Jane lives on through her actions in our world. She is woven into the lives of so many working people, and certainly to the trajectory of my life .
I first met Jane when I was working as a city carpenter at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. I was shop steward, and our crew’s assignment was to install plexiglass inserts into existing asbestos core doors in our poorly ventilated shop. We took samples for analysis and were immediately threatened by management. Jane was our contact in the White Lung Association, and was my conduit to solidarity, advice and support for working within and fighting outside the union. Jane supported us in our job action, and remained with us down the road when we organized to found a civil service division of the UBC with rank and file representation.
Throughout the years, our lives continued to intertwine as we worked together with rank and file unionists fighting against corruption and for fair hiring hall practices, for health and safety and chronicling women in the trade unions.
As Jane was writing Sisters in the Brotherhoods, we talked for hours about the struggles of women in the trades, and of the history of the United Tradeswomen organization founded in the earliest days of women breaking into the construction trades. She encouraged and helped us to tell our stories truthfully, to look back reflectively and to preserve our history for those to come after us. Long after I left the trades to pursue a career in medicine, Jane kept me informed and connected to my working sisters and brothers.
When I visited her in hospice her room was full of fellow trade unionists, talking animatedly. Laying there, too weak to move, surrounded by love and solidarity, she acknowledged with gentle humor, that she was done with the struggle, but that it was ours to continue.