Becki Cohn-Vargas and Randi Thomson-Story

00:03 My name is Randy Thompson story. I'm 64 today is December 3rd 2015. I'm at the San Francisco Public Library and my friend Becky and I have been known each other since high school.

00:20 And my name is Becky Khan Vargas. I am 63 years old and today is December 3rd 2015. We're at the storycorps booth at the top of the San Francisco library and Randy and I have been friends for many decades. And so I thought I would be great for us to share our stories. So maybe we could begin Randy with you you seem to remember where we met every memory. I do remember it was a big year because our family moved to Palo Alto from Arizona and you know, I really wanted to be in California. So I was really thrilled we were there this summer of 1967 in Barron Park near Palo Alto and we moved to Redwood Circle and I start high school at Cubberley and you were in my junior year English class you gave her a report on I think it was suggested it Judaism.

01:17 And I had read a book sort of on that subject. So I talk to you after class and that's how we met literally don't remember exactly that those are really exciting times. Where is going strong in the San Francisco Bay area and we were lucky cuz we are so near the city. I don't know if you remember but there used to be those rock concerts and the park that's across street from Stanford Shopping Center West Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead the Original Palo Alto is in that Park maybe still is was at that time. Anyway, well, I thought it was going to be like La, you know, we were going to go surfing course. We went out to the beach at Half Moon Bay and more like I don't think so at least not without a wet saw so the good news was in Palo Alto that it was just incredible to meet people.

02:14 In a really rich educational setting and to have that opportunity to go to school there even in the public schools. It was it was a real Revelation for myself and my brothers and sisters we loved it will ask you that was too far family too because before we lived in Palo Alto we were actually in South Bend, Indiana. I hope and I felt like a fish out of water. There be one of the only Jewish kids there and I had started asking my elementary Years in New York city. So they are everybody's parents were Holocaust survivors in my oh my gosh, and then we moved to Indiana and I felt just really out of it and they were all wearing shoe boots. This was up to 50 before food is 62 Foods or where you don't have to take off your boots. You wear them. They're like shoes and their boots and you wear them all day and never going to cost a lot of money and so my parents said we didn't have enough money. My dad used to say we're going to have to sell the car if we buy you the shoe boots in the raccoon collar coat.

03:14 And it was so much better how much wormer for one thing. But you know, I was just thinking I have a story in this is about you going to public school in New York City the year we graduated from Cubberley. I don't think I was actually in the ceremony cuz I was somewhere else right then but you stood and now that you don't remember I do and you stood in line next to this guy and you started talking to him and it turned out you had graduated from kindergarten or something in the same Public School in New York. And yeah remembered each other at the I do remember even remember his name is Colin and his last name start with a B. So that was why we're in line alphabetically and self. I went to PS 152 with my own and somebody had written a book at that time called up the down staircase cuz there were I remember staircases to go up and staircases to go down. So it kind of my life was

04:13 Osborne action Carmel and my mom cried when he went to New York City from Carmel California. I can imagine my parents had met shortly after they came to the us over both Holocaust Survivors. My mom was from a family that was helped by people in England. And then my dad was a refugee in Shanghai and he lived there for seven years and he has to learn how to cook so you wouldn't be hungry. And so then when he came to the US he ended up getting drafted right away, which is kind of weird, but he was drafted into the army in Fort Ord and ended up working in restaurants in Carmel and he works so hard. He actually owned a restaurant when I was born and then but then he wanted to be a Jewish Cantor so he gave it all up. So the restaurant we move to New York City.... See I didn't know all that until I read your dad's book, you know within the last 10 years.

05:09 Yeah, I'm Within trailer looks like more about those days at Cumberland, What do you remember about going to high school?

05:17 It was

05:21 I remember just the excitement of meeting a lot of new kids. I was the new kid on the Block but I didn't feel like a fish out of water. I felt like I meant a lot of other kids that seem like they liked me a lot of people with parents that were involved in education or some kind of community work things like that. The type of things my parents are in two and I do remember I made a deaf. I made a decision that I never catch up in school. So I did not spend a lot of time studying with my rationale at the time but I spent as much time as I could with friends, you know, just spending time with friends and I remember we used to ride our bikes out to the edges of Palo Alto. There were these filled out there and remember we found the horses and they had rectangular little shaped pupils in your eyes.

06:21 I think the goats to have that was just kind of fun. And I also remember rolling around in fields of mustard. Bring when it rained. We also spend a lot of time at Mitchell Park. Oh, yeah. I remember that. I spent more time at Mitchell parks and you did hanging out with with people and there's a little bit of drug use that wasn't my thing. But on the other hand there was we're Pete kids that really didn't have any scheduled activities and you had a lot of scheduled activities. So I don't think you were there as much as I was but it was I considered Mitchell Park to be a

07:01 A neutral territory not my house, not your house, you know, we could meet there and kids were really creative. We had a really fun time. There was a guy who used to read fairy tales in a Scottish brogue, you know, I mean when you're in high school you think maybe that would sound silly but it was exactly the kind of thing. I really wanted to tell her I can kind of even see us sitting on one of the hills there and we were writing a play hipster. We're on a flywheel Greg Pennington in a trench coat or I don't know if that's cuz you don't have a church and it was some old-time garbage can but I can't remember what it was like a dad if it was a. Display and somebody ended up in the garbage can but I don't recall the whole story, you know, we did a lot of art to I had a class I taught for the Free University. I remember you could sponsor classes inside out of class.

08:01 Insane art and I put it in their catalog people like came to my house. We have to put our address and and I just had a bunch of art stuff out and now is my art class that I was doing for me that stuff was after high school, but I was actually on the cover of the Free by free University catalog one. I think I still have it at that was pretty sure it was you like in a real pose right on it like on a tree and then there was like a mirror image on the other side. So it sort of look like an insect by the time the whole thing was displayed. That was really interesting. Did you get involved in any of the political stuff? I was really big and all the antiwar stuff. It's not really I did do a seminar with Joan Baez and Iris and parole at the place. They owned up in the Santa Cruz Hills and couple people that you and I both knew were also involved in it and it was like a weekend where we live.

09:00 Learned to practice nonviolent resistance it was and

09:10 We were invaded by can I buy the Canadian Army? This was the scenario and we had to come up with nonviolent ways to resist this Invasion. I did not consider it a really successful experience, but it was a lot of fun and very creative and then you know the learning behind it the learning about Gandhi and those things was was exceptional. I remember marching in San Francisco. There was this huge anti-war Mart went up to Kezar stadium. And I remember you could see people thousands of people up and down the hill all you could just everywhere Direction you looked and we were marching as to war. We also stayed overnight at take my parents. Let me do this at the implant to protest night. We didn't ever go to things like that unless they didn't let us out for that and now we could go to the park.

10:10 It was really an interesting time. I also remember this little earlier marching when Selma happened. I think I was in Middle School. So it was a little earlier and I remember we March Downtown Palo Alto and our Rabbi went to Selma so that it wasn't there was a lot of talk about, you know, the world is changing. Do you remember like the values you had that how you got influence by that time, you know at that time. I mean, I would say that I had one overriding value and that was to

10:46 Get involved in the highest possible levels of Multicultural multi-ethnic living which I assumed the Bay Area could offer whereas Scottsdale Arizona offered nothing. We're so delighted to be out of there, but I would say that was the biggest thing for me and it was I was at the very beginning it was strictly a learning curve. You were probably we had there was a fan two families we knew in Arizona or Jewish. Other than that you were an and I didn't know their children very, well my parents knew the adults, but you were probably my first Jewish friend.

11:31 I made quite a few other friends in Palo Alto. But so basically that was my goal and ultimately my goal was to find a way to earn a living too. But you haven't high school so back then were you thinking about your own Japanese Roots at the time? Yes, we had been to obon festivals in like 15 cities in the country and where we lived in Colorado. It was like Hispanic Anglo and Japanese the three types of cultures ever to mute Indians do that. I didn't ever meet any but so I was used to being in Colorado where

12:11 You know, we move freely in these communities, but when we were ten, we move to Scottsdale, Arizona, where was like very

12:21 Scary how you walk down the street people throw beer cans at you and

12:27 You know, if a things like get out of the way old man, like I was walking to my godparents once and that happened just and the school give her some nice teachers, but I mean the level of educational educational expectations were pretty low and the kids were very focused on just what was popular at that time, you know, like strictly, you know, Caucasian 17 magazine stuff in the story. So yeah, I didn't like it. I was really explore real to be in Palo Alto and that's what I you know, totally focused on from there on out. So what did your parents really tell you about the Japanese roots in my family?

13:08 And my dad was born in Japan his mom is Japanese. His father was British and they left Japan because the military buildup before World War 1 and I'm so my grandfather had been wounded in South Africa in the Boer War and at that point in time and this was in the late eighteen hundreds, or maybe yeah, I think pretty much maybe early nineteen-hundreds. But you know, he decided quote that war is stupid and acted on that throughout his life and my grandmother wasn't thrilled about moving to the US but the alternative was to move to Kenya and she absolutely mixed it because there was no Japanese there that she knew of

13:54 So when they got here they came in as agricultural workers, which of course neither one of them was they were a big disappointment to the guy who sponsored them on his lemon farm, but eventually my dad and my grandfather found work as a world tour guide on Thomas Cook ocean liners think it was Thomas Cook. Well, that was the company at that time. They bought something else later but and they the family moved to Alameda where there was a Japanese American community. And once I was in the Bay Area, that was what I hope to re-establish my connections within more or less some what have been able to do over the years.

14:35 It's interesting. So let's think about but kind of leaving high school. So we were kind of in the throes of the sixties. Everything was all exciting a lot of alternative stuff. So I remember this is that story that you remembered that I didn't about his all I wanted to do is to go to UC Santa Cruz because that was like remember we went up there and they were the redwood trees and the community garden and it was like who cares about the college part? I just loved it and I didn't get in and then you remembered about somebody offered me his spot. Yeah a friend of ours. Remember Chris he was accepted at Santa Cruz and we were

15:18 In our last year at Cubberley we were in what was that class? It was freeform. I think you were like, why was it was I invented it? We got teachers to let us have a class that had no content. The sea was totally student-initiated content and I actually had two to two hours of it. So I was into of it and I think I was only in one. Yeah, I mean that was I don't know. I guess I have enough credits I could do this and so we were able to we could do whatever we wanted. But of course there was some pressure that we would produce something. So at that time there was a book that was written call the population Bomb by Paul are like, he's a professor at Stanford people should have listened to him about you know that you had this really. But anyway, so we brought him to the school this what are class today. We brought him to the school and then we made a slideshow on went and ever.

16:18 Class like social studies class into the presentation of population explosion and it was I learned so much in that cuz I remember actually went to Planned Parenthood as part of it because I was Planned Parenthood is part of like chocolate making sure that the population didn't explode. It's really sad to see what they've done to Planned Parenthood all these years later after all Planned Parenthood is done. But anyway, the other thing we did was we had this Utopia activity. I don't know if you were neither of these and there were five of us pretending that we were on a island and what would we do? What kind of world would you create an audio tape story? Wait, when when it started we were in New York reading this wonderful thing and then we started having conflict in the story of that. We had invented it and

17:16 So that doesn't my to project you remember your project tonight? Yeah, actually, I think this is where we're at tied in with that Joan Baez Iris and pearl Institute for the study of non-violence thing. I think that's where our our went and I specifically recall the guys which will bring us back to Chris the guys in the class registering is conscientious objectors. So clearly and see that the relationship was there. I don't recall if Chris did that but he got accepted to UC Santa Cruz during that year because people were also filling out college applications and he when he got accepted and you got accepted elsewhere but not their he literally wrote them a letter and said there's this wonderful student at my school and she deserves it more than I do and I want you to give my place in the

18:15 Beginning class next year to Becky was his mom meds. So she called your mom and I don't know they worked out the whole thing. But I I will never forget that cuz he was a very dear person and he actually I am anime UC Santa Barbara and he came down to visit man. And I remember that we camped out on the beach cliff when night and woke up in the morning and that's why police card rolled up just right up to where I sleeping bags or and said, this is really dangerous. You shouldn't do this and

18:53 Recently, we looked them up on Facebook and found out he was in the Philippines when we were preparing for this interview. And so I contacted him and he doesn't remember the story either a big impression on me. I really like him. We know I thought it was worth even bringing into this interview because such a generous thing to do. I wanted to mention something about my values at that time. I in 10th Grade, which is here before I met you my English teacher gave us an assignment at the beginning of the year were supposed to write the 10 most important things for us. And then we did it again at the end of the year and I still have that paper and so at the beginning of the year, I wrote summer vacation and boyfriend. I didn't have a boyfriend and just really superficial. Thanks. And then at the end of the year, that was my transformation year. I wrote a brain that thinks real thoughts and I wrote

19:53 Thank you for watching reloaded have a lemon the Andy had others I so you looked at your values again at the end of year. Where did you care about and what I see is that those are you said I have till this day that for some reason and I'm not sure if it was because of the Holocaust surviving parents and wanting to change the world because of what they went through or because of the sea season all that energy. That was there. I just got this really strong feeling of social justice, which is been something that stayed with me my whole life as with sounds like you're saying about multiculturalism in different cultures sounds like it's stayed with you the rest of your life, I kind of started out that way in Colorado and then I when we moved Arizona was like really shocking so coming to California, you know, my additional expectation was that I would be able to rekindle that and

20:53 Make a lot of new friends and you know find a way to

20:59 You know to exist support myself and so forth to work eventually in a contacts were I was comfortable.

21:11 So high school's over one last thing at the high school. Do you remember the early morning? Pick me up at 5 in the morning and muscle group in Yakima kayak in the do you remember that? The last thing we did each time was the guys would make up a big pancake in the shape of a peace symbol and then they throw it out onto the lake and then the Ducks would eat it and then we all went to the movie over that was wrong and the guys did a specifically remember that the guys did the cooking and it was a really

21:58 Amazing group of friends that we had them because some of them are more like you they had very structured Scholastic and extracurricular lives and some of them were more like me kind of like hanging out in the park and the little drug use this nap, but those two groups really got together for those picnics, you know, and I know it was your sister married to somebody from that group, right Bruce was in that group who wrote around in that case. Yeah and trust me. I don't remember Gina being there, but I guess she met Bruce and then they got married would be

22:43 I cannot I don't think they got married. Oh, gosh. I just think that that may be a different story for another time. But Nanny case. Yeah, those funny thing we did we did those picnics the next year as well when we are all the way at college and I didn't we came back together to one of them. Actually. I do remember that cuz I actually lived closer to Foothill park for a little bit when I went to college in Santa Barbara that that was also really wet cuz I was the year that the students burn down the Bank of America.

23:22 And I was also politically involved that was involved in anything about burning down any banks, but we had all these demonstrations against the war and they actually canceled. Well, they didn't cancel class but they allowed you to drop all your classes and take these anti-war courses and we'd sit on this hill outside of the Student Union and they'd be days like 500 kids students and then I'll Professor would tell us a history lesson and we got I got credit. I had to get that through UC Berkeley extension cuz it's so complicated now, but I have a little card on the day. We took over the computer center and I have like if they were punched cards and it says this card has tasted Freedom computer. That's funny. That's what I like. Us art meets peace protest, right? Oh my God at the time. I was working at the dry cleaners in Palo Alto and years later I met

24:22 Black woman and she was on the school board in Berkeley and I complained that when I had that job I ended up losing it to like a graduate student from Stanford. She goes. Oh, I'm so sorry. I took your job and she was the one that well, I don't know if it was the same cleaners, but she works at dry cleaners in Palo Alto when he was in grad student at Stanford like oh my God, please don't take it personal that was funny at first year in college. It was like so crazy. I remember that. I was taking a harp lessons because you could sign up for harp lessons at College. I got why not? So one day I was going to practice my heart but the students had blocked the put soap in the lock. So I was saying I was like, wait a minute. I'm picking the soap off a lock to go into the music section and play the harp. So it was a lot of questioning about what we were doing is so at the end.

25:22 That school year I made the decision to go to Israel because I think that was possibly like the the most powerful place for my parents point of view. If it was not at a time when students were going abroad with Mike study abroad. I just stopped going to school and I went but the very last night before school is out. I was all packed and ready to go. We have a demonstration cuz they had better rested the people who was supposedly burned down the Bank of America, but it wasn't really the people who burned it if they if they picked on all the radicals. So 300 of us were out there demonstrating like that. They were picking the wrong person and we weren't going to stand for it. So I got arrested but I was underage I wasn't 18. So first I got taken to the jail, but then I got taken to juvenile hall and then I called my mother was a teacher you have to drive up here and pick up your daughter and my mother was like that wasn't exactly what I plan.

26:22 To do today, but she did a lot for me when I was like in those days and move his we'll come back to that. So anyway, so shoot so I arranged for my friend Susan who was going to Israel with me. Her mother was coming. I don't know how I pulled this off from inside juvenile hall, but her mother picked me up and they gave her permission to pick it's probably just as well that I didn't like waste the money to go to college, but I might not have, you know, made it through a year without a lot of support will so what do you remember about my mom? I remember your mom.

27:12 I think she's the only adult that really treated me very very well when I was that age.

27:22 I remember she took me with you on your college trip, and I think it was to Santa Cruz.

27:30 You know and I I wasn't applying any colleges. I didn't have any money. I actually already wasn't living with my parents.

27:41 And I have to the state I just

27:45 Remember her take very good care of me and really treating you with an incredible amount of respect. And I remember other families that were somewhat associated with actually treating me really like a street person which I sort of was at that point, you know after we graduate.

28:05 I'm glad you said that cuz we never had this conversation. Your mom was asked to Brightest adult light.

28:16 In my life at that time, really?

28:20 I kind of took her for granted and I don't fear for crafts with amazing memories to go to your house after school and it's when I was a senior. I didn't live with my parents Gene and I are kind of staying with another family in Palo Alto cuz my parents had to go back to Arizona and

28:39 Your mom was so cool. She used to we'd all sit at the table. This would be like on a Friday evening like before Sabbath started for you guys, and she'd have us over after school and she'd have a cup of hot water in front of each of us. And I think that's probably you me and your sisters maybe for young people and she would run around the tea bag and dip it three times a week to Cup and we call it tea and she always, you know, Tata something and she'd sit down and she really I mean, if course it was your sisters and me and she I never once felt like the the local orphan there anything and I wasn't, you know, we weren't my sister and I weren't living with her parents at that time. We were kind of a run.

29:30 And I'm strange terms with another family who are also I will say extremely good to us. But yeah, I just remember your mom she was

29:40 I just never had been treated by an adult that well before that. She she really young.

29:49 I don't know. You know, she she wasn't condescending and she wasn't.

29:54 Overly protective but she was a wonderful listener and she every time I saw her I never saw her that she didn't share some cultural thing, you know, cuz it would be Friday night. So it's the start of you guys stab it since stuff. She was a really sharing teacher and a person and I just stopped and you know, she would took me on your college trip. Oh my gosh, we better move on moving on because I didn't really get to appreciate her until many many years later when I came and became a creek on director in the Palo Alto school district and I realized she's been teaching there for 30 years and how everybody loved her and thought she was just such a wonderful person and I she died the year the year I got there. So I got to be with her and I got to see how everybody loved her and respected her but I I kind of wish right.

30:54 All right, you resemble her in mini? Excellent ways probably without even realizing how much she did for other people went. Well, I'm sure you realize some of it. But yes, she was she was exceptionally was the only adult my life at that time that really gave me.

31:10 Excellent feeling about myself

31:14 Well, you know it and I feel like I said I took her for granted cuz you know, I'm now five years. I was born five years after she got to the United States and shoot they had to flee Germany for their life. There are kristallnacht. The soldiers are banging on the door at their house and they they had to sneak out the back door and luckily That Got Away and got helped by this family in England. But you know, I was always like judging. Oh, my mother was not as Progressive as I was she was she was a revolutionary, but I got to appreciate her much more than we were all like first generation immigrants trying to in our family was more just trying to figure out a way to earn a living at my when I was in high school. And so but your dad was a professor somehow. I don't know how he managed to get straight there, but I think it's cuz he

32:09 Start in the Bay Area which was why I had such high hopes for being in the Bay Area for myself. You know, what being in the rest of the country, but Colorado is good, but Arizona was not good but looks fast forward what lives on a communist exactly with nowhere else to go with some guy has nothing better to do. That was all that in many ways that way for 6 months. We were like went skinny-dipping in the creek and we baked bread and we hiked and then you had those two great dogs and we go there was a beaver dam there. No, I mean it was a great place, but it was like retiring before you ever worked for me for a short time. Then we move to another place in Oregon and actually got married because I was like embarrassed be living with some guy, you know, although he was actually a wonderful person and I still highly respect him, but you know,

33:08 That was a mistake and ultimately I got back to the Bay Area and was able to be in the East Bay where it's a lot less, you know intellectual. I didn't have a college education. I found since then you don't ways to support myself and be part of you know the community I really felt like I fit into as opposed to Palo Alto just cuz it's you know, financially more upper-middle-class and I certainly have never gone to Stanford War. I know a way to get to the Bay Area but you've done some amazing things. I mean you are like part of the Berkeley housing scene for like 20 years or something. Yep tilts to a little bit that I would also say before housing. It was a disability rights movement. Which was a really high point for me. I don't know what to say about it. But you know, I I help start a really really low income.

34:07 Cooperative owned housing in Berkeley with a new structure called a mutual Housing Association because nobody ever could afford to actually before me housing Co-op not even a limited Equity one and you know, I'm still associated with them that crosswords Village at the corner of San Pablo and University and you know, so I did that and I would say the other thing I've been really involved with for years was like disability rights work. So yeah, you've done that and then I guess we need to mention those and I aren't you know separately doing other things all that time.

34:44 Yeah, I was going to say I then what it my path led me to Nicaragua in 1983 so that still goes back because I believe that there was an error there was a revolution and I were doing amazing things and I went to be part of the Ministry of Education. So I went down there 1980 live there for 3 years. How do I know what year? I think you visited outside and I married my husband still married to now 30 years later. What a guy and we still go back and forth to meet at our we have our little private ring Force Reserve, but you haven't been to yet of our monkey that where that We rescued and we bring college students are so someday you have to come down to my king is what we call it. So I guess we've had our friendship.

35:44 Well, the good news is cuz we live near each other in in the East Bay now, so that means great because we see each other more often and what do you think? What would you say is the reason we stayed friends and stay connected exactly. What I was going to ask you that's my surprise question. Why were you interested in meeting me when I was in high school do you recall? Well, I can't say exactly what I remember but I really like you you're always been really spunky. You're really accepting like you're like the most accepting person. I know, you know, like I'm much more accepting than a lot of people I know like I'd like to spend everybody but you like everybody and you see the best in people and that's a wonderful thing. I think we do share this passion for making the world a better place and you've always been really interesting thing. So you you know the housing and the and the we're all your friends in the disability rights movement.

36:44 Go to meeting all of them. We're both in interracial relationships and value culture. You haven't mentioned your husband used to say something about it. Can you say that when you met your husband that you current as we've been married for all my God, I think I've been married for almost well over 20 years and I remember when I felt ready to get married. I shared that with my friend Louisa and she was working at the co-op grocery stores and can use to deliver bread there. So she and her friend Ethel came upstairs into the coop where you know, we were living at the time all of us Louisa will not as all that anyway, and they said to me have we got a guy for you because Lewis and I used to go to the Berkeley why we sit in the steam room and and I just meant that I was ready to get married. I want to meet anyway, so they had a guy.

37:44 Turn out to be my husband can from Ohio from the steel mills of Ohio and my husband and we have three kids. They're all grown up. So it's 37 now and just like our lives continue you worked with her. Just in the last month you were working together and then Melania who just got married to a girl that she met in 4th grade. She's been friends whenever maybe I'm just lunch and then going to be sorry. You took care of your husband when he was sick. Yes, he did and it really made a difference if necessary. You can have some hospitalization coming up. So yeah.

38:26 So I guess I wish we had more time as I we had does zip through the second part of our relationship, but it was wonderful talking about all this. So thank you. Yeah.