SUMMERS

In the years we have described summer was not a time of relaxation. In July of 1932, after the first year of C.C.N.Y. was behind him, Mendy joined the Young Communist League in Brighton Beach. He would walk from his home at 1318 Avenue V, a matter of some twenty minutes to attend meetings held in what was then the Workers' Center—a two-story building at 3159 Coney Island Ave. One who knew him in those first days of neighborhood activity recalls him as "shy with the girls." He was seventeen at the time and just beginning to be active. There were street corner meetings; he carried the ladder, sold literature, canvassed door to door with the League paper, The Young Worker.

The next summer the Brighton Beach Young Communist League assisted in the organization of a young people's unemployed group named Y-O-U, Young Organized Unemployed. Work was done to organize the harassed ice-cream beach peddlers who were continually arrested. In those days one got neither job or license to peddle. These actions involved Mendy.

Activity in behalf of the food workers of Brighton Beach and later Avenue U led to complete unionization of all the fruit and vegetable stores. In the strike at a cafeteria, now no more in Brighton, called Hoffman's, Mendy received the honor of being arrested at the special request of the manager. In the first city-wide strike of the building service employees Mendy saw front-line of action which again led to his arrest, this time with a newspaper picture of him stepping into a patrol wagon.

Summer of 1934 saw him back in his neighborhood, but closer to home this time. The Young Communist League had begun its growth up Coney Island Avenue toward Prospect Park. This new branch in which Mendy played a leading part was the Avenue U Branch. Now followed a new round of street-corner meetings, work to build a progressive neighborhood club, Sunday canvassing with the Daily Worker, picketing and helping to organize for the Food Workers Industrial Union.

Recollection of a fellow-member of the Flatbush New Culture Club, a progressive neighborhood group, recalls him as a "very, very sensitive guy, with a good grasp on events, and a will to do work. I remember him always striding around with an apple, which he was crunching, and his nose in a book." Mendy was willing to do the daring things. One morning the papers carried a story and picture of a huge Free Thaelmann flag which floated from the Avenue S playground flagpole. Millions of people on the beach read painted slogans on the stone supports of the Boardwalk which called "Smash Fascism," "Free Thaelmann."

In Coney Island there is a famed frankfurter stand called Nathan's. In 1934 there was a desperate strike to bring union conditions to the place. It was won despite an extremely severe injunction which forbid notice of the strike for blocks around. Strikers' picketed in a rowboat, and men with guts flashed out "On Strike" signs in front of the stand. In a minute there would be slugging detectives and prancing mounted cops. Mendy was there.

That 1934 summer Mendy went on a half-vacation, half-job trip to Marlboro, New York, as a berry picker. He talked to farmers about their conditions and also led a successful action for another one-half cent on the box picked. That same summer began the camp jobs that he was to have up to the summer he went to Spain. A close co-worker of these summers writes:

"Mendy's first camp trip was in 1934 when he and I were volunteer kitchen workers and counsellors at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers' Children's Camp for short). After scrubbing vegetables all morning, Mendy taught a class for the 12-year old youngsters. We collaborated on this class.

"Mendy distinguished himself by his vivacity and eagerness for work. On the anniversary of the Sacco-Vanzetti execution, August 22, Mendy delivered a ringing speech to the assembled children on the camp lawn. After some time at camp Mendy was graduated into full counsellor's job, and relieved of his kitchen duties. For the Labor Day weekend of 1934 I can still see Mendy working in the Camp Unity kitchen, again cleaning vegetables. The years after that he worked as waiter in Camp Unity.

"At the camp he was both a waiter and a speaker and a political worker in his non-working hours—he was very active in the camp YCL branch and helped organize the model open branch meetings."

The outdoor life of camp was one that agreed with Mendy. Here he was extremely happy, with friends, a chance to study, meetings to prepare, ping pong to play (he was camp champ at this), talks to give, discussions to lead, girls to meet, water to swim in. What more could a man ask?

Having a good time was a zestful matter for Mendy. There were no half-way houses for him. When he liked the movies he was all out for it; he would prance and leap for joy at going, he would nudge your face and pinch you and as you approached the lobby of the movies he would give a deep breath and say "ah, the smell of the movies." Or there were times when he would avoid the movies for months on end. He liked to go to the plays on Broadway. He was a partisan fan of the Theatre Union and the later WPA shows. One friend recalls his unbounded enthusiasm for "Stevedore" a Theatre Union production about Negro and white solidarity. In between the acts he had long and earnest discussion with nearby members of the audience about the virtues of a certain situation. A similar recollection comes from one of a theatre party group from City College who write us:

"Once we went on a History-Society sponsored seeing of Elmer Rice's 'Judgment Day,' a melodrama of the Reichstag Fire trial. Between the acts Wilfred proposed gaily that we get tip a demonstration for the freedom of the political prisoners in the play and was on his feet ready to address the second balcony if we would only say the word."

It was in the summer of 1937 that several of the boys in Mendy's bunk were discussing the need for men in Spain. Mendy had not yet made up his mind to go but, as a member of the circle put it:

" ... I remember how ill at ease he was and how anxious he was and chafing at the bit to do something. Mendy realized and he told me then, that eventually he would go to Spain also ... "

He spent no more summers in the United States. Next summer he was in battle in a victorious offensive and tested beyond which there is no test.