Synopsis

During the Red Scare of the 1950s, many government workers lost their jobs because they were considered "security risks". That term covered a lot of territory including having relatives who had communist "sympathies". My mother was one of those fired. She was also one of the few to get reinstated with back pay and benefits.

Her brother, Jerry, was indeed a card carrying member of the Communist Party. What is more, as all of this began, he lived with my mother, father, brother and grandmother in North Hollywood. As World War II ended, Jerry became a photographer working for MGM. By 1949, the studio fired him for his communist connections. He went on to invent a film that was ultra sensitive and could take pictures in extremely low light. Despite his earlier communist ties, the U.S. Army paid him a rather large sum of money for the rights to the film. He took the money, became a yacht broker in Newport Beach and married a wealthy woman.

My father played a major role in mother's reinstatement. He came from a well-to-do family and voted Republican. Having his a-political wife fired caused him to hire a lawyer to plead my mother's case. The case took several years and my mother eventually was prepared to drop it. My father convinced her to go on. By 1960 she had won and he voted for JFK.

I also became interested in politics. My goal of a wealth sharing society that treated all members justly was not all that different from my Uncle Jerry's. However, give what he and my mother went through, I decided volunteering to help Democrats get elected in California was a much more likely rout to success.

Similar to this book