LILI BERMANT ORAL HISTORY

EMMA MORGENSTERN: This is Emma Morgenstern and today is November 10th, 2011. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Lili Bermant and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Lili, do I have your permission to record this interview?

LILI BERMANT: You have.

EM:All right, great. So, last time, we got to the part where you came from Havana to the US. So, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what happened when you came to the US.

LB:I had been in Havana for four years, where the weather was very warm and lovely, and came in December of '45, which had a humongous snowstorm. And I 1:00definitely did not have any winter clothes, and those I might have had, I outgrew. So, the first thing we had to do was go out and buy clothes. My father's brother and his wife and their daughter lived in Manhattan. My aunt had a sister who had an apartment and she had gone to somewhere in the Midwest to actually -- to work in Antioch College. And so, she gave us -- no, that wasn't it. Yeah, she gave us her apartment. And another -- that's how it started. And another aunt gave my sister a place. So, for a while, that's how -- my parents and I were with this aunt and my sister was with the other. And eventually, we 2:00found an apartment on West End Avenue. And then, life started. I immediately applied to college. I didn't -- City College at the time only had a degree in education, which I wasn't interested in at that point, which was a mistake. But there I was, and I didn't want to go to Hunter, because I didn't want to go to an all-girls college, which it was at the time. The other alternative was Brooklyn, and my -- I had to take an entrance exam and it was in between times. It was sort of late. I did take the entrance -- with the help -- you know, some friend of my aunt's intervened and gave me permission to take the second session of the entrance exam. And I remember women -- this was, as you remember, January 3:00of '45. So, there were many returning GIs. And so, women had to have about five or seven points better than the men to get admitted. And fortunately, I was admitted and started Brooklyn College. The first six months here were very difficult, because first of all, I'd graduated from a little private school with five students graduating in the senior class. And here I was in Brooklyn College. I also had a British accent, because my English teacher at this private school who was my English teacher throughout the time I was there was my English teacher and she was British. And so, I came in with something of a -- you know, 4:00a confused accent, much of which was British, like "I can't" and "better" and all -- and so, I landed in Brooklyn College with that, which invited a lot of comments like, "Oh, come off it." It seemed affected. I was socially inept and I was in total admiration of these young people my age who had graduated from high schools with mixed student body -- so, that was a little hard, although I survived that. And I loved it. I loved college, even though, interestingly, the one -- every semester, there was a class that terrified me. And when I was 5:00called upon in one such class, particularly economics -- this one was, I think, social studies or something. And if I was questioned unexpectedly, I would lose knowledge of my English. I'd forget how to speak it. So, that was also pretty terrifying, 'cause I couldn't remember how to speak. But on the whole, I adjusted. My sister, older -- at that point, she was twenty, twenty-one, wooed by many young men, and ultimately was engaged to a young man who was the son of a very close buddy of my dad's -- who also was Belgian, the son was. And I don't know if I told you about the fact that he had flown in the Belgian Brigade. And 6:00so, they were married, which left me with a room of my own, which was very valuable. And I had trouble -- once I became a little more sociable, my parents were very difficult. Anyone I went out with had to come to the house and anybody -- I said I was going on a date, the first question was, "Is he Jewish?" And I'll never forget how I had met a young man. I used to ride in Central Park. At the time, there was a lot of -- you would get on a horse on one of the side streets, then you had to cross Central Park West. But there were nice trails in Central Park. But then, I met a young -- I forget where I met him, but he 7:00invited me to go riding in Van Cortlandt Park one Sunday morning, and I have never had as big a discussion with my mother, who said, "Is he Jewish?" And I said, I didn't think so, and there was a tremendous row about it. And I was just very annoyed. So, I went riding anyway. And that was the first question everybody -- my parents asked of anyone I went out with: "Is he Jewish?" And on the first date, I wasn't planning on marrying him, but there it was. So, it was a little difficult. But I had good women friends and so we went to a resort one summer in Connecticut and I -- there was a waiter who was the waiter for our dinner -- lunch and dinner who was just lovely, wonderful. Very funny and very 8:00pleasant. And I was there a week and he never asked me for my address or my phone number. And so, I had to pursue him, which I did, obviously unbeknownst to my parents. But even so, I wasn't sure if he would be okay, 'cause he was an American. And so, it was problematic. I had to sort of make sure -- I didn't want to start any discussion about whether he was appropriate or not, so I kept the whole relationship very cool. And ultimately, he graduated from college. I was still a term away from graduating. He was an engineer and when -- my mother was sort of interested. He had come to the house a number of times. My mother 9:00was kind of interested in, "How is he doing? How is his search for jobs?" And I said, "Well, he's thinking" -- he was having a lot of trouble finding a job. "He's thinking of going to South America, maybe to find a job." And she said, "Oh! And so, what will you do?" And I said -- actually, I took the bull by the horn and I said, "I'll probably follow him." Upon which my mom typically said -- and it's a typical response that you don't know about yet. She'll say, "Oh, well in this case, I know that" -- his name was Ozzie -- "Ozzie will take good care of you." That was the thing, the theme that I grew up on. I had to find somebody to take care of me and -- upon which, when Ozzie asked me to marry him for the thirty-seventh time, I said yes. And he turned out to be a good guy. Even my dad, who spoke no English, or very little -- and the good news was that Ozzie's 10:00dad spoke Yiddish. And so, when they met, it was really lovely. But my dad became ill and five years -- '45? We came in '45, yes, and in December of 1950 or earlier than that, he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and died in 1950. So, two weeks after I was married. So, he was still around, though displayed sort of -- he disappeared and reappeared and didn't know where he'd been. But anyhow, I was married. Dad was at that point pretty much -- he had been a broker here, didn't like New York, didn't really do well. And so, when he 11:00died, there was really no money. And my mother decided she had to go to work at the age of fifty -- he was fifty-five, she was about fifty-two. She had never, ever worked a day in her life and she became a diamond broker, which was really phenomenal because, I mean, besides her being bright and clever, his colleagues were very good to her. And so, she became a diamond broker and eked out an existence and my husband and I eked out an existence. And my sister at the time was married to this guy whose father went bankrupt and they were not doing well. So, it was sort of a big struggle for a while. My husband was, as was I, an agnostic. He had been bar mitzvahed, which was a plus. That was important. What 12:00he thought of his bar mitzvah was -- my parents never knew, but it was the kind of bar mitzvah where he goes to the rabbi for six or eight months before his thirteenth birthday and learns to -- how he learned, I don't know. But that's -- he was able to do what he was supposed to do. But it meant very little to him. His dad, as I said, spoke Yiddish. His mom had died. I met her once and then she died. He had two sisters, both of whom were married to Jewish guys. So, that was good, too. And so, we went on and, I don't know, want to ask me any more 13:00questions about anything?

EM:Sure. So, how did New York compare to other cities you'd lived in before --

LB:Oh, overwhelming. Overwhelming. And I remember a lot of -- I still had -- initially was socially involved with the children of refugees. It was how it worked. I had some relatives who'd been here before, and so it was all children of refugees. And we used to dance. I loved to dance, so there were parties at different houses. And wherever I went, they'd say, How do you like America? And at first, I would say, "Oh, I like it very much," and I lied through my teeth 'cause I didn't. And ultimately, I think I blew up once when somebody said, "How do you like America?" And I guess it was the nth time and I said, "I just 14:00totally hate it." It was very hard, even though that's where I wanted to be. There was no other place I wanted to be. But it took a while for me to adjust. I had to sort of work with my parents being still in Europe, as it were, and I'm trying to Americanize myself and there was no way -- that was in my book. I wasn't going to marry a European. I was not interested. I don't know why not. I mean, I don't know if you know, if you -- maybe you're too young, but Jackie Kennedy had a -- the last ten years of her life, she had a man in her life whose name was Maurice Tempelsman who also was a Belgian and with whose father my 15:00mother worked and who was part of this Belgian group at the beach. So, had I married him, as one of my schoolmates did, I might have been very rich and maybe even hung onto him. But he wasn't of any interest to me at the time or any of the other people, so -- but Ozzie was an American, so that was big. But he was terrific, too. So, that was good and I got to like it. I really got to like it. Especially, I loved college. Not that I knew what I was doing. Unfortunately, I had very little idea because in my -- how shall I say -- my cultural background, the next step would be get married and have kids. A career was sort of something 16:00I would love, but I hadn't focused on it. So, in effect, I became an English major, which was good for totally nothing by the time I graduated. I had options. I could've -- the one thing I tried, which was -- there was an option to become a social worker in the city of New York. And I got a phone call, to which I called, and apparently, what I remember, and I can't believe that it was so, but that's what I got, was I wasn't -- I had too much of an accent, so -- and what did I know? I didn't even know what I was calling about. Somebody had said call. So, as an English major, I'd also made sure not to learn how to type. So, it made me totally unemployable. And I had jobs as -- secretarial jobs, 17:00which was complicated, but -- and then, I managed to get some jobs -- well, for instance, I -- first job I ever got, actually, I amazingly got -- being very straightforward, I went to Columbia University. I lived very close. That original apartment that we moved to had a fire and -- not our apartment, but we had to get out because everything was wet. But somebody found us an apartment on 102nd Street. So, I went to Columbia to find a job in the library. And I was applying for this job and they said, Fill out an application. And then, they asked me, Well, why don't -- we'll give you an interview now. Give me an 18:00interview and the guy -- it was a man who said, "Have you ever worked in a library?" And I'd say, "No." "Have you ever used money in business?" I said, "No." I mean, there were six questions, all of which were "No." But they hired me anyway, 'cause they needed somebody just then to replace somebody who was leaving and it was in the -- and one of the -- it was in the lending library at Columbia University. And I guess I did well enough, so I worked there for many years thereafter while I was going to college, which was wonderful. And then, in between, I also got jobs doing translation for a guy with German. Oh, and I worked for a guy doing Spanish translations, correspondence. So, I managed -- 'cause dad, by the way, wasn't happy that I went to college. He needed help. And 19:00I said, "I want to go to college and I'm going to earn my own expenses," which is what I did. I mean, at the time, it was almost free, so -- but culturally, I had this issue of always trying to balance what my parents wanted with what I looked for, the Americanization. But once I got married and -- everybody was happy with my American husband. And when my mom announced my engagement, "Oh, my daughter's married to an American -- is engaged to an American engineer," which was only second best to a doctor. But engineer worked. And he ultimately found a job. And my mom, she just kept on working until she was eighty-two years old, which was really pretty amazing, so. But it was -- I'm certainly -- for me -- I 20:00have to confess that for me, leaving Belgium -- let alone the circumstances, was the best thing in my life. So, where would I have been if I had stayed there? I don't know. I don't know. I always had dreams about going places and -- I'd never been outside of the boundary of Belgium, and you know it's very small, until the war. And it really galled me. My dad didn't have a car. We never went -- we went to the seashore or to the mountains. I never went anywhere. And all I wanted to do was travel. And I ended up doing a lot of that, but much later.

EM:And I know you returned to Belgium to live there --

LB:Right.

EM:-- for a few years.

LB:Right.

EM:Can you tell me about that?

LB:Right. So, we had two children and my husband ultimately, after having a lot of terrible jobs, a year after he graduated got a job with IBM in a day when not too many Jewish people were hired by IBM. But he got in. And so, initially, we started in New York and then we had a son in New York. But when he was a year old, we were transferred to Poughkeepsie, and for years -- we moved to Woodstock -- I had a daughter in Poughkeepsie. We moved to Woodstock and then ultimately moved to Washington, to Maryland near Washington. And that was in 1968. So, my 22:00son was, at the time, fourteen and my daughter was ten. And my son was having a lot of trouble. He had -- I know now that he was HDD or whatever they call that. But that didn't exist in those days. So, he was extremely bright, very extraordinary in many ways. But once he couldn't clown his way through school, he became -- especially in junior high and high school, he was having difficulty and he fell in love with the Beatles and he had little granny glasses and wanted his hair to grow. And when we came to Maryland, he was having a hard time. But 23:00ultimately, with much difficulty, he graduated from high school, probably in the bottom third or quarter of his class. But I think by then, he had gone through a lot of issues and I think he was beginning to feel that he needed to be a little more serious. And so, that's -- when he graduated from high school, we were transferred by IBM to live in Brussels. And my son decided to stay because he didn't -- neither one of my children were in the least bit interested in learning French, to my mother's chagrin and my own chagrin, actually. In fact, my daughter dropped French in junior high school. This was '68, '69, '70. The Vietnam War time. My son was a total hippie. My daughter, at the age of 24:00fourteen, tripped. So, we were having our issues there. But at first, my daughter didn't want to come but she -- there was no choice there. And my son stayed and he was going to community college. We did not want to finance an expensive college as long as he wasn't doing better. But going back to Belgium was interesting. My sister by then was already living -- they had gone back because my brother-in-law got a job with Sabena Airlines. So, they lived in Brussels, we moved to Brussels. My sister and I, we had a very -- how shall I say? She was lovely in many ways. But she lived in a different world. There was a lot of -- she and her husband, there was parties and I didn't like her 25:00friends. And I was kind of something of a -- if not a hippie, at least close. And so, I used to say, and I don't know why I would say that -- is that if my sister weren't my sister, she wouldn't be my friend, which is a mistake, 'cause she -- later on, I realized what a terrific person she really was and how protective of me she was. It would bug me when she'd say, "Hey, Lili, call mom, it's Mother's Day tomorrow," or something. And I'd say, "Yeah, I know." But she was making sure that I didn't fail my mom and that my mom would be happy. And so, it got a little bit overwhelming. But when we moved to Brussels, she was really very lovely and also very clearly not insisting that I embrace her social 26:00life, which I wasn't interested then, either. But she was very helpful and very sweet and we got together a lot. But I didn't want to do what she did, which was -- I felt a little more serious, although she never graduated from college and became well-read, bright, interested in politics. I mean, could hold her own against anyone. So, what can I say? I think I was prejudiced and not with good reason. So, we became friends in Belgium, really. So, she was lovely. And going back to Belgium was great. I loved it. First of all, we lived in Brussels, which 27:00is a more interesting town than Antwerp, although Antwerp is beautiful. And when we went back, I loved visiting, but I realized maybe it's not as provincial as it was, perhaps. But Brussels, by now, is -- the EU had its headquarters there and it was great. And the best part was that we traveled a lot because we were halfway there. And in Belgium or in Europe altogether, people don't stay home. They travel. We had an apartment, not a house. So, we didn't have to worry about grass and trees and snow and whatever. We had an apartment and we could go anywhere on the weekend. And that part was great and we traveled far and wide. And I also, after about six months, realized I wanted to work. And I was able to 28:00find a job in a private school. It was an American private school, actually a Catholic school where I became -- the program was all in English but the students weren't necessarily English. Brussels had a lot of international companies and people came from all over, from Denmark, from South America and all that and would bring their kids to the school. And so, I had a little office and I would tutor children, take them out of their English classes and tutor them. And I had totally free hand. I would go to London and find books. I mean, it was just a great job. And the kids liked me because I tried to be where they 29:00were and I wasn't meeting any criteria. So, that was great fun. And so, I worked until two thirty and I was able to take up riding again. And there was a beautiful riding stable nearby. I tried tennis, but that was not successful. Eye-hand coordination isn't very good. But we traveled a lot and -- to Turkey and to Sicily and to -- actually, I went through North America, North Africa, rather. And, of course, in Europe, all over Europe. And then, probably -- the assignment was for three years. And I'm not sure whether it was the last year or 30:00the year before that I decided, I'm halfway there, I wanted to go to Israel. I had never been and I had family there. My husband traveled a lot for his work. And so, when I said, "Okay, I want to go to Israel," he wasn't that interested. And I said, "Okay, then I'm going by myself." And I did a trip where they told me that they had these Egged tours where they're buses, they're public buses, but they're tour buses. So, they go all over. And so, I went to Tel Aviv. The trip was for, I think, eight days. And it was totally -- I was by myself. It wasn't like a tour or anything. But I booked Egged tours. And so, I went north to -- near the Lebanon border. And then, I went to a kibbutz. I stayed a couple 31:00of days in a kibbutz, which was a motel or whatever. And then, I took another Egged tour down to the Dead Sea. And as it turned out, there were other people doing the same thing. So, I kind of hooked up with a few people and we were sort of planning our trips. So, I went to the Dead Sea and then to Jerusalem. And there, I visited some cousins who had emigrated there. And I went to Yad Vashem, which is very emotional, certainly, because my mom had lost several brothers in the Holocaust, in concentration camps. In fact, before we left for Belgium, we 32:00had bought a camper, a VW camper with which we took a cross-country trip here in the States. And my mom said, "I'll never ride in your VW." Well, she didn't, 'cause it was one of these cars that wasn't exactly comfortable. It had a very high step and everything, so we would never ask her to, but she wouldn't -- I mean, she was very anti-German and wouldn't ever go back to Germany, although she did go back to Belgium every year to visit my sister. With my sister's husband's help, he got a ticket for her. He told them that she was his mother and so he was able to get a ticket for her. So, she'd come to Brussels every year. And so, Israel was very fascinating to me at the time because there wasn't 33:00the kind of turmoil there is today politically. I mean, it was independent, it was recognized. I think the antagonism with the Palestinians hadn't completely emerged yet, although everywhere, everywhere you would see young men with guns, with rifles. If you saw children's -- group of kids on a day trip or something, they were accompanied by soldiers. And actually, it was probably not -- yeah, might have been the last year. But we would have loved to have stayed in Belgium 34:00or somewhere in Europe, 'cause we really enjoyed it. But IBM had other plans, so we came back. And my husband, by then, was fifty-eight, something like that. And he had had it with Big Blue. He had been working for them for thirty-five years, which today you don't do anymore. You don't stay with the same company. But he was a child of the Depression and was very conscious of security, and financially, he was incredibly -- how shall I say -- would never even incur a single debt. We barely were able to buy our first house, 'cause we didn't have any credit rating. So, when we came back, he was fifty-eight and he requested 35:00from IBM -- IBM had a community service plan where if you wanted to, you could do community service work and they would pay your salary. So, he got assigned -- he did that. He managed to go to a university, a local -- it was the University of the District of Columbia, which had been created fairly recently from several institutions. And he worked with the engineering department, which wasn't certified, and he helped them. And worked for them, worked on the Hill, also, under the auspices of IBM. And by the age of sixty, he retired, very happily, 36:00and actually became a mediator and was very happy being a mediator, so.

EM:Can you tell me a little bit about that? I know you are a mediator also?

LB:Right. What happened is that I met a couple somewhere and so I invited them for brunch and they came. And they were both lawyers. And I knew the man better. I had met him somewhere. And so, we had woods in back of our house. So, we're walking in the woods and Ozzie and Nancy were walking behind and he was telling her a little bit about how the culture at the college was so fragmented. And there were issues about -- 'cause there were faculties from three different 37:00institutions and they were having all kinds of issues. And she said to him, "Well, there's a mediation program in town where you can get mediation training and maybe -- to help you to work things out." So, he did that. He took the course and it was a forty-hour course. You had to apply for it. It was a forty-hour course and then you had to commit to work for this community mediation center, which would get people -- the police department would recommend people, the neighbor disputes and all kind-- and then, he tried to use what skills he learned at UDC and he liked the process so much that he told me, "Why don't you apply? You'll like it." And I applied. Actually was turned down the first time, 'cause there were always many more people than slots. But, I 38:00finally got in and really did love it and ended up doing mediation for the community center. And then, if we stay long enough, we become mentors. So, I was there long enough -- so, I became a mentor. And it's a very satisfying process where mediators don't make decisions. They don't tell people what to do. But it's a place where people who don't listen to each other are heard and where we say, Why don't you define the issue, okay? And, "Oh, well, this neighbor always parks his car in the driveway and we're supposed to share a driveway. And he 39:00comes home first, so he's" -- so, we say, Okay, well what really -- so, the issue is that you are supposed to share a driveway which apparently accommodates two cars. I'm just giving you an example. And so, the question is that sometimes, the guy who is in the front, being blocked, has to leave earlier. And so, what mediators are able to do is to say, Okay, what is it you want and what is it you want? And what would you like the other person to do or not do? And we help them come up with a plan. Look at each other's schedules, which they never bothered to do, and stuff like that. Or, a dog that poops on my lawn or -- there was that. But then, ultimately, I took training for family mediation, which was 40:00a little more interesting than pooping dogs and stuff. And so, I started doing that. And my husband became -- broadened much more. He took more training, as did I, as a matter of fact. But he worked for the Better Business Bureau, which did mediations of issues having to do with cars, people complaining that the mechanic didn't offer the -- didn't do what he promised to do and stuff like that. And there, what happened was that it was -- actually, it wasn't mediation. That was arbitration. And arbitration is different in that the mediator can 41:00actually -- after listening to people, the arbitrator, after listening to all sides, however many there are, does come down with a decision, which is something I never did, 'cause I didn't trust myself to come down with the right decision. But he did a lot of arbitration, which dealt with not only cars but businesses and stuff. And some was binding, some was not binding. But I continued taking mediation classes and doing family mediation. And we created, in 1990, we created a company called Concordia Systems Group, which was mediation and organizational theory, because my husband also, when he quit IBM 42:00or just before he quit IBM, went back to school and got a graduate degree in organizational development. And so, he used that a lot in his mediation, in his arbitration, in broadening. And so, he was doing very well when he died. He died at seventy-two, very suddenly from one day to the next. So, he had a -- aneurysm in his brain. And in the meantime, I had done other work. I mean, I'd done other things. But I don't know how interested you are in that. You are?

EM:Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about that? I know you're in education.

LB:Yeah, well, I went back to take a master's. I started it in Belgium and when I came back, I had done -- it was an extension of the University of Pennsylvania 43:00-- was it Pennsylvania? No, well, anyhow, they had extension courses in Brussels, or in Holland, actually. I went to Holland. And so, I was interested in getting a master's. And actually, while I was working at that school in Belgium, they had a specialist come to give courses in reading remediation, helping children who had reading problems. And I was involved in the training and I became very interested. So, I decided to go back and get a master's in reading. Education with an emphasis on reading. And so, I did that. But because both my children at the time were going to colleges -- my son finally transferred to Boston University, my daughter was going to Tufts -- I went to a 44:00college that was a little further away, a little less expensive. It was called, at the time, Western Maryland College in Western Maryland somewhere. Well, yeah, but not very far west. But anyhow, commutable, an hour or so. And I got a master's, going part time, and liking it a lot. And it was in reading remediation. But then, I also decided that I did not want to become -- I would have to go through a lot more student training and stuff if I wanted to work in a school. So, I didn't, but I got -- one of the instructors had asked me to join a small company that she and a partner had formed. And so, I did editing and I went on a one-month -- it was a program where they were taking people interested 45:00in doing teacher -- sort of volunteer -- not volunteer but what do you -- it's called Teacher Corps, and it was something fairly new. Was probably modeled on the Peace Corps, but it was where people who had graduated from college would get training and it was a month-long training in a lot of things that were helpful: organization and -- in fact, I actually kind of forget. But I was part of the team that was doing evaluations. So, we were in San Diego for a month doing -- I would walk into classrooms and I'd have an instrument where I would evaluate what was going on. It was pretty boring, really, when you got right 46:00down to it. But it had its moments of being interesting. But it was a good job. I mean, I got paid well. And then, coming back, I did a lot of editing of some of the reports that they wrote as a result of that month. And then, I was sitting at a friend's house one day and she got a call from someone she knew who said, "Oh, we're looking for somebody who could work in our company. Are you interested?" She said, "No, I'm not. But I have a friend who might be." And it was in an economics company. And I got hired doing all kinds of work, among which, interestingly -- I worked for the vice president, who did work with 47:00Israel, actually, and was foreign -- do you know, it's been a long time. Good grief, I'm eighty-three years old and that was when I was fifty or maybe -- but they would encourage doctors and researchers in Israel to submit projects that they wanted funded. And one of the things I did was to review the project and then go to NIH and try to get them interested in funding the project. Did I follow up? I don't remember how many of them got funded or not. The one thing I remember also doing that -- my boss was going to Egypt to talk about what the 48:00Egyptians needed to do to get through the bureaucracy to get their research or their whatever done. And even though I wasn't going to Egypt with him, I designed the training program for which, by the way, I still have somewhere a letter from him saying how wonderful it was. 'Cause he had no clue. He was going to go there and sort of walk off the top of his head. And I said, "Well, what are you going to do? How are you going to have participation?" And so, because I had obviously, over time, been to enough training courses to know what works and what doesn't work -- so, there was that. And then, that one, I'm not sure exactly the transition, but I also worked for another educational company called 49:00Home and School Institute. And there, I did a lot of training. The woman who ran it, her name was Dorothy Rich. She had designed a program that she called MegaSkills. MegaSkills were -- she wrote a lot of books, many of which I edited and reviewed, which were exercises for parents, how parents could help children -- parents who were not necessarily educated, how they could help their children do better in school. And there were these exercises, these activities. They were extremely creative. And so, she had a bunch of books. And so, when I joined the company, she already had a bunch of books and she had designed something called 50:00MegaSkills where she had done some research to determine what kind of skills are important in the workplace. And she determined that there were ten skills that were extremely important, which she called MegaSkills. And they were cooperation and caring and initiative and who knows? There was about ten. But they were very -- they weren't the kind of thing you'd expect that was traditional. It was fairly untraditional, the kind of thing that people might be measured against if they applied for a job or if they were reviewed. She must have looked at work evaluation documentation. So, anyhow, somehow, the MacArthur Foundation had some 51:00money left over and somebody came to her one day and said, "We need a project that involves a lot of people, that will spread knowledge and information about education. Can you come up with something?" And she did. She's a very creative woman. So, she came up with a project where she picked five different organizations, among them the Library Association, some black organization, I forget what it was. She tried to find a fair -- one Hispanic -- that they wanted a lot of proliferation. They wanted the money to go very far. So, what she designed was finding organizations that had a membership body, like the American 52:00Library Association has members as -- the Post Office, I think, has members. And there were five of them. And she designed training of trainers, and so -- and provided and designed materials. And we obviously -- there was another woman and I and a couple of other people who were freelancing. And then, we ended up going all over the place, training trainers. I don't think I was a particularly terrific trainer. I was not, I don't know, I was never comfortable with myself as a trainer, although I did okay. I mean, the evaluations usually came back -- but one time, it was a mistake where she was asked to do a training for 140 53:00people. And there I was, and I did a terrible job and the setting was awful. And by and large, what ultimately happened is that the woman decided she needed only one trainer and it wasn't -- she didn't pick me, so -- for which I was actually very happy, because by then -- first of all, I wasn't paid well and I kept saying, "Hey, listen!" I was with them for three years and she said, "Well, my accountant won't let me." And there was a lot of -- so, anyhow, I was just as happy -- by then, I had had it. And by then, I was into mediation anyway. So, the mediation was much more important. However, I ended up doing training anyway, in mediation, because, again, my husband and I did a training somewhere 54:00of conflict resolution as a concept. And we had a training project. And so, some people who knew my husband from graduate school had gotten a good grant from HUD, the Housing and Urban Development, to train every one of their employees in conflict resolution and other -- the program was called FAIR, F-A-I-R, every letter standing for something but I don't remember. But -- and the training was two days with one part being communication, one part being something else. Half 55:00a day of conflict resolution and another half a day in -- if you can't resolve your conflict through mediation and/or arbitration, what options do you have in HUD, which was to go through the system. And this was for a year. We traveled all over, doing that. And by then, I was a little more comfortable and we had what essentially was a dog and pony show. We did pretty much the same thing until I got so deadly bored with it. But it was -- and my husband was very lively, very good, and I was okay. I don't know that -- I wasn't like a born trainer. But it was a very nice gig. And it was over after we -- oh, and we also did, when we couldn't get to the places we were going to, we did TV training, 56:00long-distance. Somewhere, I have a tape of that that I don't ever want to see. I mean, it was okay, but it wasn't my strong suit. And so, that's my job experience, which was very up and down. I can't say that I am happy with my employment history. I wish I had been smarter. I think I would have preferred, say, social work, where the skills that I have which are very good on a one-to-one -- I like helping people. The mediation was always very good, 'cause I had a skill that I could use and apply. But I had been discouraged. At one 57:00time, a friend of mine said, "Oh" -- she had worked for a city system and city systems are dismal sometimes. And so, she discouraged me. But I know I have many friends who are social workers who really enjoy it. And I know that I would because I'm -- temperamentally, that would have been good. But beyond that, I think social work probably would have been the best. My mom thought I would be a lawyer because I talked a lot. But I don't know that I would be a very good lawyer or wouldn't have been very good at law school. I don't know, I don't like the pressure, so -- and we did, by the way, go back to Israel, my husband and I, together, in '85. Traveled all over, went up to Masada and went down to the Dead 58:00Sea. Went back to Tzfat and to Jaffa and to the Galil. I mean, we had a car, our own car, or rented a car. And so, it was really a terrific trip and we both enjoyed it very much. And then, I went back again and I've been back several times since because -- I don't know, did I tell you that my sister is buried there? I didn't tell you that. Well, my sister and brother-in-law lived in Annecy, which is a fairly good-size town. Oh, there's a story about my niece. One of my nieces made aliyah, did I tell you about that one? My sister had two daughters, ten years apart, and the older one was born in the States and was six 59:00when my brother-in-law went to live in Brussels and became a pilot with Sabena. And the other one was born ten years after that one. Her name is Isabel. Isabel was very attractive and very pretty, a little bit spoiled. My brother-in-law was a difficult person in many ways. I mean, I don't know, not someone I could have been married to, ever. He was a little bit of a chauvinist. He wasn't very broad-minded. He was very European. When we lived in Brussels, my daughter was, at the time, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. And their younger daughter was a year younger and so interested in much the same things as my daughter was. And there'd be concerts and Isabel would say to me, "Oh, why don't you ask my dad to 60:00see if I could go," because my brother-in-law was not consistent. It would depend on the mood whether he would be willing to have her go or not. And so, anyhow, she had a lot of problems. She had problems with -- she's bulimic and she was -- what's the other one? Whatever, when you don't eat at all. But she ultimately -- she had a lot of problems and the problems were very serious. And she got married and she was married twice. Her second husband died but ultimately, it happened at some point where she straightened out and decided to make aliyah and made aliyah. And when she was there, went to an ulpan, found an 61:00apartment, found a job, was great. She's very resourceful, very bright, very smart. Her problems were behind her. And she met a Sabra man who lived in the same building as she. One thing led to another and they got married. She had been married to a Swiss man who, when he died, she had a good pension. But once she got married, she lost the pension. And it was very lovely for a while. And then, something happened and we don't know what, exactly. But this husband of hers became more and more religious. They had a son and at first, my niece said, "Okay, you want to be religious, that's fine." She had a kosher home, she did Shabbos, she did everything. She says, "But I'm not there. I'll do my thing." 62:00And for a while, that worked. But then, after a while, it didn't. He was going to -- he didn't have much of a job. He had been a physical -- he had done physical education and he was a bit of an actor. But then, he became totally involved with a Shabbat group or whatever. That's all he did. And they had a son. They had a son and she, then -- Isabel went to work and he took care of the child. And he became more and more demanding, to the point where she was nursing the child and he insisted that she did the religious kind of ablutions before she could even touch the child or feed him or whatever. And it became really intolerable. He would not let her go visit her friends with the child because 63:00they weren't kosher. And I don't know the degree to which it became intolerable, but intolerable enough that she planned to escape. Oh, it's a long story. She got a divorce from him and she got a divorce because she had gotten pregnant again and had an abortion. And when he found out, he blew his stack and divorced her. But there was an arrangement where neither of them could take the child out of the country, 'cause my niece was concerned that they might take it away. And he had visitation, supervised visitation until the child was six. It had gone to court. He had brought it to court. And so, the next thing was that she had to escape. And she, over a period of eight, nine, ten months planned an escape and 64:00drove to the Egyptian border. Before that, drugged her kid so he would be sleeping. Covered him with a blanket and crossed the border. I think she had help. She was supposed to get help from somebody who was -- gave her (UNCLEAR) who got cold feet and to whom she paid a lot of money, but he didn't quite deliver. But she's writing a book about it, because she finally got to Egypt and then her sister, I guess, financed her way back to Switzerland. So, she escaped with the child. And, of course, the husband then sued and he got a lawyer in the 65:00Swiss court, Lord knows how that went. And I'm making it much shorter because I know you don't have forever. Two lower courts, when they came down with the -- having heard the facts, said the child could say in Switzerland with the mother. But the highest court in Switzerland claimed that she had actually committed an international crime, which was to abduct a child from his parent. That's a crime and it's an international crime. This was in July of '07. They said, This child has to go back to Switzerland -- to Israel in September. Got to go. Well, there was no way that she was going to let that child go back. She could not go back because she were to go back, the Israelis would probably imprison her because 66:00she had broken the law. And she did not want to take a chance. It was a plan B that they designed. Who knows what they would have done if she would have disappeared into the netherland. But what happened was that she -- oh, and she did a lot of petitions and she had a table in the streets of Lausanne trying to sign petitions. I mean, it was incredible the way she just went ahead and said, "This is not going to happen." A lawyer that she had was convinced -- the Strasbourg Law of Human Rights to take on the case and in so doing, negated the other case from the upper Swiss government, because it became an international matter. And that was in 2007. And much happened. He, her husband, remarried and 67:00divorced, was apparently -- had abused this woman, who then became a source of information for my niece, 'cause she knew about her. She would send her stuff. But this shy -- who had become, really -- apparently, he goes around Tel Aviv on roller blades with a flag and a placard about the messiah coming or something. I mean, he's socially totally out of the norm. And so, at first, after two years, 68:00I think it was a year-and-a-half of my niece -- she had the job in Lausanne. She works at a company which offered to give her legal assistance. The Court of Human Rights came down against her five to four and they appealed. I don't know who paid for the legal cost. I have no idea, because it became an international thing. It was on TV. I mean, they sent me the links. It was all over -- certainly Switzerland. And what happened is that he got married again, a third time. He had family. He did not support his -- the wife had a baby, the second wife had a baby. It was a girl. He did not support her. Anyhow, there's lots of 69:00new information that came through and recently, probably I would say six weeks ago or eight weeks ago, the Court of Human Rights came down in her favor and she is now allowed, the child is allowed to stay in Switzerland with the mother and she's free and easy. She did not trust -- I mean, she did not trust that child to be left alone. There was always a very consistent control. He's going to a little -- to a Jewish school. What he knows about his dad is that he lives far away and they never say anything negative about him. And then, my sister -- so, 70:00they lived in this town of Annecy. But then, they moved closer to Geneva, which is where the older daughter lives and who -- the older daughter has very good jobs and is very helpful. And she bought an apartment for them so that it could be closer. But as it turned out, my sister had lung cancer and they had made no arrangements about what to do when she died. If you live in a bigger city and you join a temple, which they never did, then temples have their cemeteries. But they don't let perfect strangers go -- I guess land is at a premium in Europe. There isn't that much of it. She could not be buried in Switzerland, where her daughter was. And so, her daughter -- my brother-in-law, by the way, had family in Israel, had had an aunt who had gone there years ago as a refugee and had two 71:00Sabra daughters who had then families, one of whom lived in a kibbutz for many years. The kibbutz now became a moshav, because kibbutzim, I don't think, fared too well anymore. And they had a cemetery and my niece was able to negotiate to have my sister be buried in the cemetery of that moshav. And I was going to -- my sister was in the hospital. I was going to visit her. I had a plane trip all planned. She died two days before I got there. And so, when I got there, the arrangements were made. So, what happens? First of all, my sister had to be prepared in the Orthodox way in order to be eligible to go into that cemetery. And that was very interesting because people from another town had to come and 72:00minister to her and bathe her and wrap her. And then, the police had to come and inspect the casket to make sure that it wasn't being filled with guns and ammunition. And it was closed under the police's supervision and it could not go through any other country. It had to go through from France directly to Israel because otherwise, there would be -- so anyhow, amazingly, my niece and I flew to Israel. The casket took its turn and landed, don't ask me how, but there it was, when we -- and the moshav is way in the north. So, one of the sisters lives 73:00in Jerusalem, where we were. And we all drove up to the moshav, which was interesting, by the way, that ride, to see the wall. I saw the wall, right alongside this main highway. On one side, it was Jewish settlements and apartment houses. On the left side, they didn't look very different. But that was probably because they were close -- who knows what it was further out in the country. But it was shocking to see that wall. It was sort of upsetting to think that the Israelis wanted to do that. I don't underst-- people say, You don't understand, you don't understand the danger, you don't understand what was going on. But I don't know, it's just too bad. So, the wall was sort of there. But when we got to the moshav and to the cemetery, there was the casket. It was 74:00there. And so, we had a lovely burial there. Somebody said the Kaddish and we all said things, read nice things about her and I have pictures. And then, as it turns out, we went back to Jerusalem and we stayed another day or two and I enjoyed going to the Old City and walking around and being sort of surprised from the last time I was there how many more religious Jews I see in Jerusalem, the real -- the visibly religious Jews. Lots of people walk with -- have kippahs, but more so than ever. And there's something -- I have a reaction to 75:00that. Not so much because I think that they're not welcome to do what they want to do from a religious point of view. But I also understand how difficult they are politically in the country and how conservative they are. And I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, so it gets to me to think that on top of everything, on top of the fact that Israel is now so beleaguered that it also has to fight itself internally. But anyhow, so that was -- and then, the following year, I went back to Israel with my niece and we went to the group. The moshav had 76:00created a garden right around her. So, it's a beautiful little cemetery. Very small. The graves are separate, they have flowers. They had created a lovely plaque with my sister's name. It was just delightful. And then, my niece and I, after that, bidding her a fond hello and farewell, went down to the Dead Sea to a place, to a -- where we hiked in the mountains near -- I don't know exactly where we were. But we were in one of those resorts and there were -- what was amazing is that they have these dry, dry mountains and there were trails and then you hit a spring. We hit several springs. And it was sort of strange to see very little vegetation. Just around the springs, there were trees and plants. 77:00And we did a three-hour hike in the blazing sun and it was wonderful, I love it. And then, we went swimming in the Dead Sea. Also, the Dead Sea's much further away than it was when I first went there. It was shocking. They have a little train from the hotel, taking you to the Dead Sea. That is amazing. And the other thing that was incredible, and I think it has to do with my composition of fat in my body: I had a lot more trouble standing up. I mean, I didn't have trouble before getting up and lying down and getting up and this time I did. I went to a deeper part and when I was floating on my back, I had to struggle to -- I don't 78:00know, I was much more fatty than I was before. I guess it has to do with the composition of an older body, but it was shocking, so -- but it was wonderful. I've been very pleased that I was able to go back to Israel, even though I thought my sister puts a burden on her daughter. But her daughter was obviously willing to do it, and I was happy to have the opportunity to go to Israel a couple of times. So, there's that.

EM:Great. Well, this is totally changing subjects, but I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your involvement in women's groups and the women's movement?

LB:Oh, yes, yes. Well, for the longest time, I was raised with my mother, who was -- as bright and smart as she was, was very much traditional, even though 79:00she probably was the one who ran the home. But she pretended not to. "I'll tell your daddy" or "I'll ask daddy." But daddy was very mild-mannered and -- but basically, once I went, when I went on this trip to San Diego and I told my mother I was going to be gone for a month, she said, "Oh, and Ozzie's letting you go?" And I said, "Yeah, in fact. And I let him go when he goes on business trips." So, there was that. But just before I left for Europe, that was the beginning of what was the feminist movement and I had the sympathy -- certainly I had it in my heart. And somebody gave me a subscription to "Ms." magazine as a 80:00going away present and -- which was wonderful. And when I got -- so, before going to Brussels, I hadn't been very involved because my husband wasn't chauvinistic. So, I didn't feel any pressure. I didn't have to fight him on any ground. But when we got to Brussels, I wanted to get involved in something. And there was a magazine called "The Bulletin." It was a weekly magazine put out by the English-speaking community. And I saw a little ad that said "Women Overseas for Equality." WOE, W-O-E. And they were having a meeting. And so, I called them up and I said, "Well, what do you do? Are you sort of extremists?" There had been bra-burning until then. That wasn't where I was. "No, no, we talk about 81:00stuff." So, I went to a meeting. People were very welcoming. But the topic of discussion that evening was body hair, to shave or not to shave. And I thought, This is not for me. I don't care. If I decide -- of course, Europeans don't shave under their arms in many cases. But who cares? So, I was very turned away. But I thought, I have to give them another chance. And the next time around, it was much more interesting. And it was really terrific. It was a great group. I have to give you one example of something that totally blew me away. We went to a -- there was a presentation of a woman who was talking about taking control of your body and taking control of the inside of your body. And she said her idea 82:00was to -- have you ever looked at yourself the way a gynecologist does, with a speculum? It had never occurred to me. She says, "I'll show you an example." And this woman, I was totally blown away. Got down, and there was a stage, actually, and inserted a speculum and we could look into her insides. And I thought, This is going a little too far. But it was a little bit on the edge, but not everything was on the edge. We were politically interested in what went on. There were women who came to these meetings saying that they had to lie to their husbands to leave and didn't tell them where they were going. And there was a -- 83:00it was a very supportive environment. And my husband was very receptive, really, with the fact that I became very valuable on the women's rights. For instance, women -- and by then, I had a job, so that was pretty good, but women -- my husband was not part of an international organization that went from here to here to here and where the women had to adjust. After two years, they went somewhere else. And there were many women who were very bitter about the fact that their needs were not considered and that sometimes they started something here and when the husband got a promotion to go there, they had to follow. And there were no choices in those days. And so, whenever we'd get together 84:00socially, my husband was part of a sort of an international center. So, there were people from Italy and Denmark and South America and everywhere. And they got very friendly with each other, 'cause they worked together. And I would start having conversations about this and get very enthusiastic and then I'd get challenged. And sometimes, I would lose it and my husband, then, would pick up and rescue me. So, it was wonderful the way he was right there with me. And many women were saying that they felt that they could not maintain this situation. And one in particular was a very good friend of mine. She divorced her husband because she saw what she was in. And so, this was a great introduction to 85:00feminism and I felt very strongly about it. And when I came back, I was busy going to school. But then, I was also interested in hiking and doing things and there was an organization in Washington called Washington Women Outdoors. And so, I joined Washington Women Outdoors and we -- again, I was at least concerned at first. But at first, it was very much we'd hike, there were -- I mostly hiked and cross-country skied. And ultimately, I got so into it that I became a hiking leader and a cross-country instructor and made good friends, but then -- and the woman who had created the organization was someone who had lived in Switzerland and when she came back to the States, wanted to do cross-country skiing and then 86:00had put an ad in the paper. Said, "I'm looking for a couple of people to cross-country ski with me" and thirty applied. So, she realized there was a need. And she had created this Washington Women Outdoors organization. And after a number of years, it became very obvious that many of the women were gay. And there was one summer an incident where one woman who ran a summer program, which was very much catered to gay women, wanted to borrow some canoes that belonged to Washington Women Outdoors. And what was her name? The woman who created the organization, who -- well, I can't remember her name. There was a board meeting 87:00and she didn't want to. She said that was -- or else realized that the majority were in favor of it and ultimately, she resigned. She also resigned because the organization was -- she had thought of it originally as a moneymaking organization and it wasn't making any money. It was sustaining itself through membership and fees, but not enough for her to support herself and her three children. So, she quit the organization. But there was an element of her not wanting to be involved with an organization that was more and more being defined as a gay organization. And I was obviously aware that many other people were 88:00gay. But there was no conversation about it until one day I went skiing up in Pennsylvania and I had gone up with one person. I hadn't driven up myself and then I was driving back with a couple, and they had two cars. They had come up separately, but they were a couple. And so, it was decided that I would ride down with one of them halfway and then switch and then ride down with the other one so they didn't all -- it was probably a four or five-hour drive to the mountains. And so, they came out to me in a lovely way that I felt was very flattering, that they -- 'cause they tended to be very closed within the outside 89:00world. I mean, we're talking 1978, '79, maybe '80, so it was -- many of them hadn't come out at work or anything. But over time, it became much more open that Washington Women Outdoors was very much an organization where -- which attracted gay women who felt that they could be comfortable in a heterogenous environment. I remember one couple inviting me to their Christmas party and the way they asked me was, Would you be comfortable coming to a Christmas party to our house? I said, "Sure! No problem." And it turned out that I was probably the 90:00only straight person there, which I thought was just pretty terrific. I don't imagine anybody would have turned them down. But, I mean, they tended to hang out with each other. But I have, between that and the fact that I'm really very much a feminist, I -- the one piece of information that I gave my daughter or advice that I gave my daughter that she tells me she listened to -- all the other advice I gave her, she's been -- but we were in Belgium at the time and I had known a couple of people, one in particular, a friend of mine in the States who was married to a man she really didn't like and didn't love, who was difficult. She had a small child and we would sort of -- our children were the 91:00same age and we'd push the carriages and she'd say, "If only I could leave Alvin. But I don't know where to go and I don't know how I would support myself." And I would be in the same situation. If my husband hadn't been as wonderful as he was, I would've been up shit creek. Excuse me. But I told my daughter when she was about fourteen, I said, "Whatever you do, don't -- become fiscally independent before you marry anybody. Be independent financially so that you're free to do what you want." And she tells me that she listened to that. And actually, she ended up in a situation where she ended up being the breadwinner in the family. Her husband, I don't know, he was -- as bright and 92:00smart as he was, he just wasn't doing the job. She ended up divorcing him and marrying somebody else who was in a better situation, the current David. There was another David who was Mira's dad and who is doing whatever he's doing. But they're friends still. So, but I feel very strongly. The only thing that I did not do and I know many of my feminist friends did was vote for Hillary for president. And I had my reservations. And I felt that just because she was a woman didn't -- I didn't have to vote for her. But I would say, though, that I admire women today who -- many of whom are independent. My niece -- well, the 93:00oldest niece is totally independent, has been the breadwinner from day one when she had her children. She has a husband now but he -- there were some issues there. They love each other but there are issues, so she's the breadwinner. Certainly, Isabel is her own person. And my daughter is, certainly, in many ways, although he participates. But I would say many women today are totally in a different situation than the one I was in. And so, I'm right up there with the rest of you.

EM:All right, well, we only have -- less than five minutes left. (laughs) So, I'll just ask you, sort of going off of that, if you have any advice for future 94:00generations, other than financial (laughs) independence?

LB:Well, I would say that the choices -- and if I say that I didn't make a good career choice, it's because I didn't know about choices. And now, there are so many choices -- is I would say explore choices first. Look, there are people in all kinds of professions. And don't be satisfied to stay in what is known. Go far and wide and be thoughtful. And know the person you marry before you marry him, that's for sure, which is something I didn't do. But then again, I was lucky. Luckier than many. And respect your children. I did not feel respected. 95:00So, when I was a child, my opinion did not count. I was loved, but I was not respected, and I think it's important to make a child feel that what he or she thinks is valid. And also, make sure that they know the world, that there's a world out there. Children today, I think, are very much into their own -- I think it's a pendulum. When I was young, I think we knew about the world. Children today, although I don't know them all -- but I see in the paper that children are concerned about other folks and other children in the developing 96:00world. But by and large, I would say tell them about what's going on in the world. And tell them the truth. Don't hide anything from them.

EM:All right. Well, thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

[END OF INTERVIEW]