On weekends, you could find anyone from the chief of police to female impersonators from Finocchio’s hanging about, having drinks or sipping coffee together. People from all walks of life—from writers to Teamsters to homeless folk—all found their way to my mother’s door. We always joked that if there was a nut within 10 miles they could find her. She took in many people over the years that needed care. A pregnant woman who worked for her close friend Joe needed to get away from her abusive husband. Mother took her in for about six months, and she became the little girl’s godmother. She had at least 10 godchildren throughout her life. Once a neighbor sold her house and moved away, but left her tenant in the basement. The tenant, a woman, had emphysema and was an ex-con. Mother put her in our extra bedroom, and she lived there for the next five years.
Life with my mother was never dull, though I often found myself disapproving of her behavior. I was always the conservative one, and she was the free spirit. In many ways, I was the mother and she the child. A few years back, she visited me in Virginia, and we drove over to the Edgar Cayce Institute in Virginia Beach. We had read his book The Sleeping Prophet when I was quite young, and I have since learned that Neal and Carolyn Cassady were big followers of his. We went to a lecture and past-lives reading. According to the reader, my mother and I actually did have our roles reversed in one of our previous lives. We are supposedly destined to go through our many lives as best friends, mother, and daughter in many different combinations.
There was one area, though, in which I learned some very important lessons from her. Lu Anne had a profound understanding—an almost inborn understanding—of how wrong racism was. Her experience with it began in California at the start of World War II. In Los Angeles, she had Japanese schoolmates, one of whom became a very close friend of hers. After Pearl Harbor, this girl, along with all the other Japanese in the area, were hauled off to internment camps. Many of them lost their homes and everything they had. Only 12 years old, Lu Anne was crushed by the loss of her friend, and angry at what seemed to her such an obvious injustice. Then, when she returned to Denver, a new face of racism showed itself in the prejudice against Mexicans. My mother always loved to dance, and she told me how the best-looking boys, as well as the best dancers, were usually Mexican. When she mentioned her interest in certain Mexican boys, however, Thelma was aghast. She told Lu Anne, “You do not socialize with Mexicans. You do not go out on a date with them. It’s simply not done. A nice white girl like you does not date a Mexican.” My mother just did not understand. She would always ask, “What’s the problem?” and nobody gave her any answer that made sense to her.
As she began to strike out on her own in Denver—in her years of teenage rebellion—she would go to the all-black jazz clubs in Five Points, and she began to be exposed not only to different races, but to people with a variety of different lifestyles. She was always very accepting and very friendly to everyone, and she gave everyone the opportunity to be themselves. In later years, she made a point of inviting people of all races, nationalities, and economic levels into her home. When she moved to Florida in 1957—when it was still the Deep South—she encountered the real, hard-core racism against blacks. She got a job at Vic Tanny’s fitness club, which had both black and white employees. But the employees were kept completely segregated. There was no intermingling in the lunch area. My mother had become friendly with several of the black employees, and one day she brought her lunch over and sat down with some of them. As she prepared to eat her lunch, the boss walked over and told her it was not acceptable for her to eat lunch, or even to sit down, in the “colored section.” My mother refused to move; and after that, she ate lunch in the designated black area every day. For some reason, they didn’t fire her.
When I was growing up, she would tell me, very pointedly, that I should never judge anyone by their race, religion, color, or their status in life—that I should accept everyone as an equal, even if they were homeless. And I saw her practice what she preached. She always befriended people from all walks of life.