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six Gladys One day, my friend Bobby said, “Come on, Gladys, let’s go up to Camp Unity for a weekend. Let’s see what it’s like.” He was looking for a girl, and I suppose I was looking for a boy. The second night we were there, this young man and woman came to our table. They didn’t say a word to each other, and I thought for sure they were married. He was awfully cute. She got up and left, and it was obvious then that he had nothing to do with her. Bobby started talking to him. And we just sort of became interested in each other immediately. It was a very fast courtship. Junie had been separated from his first wife for about a year or so and had been a hunk of misery. The Party people down South were just like a family, and one couple in particular just insisted that he get away. He was working too hard, looked tired, and had no girl. The circles were rather limited, and everybody was coupled up. So they packed him off to Camp Unity. And that’s where I met him. It was a weekend in July, and we went to the Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill. Junie and Bobby and a couple of other people and I drove there together. The crowd was great, but we were surrounded by hostility, and Robeson had a bodyguard around him. It was a rousing meeting; there were speeches, and then Robeson sang, and it was wonderful. As we all got in our cars to go home, word slowly got back that all the windows should be raised. And there was this line of people standing there, shouting and throwing rocks while the state police stood by. It was pretty rough. And, although nothing happened to our particular car, others were pretty banged up. When we got back to Camp Unity, we got word that a group of guys didn’t get out. So Junie and a group of men went back and got them back. A RED FAMILY 59 We spent the rest of the weekend together, and then he came to New York City, and we spent every moment together. He had already started talking about marriage. After he returned to North Carolina, we wrote constantly. He wanted me to come down Christmastime to meet his family and friends, and wanted all his friends and comrades to meet me. And, of course, I was scared stiff because I knew his family wasn’t really waiting with open arms for me. I was still really quite shaky and unsure of myself. I had discussed with my psychiatrist whether I was ready to leave him, and although he never met Junie, he said yes. But it takes a long time for you to internalize all of this, for all the health that you’ve gained over those years to really become a part of you. Junie knew my whole story and was just wonderful. My first introduction to the Communist Party of North Carolina was Junie ’s dear friends, Bernie and Bea Friedland. Bea, a wonderfully compulsive kind of nut, though never having met me before, just started running up and down the Raleigh station platform and found me. And she pulled me along until I saw Junie. On the trip back to Carrboro, Bea, who has always been a rather nonconformist thinker, made some derogatory comment about all of the big photos of Stalin in the May Day parade. And everybody laughed. I thought this was absolutely blasphemous, and I remember my first very judgmental reaction: “Very bourgeois woman . . . humph, humph.” Bernie was the district organizer, and he was from New York City. And, of course, you couldn’t help but be tremendously impressed with Bernie. Even though he was a Stalinist dictator, he’s a love, and his outstanding quality was that of a humanist, somebody who cared for people. I just loved him from the moment I met him, and to this day, they are our dearest friends. We went to our little house in Carrboro, and I guess I expected some kind of log cabin because Junie kept saying, “Now you know it’s a very simple little house, not fancy, and there’s not too much to it.” But I remember being tremendously impressed with it. It was a mill house, and this was the middle of winter, so it was cold...

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