Phil Cohen War Stories: Visions of Valerie—Part II

War Stories By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of Phil’s touching two-part saga recalling a very special relationship with a remarkable woman named Valerie. Here’s Part I in case you missed it.

Part II – The Hand of Fate Points South

Three years later, I moved to North Carolina, found work as a city bus driver and became chief steward of the union local. I stayed in touch with Valerie and periodically visited at her new apartment on 92nd Street and West End Avenue. Riverside Park was one block further west, where the vigilante played by Charles Bronson in Death Wish hunted for muggers. One had to remain vigilant at night, but it was still a long way from the crime-infested labyrinth of the Lower East Side.

When I entered her door in 1982, I found the apartment strewn with Twelve-Step literature. Valerie had become strung out on pain killers, hit bottom, and was seriously trying to turn her life around. She’d found a good therapist and was slowly putting herself through college at night.

“I totally freaked out one day at work,” she told me, “and hid under my desk for hours, refusing to come out. Naturally, they fired me but the Voice took me back once I went into recovery. I’ve been completely sober for over a year.”

Based on a series of unconventional triumphs at the bus garage, I was hired as a lead organizer by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1988 and began spending most of my life on the road doing internal rebuilds. I visited Valerie during my Christmas vacation the following year. She buzzed me in from the lobby, peered through a crack in her door, then flung it open and we hugged for several minutes.

Valerie had finished college, found a career in vocational rehabilitation, and attended AA meetings three times per week without excuses, extending her sobriety to nearly a decade.

The next evening we decided to share a nostalgic dinner at Leshkos. It was a strange juxtaposition to suddenly be back on the streets of the Lower East Side and disconcerting to discover our small diner had become a hot spot for yuppies.

We returned to Valerie’s apartment and knelt facing each other on the floor of her living room.

“How are things going at work?” she asked.

I explained that I was running a campaign against a union-busting company in West Tennessee that allegedly had ties with the Dixie Mafia. They’d taken over one of our plants but refused to recognize or bargain with the union, and I was sleeping with a .38 draped over my bedpost.

“When I get back to Tennessee, I’m forging an alliance with the Teamsters so we can cut off their supply chain.”

“How long can you keep doing this?” she asked. “You’re gonna burn yourself out. I’m really concerned about you. What happens after this is over? They send you someplace else and you do it again, right? Somewhere along the way, if you don’t figure out how to pace yourself and learn to make compromises, you’re gonna crash and burn...hard.”

“I do a better job than most at pacing myself,” I answered, “but when it comes to compromise, that’s not part of my dance. I mean, I make compromises when it comes to cutting a deal, that’s part of negotiating, but I don’t compromise the quality of my work. Before it comes to that, I’ll walk away.”

I’ve been exploring something really cool in my therapy,” Valerie said. “It’s an interesting paradigm I’d like to share with you. It’s called searching for the original.”

“OK, I’m listening.”

“There’s an early developmental stage during which a child is supposed to bond with its parents…and what they receive is the original experience of feeling whole, cared for, and safe.  It becomes part of their foundation and is always there to fall back on, whatever else happens in life. But people who don’t get this as a child end up spending their whole lives chasing after it.

“For the people in my Twelve-Step program, it’s been through drugs and alcohol. You get high and there’s this warm gentle space that blots out everything else in your life, until it wears off and you crash, and have to go out looking to score again. Think about a person whose whole life is about money. They earn a billion dollars but it’s still not enough. What do you believe it is that they’re really searching for?

“For some people it’s about sex. You’re into sex for sure, but you’re not an addict. With you…it’s like you always have to be bigger than life. You always have to be a hero. You have some great victory and it makes you high for a day or two, but then it wears off and you need to do it all over again. A normal day, where nothing spectacular happens, either good or bad, a day that most people would think of as a good day, feels like death to you. You’re not happy unless you’re living on the edge.”

“The thing is,” I told her, “if you worked in a factory and one day, when you least expected it, you fell through the cracks and got fired for something you didn’t deserve, there’s nobody on God’s earth you’d rather have representing you than me.”

“Fuck you, I was trying to teach you something,” she said, then smiled up at me and laughed like a little girl.

We spent a few more evenings in each other’s company, and then I returned to my war zone.

Valerie eventually found a vocational rehab job in a small Southern Florida town and relocated. We were both overwhelmed with work and years started going by between phone calls. On one occasion she told me that she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and afraid of losing her job because of how many days she was missing. I explained her rights under FMLA and the best way to play her cards so none of the absences could be penalized.

In 2016, my first book about the brutal campaign in Tennessee was released by the University of Tennessee Press and I began speaking at union conferences. An engagement had been scheduled in Jacksonville, Florida and I called Valerie to see if she wanted me to drive south afterward for a visit.

“My health has really fallen apart,” she said. “I had a heart attack and then a stroke. I fell down a few times afterward and the doctors now want me to get around with a walker. I had to retire early and I’m renting a tiny apartment the size of a postage stamp in the basement of someone’s house, getting by on social security and part-time office work. I don’t know how much energy I’ll have for long visits, but I’d love to see you.”

Three months later I pulled up in front of a cozy house surrounded by an acre of property in a small town residential neighborhood, and saw Valerie waiting for me on the sidewalk. I was surprised by how her curly orange hair had turned white as she propped herself up on the walker, but she smiled and it was still Valerie. We hadn’t actually seen each other in almost twenty years but as soon as we hugged and looked in each other’s eyes, it felt like we were picking up just moments after where we’d left off. I took her to dinner at a local restaurant and as we shared stories and joked, it was clear that nothing had changed between us. If anything, being together after such a long absence made us even closer.

Valerie’s apartment was too small for company but I was able to find a huge suite at a Holiday Inn for the price of a room, as this was August when few people in their right mind choose to visit Southern Florida. The next day we had lunch at Whole Foods where we reminisced about the old days in the East Village. I reminded her of how she’d gotten in my face for judging the guy panhandling for drugs, telling me about people with and without choices.

“Oh God, I can’t believe I said all that. I was so arrogant back then.”

“No you weren’t. You taught me an important lesson that I’ve never forgotten. As the Bible says, the wise man loveth reproach…You’ve got to admit one thing — Whole Foods is a lot healthier than Leshkos.

I gazed in her still sparkling turquoise eyes and without thinking about it said, “She does not eat at counters when she spends her panhandled dimes.” Valerie laughed and then all the words to a song I hadn’t played or even thought about for decades came tumbling out of me. After dropping her at an AA meeting, I returned to my hotel and scribbled the words on a notepad so I wouldn’t forget them. I remembered the chords and put them to a new arrangement.

When I called the next morning, Valerie told me she was feeling really weak and might not be able to see me for a few days. I was naturally disappointed but took advantage of the subtropical environment, which had several locations perfect for photographing exotic birds. I was entranced by our proximity to the Everglades and headed south one afternoon toward a park leading to where the unique ecosystem began. I had a lot of experience photographing alligators and snakes at close range, and that was what I went looking for. The secret is approaching very slowly, intuiting where their personal space begins, and not crossing that line.

I strolled down isolated trails and soon realized that the maze of interconnected waterways was not ideal for reptile viewing. Occasionally, I observed a partially submerged alligator swimming by but that wasn’t the type of intimate close-up that interested me. I headed back toward a large sign I’d passed, filled with pictures of the local wildlife figuring it would naturally have a map…but it didn’t. Narrow trails fanned out in all directions and I chose one between a waterway and the forest, hoping I’d come across a familiar landmark.

I walked for two miles in humid, hundred degree heat without encountering a pathway out or anything recognizable. Dripping with sweat, I began to suffer from heat exhaustion, and sunset was about two hours away. I hadn’t brought any water because I’d envisioned only a brief sojourn. Suddenly I halted as a voice deep within told me to retrace my steps all the way back to the sign and then choose another direction. My head was starting to spin from the heat and I was truly terrified by the prospect of being lost in the Everglades at night. Immersed in total darkness, the alligators and vipers might well make their presence known, but not in the way I’d envisioned.

Fortunately, I had a lot of experience putting fear on the back burner and staying focused in the moment. I breathed deeply and maintained a steady pace, putting one foot in front of the other. It occurred to me that, as a final embarrassing resort, I could call the sheriff’s department and request a rescue. But that would be for when all hope had been abandoned. I decided instead to call Valerie, just to feel less isolated and get some comfort. But there was no cell phone signal and I had to accept that I was truly on my own, to live or die based on making the right decisions.

Upon finally nearing the sign, I spotted a wooden bridge crossing the water about a hundred yards away and, as my gaze shifted, saw a man walking across it. Shouting that I needed help, I hoped he’d hear me at that distance and bother to wait. When I finally arrived at the foot of the bridge, I observed a man calmly leaning against a tree, who introduced himself as a groundskeeper on his way back home. He offered directions to the parking lot but his words just bounced off me as if he was speaking in a foreign language.

“I’ve been out here for hours without water,” I told him. I’m suffering from heat exhaustion and can’t think straight. I hate to ask you this, but could you walk me to the parking area?”

The kindly gentleman was happy to oblige and a half hour later I was back in my hotel suite. I reached in the fridge for some Kombucha, a healthy beverage filled with electrolytes that I’d bought at Whole Foods, and drank half a bottle. Within minutes it felt as if the ordeal had never happened. I was amazed at having survived at my age, let alone bouncing back so quickly.

Valerie and I spent a final evening together before I headed head north to Charlotte for another conference.

Valerie had to quit her part-time job because of declining health and was left with only Social Security to live on. The man who rented her an apartment decided to remodel the house and sell, forcing her to move out. But she found a retirement complex that offered substantial discounts to people in her situation.

Since being hired by the union, I’ve known a succession of beautiful, crazy, talented women who brought hardship and chaos raining down upon themselves and then expected me to bail them out, which I always did…a few hundred dollars here…a few thousand there. I finally had to admit that I was a sucker for damsels in distress.

But despite misfortunes for which she was not responsible, Valerie never asked me for a penny. When her computer was destroyed in a flood, I offered to buy her a new one, and though deeply moved with gratitude, she never took me up on it. Underneath it all, she’s remained a tough working class girl from the Bronx who stands on her own two feet and gets by no matter what. It’s one of many reasons I respect the hell out of her.

Valerie is a golden thread weaving my entire adult life into a single tapestry. She’s the only one left who knew me when I was on the streets of New York and watched me beat the odds, fighting my way up from nothing to where I am now. We think about each other all the time yet only end up talking every few months, but the sense of connection and love is always instantaneous.

We were on the phone two years ago when she suddenly exclaimed, “I’m really proud of you…shit, I shouldn’t have said that. It sounds really condescending and —”

“No. It’s OK that you said it. Coming from you, it means everything.”

Phil Cohen spent 30 years in the field as Special Projects Coordinator for Workers United/SEIU (and its predecessor unions) and specialized in defeating professional union busters.  He’s the author of Fighting Union Busters in a Carolina Carpet Mill and The Jackson Project: War in the American Workplace.