Jim Hirsch and Laurie Laz

00:00 My name is Jim Hirsch. I'm going to be 67 in August. Today is June 10th, 2021 and I am in Madison, Wisconsin with my wife Laurie Laz, who is conducting this interview?

00:17 My name is Laurie Laz. I'm 66 years old. Today is June 10th, 2021. We're recording in Madison, Wisconsin, and I'm interviewing my husband.

00:31 Jim, we've been wanting to do this for a long time, or I've been wanting to do this for a long time. And I talked with all kinds of of memories of personal, our personal relationship, for the past 45 years. I wanted to talk to you, more about your professional life, specifically about values created or supported your vision. That's guided your professional life in the various things that you've done.

01:10 Since you know, whenever a first of all in order to do that effectively, I feel like we need to go back back, you know, so I want to talk to you at least briefly about your childhood. And when you reflect upon influences and events from your childhood, that scared you to wear your life, when you know, what are some of those things? What really stands out.

01:40 I remember my father being an aluminum siding salesman and telling stories about the Tin Man and a tall the rockets that used to run and how funny they they thought that was and and how much money they made and and how much pride they took and selling aluminum siding to somebody who had a brick house and my father was also a a gambler and would scorebig after a sale and go to Las Vegas. And my older brother used to go on calls with him and, and they had, they had a closer relationship at one time. I asked to be to go long. I don't remember how old I was. I was pretty young. I must have been 7, ate something like that, maybe even younger and and we were sitting in somebody's living room in my father was making the pitch and he had the sample board and he says a live

02:40 Inside and doesn't doesn't scratch chip flake or peel you said you can scratch it with a quarter and there will be any damage and I pulled a quarter out of my pocket and I ran it across the sample board to approve my father. True. And of course there was a deep scratch in the the sample board in that was me the end of the sale and that was the last time I ever went out on a call with my father, there were other experiences like that. And I know he was embarrassed and I was embarrassed for him and pretty early on that that help set for me. The idea that I didn't want to be that I didn't ever want to put my children in a situation where they had to be embarrassed for me or by me.

03:33 That you had that experience. You see what you must have been like early Elementary main Elementary, something like that. Okay, so that was embedded in your idea about professional life. So you had a job in high school working for people. You cared about did did they validate your feeling about what a positive professional experience as well, which is after my parents were divorced. My mother went to work.

04:16 And I remember her not only not only having a full-time job is a secretary but taking ironing. Then I remembered going to with her to pick up baskets of ironing for other people that you would go home and iron and then take these things back in order to make money too. Good to keep us going to. So that that created kind of a different, a different section of working and the need for the responsibility. For the one I was I was still in high school. I used to go to a clothing store, the store, I need the owner of the store is the person. I bought my bar mitzvah speech from any open does his own store and I used to go there and visit because they had a big jar of Tootsie Rolls on the counter and I used to eat the tootsie rolls and then I would just talk to the to the to the other salesmen there.

05:13 And eventually they just said, why don't you just come to work for us? If you're going to eat all the tootsie rolls? And they gave me, they gave me a job as a stock boy, part time when I was in high school and it was a, it was a really, really fine men's clothing store that was owned by a person who had really high standards if it was. And since then, I've talked to other people in in that industry from that time from other cities who knew about the store to the reputation of the store, at how well they did. And it was something I was, I was always really proud of. So I was proud to work there and I was proud to work for somebody. You cared that much and and maintain such a great environment. They were known for their customer service.

06:08 I saw they had they had Taylor's that that work in that did the basement. They were all Italian tailors in on Saturday when NPR would would play operas. It would all be singing opera at the top of their and it was a great experience. And I learned my first important than, which is, there is always something to do with a retail store. So I feel like, you know, that those experiences that you described really contrast with things that you talked about with me about your childhood kind of phone other other influences. That didn't make you feel as good about some, you know, other aspects of personal life and things like that. So as you complete sort of this game is 0 to 18. Of your life and you've had, you know, those work experiences in your head.

07:08 To be responsible for yourself at that point in time. Did you have or what was your vision for what, your life was going to be? So I can have a vision when I was in high school. Probably up until I was sixteen years old. I suffered probably for what was. Could diagnosable is depression. I was always depressed.

07:39 Unmotivated I just I didn't do work. I didn't really do much of anything and there was probably a watershed was what I was 16 years old. I ran away from home and took a Greyhound bus to Toronto and buy lock. Found a wonderful person who worked at the University there. When I was looking for temporary housing for a. Of time before I came back and then when I came back, that was kind of went where I made started to make the change and then I went to work for, I went to work for the clothing store on. That was really there in the first place that I began to have some real personal sense of sense of worth.

08:37 Prior that I didn't have a vision. I didn't have a plan. I was just just reacting to Haley and and trying to get through day by day, trying to ease the pain.

08:55 Better if you do inspiration number one, there's somebody who makes a difference to you professionally and and also the other personal people who helps you, you know, at that point in your life.

09:06 I know but you have some pretty profound experiences in those next few years that took you in an entirely different sort of Direction professionally in Canada that you first encountered, the ufw organizers a little bit about that because that was such a, a major turn out that you've heard before. There was a fellow, who was a anti-war protester in Milwaukee connected to the Catholic Worker house and have that. He spoke in a high school class that I had. That was important to me. And I took a class in high school. This is after I think this was the last year, after I return from running away from me, and then the name of the class was facing reality.

10:09 Writing a CREDO, your your system of beliefs, your statement of beliefs. And and so I went through that and we were introduced to this to this protester and I and I was impressed by him in the Catholic Worker movement, and he introduced me to Thomas Merton who was in Trappist, famous book, called seven, Storey mountain. And I read that book and I was After High School.

10:43 Pretty shipless hitchhiking around and I wound up in Montreal and I was going to go to the youth hostel and it was closed and an everybody spoke. And I I didn't know what to do, or where I was and I somehow went to the phone book and looked up this Monastery cuz I think I remember reading about in his book and I took a Subway in a bus out to open it, which is a little town outside of Montreal, and rang the bell at the gate after it was probably around Sundown. And I was was invited him and and I wanted spending six months there. They were, they were kind to me and I met interesting people there, who, who is my education, but I started, I started migrating back and forth or commuting back and forth from the monastery to the Montreal.

11:41 Where I became introduced to the Catholic Worker house in Montreal, so, I was at the Catholic Worker house at Montreal one night, and they said, Jim, there's a meeting tonight and we don't have anybody who can go to it. Can you go to it for us and, and come back and tell us what what happened? And I said, sure, and I went to this meeting and it was, it was Dolores Huerta and Marshall Ganz. And the anti Catholic priest, whose name? I forget. And they were in in Montreal in 1973.

12:20 Getting getting ready to restart the day, the grape boycott and the lettuce boycott. And so, I sat through that meeting on. I met these leaders of the Farm Workers Union and I became part of the Montreal support committee. And then, and then at some point. Shortly thereafter, Caesar came to town.

12:44 And and was speaking at a rally that was headlined by mattamy. Ian day, whose husband had just been murdered that I didn't know anything about that in the US, but it was covered in the Canadian press. And, and so, I, I helped organize his, his visitor. I didn't help organize his visit. The one of the things that I was asked to do, was be part of his security detail just to be another body Caesars Security, and to travel with him for the day that he was in Montreal. So I just accompanied him and Marshall and Dolores. Through Montreal through the poorer sections, in Montreal in particular for a day and a night and supposed to stay awake while he slept that night and and then the following morning,

13:40 And after that door said, if you're ever in California,. So I didn't know that they said that to everybody unless they were desperate for volunteers. But sometime later the following was recruited to work full-time for the United Farm Workers Union.

14:08 You, when you first arrived in California, if your dad was living in San Francisco at that time, is that where you headed first? That I was recruited to work for the ufw and they sent me to the boycott in San Jose and the California boycott was different from the Boy Scout offices in other parts of the country. Because we were so close to particularly to Salinas, which is where let us organize it was going on. Until we got to the Farm Workers movement in the best part of three years, working full-time, 10-12 hours a day or more for $5 a week.

15:06 Selling Justice for Parmer County.

15:16 So that was also not just not just an experience that

15:25 Validated some of your core values, your personal values about how people should be in and what they should care about, but it also introduced you to the union and the end, the labor movement. And yes, I'm so in the course of that, your your work for the Farm Workers Union and the other volunteers that you encountered and and people that you met, did that, broaden your introduction to the labor movement, and specifically, for sure, the support for that the same reasons, for going back to the experience with my father, as I wanted to be real. And so, so I read everything I could read about organizing in, in, in farm labor history, and then that led me to to learn more about about the labor movement in general, and the fundamental principle

16:25 That. Organize workers, which is social justice. That that corresponding very well with what I was doing with the farm worker. A people should spend their lives. I have to believe that, you know, one of the, the key experiences for you was kneading bread and Jenny Hurst during that period of time. Am I correct? That was after I thought it was, but I might have met them once or twice in the course of your work with dinner. But I don't think so much Fred someone like, you know, that that there was a strike, let's say, in Salinas in and they needed they needed beans or they needed food was one of those guys who were

17:25 Show up with 300 pounds of beans if if that's what the call was for. But but it really wasn't until after I left the Farm Workers Union that that I walked up moving in to Jenny's house. I want up living there and that's when I really got to know from you and it was after I after I left the shop, but was that relationship Thibodeau in? You're getting so connected to the Santa Clara County. The agricultural Labor Relations. Act was passed in there was some issues.

18:18 + 478.

18:27 And,

18:29 Yeah, I guess the end of 78 and I needed a place to live. I've been working for $5 a week plus room and board. I didn't have any money. I didn't consider that, I have any skills. And and somebody said this, this person used to be a volunteer for the Farm Workers. Maybe they'll take you in. I went and met her. She said, sure you can live here while you're getting getting your legs under you. And I met her husband who say that you should be a carpenter. He was a union, plumber, and son-in-law was a union carpenter. And he explained to me why I would want to be a union carpenter instead of a non-union that made perfect sense to me. Sorry. I went through all the steps that I needed to do to get into the apprenticeship program will be at my first job as a carpenter. And and then, excuse me, I learned a lot about

19:19 The Union at their table living at sitting at their, at their kitchen table and having conversations at night and going to my own Union meetings.

19:29 Regularly and, and believing what I knew about unions from the Farm Workers Union, thinking that applied to all units that everybody and that's what we should be working for.

19:49 One of the things that we you and I have talked about recently based on a book is that whole idea of rethinking yourself and making that, you know, your story of coherent story as you're going through these changes in your life at various points. At at this point. It feels very cold here in you know, it does it feel that way to you or you were they surprised and changes as you encounter them natural growth from there. We made a decision to live Dallas can and confirm that point forward. I believe that that was the my purpose in life.

20:47 Was was to serve was essentially today. I mean, what what is the reason? What is the reason for it to be alive? It's to serve God. How do you serve God, you serve God by loving and how do you love people? You love people by serving got so so what was that? That was kind of done everything from there. Just kind of spread out Anthem seem like like a new opportunity and to continue to live that life.

21:34 In your story, we are now connected, not by marriage, but but we are friends at this point. So some of the things that that I'm, I probably will, you know, ask you about. I have some familiarity with and

21:53 I know that it was a big leap for you. When you were asked to work as staff for the Carpenters Union. You were very young. You're only 25 years old and leave the most business agents were significantly older than you and I had significantly more experience with your local and, or somehow in the in the union. So, how how did that happen? How did you? I mean, the ufw experience is dramatically different from United Brotherhood of Carpenters, at that point. I was getting receiving guidance and support for me.

22:41 They were old laborer old labor radicals from from way back and said already told me that they had of the Carpenters Union, in Santa Clara County was a good guy, was a real good guy who had kids fought against discrimination in the Carpenters Union. In the early days and he had Pad Thai, baht against the leadership of the Carpenters. Union Jamaican Jamaican more representative. I knew that there was still young and and I got in trouble by Third Year apprenticeship. The most important class in your tire pressure at the time was a roof framing.

23:32 Because if you, if you were really a carpenter, you knew how to cut a roof, you could be a handyman to do a lot of the other things but it really took a carpenter. Especially that takataka play. I Am the nearest trigonometry involved and there was all kinds of skills. It was the perfect, melding of hand and brain and Trauma. In this class. I would people I've been going to school with for years who I really liked and and we had a teacher who was a little Mark meant. He was the kind of teacher who like to make an example out of sub and there was a fellow in that class and we went to school at night and so people would come there when they would work all day. They might have a beer or something while they're waiting for class to start cuz they work until 3:30 and class started at 6. I think, but they didn't want to drive all the way home and come back and and and this fellow was

24:32 Good-hearted guy. And at night, the carpenter would make us. He would make his comments and you would make us Wise Cracks and any would make everybody feel good and it would loosen the tension but it and undermine this this teacher's control of his class and he decided he was going to make an example out of this guy that made him sit in a corner with a dunce hat.

25:03 Alyssa sky with with a with a child already. And and when you're an apprenticeship, when you were in the apprenticeship program.

25:15 If you get kicked out of school, you can't be on. You can't be a carpenter. You can't be in the union that kick you out there and they take away your livelihood. And so this teacher was threatening. This guy's livelihood and and humiliating them that way. And at one point, I said something in the teacher said Mr. Hirst, you have a problem and I said, yes, you're my problem, and, and I got the class and there was more to it than that, but they said, micha's, they sent me to this. This guy who handled all the hard cases was the person who was supposed to, who was supposed to discipline the kids, the mean kids and keep them in line and let him know that that they had to call the rules. Are there going to be

26:05 And he heard what I did and he just kind of laughed and said, said, why don't we just put you in another class? I should know. These are my friends. These are the guys I've come up with us. If you put me in another class, makes it seem like the teacher was, right. I'm not going to do that and then he got it with me cuz I was making I was making real damn. Can I said I want to know who's in charge here?

26:35 Anyhow somehow or other I want them eating this, this John Rivera who is the head of the unit and a piece of your program is a joint program. It's it's it's labor and management. It's not the union. You tell that to the apprentices who are being threatened with their jobs that they don't believe that. So this is a reflection on the union. Well, a long story short, this person that the teacher was taken out of the classroom and and made a coordinator. And I was put back in my class and and all of the administrators for the apprenticeship program. And most of the businesses. I really hate it because they thought the hell is this this punk, you know, creating all this trouble and sometime later as as the union was getting ready for negotiations and they were pretty important negotiations. There's a rising open chat moving to California.

27:35 I was contacted by this, the executive secretary of the union and and and he asked me, would you like to help me organize for the strike? Would you be willing to do that?

27:50 All I had was getting my Farm Workers experienced 3 years is a carpenter and lots of lots of good stuff and you like that. So, so he offered me the job and of course, took it.

28:07 No, I've been married to you for 42 years, and I've never heard all those details.

28:16 So, we spent a lot of time on this, which I really enjoyed, but I'm going to take a bit of a leap now. So you spend a lot of time as a labor organizer. We left California and moved to Wisconsin.

28:31 And upon arriving in Wisconsin. You kind of took complete like you no left turn into business working as an estimator for a construction company, you know, helping our family to survive while I was teaching and things like that. And at that point in time, how did you feel about? You know, that this this investment that you'd had in the labor movement and and social justice and suddenly

29:07 Being be having to do the day-to-day of this, you know, much more mundane. I felt. I felt terrible. I felt in some ways, like, it was a betrayal of myself. I felt like it was at the trail of of the old-time made when I made the resolution and I just couldn't see any way out. I just thought I'm going to have to adjust going to have to figure out how to do this. Because what's most important now is taking care of my family's meeting that application. I'm not by myself anymore. I'm not just responsible for me.

29:52 So, enjoy doing that in in understanding obligations in that way, but still are recognizing that you had this. This some Foundation of things that you learned, then again, its core beliefs and this vision for what you needed to do, you found your way.

30:17 To get back to service within the structure of a business. And I feel like a big piece of that was when you ultimately metal, oil Drinker. Is that fair young? And I was, I was fortunate, I mean, even when I was miserable, but I work for a person. If I character, I work for maslowski Jim a sauce, keto, the second son and Bill mazeroski his father. We're both highly.

30:50 They have lots of integrity, and I don't know if without that experience. It's your first business was my first business experience. I don't know that that I would have continued to the feel the way I did, but they told me that you can run a business and and, and I'd be a decent person that you can that you can do things. You can file. The while you can, you can do the right thing, even if it's difficult. And you've heard some of those stories out of time for yesterday even actually, I met loyal drinker.

31:29 Who was was the epitome of the honest Thief, that he had it Integrity of his own? He had a very good company. They, they provided high quality service. He was the only restoration Insurance Restoration company that that use union carpenters. And and he was firing away, providing the highest-quality service, turn into inner-city residents in Milwaukee. And so so

32:13 And more through lots of steps do to wind up there, but I wanted working. I wonder if working for him and being introduced to disaster restoration and learning learning the trade that that has supported us for all these years.

32:31 So I remember, you know, how difficult those years were and how challenging that kind of work was, but I feel like there were ways in which you found another part of yourself in this, you know, your values and your your commitment to service in that that sealed. And I can, you, can you tell me when you realize that, that was something that you could do input. Means it could mean something very long.

33:09 Before before I saw what they did that the work that they did was putting people's lives back together after they suffered structure fires. And and I was part of my job was chasing. Fires was was selling work. Try and as I told prospective customers to protect them from my competitors who were really vile people. But so I was part of these people's lives from the moment of the tragedy from from the moment when they are in Shock standing in front of their house, watching it for watching the firefighters throw for their burning furniture out, the windows all the way through until they were put back into their homes. After they were reconstructed and they were able to reconstruct their lives and being part of that. I just felt I felt real good about that. I felt good about about the community and even chasing the fire.

34:09 All the people in the neighborhood standing on their front, lawn watching that and commiserating it, and having a shared experience of empathy. And and I and I I felt good about I felt good about this the service that we are providing the poor people and working people that that is the same care that rich people. Get it made a big difference.

34:39 At this point, then another leap ahead. I'm going to skip the, you know, the the next

34:46 Employment and go straight to your determining that disaster restoration was a field that you felt committed to and you wanted to do what your well.

35:00 So, you made the decision to spark the business. I could have never done that without your having given me growing a business by Paul.

35:14 Remember doing what you do? I don't know. I don't know how you found out. Why you twice? I did it but you, you gave me a used copy. I think I'm growing a business by Paul Hawken, and he essentially said that that as a business owner, you can, you can have a business, you can run a business as an expression of your own values that it can be a creative at running. A business is a creative act. And and that's the purpose. That's why you kept. Why you run a business, is it is if you can't write and you can't sing and you can't dance and you can't sculpt, you can always run a business up. To that point. I always thought I never wanted to be washing, some of that was the only training from the Trade union. I also believe just from my observation that any asshole can make money and I didn't want to be an asshole.

36:13 And so I read this book and and then I had a bad experience with unethical. People at that work in that industry. And I said I'm not going to do this. I'm going to start my own business and live to it to my value. So that was 1995 Christmas in 1995.

36:38 Don't think that you will ever be able to make clear to anybody in your family of your co-workers or anything. How hard it was to do that on your own to start that and I know that you had lots of organizational Health from Susan and Jerry and and how that was. That was so critical and in financial support in that. And from Bob have asked, and then

37:15 You, however, did that day-to-day of the starting of the business, and finding people and making it happen. So we only have a few minutes left. If there are a few key things that you want to say about this experience of

37:39 What became of from day one to today. Your your ideas going in to what it's become now with you sissy employees and and successful. Do you feel like it's reflecting what you were original intent was? I feel like, I feel like, I feel like I'm doing, I'm doing what I set out to do. I feel like I'm trying to make the world a better place. I feel like I'm trying to brighten my corner that that I'm trying to pay forward all the kindnesses that that other people have shown me and tried to be an example to other people who are growing up for my Sunday. Say, who might someday saying Chi, I'm really lucky. I got to work for

38:28 Ordinary peeling. I have to believe.

38:36 It's really important that you're you're able to who say that and while I know that, you know, there's so many frustrations that go with the two. What do you think you left behind for your, your kids of that vision? And we only have a minute left? I think I I I hope that I don't help. I know that my kids are embarrassed, by me, at least, by by the work that I do. It's 2 in the morning. If I think an example of a real life, where and you

39:33 That's right, and it's so so I have to believe that that nobody is embarrassed by what I do, but but that's what I feel like I've done is is, is is left is left besides providing for my family, live election example of of work that can be meaningful and rewarding.

39:57 I'm proud of you, proud of you.