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Sam’s daughter, Joan Wallach Scott is an author
and Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of
Social Science. She contributed this edited version of her talk given at Sam’s
memorial service in June 2001.
Sam Wallach was born in Dolina, Poland on July 1,
1909. He came to the United States with his mother and father,
Bertha and Abraham Wallach, when he was about 10 months old. He
grew up in Brooklyn, the oldest of four children. And he quickly
became the mentor, if not the parent, of his younger siblings,
Sylvia, Eli and Shirley, offering his advice, criticism and
generous care throughout their lives. The family lived behind a
candy store on Union Street in Brooklyn until they moved to a
house on Bedford Avenue–across the street from the legendary
Ebinger’s bakery headquarters
Sam went to Brooklyn Technical H.S., planning to
become an engineer. He was enormously proud of the skills he
learned there and which he was always willing to apply and to
share, teaching his daughters, for example, the "principles" of
toilets and electrical wiring.
Sam’s plans to become an engineer were discouraged
by his teachers at City College because of the difficulty they
knew Jews had in entering that field. Instead, in what
became a tremendous gift to generations of New York public school
students, Sam decided to become a teacher of economics and
history. The choice of these fields was not accidental. At
City College, along with others of his depression-era generation
(Sam graduated in 1929, on the eve of the stock market crash), he
was inspired by the idealism of his professors. To say that he
became a communist reduces the story to its barest outlines and,
in our more disillusioned times, misses the extraordinary
combination of intellectual excitement and political awareness
generated by the social movements of the 1930's. Economics meant
analyses of capitalism that could explain how one of the richest
countries in the world could have "one third of the nation,
ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed." History was a way not only
of understanding how economics shaped societies, but also a way of
promoting change. It nourished the optimism of Sam’s generation,
sustaining their belief that revolution was just around the
corner, that their dream of a new world, free from hunger and
fear, could be realized in their lifetimes.
Early Years in the Teachers Union
Teachers Union President
Sam Wallach |
The 1930's were a heady time for young college graduates.
Sam was a playground director in Brooklyn, then a high
school teacher. He joined the Teachers Union and, inspired
by Charles Henley and Eugene Jackson, became – along with
Abe Lederman and Rose Russell--one of its leaders.
In 1939 Sam married Lottie Tanenbaum, at
a ceremony presided over by a rabbi–to please her
Orthodox parents. Politics, however, was not far from
the celebration. The wedding certificate has on its back
a list of guests who, in honor of the new couple,
contributed to aid the republican cause in Spain. Sam
and Lottie lived busy lives; teaching, working in the
union; attending meetings and rallies. (Theirs was an
enviable companionship; although there were surely
conventional elements to the household division of
labor–she cooked, he took care of foreign policy–theirs
was a partnership characterized by love and mutual
respect that lasted for 56 years, until Lottie’s death.)
_&_ARTHUR_MILLER_(playwright).JPG "Sam Wallach (TU President dismissed) & Arthur Miller (playwright)")
Teachers Union President Sam Wallach after presenting
playwright of The
Crucible, Arthur Miller, with award Dec.
18, 1948 |
Life got busier in 1941, when I was born; even busier in 1943,
when Ruth arrived. Photographs from those years show many aspects
of our lives: Sam in front of a blackboard, handsome and
charismatic, Sam at TU meetings, with Rose and Abe lobbying
in Albany, all of us together during idyllic summers at Eagle
Mountain Camp in Vermont, fishing, berry picking, swimming; at
home, at 1776 Union Street and then East 16th Street in Brooklyn;
at TU conferences and at demonstrations in the early 1950's to
protest the firing of New York City school teachers, among them
Sam. For me, family life and politics were entirely intertwined
in this period; the community we lived in was not the neighborhood
or the family, but a brotherhood of people deeply committed to
social justice and social change. The lullabies of my childhood
were "Joe Hill" and "Union Maid." In this period "our lives were
made richer by the cause that we fought for," but also more
difficult–we paid for our beliefs and our parents’ attempts to put
them into action. The atmosphere was charged: veiled anxiety,
deliberate cheerfulness. My favorite of these scenes was Sam,
standing in front of the door to our apartment, lecturing two
young FBI agents, who had come to see whether he’d changed his
mind about cooperating with them (they continued to do this until
1967, according to the files we got under the Freedom of
Information Act). "Have you boys read the Bill of Rights?" Sam
would ask provocatively. Then, ever the pedagogue, he read them
the relevant sections as they shifted their feet uneasily and
finally tipped their hats and turned away in frustration. The FBI
files report his behavior as "adamant" –a characterization that
captures perfectly the outlook of the man who would not compromise
his principles to save his job. Sam was adamant alright and that
gave a certain ferocity to his opinions and actions, an undeniable
sense of the rightness of his being, a severity of judgment
against those who betrayed or disappointed him, and an unwavering
loyalty to his friends and colleagues.
Wallach Statement to the House Subcommittee
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Rose Russell Teachers Union Legislative Representative
and President Sam Wallach flank telegram to Mayor
O'Dwyer |
I want to read the statement Sam made in
1948 when he refused to cooperate with a House
subcommittee investigating communism in the Teachers
Union, CIO. It was after this hearing that a reporter
asked him if he knew his job was in jeopardy. "These
guys," he said referring to the subcommittee, "placed the
Constitution in jeopardy. That worries me a lot more."
Here’s the statement he read from the witness stand:
I have been a teacher for fifteen years–a
proud American teacher. I have tried all those years to
inspire my youngsters with a deep devotion for the
American way of life, our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Hundreds of my youngsters fought in WWII and I know their
understanding of the need to fight for their country was
inspired by my teaching and the Bill of Rights....From
that teaching our youngsters got the feeling that we are
living in a country where nobody has a right to ask what
are your beliefs, how you worship God, what you read. As a
teacher and a believer in those fundamental principles, it
seems to me that it would be a betrayal of everything I
have been teaching to cooperate with the committee in an
investigation of a man’s opinions, political beliefs and
private views.
(NYT Oct 2, 1948.)
Abby Lederman, Abe Lederman's daughter; Joan
Wallach Scott and Ruth Wallach Frankel |
Sam was among the first eight teachers to
be suspended in 1951 as the red scares invaded New York
City’s schools. According to students who testified on his
behalf he was an exemplary teacher; those of us who lived
with him also knew how much he loved to teach. His
repertoire of jokes about students and teachers, his
affectionate stories about his students’ understandings and
misunderstandings of economics, his ability to clarify and
simplify, even the sometimes annoying trait of explaining
the obvious–all these are the marks of the master teacher.
Although he never complained about losing access to his
chosen profession and although he performed the jobs he had
with characteristic good humor and effectiveness, I imagine
that being deprived of a classroom, and of generations of
students, was extremely painful for him. He always talked
about being fired in terms of the loss of his academic
freedom, but the loss of his connection to New York City’s
public schools was, for Sam, greater still.
Politics and Children
But he didn’t lose his connection to
politics or to children. When he finally landed a job as an
administrator at Maimonides Hospital, he put all his
extraordinary political skills into advocacy for
developmentally dis-abled children. This was the post-Willowbrook
period and Sam helped formulate strategy for
"main-streaming" students and for establishing residential
group homes for the retarded. He once told me that he’d
found in this world of advocacy, where priests and rabbis,
Republicans and Democrats, bureaucrats and idealists worked
selflessly on behalf of children, something approximating
the socialism he once strove so hard to achieve.
Legacy of Political Insight
Sam has left many legacies, but one of the
most formative for Ruth and for me was his political
insight. He was a brilliant strategist, reading
institutional power relations, finding the right point of
entry for a critical action. Ruth and I either inherited
this gene,or, more likely, imbibed it at the dinner table,
where it was absorbing to hear our parents analyze events
(Albany’s legislative actions, some H.S. principal’s assault
on teachers’ rights, the choice of a speaker for the TU
conference, how to expose the NY Times’ refusal to report on
these conferences, the meaning of some seemingly benign
politician’s comments) and prepare strategies and tactics to
address them. (There was something fitting–or, if not
fitting, a certain poetic justice–in the fact that there was
no obituary for Sam in the NY Times last February. All
through the fifties, the post-TU Conference refrain in our
family was outrage at the Times lack of coverage of this
significant event or, if it were covered, the appearance of
an article on the obituary page. The obituary page was
associated with a certain lack of official respect, an
attempt to minimize something really important, and a series
of questionable political motives. Sam would not have been
surprised at the Times’ neglect of his death; on the
contrary, it would have been precisely a confirmation of his
enduring status as a radical, a leftist trade unionist,
whose historical importance could never have been properly
appreciated by the likes of the editors of the NY Times.)
Retirement and Vindication
 Eli
Wallach, brother of TU President Sam Wallach, addressing
the Dreamers & Fighters Conference |
In December, 1976, as Sam was about to retire from his job
at Maimonides, he and nine of his cohort–all fired teachers
from the 50's–were reinstated and awarded pension benefits
by the New York City Board of Education. A NY Times
editorial echoed statements that Sam and others had been
making for years about the sacredness of civil liberties and
academic freedom. In Sam’s files there is also a letter from
the principal of Franklin K. Lane HS (where he was teaching
when he was fired in 1953). "The years in exile cannot be
returned to you," this man wrote, "and even this recent act
of the Board is too little to compensate for everything you
have been through. However, at the moment of your
vindication, I want you to know that we at Lane share your
joy with you and have you in our thoughts." The pension
settlement he received made it possible for Sam and Lottie
to buy a house in the Berkshires. They moved from Brooklyn
to Alford, Massachusetts, and Sam, at least, never looked
back. He loved the beauty of the countryside, the chance to
make new friends, and the joy of inviting old friends to
visit. Though he tried to tend a garden, he wasn’t much good
at gardening. Instead, characteristically, he found what he
considered serious advocacy work that needed to be done,
especially at the Children’s Health Program.
Those years of retirement were rich ones.
Alford was near enough to NY for trips to conferences and
meetings and especially to the theater. Sam and Lottie spent
winters in Florida or California, warmed by sunshine and the
sociability of dear friends. And, of course, there was
increasing "naches von kinder," as the
grandchildren grew up. Ruth had married Herman in 1963; Joan
married Don in 1965, each couple had two children. As many
of you know, Sam was not shy about lauding the
accomplishments of his children and, even more, his
grandchildren. And though he often seemed to be critical and
even judgmental about their choices when he talked to them,
when he talked about them to others it was with evident,
unabashed pride.
There were inevitable sadnesses too. Good
friends died, Lottie was lost to Alzheimer’s, the world he
expected would be better by the end of his life seemed as
troubled and harsh as ever. Students came to interview him
about the old days of the TU and Sam managed to rally the
energy and fiercely principled arguments, the humor and
seriousness of purpose that constituted his charisma. For
his 90th birthday, friends and family endowed a prize in his
name at his alma mater, City College, for a student in the
Center for Worker Education who shared his commitments to
labor organizing and social justice and who planned a
teaching career in the New York City public schools. Sam was
thrilled at the existence of the prize, not only because it
guaranteed him a certain immortality, but also because it
perpetuated a set of commitments to which he had dedicated
his life. A new generation would carry on; he could rest
assured that there would be teachers who cared about
children and who acted–loudly and clearly–on their concerns.
As for him, he was growing more and more tired.
Wallach's Legacy Realized
He was pleased though by the arrival of yet another
generation in the family. Two great grandchildren, whose
arrival he welcomed with a mixture of astonishment (imagine
that, he had lived to see these beautiful great
grandchildren) and pride (they were, of course, the greatest
because they were his). On the weekend before Sam died, his
great grandson Ezra and I went to Alford for a visit. For
me, it was a sad visit because Sam seemed so weak, so
sleepy, so demoralized by the plague of disorders his body
had started to produce. For four-and-a-half year old Ezra,
it was an ecstatic time: his first trip without his parents
and little sister Carmen; his chance to shop the special toy
stores in Great Barrington and pick out presents from GG
Sam. Ezra charmed Sam, demonstrating his strength by working
the lever of the recliner chair every time GG wanted to get
up or sit down, spelling his own name and Sam’s, and passing
various other of Sam’s tests, among them the "mensch" test.
This boy, he announced was the smartest four-year old he’d
ever met, but also among the sweetest. He knew his words
and numbers, but he also offered charming observations about
himself and the world. "Delicious" Sam pronounced as he gave
Ezra his last hug and kiss, "what a boy." Thinking about it
now, it seems to me that that visit provided solace and
reassurance for Sam. He knew somehow that his own life was
over; he’d already passed the torch to his children and his
grandchildren, confident of the fact that the principles of
decency and the search for social justice were a legacy that
would continue to be lived long after he was gone. Now he’d
met yet another generation and he knew that it, too, had
what it would take to keep his spirit alive. I like to think
that Sam died with his belief in history intact. The social
revolution he spent his life working for may not have
happened as he’d expected it would, but watching Ezra,
listening to that sweet, intelligent voice as it observed
and commented on the world, Sam knew he’d seen the
future--and it worked.
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