Editor’s Note: on May 29th 2012 President Obama Awarded a Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta. Susan Samuels Drake interviewed Ms. Huerta in 2000 for SeniorWomen.com.
“I know the softer side of the woman. She’s the boss I’d go to some mornings before work. That was in 1973, when César, not with great wisdom, placed her as his Administrative Assistant (imagine that tigress caged behind a desk). Dolores’ tensions spilled over to me, at that time César’s secretary, who’d been running the office longer than she had.”
“So several mornings before work I walked across the compound misnamed La Paz to catch her in the old hospital we used for a dorm. Peace was not a usual state for the union’s headquarters above California’s Central Valley in the Tehachapi Mountain. I would beg Dolores for patience, understanding or advice. She would wrestle with her hair and breakfast while tears ran down my cheeks. By the time I walked over to the office, I wasn’t sure whether I was crying from relief or from the amazing confidence she’d just instilled in me.”
“Now I can scan the 1,000 sites on the Net that mention this friend, an idol in many American circles, an unknown in others. I already had her agree to an interview before I saw her picture with President Clinton on the front page of my local newspaper last December. He had just awarded her the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights. On some of those Internet sites, I learned how she had spent those calendar-crammed years since we worked together.”
“The first time I met Dolores, she had been fired by César the day before but there she was, working behind the counter of what was known as The Gray House. Gray House headquartered the National Farm Workers Association, as they were then known, housed organizers, a legal department, a boycott staff and a couple of rooms and garage office that made up the newspaper. No wonder grape growers thought we would disappear before labor contracts could be signed.”
Read Susan Samuel’s Drake article, Dolores Huerta: A Role Model for Any Age
http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/articlesDrakeDolores.html
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