| In memoriam |
Herman Bates, early AFT 1493 & DART activist
Herman Bates came originally from Indiana. He began working in the District in 1971, joining the faculty at Cañada College just a few years after the college first opened. Herman taught Psychology for some years at Cañada before moving to Skyline College. When Herman moved to Skyline he became a counselor, and spent the rest of his career in the District as a Skyline counselor. Herman was involved in AFT Local 1493 from the early days of the union. As Pat Manning, one of the original AFT 1493 leaders, recalled in a recent email message: “Herman was active in the AFT during the first collective bargaining campaign in 1978. I remember him as a pleasant and dependable person.” Later Herman was a member of the AFT Executive Committee from 1987 to 1993, when he retired. He then began working on a Post Retirement Contract from 1993-94 through the 1996-97 academic year. After retiring, Herman became very active in the District Association of Retired Teachers (DART). He was the President of DART from 1992 to 1997. During the time that Herman served as the President of DART he continued to attend all AFT EC meetings as the representative of all District retirees, regularly bringing to the attention of AFT members issues of concern to retired faculty members. Herman followed all legislation affecting retired teachers very closely, and frequently wrote articles for The Advocate on retiree issues. After stepping down from the DART leadership, Herman and his wife, Joyce, lived in La Conner, Washington and McMinnville, Oregon. George W. GothJune 23, 1943 – November 28, 2009
George Goth, Skyline College Chemistry and Physics Professor, long-time AFT 1493 Executive Committee member and founding editor of The Advocate, died on November 28, 2009, of cardiac arrest with secondary causes of respiratory failure and complications due to Type II Diabetes.
A memorial for George was held on January 15, 2010 at the Berkeley City Club. To see the program from the memorial, including numerous remembrances and photos of George, click here. Two of the speakers at the memorial were Paul Goodman, fellow Skyline Physics Professor and longtime office mate of George's, and Dan Kaplan, Executive Secretary of AFT 1493. Copies of Paul's and Dan's remembrances are included below. Paul Goodman's RemembrancesGeorge and I were colleagues and office mates at Skyline College for about 25 years. In 1980 George had been teaching chemistry at the College of San Mateo and had requested a transfer to Skyline to ease his commute. The first time I met him was when I walked into the physics lab and saw this slightly rumpled and bearded We were Skyline’s physics department. George enjoyed teaching the premeds and I took the engineering students. We were both more theoretical than experimental: neither one of us could figure out the business end of a screwdriver, although George did design some ingenious experiments for his students. I recall one, I believe it was called “Hair — The Experiment,” not to be confused with “Hair — The Musical.” Each student would pull out a hair, mount it along a slit cut in an index card, and then shine a laser light on it. From the resulting diffraction pattern thrown on a distant wall they could calculate the diameter of the hair. The students loved it, and George loved the fact that they loved it. It was always the high point of his semester. As officemates we were a bit like the Odd Couple: George’s Oscar Madison played against my Felix Unger. Fortunately we had a floor-to-ceiling bookcase separating our halves of the office so I didn’t have to see his papers strewn randomly about, and he didn’t have to see my books neatly lined up in alphabetical order by author. Our weekly department meetings consisted of lunch at Jo Anne’s Cafe on El Camino Real in South San Francisco. George always ordered the soup of the day and nearly always spilled half of it down the front of his sweater. We enjoyed ourselves telling jokes, reminiscing about growing up in New York, and arguing politics. Occasionally we would even talk about the physics curriculum. George always divided the bill proportionately to the penny, and he always kept the receipt so he could claim a deduction on his tax return. The man was frugal. George had a phobia about driving across the Bay Bridge, actually any bridge; so if he didn’t commute with the carpool, he would take a San Bruno bus to the Daly City BART station and then take BART to Berkeley. One semester he had a Monday afternoon lab that didn’t finish until 6 pm, and then a Tuesday morning lecture George’s students had a genuine affection for him. They adored the fact that he was a little absent minded, a little disheveled, always had something offbeat but fascinating to offer them, and made himself available whenever they needed him. His patience with students was stuff of legend. George was emotional — more than you might think. He could cry as easily as he could laugh. When something moved him the emotions would suddenly bubble up, and tears would literally just squirt out. Then it was over, as suddenly as it had begun. He could, at times, seem aloof, but perhaps that was because he knew how easily he could lose control. He became an expert at the fine art of intimacy at a distance. George loved the Berkeley City Club. After he retired we would get together every few months for lunch in the club’s dining room, and then sit in a couple of big leather chairs and catch up. If he were here today, part of him would be horrified at all the attention, but the greater part would be touched by the tribute. He’d be squirting tears all over the place. In the Jewish religion (mine, not his), when someone dies, there are many prayers said over them. One of them is “zichrono livracha,” which translates from the Hebrew as “may his memory be a blessing.” So long, George — zichrono livracha.
Dan Kaplan's Remarks
My name is Dan Kaplan, and I have been the Executive Secretary of AFT Local 1493, the San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers, since June of 1994. By the time I arrived on the scene, George Goth had already made a huge contribution to the history of this union, which is the collective bargaining agent for all of the faculty in the San Mateo George was the founding editor of The Advocate, the newsletter of AFT Local 1493, from the time of its first issue in 1977 until 1988. The California Federation of Teachers, of which AFT 1493 is an affiliate, has published a wonderful history of this organization. In the chapter on AFT Local 1493 there is a section that discusses “The Approach of Collective Bargaining: 1972-1977” where it is mentioned that “The lively and contentious pink flyers were now replaced by the more professional Advocate, expertly edited by George Goth until 1988.” In another section of the chapter it is mentioned that later “a newsletter committee (it took a whole committee!)” was required “to replace George Goth as editor of The Advocate, with Eric Brenner in charge, assisted by Bernie Gershenson.” But that was not the end of George’s union activism. He then became the Secretary of AFT Local 1493, and took the minutes of every one of our 9 meetings each academic year from 1988 until 2004. For all these years, the minutes that George took for each meeting were approved the following month by the entire Executive Committee. It is interesting to note that George was also, as I just found out, the editor of The Record, the newsletter of the Berkeley City Club. Clearly George enjoyed being involved in the editorial work of every organization that he belonged to. I used to drive George home from meetings of the AFT Executive Committee because we both lived in Berkeley. We soon discovered that we both were eclectic and voracious readers. On the way home we talked about philosophy, history, literature, poetry, and the theatre, in addition to union issues and politics more generally. I would like to end by quoting from an article that George wrote for the March/April 1988 issue of The Advocate, shortly before he stepped down as its editor. It is a front-page article entitled “Part-Timers: Qualified, Motivated, & Exploited”. Every one here today who knew George will recognize his voice and the values he articulated so well in this article. In a section of the article titled “Where Blame Lies” George writes: “Let’s take the full-timers first. Now actually I consider myself pretty virtuous on this issue. For one thing, I was a part-timer myself, back before the wheel, and I know the dread you feel in your bones when you are running around without any health insurance. Also, I am proud to say, I’ve been working with the AFT ever since I’ve been employed in the district and the union has been, and remains, the only faculty organization in this district that has continually spoken out on the part-timer situation. Spoken out and taken action, I may add.” Later in the article George goes on to say: “Second, and this is so obvious I almost hate to write it, is that we are not here to make a profit. We are here to educate people. Particularly, we in the community colleges are here to educate those who, for one reason or another, are not going straight from high school to Phi Beta Kappa. A lot, and I mean a lot, of them are going to be taking remedial And then George says this: “Finally, a word or two hundred to my part-time colleagues. You simply have to get together on this. You’ve been divided and conquered and nothing else really matters. If you’ve written a novel, been awarded a prize, been worshipped by your students, it simply does not count. You will be treated like a peon until you and the 500 other peons in this district and the twenty thousand other peons in this state make one hell of a ruckus, in unison. A magic full-time position will not open up for you and you alone. If full-time positions do open up and they should open up in droves, it will be because you have gotten the word out on the situation. Gotten it out to your students, gotten it out to the administration, gotten it out to the public. “Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The quiet wheel ends up 39 years old wondering if it is too late for a career change. “Also, I have decided (I am the Editor and I get to decide these things) that a regular feature will be an interview with a part-timer regarding his/her situation. If you would like to be interviewed, please contact me at Skyl ine.” That was George. |
fellow telling a joke to a student. The joke went right over the student’s head, but George was having a good hearty laugh anyway. We hit it off immediately. His position at Skyline was to be half physics and half chemistry while mine was half physics and half mathematics. We had both grown up in New York suburbs, probably not more than 10 miles from each other, although we had never met before this. We were both from working class families: his father had been a bus driver and mine sold seafood in the Fulton Fish Market. Neither one of us had much patience with pretension. We both had a New York directness that each of us found refreshing and familiar. We had similar senses of humor and enjoyed telling jokes.
that was scheduled for 8 am. He thought it too much trouble to take a bus and BART home from Skyline and then reverse the procedure early the next morning, so he decided to spend Monday nights sleeping in the office. One particular Monday in February he brings in his sleeping bag, thermal pad, radio, toothbrush, and NY Times, and prepares for his office campout. He strips down to his underwear, crawls into his sleeping bag and settles down for the night. He wakes up at 3 in the morning to go to the bathroom. He opens the office door, steps into the hallway, and watches in disbelief as the door closes behind him, and locks. There is nothing he can do. He sits down on the floor and waits for the inevitable humiliation as students and faculty wander in later in the morning. As luck would have it, there is a janitor in the building doing nightly maintenance work. The janitor comes down the stairs and opens the stairwell door to the hallway where he sees George, on the floor, in his boxer shorts. George jumps up and runs toward the janitor trying to explain what happened. The janitor, who happens to be deaf, freaks out. He turns around and runs back up the stairs with George running after him. This Marx Brothers movie finally comes to an end as George trips and skids along the newly waxed floor. Eventually, with some creative hand gesturing, George manages to convince the janitor to unlock the door. The incident did not dissuade George from continuing to sleep in the office on Monday nights, but now he would always wear a key around his neck.
Community College District. This means that AFT Local 1493 represents faculty at Skyline College, where George spent most of his teaching career, but also faculty at the College of San Mateo, and at Cañada College. The union represents over 700 Part-Time faculty and slightly over 300 Full-Time faculty members.
and preparatory classes. It should be readily apparent that these programs deserve the most intense scrutiny in order to achieve the goal of preparing these students for more advanced courses. It is these programs that need full-time professional people. Yet, it is these programs that are staffed by part-timers who, as stated, are unable to inform or advise students because often they are uninformed as to departmental policies, unable to plan their own professional careers in education, unable to meet with students because they have to fly off to West Valley to teach another class. It is completely ridiculous.”