September 24, 2022 Dear Mendel, My involvement as a community organizer in the United Community Centers wasn’t your thing, but you were always supportive of my participation. I guess I was a little wild during my teen years and you felt my activities and relationships there gave me the purpose…

September 17, 2022 Dear Mendel. As I became more politically active and a more serious student in the late 1960s, I decided I needed to study working-class movements and learn why some working people were radicalized. In my junior year in college I did a seminar paper on British trade…

September 10, 2022 Dear Mendel, When I became a serious political activist in my sophomore year of college I also became a serious student, really for the first time. It helped that I had completed the required classes at CCNY that reminded me of being in high school — super…

September 3, 2022 Dear Mendel, You bought me my first two-wheel bicycle in 1960, a beautiful Red Schwinn, and started my love of cycling. I am a bike endorphin addict. Cycling clears my mind. I always bring along a pen and pad to jot down notes about whatever I am…

August 26, 2022 Dear Mendel, I was very unhappy during my freshman year at City College. I was living at home in the Bronx, riding the subway to school, mostly taking required classes that I hated, and felt like I was in 13th grade. That summer my friend Kenny and…

August 20, 2022 Dear Mendel During the summer of 1965, I had my first taste of politics. I was still going to the “Y” youth program at the Concourse “Y,” but it was only a few days a week. That summer Congressman John V. …

August 13, 2022 Dear Mendel, Where we lived on Jesup Avenue in the Bronx there was alternate side of the street parking four days a week for street cleaning. On one side of the street there was no parking on Tuesday and Friday from 11 AM until 2 PM, on…

August 6, 2022 Dear Mendel, Warren and I really hated going to Hebrew School, Warren even worse than me. Starting when we were eight, we had to go to Hebrew School at the Jewish Center of University Heights on W. 174th Street off of Nelson Avenue in the Bronx four…

July 30, 2022 Dear Mendel, If you could have been any singer, other than Manny Singer, it would have been Frank Sinatra. In retirement at the Deerfield Beach Century Village you finally got the chance to fully indulge in the Chairman of the Board’s music. …