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On line for #TheInvestigation, just finished a long conversation with a woman who was involved in left-wing student activism in the late 1930s.
She’s 96. She marched for a boycott of the Nazi regime when she was a child. And her handshake is firmer than mine.
She enrolled at NYU in 1936. “Were you involved in the American Student Union?” Withering stare. “Of course.”
Her husband was a war hero. “Did you know him before the war?” “No, no. How could you? Can you imagine?”
She danced with Martha Graham. “She used to smack our butts.”
Her parents came from Russia, so when she went to the Soviet Union on a dance tour in 1956, she didn’t tell them until after she came home.
She and her fellow Americans were eager to discuss the invasion of Hungary with the Soviets they met, but none of them would admit it had happened.
If we live long enough, each of us becomes a time traveler.
One more story: In the 1920s her mom was in a Russian expatriate choir. Every faction had its own—the Bolsheviks, The Mensheviks, the Bundists, and so on. They were VERY competitive, as you can imagine.
There was a tenor several choirs had therir eye on. Her mom was deputized to take him to the Met to try to lure him in—Caruso was singing.
But the tenor got sick , and another boy took the second ticket.
And that was how her mother met her father.
One other thing: I don’t remember when or why she winked at me, but it was a wink I will take to my grave.
