Gloria, my dear friend, Happy Birthday!

Our birthdays are only three days apart, and during the years of our work together with homeless people, we always shared a meal to celebrate. This week I again remembered that and missed you all over again, Gloria!

I am grateful for those years of our friendship, Gloria!

Dear Connie, Chris, David and all the family,

Recently I was able to retrieve this poem (below) which I wrote for Gloria years ago. The writing followed a visit in her apartment there on Tennessee where she showed me pictures she had taken of, and told me stories about, various poor kids she had taught in the New York Public Schools …and of the great loving heart she had for them.

One of the photos was of a young teenaged African-American girl standing on a school playground made dangerous and ugly by strewn broken glass and trash of all sorts and sizes. An eight-foot cyclone fence surrounded the playground, and in the not-too-distant background one could see part of the side of a church with beautiful richly-colored and whitely-holy stained glass windows.

 This poem is written in the person of the girl in the picture as she stares directly into the camera...beyond to Gloria!

 Happy Birthday, dear Gloria. I recall with happiness when each year you and I celebrated with a meal honoring our September birthdays, yours on the 25th and mine the 23rd.  I miss you, dear friend. Until we meet again…

 -Sister Bernie

 The Lady Behind the Camera

Click. Click. Click.

The eye of the camera taking quick glimpses into our grim reality:

a small bleak world defined

--- by cruel, forbidding chain fences

tightly wrapping our scared tender hearts in despair;

--- by endless cold cement strewn everywhere with pieces of jagged glass

threatening to pierce any bubble of hope

                       that might dare arise out of our desperation;

… and even by the few incongruous stained glass windows

that rise high in hypocrisy and hold for us little comfort.

Yes, the bold eye of the camera sees all ---

our smiles and curses, our clowning and striking out,

all in denial of the harshness that envelops us.

But with equal boldness

we peer back through the camera’s clicking shutter

and behold the lady behind the camera.

We are at first confused by her eyes ---

so loving and understanding,

so genuinely caring,

instilling deep within each of us

a faint “I am somebody.”

 
Click. Click. Click.

Day after day the lady behind the camera

beckons us up and onward by her love,

now instilling a “I really am somebody!”

Our young hearts begin to beat with hope,

we dare to dream…

Thank you, lady behind the camera, thank you!

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________

-By Sister Bernie Galvin for my dear friend Gloria

I met Gloria in the headquarters of the Jackson for President campaign in Nashua, NH, in 1988. I say “headquarters.” It was an old beauty parlor that Gloria, two homeless guys and a whiz kid from Columbia U. had gutted and propped up a few sheets of plywood on saw horses. The homeless guys slept in the office while everyone else (others showed up in the course of the weeks) sacked out in sleeping bags in a dingy apartment above the office. We lived on donuts and coffee. Gloria liked to say that the entire town reeked of sugar. You could smell it in every shop, bar, office. I liked and admired Gloria immediately and relished driving around the state in her little tin can on wheels fighting a cause that surely seemed lost from the beginning. And JJ did lose but he made an incredible run of it and experiences like addressing the striking workers way up in Jay energized him as much as it did us. G & I were in awe, flying so high after that one. Wow. If he could connect with such lily-white, red-necked workers in boondocks, NH, then maybe he could really do it across the US. And he did.

Shortly thereafter I got a job at the Guardian Newsweekly in NYC and Gloria flipped me her keys. Typically trusting and big-hearted. Eventually she wound up back in the city and often came by the Guardian to proofread and/or hang out. She helped make NYC bearable before I finally ditched it for Europe, and she for SF.

 Great photos exist somewhere (once in my possession) of her seat-of-the-pants tour of central Europe in 1989/90, including an all-night party in a Budapest hinterhof. She was a photographer with a keen eye! She had a keen eye for life. I hope I absorbed some of her inspiration, curiosity, generosity. She touched the lives of a lot of people. Certainly mine. I miss her.

      Gloria was a very important part of my adolescence. I spent a lot of time in the apartment in Pomonok, as Connie spent a lot of time in my house a few blocks away. Gloria had many of the same wonderful qualities as my mother – nurturing, intellectual, friendly, leftist…but  also a relaxed attitude about the kids in and out of the apartment, dinnertime, making a mess, and being allowed to use the kitchen. While Connie appreciated the order of my house – she could get a home-cooked meal anytime by just showing up around 6pm - I basked in the freedom of Gloria’s home. When I met Connie she had several small mammals in cages in her room. I certainly wouldn’t have been allowed that!  If Connie and I suddenly decide to cook something, or fix our bikes in the apartment, no problem. We embarked upon various projects and our creativity was welcome and nurtured.  David had a collage that covered the entire wall of his room; to me it seemed a work of genius. It would never have been allowed in almost any other home I knew. I was in and out as if it were my own home, I was just part of the family. No big deal.  

            Gloria was delighted in her involved and engaged life, and so many around her seemed to follow suit. I am enriched by having known her.
Elke

You know how much I loved Gloria. 
I remember you, David, me and Gloria were in the car going to New City and we were playing a word guessing game. 
I said something like "Aestivate" and gloria said "Hibernate" and you looked at david, raised your palms skyward and said "Aestivate?" David did his famous I dunnno shrug with scrunched up bewildered face,  and then you said, "I quit".

I loved her choice of books and I loved her politics and I loved how she allowed me onto her living room couch and into the family.
I loved listening to her and Bill sing and dance out of the room to "Shuffle off to Buffalo".
I loved her full throaty laugh, and her kindness to my 16 yo self, and her cooking and her plants. 

I haven't seen her in 20 years but I still think of her often, and always fondly and a smile. 

I miss her, and regret not seeing her all those years but we did spend a lot of time together, in Pomonoc, in Grand Gorge, in Ky and back in NYC. We even had a great road trip tour of the horse farms of NY that ended with a tour of the Indian Point nuclear power station where she asked embarrassing (to our guide, I loved them) questions.
I am glad I missed her decline and my memory is still of her laughing, and trying to contain her mirth with her hand. 

Henry Q

The Gloria I Knew and Loved

Gloria was a unique and profoundly good woman, as anyone who really knew her was well aware. Totally committed to the poor and downtrodden of society: always tipping waiters most generously and taking time to inquire about their well-being and that of their families; taking pictures of people and scenes that reflect class discrimination in our society; working tirelessly with me through Religious Witness with Homeless People in our demand for just and compassionate public policies; joining in all the anti-war protests.  Where there was a public demonstration against social injustices, Gloria was right there in the middle of it. That is who Gloria was; that outrage against social injustice defined her soul. Gloria was a person whose magnanimous spirit we all want to emulate. Blessed am I that Gloria’s path and mine crossed in this life.

Sister Bernie Galvin

Fourteen months into serving in the Womans Army Corp during World War II, Gloria got pregnant. She was stationed in Rome, Georgia . She was forced to leave the service with an honorable discharge. In New York she was able to find a competent doctor who was willing to perform what was then an illegal abortion, through her friend Pearl Primus.
She had complications in the ensuing days afterwards.  She was lucky enough to have a committed doctor  who paid her a follow up visit in her home.  She would sing about the experience with a couple of lines to the tune of "Pretty Baby" that went "If you're nervous in the service and you don't know what to do, have a baby" . I think saying it was one of the phrases the men would chant as they were marching.
This experience shaped her into an advocate for a Woman's Right to Choose. She had no shame about having had the experience, turning a very difficult decision into action. She openly shared and wrote about it. She  generously contributed to NARAL and Planned Parenthood until she couldn't anymore. She was angry about the violence to abortion providers  . I share this with everyone because we are living in a time when  there are fewer and fewer safe legal abortion providers.   It was important to her.

So, an a teenager growing up in Gloria's home, she sat me down and talked openly about sex. She raised me to think of sex as joyful. She made sure I knew about birth control, and as a result I was very careful about it and never had an unwanted pregnancy. Her teaching helped me to not have to face a painful and difficult decision about ending an unwanted pregnancy. I am grateful that she was open and honest with me. If she hadn't had the abortion her life may have followed a different trajectory. She may have not gone on to marry my father and have the three wanted pregnancies she did have. 
Thank You Gloria.
Connie