Giants among the people

All of us see the world through the prism of our own experience. As I look back through that prism, I can still see, hanging on my parents’ hallway wall, three pictures — Jesus Christ, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers Union. These men, these giants, informed my family’s political and life perspective, and mine as well.

The values of those three giants led me to a life of political and community activity based upon a belief that the backbone of America is the people — the workers and families whose labor and sense of community have made this grand American experiment in democracy unique.

From that beginning, from those three giants, from my parents and their parents, I have approached life committed to community, workers, unions and the least among us; believing in hard work, education, tolerance, selflessness, diversity, and opportunity and fairness for all.

My dad was born into a coal mining family in Red Lodge. His family had little, but worked hard. They believed in unions, in workers’ right to organize to make lives better, protecting workers like themselves, the people who ultimately made everything happen. After high school, Dad joined FDR’s New Deal CCC. He eventually got a factory job in Los Angeles, working during the day, boxing at night for a dollar a round.

Across a neighbor’s fence, he spotted a gorgeous 5 foot brunette with deep brown eyes and a big city swagger. She was a Jewish beauty, originally from Connecticut. Her father, a graduate of the London Conservatory of Music, emigrated to America, joining the U.S. Army in WWI. He composed and arranged music in New York and for films in Hollywood. She, too, was musical, once penning a song done by Frank Sinatra.

She immediately fell in love with this cowboy-boxer from Montana, and he was smitten, too. They married, but then came Pearl Harbor. Dad enlisted in the Navy, but was quickly hit with asthma, returning to Montana, searching for clean air for his lungs.

Mom went from a maids-in-the-house youth to a Montana log cabin with an outhouse and hand-pumped well water. They always worked hard so their growing family — ultimately six sons — could get by. They had little except love for each other, their family and a commitment to community as a way to make life better for their children. While they had little, they knew many who had even less. They were part of “the people” who believed in the American Dream where things would improve for all citizens together.

Only high school graduates, they inherently understood that the path to a successful and giving life began with education. So all six sons went to and graduated from college, most getting graduate education and advanced degrees.

They also taught us the lessons of tolerance and respect for diversity. We were kids with a Jewish mother, raised in the shadow of the Holocaust. Learning the lessons that intolerance painfully brought to the world, and with enlightened parents, we emerged with a tolerance for others’ beliefs, a commitment to diversity, and our own firm belief in the power of the people.

Mom, now 94, is still strong, but age is slowly taking its toll. They were married for 63 years until Dad passed away 10 years ago. He was powerful, but taught us to be concerned for the weak, adhering to the principles of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Mom brought us the Jewish tradition of “caring for the least of us.” They both taught us to seek opportunity and fairness for all, to be committed to workers and to believe that we were a part of a community, not just stand-alone individuals.

So, looking back through that prism, we remember the three pictures of the giants on our hallway wall, but most importantly, we remember the life lessons we learned from our parents. This country needs more like them, the little people who were themselves giants — the folks and families who should not be left behind as we pursue the American dream for all.

(Evan Barrett of Butte is director of business and community outreach and an instructor at Highlands College of Montana Tech.)