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Ruth Horowitz Class of 1957 Trouble Growing Up I grew up in an attached brick row house on a tree-lined street in Sunnyside, Queens. Both school teachers, my parents provided a materially comfortable and culturally rich life that offered everything I needed to flourish as a child. We lived well, if modestly. We were clothed, fed, loved. Yet McCarthyism, with all its attendant fear, swept into our lives, creating difficulties I could not navigate and from which my parents could not entirely shelter me. As a child, I understood that our family was different, that my parents held unpopular views, and that there was an element of risk to holding those views. I did not really understand much more than that. Once McCarthyism had established itself, I lived in continual dread that something I'd say outside the home would have dire consequences for the parents I adored. The books on the shelves, the Daily Worker on the hamper, and discussions between my parents and their friends gave me some idea of the social ills in America, and of the struggles of its workers and Black people. Emotionally, I identified with underdogs and easily absorbed my parents' ideals for a better life for everybody. I had adult-sized concerns about events that other kids at school didn't think about such as the murder of Emmett Till, nuclear war, the execution of the Rosenbergs, and the government’s effort to destroy the lives of people whose ideas they did not like. While my parents did their best to allay my fears, I was burdened by things I did not understand and over which no one seemed to have any control. In the fifties, so great was the pervasive fear of a Russian nuclear attack, we were issued standard army dog tags in school, and were periodically made to crouch under our desks during Civil Defense air raid drills. The FBI arrived in our neighborhood, sitting hours in their cars parked in front of our house, and harassing people on the street. These men were a common sight in the neighborhood, and we were counseled not to respond to them if they approached us. In fourth grade, my best friend's father went to prison for his political beliefs, and for a time, my family harbored friends being followed by the FBI. In great consternation, I asked my mother if she and my father would be going to prison too. Her answer was not reassuring; she really didn't know. That kind of vague and steady threat to the well-being of my family poisoned my childhood. When my father and his colleagues began to lose their jobs, I worried about my own future, inviting laughter when I said I wanted to be a teacher but, if I was fired, I would be a harpsichordist. Funny as that was, I was completely in earnest. My parents met in the 1930s through their membership in the independent progressive Teachers Union, and much of their life together was committed to improving life for teachers and their students. My dad was a dedicated and happy English teacher. He was also the sunshine in my childhood. My father had taught high school English for 28 years when he was fired by the NYC Board of Education in 1952. I was ten years old. Robbed of his ability to provide financially for the family, and robbed of much of what gave his life joy and meaning, my father despaired, and a pall settled over the house. Seemingly overnight, my world changed. I cried a lot, and ran away from school. In the years that followed, a series of jobs provided by sympathetic people got my father back to work, but I could tell it wasn’t ever the same again for him. I too was changed. My father’s firing, my mother’s subsequent leaving the school system on a disability retirement soon after, and the constant vague threat of something dreadful happening to us pressed down on our family, lasting all the years of my childhood. I was confused and scared throughout. As it happened, within my family circle I was alone in not understanding a lot of what was going on. Three years older than me, my brother took easily to politics and became absorbed by and conversant with my parents and their circle of friends in Marxism and the politics of the day. But my intellect did not grasp political concepts, and my concerns were concrete: My parents were good people, why were they in trouble? Did people hate us because we were Jewish or because we were communists? Would my parents go to jail? And most pressing for me, what can I say freely outside my home without doing harm to my family? Obsessed with having to know, I’d ask my mother, whatever movie we were watching, “Who are the good guys; who are the bad?” While that raised a smile, my confusion was a source of great distress for me. During those years, I was buoyed by my parents’ love, and I always managed to have one close friend at school. Sensitive to my unhappiness, my parents sent me to Camp Kinderland – a respite for several summer weeks where I could let my guard down. There, I found friends with whom I could really relax, and in winter, we met up with each other at hootenannies. Those years, I especially felt good at large rallies of progressive people who felt like extended family to me. One year, dressed in a homemade Russian outfit created for a school performance, I was unnerved at a May Day march when rotten tomatoes were thrown at us from behind the police barricades. I never understood the hate directed at us, but the incident served to further solidify my identification with other mistreated minority groups. I am hopeful for a future that includes everybody justly, and trust that most human beings want that world too. Young people I read about are clear-thinking and uncompromising and I have enormous love for them and their pavement-hitting movements. I think it behooves old people to support them in all ways possible. Today, my 80th birthday, I have hope, in part because I survived the McCarthy years. I know that in the darkest of times, there are ways out. I know there are people in a life that will hold you up and see you through. I know there are masses of people marching everywhere for truth and peace and social justice. Ruth Horowitz February, 2022
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