Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [61]
” while present-day union members “never dream that if it hadn’t been for the fighting wives, daughters, mothers and sweethearts,” the “great victory of 1937 would not have been possible.” One old-timer said that Genora’s speech brought “tears to his eyes” and caused some in the audience to want to “go out and bust some more GM windows, just like in the ‘good old days.’”23 She enjoyed the playing and singing on this occasion of the national anthem, which she referred to as the “Star Spanner Bangle,” as well as the solemn and sincere invocation by the Reverend G. Curry. But only a couple of days later, she received a package that caught her up with reality: the package was from the hospital and contained Denny’s belongings. She could not bring herself to unwrap it. Instead, she called Denny’s father, Kermit, to her house to open it. The package had a book with marks in it, forty-eight cents in change, a pen and pencil, and letters that Genora had written to him. It was like a “knife in my heart,” she said. “It made me cry,” she told Sol, who was in New York. “I have weathered the sympathy cards, the friendly ‘consolations,’ representatives calling here [and] phoning about headstones, etc., but this box and its contents knocked me for a loop.”24 Genora Dollinger, the hard-bitten ideologist—at least to union, feminist, and philosophical audiences—proved vulnerable to the world’s less positive events. This vulnerability manifested itself in her relations with Sol. It was clear that the two were dear to each other, but their mutual love did not prevent flare-ups concerning domestic issues, as well as ideological and philosophical ones. Genora was offered a job at the Checker Bar B Que restaurant, but she hesitated, waiting for the decision as to whether she was going to continue living apart from Sol. Briggs, in Detroit, was taking new applications, and she thought it would be wonderful to be back there, perhaps momentarily forgetting that she had been blacklisted. Sol went to New York in early 1951, taking leave from his job at GM in Flint. He attended the SWP-spon-sored Trotsky school to read and study books that explained Socialist positions, particularly those of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. He wrote to Genora on January 24, 1951, and asked, perhaps too nonchalantly, “Why are you staying in Flint? There is no reason wondering about the future ’til you have had a chance to relax.”25 This question was ironic as he had tried so long to get her to leave Detroit and return to Flint. When she did because of her 1950 congressional race, Sol then spent much time trying to get her to leave Flint, primarily to join him in New York or wherever he happened to be. He regaled her with descriptions of the books he was reading, including some by noted American historians Charles Beard, Samuel Eliot Morrison, and Henry Steele Commager, and how enthused he was with all his learning. Genora told him that she dreaded being around a lot of people for long periods of time. “I get dizzy and this is not a figure of speech.” She was afraid she would stutter in front of groups or in the presence of others. “On the surface,” she said, she coped with Denny’s death and other problems “the best I know how.”26 Perhaps it was that mood that caused her to explode upon receiving Sol’s letter of the 24th. “Don’t write me any more letters! For God’s sake there is no one here to help me with my problems and you tell me how ‘little’ they are—constantly.” His letter only showed her that “you never knew how to write, to think, to analyze, to appreciate, to understand, to compare, to reason, to detect—or anything else—on advising me.” She informed Sol that she was planning to visit New York in the near future as the guest of James P. Cannon, national secretary of the SWP, and she did not “want to see [Sol] for a couple of weeks.”27 The next day she wrote another letter to Sol, full of remorse for her previous statements. Such letters became standard procedure between the two: writing hastily one day and regretting it the next. Sol wrote back that “while I am a long