Betty Lee (Palais) Levine

Beloved wife of the late Oscar Levine. Devoted mother of Douglas Stewart Levine and his wife Barbara and Jan Louise Levine and her companion Garrett Brown. Dear sister of the late Hilda Weiss. Loving grandmother of Kristen Merriman. Employed as Placement Officer and Vice President of The Skill Bureau, Boston, for 20 years. Enthusiastic supporter of the National Braille Press, Boston, as member of the Board of Trustees and the Braille For Life Alliance. Long-time volunteer at the F.W. Parker Elementary School, Quincy. Served for many years as judge of student essays for the Profile in Courage Award at JF Kennedy Library, Boston.

Graveside services were private. In lieu of flowers, donations in Betty’s memory may be made to the National Braille Press at 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston, MA 02115 or at www.nbp.org

כַּבֵּד אֶת אִמֶּךָ

(Honor Thy Mother)

IN HONOREM MATRIS MEAE

by Douglas Levine

My Mom, Betty Levine, passed away earlier this year at age 96. She was a strict but loving mother, a devoted daughter, sister, wife, aunt, mother-in-law, and grandmother, and a formidable person. Stylish and seemingly destined to entertain, Mom hosted festivities for my sister, me, and our friends as we grew up and for neighbors and relatives. She planned parties for birthdays, celebrations for graduations, and receptions for my sister’s and my weddings. But Mom’s instructions for her funeral were to be expedient, without fanfare, and attended only by immediate family. My wife, my sister, and I participated in a short graveyard service officiated by an eloquent rabbi. Beyond his well-informed speech about her, there was little time to deliver elaborate eulogies, which is why I wrote this tribute.

We have mothers and their love. They have strengths and foibles (Don’t we all?) and, inevitably, we are profoundly influenced by both. Sunshine. Blind spots. Regardless, there are unique tales to tell about the power and the radiance of every mother and I would like to share parts of the story of mine.

My grandparents immigrated to the US before WWI to escape atrocities in Russia and Eastern Europe. Alas, these continue there, and globally, to this day. Grandfather was a glazier and established a business in Brooklyn, New York. Mom was born there in 1926 and named Rebecca. The first inkling of her willfulness emerged when, as a young child, she insisted her name was Betty. It stuck. I have her birth certificate and Social Security card to prove it. She grew up during the Great Depression that followed the 1929 stock market crash. Her parents sustained their glass business and provided for her and her older sister. Betty learned the value of a dollar and hard work, and to be economical and practical, by her parents’ example during those tough times.

Betty graduated high school soon after the US entered WWII. She was smart, but women were not encouraged to attend college in the 1940s. She trained to be a bookkeeper and was turned down for several jobs because she was Jewish. My father, a staunch supporter of hers throughout their future marriage, would have been incensed: “What? Are they blind? Don’t they know what they’re missing by not hiring you?” Not long after, Betty learned that most of our family that had not emigrated from Europe perished in the Holocaust. Thus, early in her life, and in the company of many, Betty lived in the shadows of blindness, ignorance, and hate.

Mom and Dad married in 1948, and my sister and I were born in the early 1950s. We lived in a modest apartment complex in Maryland outside of Washington DC. The arrangement was outstanding because the plethora of neighbors provided numerous playmates. I met one of them when we were four years old. After our moms introduced us, he examined every part of my head – hair, forehead, eye sockets, ears, cheeks, nose, mouth, chin – with his hands, relying on his sense of touch to get to know me. The encounter with this boy is fixed in my memory almost seven decades later. For Mom, the experience had a lasting effect, too, as she contemplated his challenges in the sighted world.

My family moved to the Boston area where my sister and I attended elementary, middle, and religious schools. Mom and Dad set expectations: homework first, play second. We became good students. During two consecutive summer vacations – summer vacations! – Mom compelled us to spend an hour indoors every morning with a typewriter and a self-instruction touch system manual to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard. We felt deprived at the time but are grateful to have this lifelong business skill.

Dad went to work every day and Mom stayed home to oversee children and household. She took up hobbies: reading, oil painting, adult education classes. She volunteered to transcribe books into braille, the tactile writing system of raised dots that represent letters which are read with the fingertips by people who are blind or severely vision impaired. Mom got a braille typewriter, special embossed paper for indenting the paper with the dots, and an instruction manual to learn braille. She devoted hours each day to produce braille books and suffered eyestrain from proofreading. Our dining room table became her work desk with foot-high stacks of completed pages for a single children’s book. Looking back, I am ashamed of my reaction to Mom’s summertime ‘sentence’ for my sister and me to learn the touch system for typing in plain English while she learned how to type it in code.

In her early forties, when my sister and I were mature enough to keep ourselves out of trouble, Mom defied a bit of the convention among suburban housewives in 1968 and returned to the workplace. I don’t know whether hers was an independent decision or one influenced by the emergence of modern feminism – the National Organization of Women was founded by a different Betty, Betty Friedan, two years earlier in 1966 – but my party-loving mother was also destined to make hay. She joined The Skill Bureau, a human resources firm, as a part-time bookkeeper and rose to become Vice President. The open-minded owner, a man, mentored my mother’s professional development to run the company, which focused on placement of office personnel in many corporations, universities, and non-profit organizations throughout the city of Boston and its environs.

Mom cared as much for her employees at The Skill Bureau as the clients she served. She gravitated toward talented people who might not have been accepted to work in some offices beset by different types of blindness: bias, prejudice, ignorance. She understood LGBTQIA+ at a time when the L and the G were barely comprehended in the workplace and the rest of the acronym had yet to be invented. She was color blind and indifferent to creed or place of birth. She knew a woman could do anything a man could and vice versa. Mom fiercely and fearlessly advocated for equality in the workplace. She refused to do business with firms that expressed requirements for restrictive hiring. Bottomline, if people were well-trained and professionally qualified, she found establishments where they could work. Mom was justifiably proud of her accomplishments as a businessperson: what she did for her people and her customers and how she successfully grew The Skill Bureau’s business while she sustained its integrity.

After Mom retired she turned her attention back to volunteer work. Not surprisingly, she focused on an organization for which she selected office staff during her tenure at The Skill Bureau: The National Braille Press began as a weekly newspaper in 1918 and grew to become a premier publisher of braille books and other critical materials to promote braille literacy and aid the blind and visually impaired. As a non-profit organization, the National Braille Press has depended on charitable contributions. Mom contributed her business expertise, assisted in fundraising efforts, became a Member of the Board of Trustees, and made regular, personal donations to the cause.

Mom shared additional volunteer activities with Dad. They served as teachers’ helpers at the F.W. Parker Elementary School in Quincy, Massachusetts: Mom delighted in opening the eyes of her first graders as did Dad with his fifth graders. They also served on a panel of judges of written submissions by high school students for the Profile in Courage Essay Contest at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. The objectives for these essays were to shine light on and analyze acts of political courage by US elected officials who served during or after 1917.

At her greatest height, my mother stood five foot two inches (157.5 cm) and acted like she was the tallest person in the room, often for good reason. In her prime, her fighting weight was one hundred and two pounds (46.3 kg), well below the qualifying weight for the lowest-weight boxing category of Bantamweight. But she was perceived as a Heavyweight in offices and home: Her employees, staff, colleagues at the organizations at which she volunteered, and family always wanted her in their corner.

One of Mom’s instructions was that in lieu of flowers, donations in her memory could be made to the National Braille Press, 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston, MA 02215 or at www.nbp.org. When I reflected on Mom’s life, I understood the symbolism of her last wish: it represented the importance to act, stand up to, and fight to overcome blindness in all its forms.

Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I see no further nor farther than the next person. But my vision is clear and broad because, out of love, I was held up to see the world for what it is, and what is possible to change, on the shoulders of a mother who would not suffer blindness. She is forever a genuine giant in my eyes.

I love you, Mom.

Doug

Seekonk, Massachusetts

03/2023

#motherhood #in memorium #vision #integrity #equality #love #hope