacher.

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Uh, sort of akin to the one in, in, uh, in the teachers characterizations you see of teachers in the. In the funny papers. Sure. In, uh, Uh You know, a quite large woman and. Definitely, definitely what they would have in previous years called a battle ax.

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And she, she was. She did not give any quarter. Um-hum. But you got through somehow. Yes, I did and it was a very, they were very valuable lessons, uh, For future writing and you know how you, how you treat all these parts of speech, but the

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other thing was that I was, I was in politics in junior high. I, I was the one elected position. The in the junior high I represented the junior high students in a in a council that then. Uh, the senior. Group was the was the major part

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of that. I was, I was speaking for 3 years' worth of students speaking for what, what, what possessed you to, to run for that office? I, you know, I really don't remember at all. I don't, uh. It just sort of happened, uh, and I don't know

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whether it's because I, uh, it probably had to do with having two older sisters and having a very open family that discussed. Everything from soup to nuts and having a mother who didn't tell you no you can't do that uh uh a boy should be running

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for that. You know, which some mothers have done down through the years. In fact, many mothers have done that down through the years. It's my impression. And by the way, sometimes I'll nod rather than speak. I try, I try to speak. As little as I can.

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OK. I know I screw up a lot on that issue because I'm talkative, but I, sometimes I'll just, with my eyes. Yeah. Um, OK. How about politics at Berkeley High School? How about what? How about politics at Berkeley High? Yes, I think I was, I don't

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remember exactly what. Positions that I had at Berkeley High, but I was elected from time to time to uh. Um You know, to class. Uh I don't know whether it was vice president or a secretary or or what, um, but, um. I was Berkeley High was

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a a wonderful um. Wide open Space, I of course was concerned coming from San Diego to Berkeley High. Until I realized that everybody at Berkeley High, everybody in the 10th grade. Uh, they were all new to each other. Because they had come from 3 different junior

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high schools and so the people from um Willard thought I was from Garfield and the people from Garfield thought I was from Willard and Garfield is now called uh Martin Luther King. And um So, uh, They didn't know that I was an Outlander. A foreigner, somebody

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who had to be dealt with. I was just, I was just one of the crowd, so it, it was a that was a great boon to me, but um. Let's see You'd mentioned one little interesting satellite that. Might be uh kind of interesting at this point.

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When did you graduate from high school? 45. You'd mentioned that you mentioned that you um. Used to go, your mother would go to take you all to Yosemite, and she'd take all the daughters up to Yosemite. And you said you went on a backpack trip in

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August 1945 or or a camping trip. And what happened at that time in August of 1945? Uh, the end of World War II, we, we took off on this, uh. Uh It was a it was a borough trip actually and and it was with a family

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uh that I had known through uh. High school and I had also um first gone skiing with up in the high country in the at Norden at Sierra Club. And we went, uh, we, uh, the, the daughter in this family and I had been working for

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Yosemite Park Curry Company that. That summer I worked in the greasy spoon in the old village. And uh which which made a a pack trip look like a vacation. Uh, because that was really tough work and um so I can remember being at the greasy spoon

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when I saw the, the, uh, newspaper headlines that the atom bomb had been dropped. And uh but before the um. Japanese surrendered. We had driven up to White Wolf and and taken off on this, uh, pack trip to Benson Lake, and we didn't see anyone, uh,

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for 10 days, anyone outside of the people that were on the trip. And we were so startled when we saw people that we just said hello you know and and we forgot to ask them if the war was over so one of us had to run

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back and and check with them and they said yes it had happened soon after we had. Had left uh the civilization, so-called civilization. Now you, you, you'd mentioned an interesting point. That um You'd set up all your gear by yourself and um there were some other

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women who said, you know, don't you have to wait for the men to do all this work and you kind of, this, this went on from the early 30s when we first went to Yosemite and I was 4 or 5 years old. Uh, and I was

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the baby of the family. I had 2, my 2 older sisters, and, um, We, we camped on the valley floor, uh, in Camp 15, and, uh, which my mother loved because being from Southern California she'd never seen a river like the Merced she just she loved

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to be camped by the Merced River so we would scout out a camping spot and move in and the women on either side of the. Of the camping space would say oh can't you wait till my husband comes home from fishing or hiking or whatever he

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was doing he'll help you set up your camp and my mother said no we we don't need any help we we'll, uh, we know how to do it and so the only problem at that point was that. My middle sister, who usually argued with my mother

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in a very friendly but you know definite she had definite ideas no matter how young she was and the two of them would have a hard time deciding just where we would put the tents and what they would face and and then when my sisters were

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in high school. Um, often the fellows that they knew and, and sometimes the girls that they knew, uh, came up to visit us and stay overnight and all that, so we'd have a, a boys dorm and a girls dorm and, uh, and where the kitchen would

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be set up, which of course we created out of, uh, uh, egg boxes and things of that kind that we went to the store and got and my mother would build a, a fireplace in the front of the camp. We did a lot of cooking on

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that fireplace rather than on, uh, she was a little leery of gas stoves and uh. So she would, would build her own fireplace. She took with her a, uh, like a, a stove top, and, and she would build up with the rocks and sand and things

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around it that would support the stove top, and then we would, uh, cook on that. Well, the, the part about, um, the fact that you could set up yourself without having to have some, yeah, my mother was very proud of her. Of her three daughters, so

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the four of us working together that uh we could once we got it figured out how we were gonna where we were gonna put things with no problem um I'll tell you what I'm getting I think close to the end. So why don't we turn the

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side over? We're gonna call this the end of side one. OK.