I come from a long line of strong activist women.  Young people today aren’t often aware of the  restrictions that women lived with in the decades before they were born.  I was born in 1961 when so many avenues were just opening up to women, thanks to the generations that came before me who fought the hard fights, protested, were arrested and persisted.  My mother went to college when the few women who were able to go to college were there to become secretaries or nurses or teachers or most importantly to meet a good husband.   Lenore studied journalism and pre-law. Her father encouraged her to be a lawyer and she was accepted and agreed to try out  one year of Penn law, one of 4 women in her class, she did very well, but decided it wasn’t where she wanted to use her energy so left law school in good standing.  She worked in a publishing house and insurance companies, she supported her and my dad while he finished medical school.  But even though she was the one working she wasn’t allowed to have a credit card in her name.  Lenore was unconcerned with fashion, or makeup or trying to stay young and in style.  She was focused on what she could do to move her causes forward.  I was raised to believe that being a woman was a strength and although there were barriers, they should never hold me back from achieving and becoming whatever I wanted to be and she helped me pass this confidence on to my daughter.

Lenore walked her talk with environmental issues.  We were always raised with the reduce, reuse, recycle motto long before there was such a slogan.  We reused plastic bags and containers instead of the popular plastic wrap or Tupperware.  There was always a big watering can in the shower to catch the water as it was warming up to use to water the flower pots.  There was the insistent demands on us kids to turn off the tap and shut off the lights.  Was the avoidance of wrapping paper laziness, cheapness, or environmental?  Probably all of the above.  Lenore was well known for carpooling efforts.  She both hated to drive and hated to waste gas.  As kids we had to know where friends lived so we could carpool with them.  And in her later years she was a master of contacting people for rides to meetings and events and knowing that someone would give her a ride home to our conveniently located home.  Many lovely people got to know Lenore by being so kind as to give her a ride to or from a meeting or event.

Generosity was probably the most important and pervasive lesson that my brother and I absorbed.  It was a generosity of time, of money, but mostly a hospitality and generosity of spirit that I most appreciate.  All of Lenore’s activist work was unpaid.  She felt privileged to be able to not hold a job so that she could prioritize us kids and her causes.  We lived very comfortably, in a beautiful home.  Unlike many of our friends who moved up to more prestigious neighborhoods, or would redecorate their homes to the newest latest styles.  My folks stayed in their home, it was furnished as it was, with a few beautiful things they bought and lots of hand-me-downs from Latrobe.  As well as art work that they picked up mostly from fundraising auctions or from their travels. They drove reliable cars that they bought new and drove for decades until they needed to be replaced.  They used the money they had to support their family, to travel, and to support the causes that they believed in.  Many who knew Lenore and Jack  have talked about the events, dinners, and parties that were hosted year after year.  The house crowded with old friends and new, food everywhere, the bar open and well stocked. And all were and felt welcome and cared for.  Billy and I grew up as part of the team doing the prep work.  There would be days or weeks of planning and shopping, Sibby baking and freezing dozens of delicacies.  Shopping lists, prep lists, serving dishes laid out, timing written down.  Flowers cut and arranged. Billy and I absorbed this skill of knowing how to make it all happen and we are both well known for being able to do the same and carrying on the tradition of opening our homes and welcoming in friends and family for bountiful food and drink and loving hospitality.  I am so grateful for this gift and being able to pass this on to the next generation.

Our home was always a center of activism.  There were meetings, parties, campaign mailing work-parties. When I was in early grade school I used  to use my treasured Light Bright toy to make welcome signs for the various events.  The dining room table would be covered with computer printouts of registered voters to be poured over and coded into different interest groups.  I loved the mailing assembly lines folding the literature, adding the potholder, mailing labels and stamps onto the envelopes to be stuffed.  And I especially liked laying out all the filled envelopes to be sponged and sealed and put into the boxes for mailing.  On years with important June primaries my May birthday celebrations would be delayed until after the primary.  The hardest was not getting my driver’s license until mid June when mom could get away to take me to the DMV.  We grew up precinct walking, hanging literature on door knobs, helping support the phone banks and attending rallies. We were at home in the various campaign headquarters offices. There were always political signs on the front lawn and bumper stickers on the car.  Buttons and hats worn proudly of the significant cause or candidate of the day.  Around elections mom would field all the phone calls from friends and neighbors to get Lenore’s picks for the upcoming election.  She was always up to date on every initiative and every candidate for even the most obscure race. 

Lenore was an unique and important part of so many of our campaigns, when targeting was difficult and labor intensive.  Meeting at Jack and Lenore’s home, a group of volunteers led by Michael Berman and Lenore Wax produced the beginning of a huge coalition of idealistic Democrats and coding.  Lenore was the mother who inspired everyone to show up. She had no ego, enough patience, kindness and dry humor to keep the volunteers coming and coding, which was so important to winning.  And of course, she always served the best bakery goods!She lived an important well lived life and we will always be grateful for her being part of the machine. RIP

My first winter living with Lenore in Los Angeles (2013), she kept asking me for a ride to her Hanukkah party with "my Young Dems." She told me the date over and over and said I was welcome to join, but either way, she needed a ride because her Young Dems had this dinner every year and it was really important to her. I thought it was a little odd that Lenore was still attending YD events in her eighties, but I know everyone's welcome, and I myself was young and a Dem, so I figured I'd check it out. 

When I walked through the door, I saw that no one there had been a Young Dem in quite some time, but there were multiple elected officials including sitting members of Congress. These were Lenore's generation of Young Dems. As I sat at that dinner and heard Lenore's lifelong friends remembering stories and catching up on life, I realized Lenore was doing something very right. I wanted friends like hers who were intelligent, engaged, loyal, caring, and active. Shortly afterward, I joined my local Democratic club and started getting involved and meeting wonderful people.