REMEMBERING BETTY

Elizabeth Resnikoff

1936 - 2020

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SHE WAS A WOMAN FOR ALL SEASONS.

Yesterday I received the sad news of the death of a wonderful  woman and beloved friend, Betty Resnikoff. 

 I met Betty when in the summer of  1969, I attended a rally at the Rhode Island State House to support the  Grape Workers Boycott led by Cesar Chavez. In writing this entry I just looked up the Grape Strike on Wikipedia and found that it  was made up of Filipino workers and began  on May 3, 1965.  And here am I on May 3, 2020 recalling it and testifying to how it influenced my life and activities.

 How did I become aware of the Strike? 
Well I had just  moved into an apartment on Butler Avenue across the street from what was then an Almacs store and is now a  Whole Foods store.  When  picket lines began to form, I  became curious and went out to talk to some of those on the picket lines.  I was impressed with their dedication and I began to brew pots of coffee and bring them out in the long nights  to give them  a lift. I also invited them to use my bathroom, since I knew they would not be near any public facilities  in that neighborhood. 

When they decided to have a  State House demo, they urged me to come to it . And I did.
I went there with my  5 year old son,  and had brought some puzzles and books to amuse him. As we sat on a blanket other attendees with children had asked me if I would watch their  kids while they participated  more actively in the demonstration. I agreed and in a short time I had collected around me a group of about ten kids who were listening to me read to them.

Suddenly there appeared a man who was distributing leaflets.  His words to me were funny

"Wow you have all these kids.  You really need to read this leaflet." 

And he handed me a leaflet about Women's Lib. I laughed and said that only one child was mine.

That was my meeting with Neal. 

He joined us and asked what I did.  I said that in September I would begin a  job as an Instructor at  Rhode Island College.  He told me that his wife was  also starting an instructorship there.  He was teaching at Providence College.  He  volunteered to take over the child care and  directed me to  where his wife was and urged me to introduce myself to her.

I did just that.  And a few minutes later I was greeting a  short  woman with a babushka on her head who was  talking to  a group of women about their liberation.  I introduced myself and that is how I met BETTY.

That was my lucky day.  

She and I became good friends and  I was glad to have someone like her to guide me through my first  college teaching job. I was ABD at the time after completing a Masters and all the course work for a PhD at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. 


 Betty was the most progressive person I had met up to that time in my life.
I am always so glad to meet people who are more radical than I am.. They make me feel less odd, and they  reassure me  by their very being that there is a wide spectrum of political belief and understanding.  I no longer feel so far out and alone.


 I found all of her ideas about the class  struggle extremely interesting and convincing. 

She helped me to see the connections between that struggle and the texts that we were  paid to teach.  She helped me to see that particular texts  serve particular class interests and that we could raise those questions when  teaching the literary texts.

When I began my  job in September, I was glad to know  another  new but experienced instructor and I could consult her if I needed help or advice.

Betty introduced me to the world of  Women's Lib when we  drove together to Harvard to attend a conference there on the Struggle of Women.
 Betty noticed immediately that there was little or no attention to the struggles of working women who were also wives and mothers.  Since I was one of those women, I was very aware how much the experience of motherhood was absent from the discussion.

I can't really enumerate all the ways that Betty helped me and improved my life.  How can I count the ways?

She helped me on the personal level. She was the first person who told me that  Yashdip, the handsome Indian Shakespeare scholar in the department,  liked me.  How do you know that? I asked Betty; he is so aloof and he never speaks.  Betty then  told me that she had seen how  he watched when I finished a class and went to the faculty coffee lounge; he went too.  I had noticed that he always seemed to be drinking coffee, but I never thought  he did that to be in my company.


Then Betty  explained some thing that she had seen in her years teaching in Zanzibar. She told me that Indian men have no experience of dating; their society arranges their marriages.  So they do not know how to approach a women they  would like to know better.

I remember asking Betty what my response should be.
She suggested that I invite him to dinner at my place.  After a few more weeks of daily encounters in the coffee lounge which he had ramped up to offers to lend me books. He had noticed that I often had a book that I was reading with me  when I got my coffee. I finally took Betty's sound advice and invited him to dinner.
Even about dinner, Betty had some advice.  Odds are, she explained to me, he is a vegetarian.  So make him a  vegetable main course.  I decided on Eggplant Parmigan and she  applauded that choice.

WE became very good friends in that  year of teaching, and since Yashdip was also a progressive person, she became friends with him too. 

 When our year of being instructors was over, we parted. 
I and my son Joey went to  a summer in Ireland to do research on my dissertation topic. I think Neal and Betty moved on to Easton PA where they had new jobs. That was the summer of 1970, I came back to  a changed scene.  I had received a new job at  nearby Bryant College and my father had died suddenly the day before  my return. 

I realize as I try to sum up my experience of Betty that  it resists summation. 

 Betty's great gift is that she saw the opportunity to improve  every single moment, and she saw that in every one that she met.  She spoke in a direct, frank way to everyone, and she saw in all of us something  that was shining.  

She saw the longing in every one for a better world, a just society and a freer life. I do not believe that constant  reaching towards freedom ever left her. 
She saw  the bright field of each landscape, each human life, every day and every where.

Welsh poet R.S. Thomas is considered one of the finest poets of the twentieth century captures that  shock of recognition in his poem--
 
The Bright Field
 
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
 
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
   —R.S. Thomas