Jack Battuello Memoir #1 - University of Illinois Springfield

Jack Battuello 61
Sign me up and sends me to Chicago. And I was walking out of the
office and he said, "~ey, Indian, come back here." Be said, "In
addition to reporting to Brennan Ford up in Chicago," he said--that's
the district manager up there. He said, "How about Tilly and the kids?"
Now think of this. He remcmbcred Tilly and the kids! hat's how
thoughtful he was. I said, "They're in ~ouisville." Well, he said,
"You're not going to 1-eave them down thcre." T said, "For a while."
He said, "You are like hell." He said, "I want you to go down there
and get them right now." And he said, "I know you don't have any
damn money." He sat down and wrote me a check for three hundred and
fifty dollars, and he said, "You go down there and get those kids and
Tilly loaded up and move them right to Chicago." I said, "I can't
pay this back right away, you know. Only as f get it." "That's all
right," he said. "Don't worry about it. " And he always forever when
he sent me, later on kc sent me down here and made me regional director
in Alton. I broke all these company unions in Alton, it was all company
union, And every time I had a Goddamn certification far a election
coming up the phone would ring and it would be Kay [who would] say,
"Do you need some money down there?" They are always forever using
money, you know. They want money to swing everything, Like the Nixon
crowd. And Z say, "Hell, if I have to organize with money I ain't
going to have a good organization." I'd say, "1'11 send you down
a . . . (tape ends abruptly)
A. What's our destiny? I think we ought to talk about this a little
bir. History is fine. We ought to learn from history but 1 think
we ought to be concerned maybe about our social conditions of today.
Our waywardness of today. Where art thou going? That's the good
question. Whar do you think, Nick? Nick won't answer. I can't get
Nick to say anything. He's with the Democrats now and Goddamn I got
to trcad cautiously here.
Q. Now you and Ray Edmunds were working together. I'm sure there's
not a single dat~ that you can set but when did that start cooling off?
A, The DuQuoin case wa.s the leader in subsiding the tensions and the
hatred there between the leaders. Like when we were . . .
Q. Like you and Ray Edmunds.
A. When we were working with United Mine Workers on the DuQuoin case.
Quite normally there would he a period of time where we discuss many
ramifications of the mining industry and the miners' union had our
problem. Our concerns, our own, "Where in "thc hell are wc going?"
We asked each other things like this. If the move was good that pasticular
moment, well, we elaborated and one wmd, one sentence led
into a paragraph and a paragraph became a chapter and the chapter
became the book. And we learned to trust each other at least in this
realm of discussion and it brought a good feeling, Oh, we could quitc
frantically say now killing ourselves like this in this factional
struggle is not only insane it's criminal, criminal and it leads to
Jack Battuello Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield