by John Patrick | Aug 27, 2014 | stories
Grandpa Duck found fulfillment in his work as the owner and operator of his drilling company. Work was something he liked to do. He taught me to take pride in my work and do a good job regardless of the task. Work hard at your job, work hard at your fun, and you won’t have to work hard at having a good...
by Ori Korin | Aug 27, 2014 | stories
After fighting in World War II, my maternal grandfather Bob Waterman came home and found a job as a salesman. He spent decades on the road away from his family, trying to earn enough to support them. Later in life, he had an opportunity to buy a rental car company franchise and he seized it, desperate for some more stability, more time with his kids, and a more steady income stream. He spent several years running the Mr. Rent-A-Car and Mr. Lease-A-Car franchise and was actually able to retire on the living he made, something that’s increasingly rare for middle class people today. His work was less about a career and more about providing for his family — it’s taught me how the simplicity of hard work can end up having a real significance in a family history. Ori Korin is the Press Secretary at Jobs With Justice Photo: Ori, pictured with her brother, is wearing a t-shirt with the logo of her grandfather’s rental car...
by Susan Van Dyke | Aug 27, 2014 | stories
My Grandma Dorothy was a Chicago homemaker most of her life – raising six kids in a three-bedroom house with more grace then I could ever imagine having. But before that she, just like I, left her home in Illinois to pursue work in our nation’s capital. With a high school diploma and two years of secretary school under her belt, my Grandma took a job during WWII as a secretary for the Department of War in the tombstones division. When I moved to Washington D.C., at the same age as my Grandma had, she was elated. We had frequent phone chats about the sites of the city and where I went shopping and out with my friends, which always included my Grandma reminiscing and wracking her brain to remember her own formative days in the capital. The similarity in my Grandma’s and my “work story” drew us closer together in her final years, and continues to be meaningful to me to this day. But more than that, in learning about my Grandma’s working years, I gained new clarity around her long-standing value of respecting working women. My Grandma encouraged her daughters and granddaughters to go to college, take on graduate programs and get out in the world. She always made an effort to attend our graduation ceremonies and never forgot to ask us how our jobs were going. My own strong beliefs that women deserve an equal role in a workplace traces back through my mom to my grandma and her days in Washington...
by Erica Smiley | Aug 27, 2014 | stories
I remember my grandpa as a farmer and a fisherman. I have memories of picking turnips, butter beans and corn with him, and he also taught me how to clean a fish and catch crabs. To this day, I still feel connected to my grandparents any time I am near a farm or on the ocean—whether in my home state of North Carolina or in the countryside of Cuba. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized that my grandpa’s real job was actually welding. I thought it was just a side gig he did in the winter to stay busy while the land was frozen, but in fact the farm was more the hobby. My mom’s memories of what he did for work were quite different than mine. She recalled that he helped build bridges throughout Virginia, was really known for what he did, and made a good living doing it. I never knew if he was in a union or not, but years later, when I was organizing with the Black Radical Congress, I did discover that he was a part of a populist organization of black farmers. In all of this, he taught me to make my own way and to not let anyone get in the way of it. In his retirement, he spent a lot of time taking care of my grandma when she got sick, and in doing so he taught me how to take care of family just as you nurture the land you till. My grandpa represents a lot of things that are more difficult to achieve today—small farming, steady work...
by Scarlet Jimenez | Aug 27, 2014 | stories
My Grandma Juana’s nickname was Chi-Chi, but I just called her Mama. She grew up in the cow fields and couldn’t read or write. She made ends meet by operating a food cart, and somehow got the police department to hire her to iron their uniforms. She also tended to farmland, and basically was a true renaissance woman. I know that my entire family got our hustle from her. Scarlet Jimenez is the Finance and Operations Director at Jobs With Justice Photo: Scarlet and her grandmother in matching outfits posing at a seasonal...
