I got an email, then a call, from Cindy Piester of Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions a week ago. Would I like to do the sound for a memorial park bench dedication in the Peace Garden in Plaza Park, Ventura, on Sunday, the seventh of November, for Betty Eagle, who died July 27 of this year. Happy to help when and where I can. The bench placement and dedication had been delayed because the City Council wanted a small bench, and had rules. Nothing big enough for a homeless person to sleep on. The Eagle family, God love 'em, held out for a big bench, and got a real beauty, a double-sleeper. One of the attendees, Rachel Morris, local singer-songwriter extraordinaire and peace activist, brought a banner she and I had made before Operation Desert Storm, and flown from a local freeway overpass. Rachel later sang beautifully at the memorial, which was attended by members of over half a dozen local political and social justice groups, all of whom Betty had worked with. Betty was a shining example of what a motivated activist can do. More below the fold...
Betty Eagle was born March 25, 1927, in New Brunswick, N.J. to Louis Sobel and Esther Ingber, two pre-World War I Hungarian Jewish immigrants. It was her mother who first instilled a sense of justice in Betty, teaching her to always care about other people and their difficult struggles.
Her fiery disposition toward fairness and justice manifested when, at age 4, she protested being denied a library card saying to the librarian, "I’ll show you I can read," and proceeded to do just that, eventually winning the card. Access to a public library was at her core all of her life and she passed this love of books on to hundreds of children in her 20 years of elementary grade teaching.
In her teens Betty supported and worked within the Zionist movement for the creation of the state of Israel, but she became disenchanted with Zionism when she saw its violent and unjust implications. Upon graduation from Queens College she began work as a social worker for the city of New York, joining the progressive-led Public Workers’ Union and attending the Progressive Party’s presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia in 1948 which chose Henry Wallace as its candidate.
After her marriage in 1952 to Norman Eagle, she and her husband joined a civil rights coalition dedicated to ending Jim Crow on all the railroads in the U.S. which, in 1956, resulted in the hiring of the first black freight brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1963 at the height of the struggle to end segregation in housing and in schools the family was living in an all white suburb of NYC (Edgewater, NJ). To become more effective fighters for integration the family moved to Englewood, NJ, where they joined the struggle supporting the integration of public schools so their sons could grow up in a diverse community. During this period Betty and Norman also founded the Englewood Peace Committee in an ongoing effort to end the Viet Nam war and succeeded in getting the City Council to approve the participation of an "End the War" contingent in the annual Memorial Day parade, including anti-war signs and banners, against a strong "pro-war" opposition.
Astrong proponent of progressive unionism, Betty was elected president of her local teachers’ union for two terms, fighting for teachers’ rights and in an important legal case still on the books in New Jersey she prevailed against her Board of Education’s strict policy regarding sabbaticals. Thousands of teachers have since benefitted from this action.
Retiring to Vermont, Betty found her place with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which opposed our governments’ support for right-wing, military-dominated governments in Central and South America. CISPES sent an observer from Vermont to El Salvador as a way of mitigating right-wing attacks on the population. Also while in Vermont, the Eagles worked for Bernie Sanders in his first two campaigns for Congress.
Betty loved all the arts. Good novels came first she also treasured classical music. From their Vermont home the Eagles created a European Classical Music Festival tour following the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They conducted these tours for fifteen years and in1989 the Mozart’s Europe Tour was awarded the Marco Polo Prize for excellence in travel by leading travel writer Arthur Frommer.
Moving to Oxnard, California in 1998, Betty found an opportunity for political and ideological expression in the fledgling Green Party. Helping with the party’s voter registration efforts, Betty served one term on the party’s County Council. In 2000, local Greens organized a rally for presidential candidate Ralph Nader that filled the Ventura College gymnasium. Betty and her husband were present at the first group convened by Dr. Robert Dodge and colleagues before the start of the first war against Iraq, which has since developed into Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.
Extending the Eagle family’s long time support for farm workers during the lettuce and grape boycotts of the 60’s and 70’s, Betty and Norman arrived in Oxnard and soon gave their unqualified support to the union at a critical time in its struggle to help the local mushroom harvesting workers in their actions to force the corporate employers to agree to a contract. In January of 2001, Betty and Norman were awarded a certificate of appreciation for "Dedication and Contribution to La Causa" from the UFW President, Arturo Rodriguez.
In 2007, the Eagles received the Earth Charter Award for their "Commitment to Democracy, Non-Violence and Peace."
Betty is survived by her husband of 58 years, Norman; her brother, Bernard; sister, Ruby; three sons, David, Jeremy and Harry; daughter-in-law, Nancy and two grand-children, Ali and Jesse.
She is dearly missed by all who knew this rare gem of a human being.
