Bernice Belton's Memorial

A lot of people our age are dealing with the vicissitudes of aging parents, but neither my wife nor I have living parents. Indeed I never knew any of my grandparents and being child free our place in the constellation of generations is a bit murky sometimes. Bernice Belton died in Santa Cruz a few weeks back at the age of 87 and she was as much a godmother to my wife as anyone formerly living. The memorial service was set last week and thus it was we flew by commercial airliner, my least favorite form of travel from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco. Saturday afternoon found us immersed in renewing old friendships. Barbara, our former realtor.Mitchell my wife's boss grinning at me from across the room. He leads the contract public defender office where my wife worked for years. My wife told him she needed a sabbatical a dozen years ago and sailed off with me to Panama. From a pay phone in Costa Rica my wife called Mitchell and he said,"So when are you coming back?" A burden of law lifted from my wife's shoulders as we strolled back to the dinghy pulled up on the shore of the Gulf of Nicoya and we resumed our journey sailing to Key West. Michael in the blue shirt is another in the coterie of Santa Cruz lawyers we spent some considerable time reminiscing with during the preamble to the service. Mary, below, another lawyer......and the object of the gathering, now available only by photograph as she is nothing more than ashes and memories at this point.The master of ceremonies Jess Brown was emblematic of Bernice's wild life. Herself a dedicated leftist of the old school and gentle Jess the head of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau, a Republican and Bernice's constant helper. Odd but true, in a world always more polarized.Pete, and his wife Amanda sitting at our table because Pete was on our catamaran when we sailed away from Santa Cruz all those years ago.Frankie fresh from New York telling lies about their early years together in the Big Apple, remembering Bernice's first husband Irv and putting together the pieces for her California acquaintances who may never have heard the stories from the master story teller herself. Bernice always claimed to feel exiled from New York City.Annie with more stories. The generations past always get my attention because I am a firm believer that without knowledge of history the present makes no sense.Julie, of my wife's generation telling stories about early life in Santa Cruz where the relatively young university hired people at random it seemed to fill positions. Bernice worked with students as an advisor for a while and as she used to tell it she learned more from them than they ever learned from her. Paperwork was not her strong suit. The formal part of the memorial was interrupted by a recreation of Bernice's favorite past time: politics. Former Mayor Jane Weed presided over a mock council meeting and invited public comment. Mike Rotkin another former mayor and socialist-feminist powerhouse of the 70's and 80's and still on the city council today was also at the table.My wife pushed me to speak and I said a few impromptu words about my time reporting on daily life in Santa Cruz and the also the encouragement Bernice gave my wife to leave her home town and make a new life in the Keys.Bernice also had arthritis and appreciated the milder climate for my wife's disease. Bernice was no cook and much was made of her lack of skill in that area. My wife tells the story of how Bernice invited us to her home for one thanksgiving and promptly called back to remind my wife that she it was who would cook the turkey for Bernice after we accepted the invitation. One comment about carbon dating Bernice's spice rack brought a round of laughter. Her banana bread recipe was not to joked with though.Indeed there was a copy of the immortal recipe included with the program.David Winters a noted local musician offered his own tribute, a rendering of the Internationale,. Billy Bragg says it is only appropriate for certain occasions and he's right. This was one of them. The event was recorded for community TV, though many of the public figures of Bernice's generation were not present. Time passes and memories fade. "Stand up all you victims of oppression..." State Assemblymember Bill Monning was on hand. One of the good guys in Sacramento.The left in Santa Cruz had got upset with Mike Rotkin on the city council. I wanted a chance to talk to him because I remember him well but that didn't happen. Pete was watching it all.Sara offered her memories of Bernice as the program resumed.Bernice touched a great many people.Her niece Linda from Texas gave a speech that cracked everyone up. The dry southern sense of humor was refreshing. And finally the daughters, Nora (glasses) and Donnie.

A final song from Cliff and Sara...... and a chance to catch up before splitting.We decided dinner could be a tribute to Bernice at her favorite (Chinese) eatery and Barbara and Marty and their daughter agreed so off we went.

Omei makes a mean Lemon Chicken, Bernice's favorite, a dish that only I usually enjoy apparently. I got to have it one more time that night.

A few more reminiscences,...and we split one more time. Layne and I closed the evening in high excitement in the local Publix, er, Safeway. A mega-supermarket with endless aisles of consumables. Including sophisticated Italian scooter....coffee?The place was vast and thus vastly entertaining for people like us used to the more modest proportions of Searstown.

Somehow it is all entertaining when one is on the road.

Bernice Belton RIP

When my wife heard today that Bernice had finally died, after spending months slipping slowly away, all she could blurt out to me was that she had known Bernice since she was 21, which was about 35 years ago. Bernice was a powerhouse of leftist politics in Santa Cruz, California while my wife and I were maturing there in the eighties and nineties on our separate paths. Bernice was a New Yorker at heart but ended up living much of her life in Southern California before settling up north and spending her later years missing the Big Apple. She was our inspiration when we decided to move to Key West and make a new life. "Well," my wife used to say,"Bernice said it takes three to five years to make new friends in a new place." And: "Bernice was about our age when she moved to Santa Cruz and started again."We spent a lot of time around her dining room table last summer talking, as one does, about the past, and complaining about the present. Her husband Bill died a few years ago after a lifetime spent together organizing and fighting the good fight for ideals that seem in abeyance in the modern era, human rights, looking out for each other and the ideals of the collective. Still she inspired us to hope in a better future. And now she is no more.

From the Metro Santa Cruz Archives this short essay with her thoughts on Death and how she would like to be remembered.

When asked to participate in this photo essay, which will run during the week of All Saints' Day, Bernice Belton lets out a guffaw. "Ya' hear that, honey?" she hollers to her husband, Bill, in the background. "I'm a saint!" Well, perhaps Belton has raised too much hell with all that organizing, agitating and rabble-rousing to fit the religious definition, but she is no doubt considered a savior by the poor, the marginalized and the embattled for whose rights she dedicated a lifetime to fighting.

Given how many times she has had to sit down and hash things out with friends and foes to accomplish her aims, it's not surprising what the political activist expects as a fitting tribute. "I want a moratorium declared on all political meetings for three days," Belton laughs. "I deserve three lousy days, don't you think?"

Along with that, she expects a youthful choir singing a song specially written for the occasion. The theme? "Don't Mourn--Organize and Dissent!" Of course, there'll be food: "I don't care what kind, as long as there's plenty--and music!"

Belton hopes the ceremony will give a nod to her "Jewish consciousness and identification" but still manage to be a nonsectarian send-off. Also an atheist, Belton figures that when death comes, it's all over.

However, life and death are put in perspective by Belton's beloved semper virens that tower over her property. "There's something about having a view of the redwoods that gives me a sense of the continuity of life," the activist says. "They've been here a long time, and they'll go on long after many of us are gone."

This was the Obituary that ran in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Obituary Notice for Bernice Belton

Bernice Belton, a long-time influential community activist in Santa Cruz
County, died peacefully at home in Soquel on February 3, 2011. Born in 1923
to Austrian Jewish immigrant parents, Bernice grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
After graduating from Erasmus High School, she moved to Manhattan,
discovered boys and swing band music, attended college, leaving college soon
thereafter to work at the New York Post as a reporter's assistant.

Shortly after World War II, in which her beloved brother lost his life, she
married Irving Hochman, a fellow New Yorker. At the end of WW II they
moved to Paris. They bicycled through Paris and Italy, studied music, and
developed what would become lifelong friendships with other young
adventurous American couples also living in Paris. While in Paris, Bernice
worked for the American Joint Distribution Committee and Refugee Aid,
affectionately referred to as The Joint. Once back from Europe, they
continued their adventure by bicycling from New York to San Francisco. They
settled in North Beach where her husband began a printing business. Bernice
worked for the Friends Committee on Legislation and the World Health
Organization -in the midst of starting a family with two daughters.

After her marriage ended in 1963, Bernice soon met and married Bill Belton,
a General Motors auto worker and union organizer who brought a third
daughter into the family. Bernice moved from San Francisco to the San
Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Bill, her humorous and loving new husband,
thought it customary to have an activist wife working full time. It was in
Los Angeles that Bernice gained the dexterity and skill of political
organizing and fundraising development. She became proficient at both.

Bernice was active with Women for Legislative Action and Women Strike for
Peace during the early Vietnam War years, ultimately becoming the West Coast
Director for the Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities
Committee. She "turned our family home into a meeting hall" recalls one
daughter; she taught her kids how to manage political mailings. Later, as
Staff Director for Jane Fonda's Indo-China Peace Campaign, there was even
more boisterous political activity surrounding the family, including family
road trips to San Francisco for anti-war demonstrations. Throughout those
years of "mailings, meetings, and marches" there was always plenty of time
for family camping trips to the mountains.

Bernice loved the active life and warm weather in L.A., and was reluctant to
move when Bill wanted to leave the smog and relocate to Santa Cruz. However,
in l974 they came north, settled briefly at the Villa San Carlos apartment
complex where they organized a tenants' union, then managed to buy a
pre-fabricated house from the woodshop at Fremont High School. This became
their home in Soquel, CA.

Bernice first worked at the Community Counseling Center, offering treatment
for drug addiction to inmates at the County Jail as an alternative to
incarceration -- in those days a radical idea. Later she served at Court
Referral, helping people with fines to seek alternatives through community
service. This work stemmed from her conviction that no good purpose was
served by jailing non-violent offenders, while much good could be done by
the same people engaged in useful work for others.

As a Vista volunteer she was Fundraiser and Volunteer Coordinator at the
Food Bank of Santa Cruz (now Second Harvest Food Bank). She served as an
active board member for fifteen years. Her specialty was charming large
local growers to make substantial contributions.

For another dozen years she served on the Community Action Board, with a
particular interest in efforts that addressed the hardships faced by
low-income women with children. The conviction behind much of Bernice's
community work was simple: "people have to eat, have a job, and have a place
to live."

Beginning in 1978, Bernice was a founder and leading force of the Santa Cruz
Action Network (SCAN). She worked on the Santa Cruz County Jail Moratorium,
the Watsonville cannery strike and district election campaigns of the late
1980s, as well as many progressive Santa Cruz city council and supervisorial
campaigns. She was very effective at communicating respectfully with
elected officials. She was a caring and fantastic friend, a voracious reader
and book club participant, a lover of chamber music, art museums,
Impressionist paintings, and an enthusiastic traveler to New York, Paris,
Prague, Rome, Bali, and many points in between.

Bernice is survived by daughters Dani and Nora Hochman and Nora Belton,
sons-in-law Gary Wohl and John Oldenkamp, grandchildren Daniel and Andrew
Wohl, Adina Belton and Sabrina Lake, nieces and nephews Linda Broessel, Hank
Goldstein, Janet Shirley, and Ken and Miguel Dickinson. For the past
several years her principal caregiver and close personal friend has been
Tracy Rivers, who assured for Bernice a high quality of life. Also providing
loving personal home care were her former Food Bank co-workers Bertha Fierro
and Melody Culver. A memorial gathering will be held at the Jade Street Park
Community Center in Capitola on Saturday, March 26 4:00 to 6:30.
Contributions can be made to the Second Harvest Food Bank, and the Community
Action Board.