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| Aaron Solnit, MD, in his role at the Ammonoosuc Community Health Center |
The
present crisis [Covid-19 pandemic] and the need for medical personnel
reminds me of another crisis that occurred in the 1940s.
It
was a time of another kind of war and many doctors and nurses were
inducted into the medical corps of the army, navy and air corps, leaving
hospitals in the U.S. without adequate, needed personnel. The Red Cross
was given the challenge of recruiting and training citizens to provide
help and back-up where it is was appropriate.
At
that time, after the 4th election of FDR (in which I was heavily
involved ) I decided to volunteer. Sam was still stationed at Minter
Field, near Bakersfield, and although the sight of blood was something I
tried to avoid, I decided that volunteering to be a Red Cross Nurse's
Aide. It was a duty I could not turn down.
I
was accepted for the training, along with nine other women, which was
held at Kern County General Hospital. Our Trainer was a
large, articulate nurse from Texas, who was clear with her instructions
and her prejudices. I found myself uncomfortable with much of what
she said, but happy to learn the do's and don'ts of providing much-needed services: how to bath a patient; how to assist the doctor; how to
help with bed-pans, etc.
My
moment of decision came when she told us that we didn't have to worry
about bathing, or attending to patients of color (she did not use those
terms). I spoke up saying things like “Doesn't every person deserve to
be treated with dignity?” "What is this war being fought for?" etc. She
would nod her head, roll her eyes, smile at me, as if I was some sort of
nut, and continue her lecture. I talked to the recruiter about the
Trainer's racism and got a smile and pat on the back.
I
decided that I would proceed with the class and when I was
finally given a schedule for work, I would ignore her racially repugnant
directions. For a few months, that worked out: I treated all
patients the same. Then our instructor came to review our work and she
noted that I seemed to be more diligent with people of color
than others. My reward was that she placed me on the prison ward where
the injuries and illness were so difficult for me to face that I became
ill.
Sam wanted me to quit. He was so kind and understanding, but me frequently throwing up ....well, you know...it wasn't pleasant.
After a week or two, I was back to what was normal, and I decided to give semi-nursing another try.
I
talked to my recruiter and asked if I couldn't be placed at Mercy
Hospital. She was not thrilled with the request, but since Mercy did
need a few volunteers, she made arrangements for me to meet the nuns who
were in charge of that part of the hospital. Our meeting was a
wonderful relief for me. The nun in charge was sweet and kind...she
welcomed me with open arms (we did not have to keep our distance then).
I
stayed at Mercy until Sam went overseas (to Honolulu). When I came
back to Los Angeles, I again volunteered and was placed at LA County
Hospital in Boyle Heights. Unfortunately, I was placed in the Burn
Ward......another time I would get home in time to throw up.
Finally
(you are getting to the end of this confession), I asked if I could be
placed at Children's Hospital since they were asking for volunteers. Ode
to joy. I had found my place in the "war effort". I loved my work. I
loved those sweet children. I loved the people I worked with. However,
despite a happy ending of my "contribution" to the war effort, I now
will do just about anything to stay away from hospitals...especially if
they involve my health and welfare.
June was married to Sam Sale (the couple is pictured above, from some time in the 1990s), and they lived in Los Angeles. Here is Sam's obituary:
Samuel Sale II
March 23, 1921 - April 25, 2014
Sam was born in St. Louis in 1921
and was the pride and joy of Julia and Frank Sale. He was the grandson
of Samuel Sale, the first reform rabbi in St. Louis. He lived in many
different places: Chicago, McAllen (Texas), Boston and Los Angeles, and
in each of those places he made lasting friends. Sam went to Soldan High
School in St. Louis and then to Wooster Academy for two years (because
he graduated from high school at 15). After that it was on to his
beloved UCLA, where he majored in business administration and became the
sports editor of The Daily Bruin. It was there he met June and went on
to become her constant support and lover until he died. In the forties,
Sam volunteered for the Army Air Corps and was sent to Bakersfield's
Minter Field where he became a navigation instructor. He then
volunteered to go overseas and was sent to Honolulu to conduct classes
for Air Force personnel on "Why We Fight". He returned to Los Angeles
where he became the campaign manager for Gordon Williams for state
assembly. After a disappointing loss, Sam joined his father-in-law, Ben
Solnit, in the wholesale shoe business. They truly loved, admired and
respected each other and Ben's death was a big blow to Sam. After many
successful years in the shoe business, at 65 Sam decided that was not
what he wanted to do with the rest of this life, so he concentrated on
volunteering, sailing, handball, racketball at the "Y" and senior
classes. He especially enjoyed going to the Pasadena Senior Center with
his college classmate and dear friend, Lester Buhai. There, again, he
made new and lasting friendships. Sam was a mensch who would get to know
the stories of everyone he met. He was outgoing and full of fun, yet
serious and concerned about those who were unable to fully participate
in this rich world. He worried about the future for his children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Climate change, discrimination
and the many wars in which we have been engulfed were a constant worry.
He has left a rich legacy for the world: June, his loving wife of more
than 70 years, Laurie Sale and Norman Josephs, Nancy Sale and Bleu, and
Josh Sale and Peggy Curran, Jorge Flores and Jill Teitelbaum, Aaron
Flores and Jordanna Flores and great grand-children Luca, Maddox, Shira
and Reuben Flores. He is also survived by his sister, Betsy Singer. The
family wants to especially thank Jeffrey Medina, who has been his other
son and caregiver for over three years, as well as Edgar Toletino and
Alex Gueverra, who were with Sam to the very end. Services will be held
at Hollywood Forever Cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard at 1:00
p.m. on Sunday, April 27, with a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers
donations may be made to Southern Poverty Law Center (splcenter.org), LA's BEST (labest.org), Stone Soup (stonesoupchildcare.org) or Court Appointed Special Advocates (casaforchildren.org). GO BRUINS!
[Published in the Los Angeles Times from Apr. 26 to Apr. 27, 2014.]
Aaron also provided a second set of June's recollections, in this article originally published in the Jewish Journal:
In November
1943, June Sale, a UCLA student, was part of a demonstration at Los
Angeles Polytechnic High School against Gerald L.K. Smith, the most
prominent anti-Semite of the time.
Listening to the speeches inside the auditorium, she recalled recently, “I became nauseated and teary. I decided to leave. As
I got to the foyer of the auditorium, a police officer arrested me,
told me I was disturbing the meeting and walked me to the police paddy
wagon.”
I learned of her
long-ago bust in one of the emails she sends to friends, often writing
of her anger over where President Donald Trump is taking the country. I
was intrigued by the story of her arrest, and by the picture she
included of herself talking to her lawyer before going on trial, which
appeared in the now-defunct Los Angeles Daily News (the one that folded
in 1954, not the current Woodland Hills-based newspaper). I wanted to
know more. So my wife, Nancy, and I talked with her early in April over
lunch at her home above Sunset Boulevard. We have been friends since we
met June and her late husband, Sam, on Barbara Isenberg’s London theater
tour several years ago.
As she
told the story of her life, I saw that it reflected an almost forgotten
era of Jewish Los Angeles, when anti-Semitism was rampant and a
beleaguered Jewish community pondered how to fight it. “It was just
something that happened to me over and over again,” she recalled of the
anti-Semitism of her high school days in Pasadena.
June
was born at White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights in 1924. Boyle Heights was
then home to immigrants of many ethnicities and a hotbed of Jewish progressive
politics. Her parents,
Ben and Bertha Solnit, were immigrants from a town on the Russian-Polish
border. Ben learned the shoe business from the bottom up and grew prosperous.
When their son was ill with bronchitis, his pediatrician advised them to move
to a hotter, drier place. They chose Sierra Madre, near Pasadena, a center for
right-wing politics and one of several communities riddled with anti Semitism.
Although Jews were
among the founders of Los Angeles in the 19th century, Midwesterners who made
the growing city a white Protestant conservative place soon outnumbered them. Restrictive
covenants kept Jews — and African-Americans, Asians and Latinos — from some
neighborhoods. Clubs would not admit Jews nor would fancy downtown law firms
hire them.
In high school, June
said, “all my friends who were not Jewish joined sororities and they were told
not to talk to me.” When she was elected president of a student YWCA group
in junior high school, a vice principal said she could not accept the job
because the group recited Christian prayers and Jews could not join them.
The Solnits wouldn’t
take it. “I’m a better citizen then you’ll ever be,” Bertha Solnit told another
school vice principal when he refused to permit June to use transfer credits to
graduate and lectured Bertha on what he considered the citizenship obligations
of immigrants.
Their determination
to fight anti-Semitism, as well as their liberal political views, put the
Solnits firmly in the ranks of pro-labor, progressive Jews — usually immigrants
or children of immigrants. They were at odds with more politically conservative
Jews who wanted to get along with the city’s Republican powers and didn’t
approve of the liberal activists’ confrontational tactics with anti-Semites.
June accompanied her
father to meetings of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, which was helping
anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War and campaigning to rescue Jews and
other victims of Hitler. President Harry S. Truman’s Justice Department later
blacklisted the committee, an action overturned by the Supreme Court.
“The grown-ups were
passionate, worried and concerned,” June wrote of the meetings. “The
discussions were often difficult for me to comprehend, but I do remember the
point of the gatherings was to find ways to bring refugees from Spain and
Europe to safety. [President Franklin] Roosevelt had turned away Jews
trying to escape the Holocaust and refugees from Spain were not welcome here.”
Liberal outrage was
intense when Gerald L.K. Smith spoke at Poly High in 1943. Sam and June had
married and he was overseas with the Army Air Corps. June, still at UCLA, had
been on a union picket line during a strike against the studios. Impressed with
her demeanor, one of the strike captains, a man named Irving, asked her to join
a labor-sponsored demonstration against Smith.
After her arrest, she
said, “I was greeted in the paddy wagon by other ‘disturbers’ and we were
whisked off to jail. The women were placed in cells with prostitutes who had
been arrested. Irving had observed my arrest and soon came to my rescue. He was
able to pay my bail and I was released early in the morning. Believing I would
be the first person out of the dungeon, I took everyone’s phone number on a
piece of toilet paper (the guard loaned us a pencil) so I could call a contact
and tell what had happened.”
All of the charges
were dismissed. “The police were required to identify us and they couldn’t,”
she wrote in an email. “Strangely enough, we all looked quite different from
the time we were arrested.”
She concluded her
email about her arrest by saying, “You may ask why I bring this moment in my
history up at this time. Well, I think we are headed for rough and difficult
times as we face the Trump years. America First was a theme of the thirties,
anti-Semitism is on the rise, the rich are getting richer, the middle class is disappearing
and the poor are getting poorer. We must organize against this growing threat
of ‘America First.’ ”
June graduated from
UCLA. She and Sam raised a family and generously supported progressive causes,
no matter how unpopular. She became a preschool teacher, started Los Angeles’
first Head Start program and was in charge of child care services at UCLA for
10 years. Then for 18 years, she was a court-appointed special advocate, going
from court to court, home to home, looking after the welfare of some of the
35,000 children in the Los Angeles County foster care program.
“When you get old,
gray and sleepless, you may find, as I do, that your memories of days gone by
keep you company,” she wrote.
Her memories keep us
company, too. The issues have changed. The immigrants are no longer Jewish
refugees, but Latinos and those fleeing war-torn Muslim-majority nations.
Episodes of anti-Semitism are increasing. But the challenges remain the same as
they were when June Sale joined the picket line at Poly High.
BILL BOYARSKY
is a columnist for the Jewish Journal, Truthdig and L.A. Observed, and
the author of “Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times” (Angel
City Press).
It's intriguing that none of the preceding material mentions that June Solnit Sale was also an author. She was the lead author for The Working Parent's Handbook (1996), pictured here; contributed to Child Care and the Family (1984); and wrote Child Care Services: A Guide for Colleges and Universities (1993). With her daughter Laurie, she also wrote blog items on grandparenting.
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