tradeswomn musings

My Silver Linings Playbook

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

I should have canceled the hiking trip to Morocco and Portugal after falling on my deck. The X‑ray showed my ankle wasn’t broken — just a small fragment of displaced bone — and I convinced myself the pain would subside. They fitted me with a walking boot, and I left the hospital with cautious hope.

The trip was filled with mishaps, and so I have begun to frame it as a succession of silver linings. First thing: I forgot my passport and missed my flight. Unable to get on another, I took BART back to San Francisco, had a lovely dinner with old Bernal Heights buddies Judy and Diane, and slept on Judy’s blow‑up bed.

Judy K and I, Diane in her garden with Bernal Hill in the background, dog walking the next day at Holly Park with Judy K and Judy S

The next day, back at the airport with time to kill, I explored SFO’s International Terminal and found its quirkiest attractions: a roast‑your‑own coffee machine and a tiny theater showing shorts that felt like art‑school therapy. At a bar near the Lufthansa gates, the bartender poured a consolatory 20‑ounce IPA and chatted with me — mostly because I was the only customer. Lufthansa pilots were on strike and so their flights were canceled and the bar empty.

At SFO: part of a low rider bike exhibit, roast your own coffee

Standby meant more waiting, more near‑misses. I missed another flight because it was full, then met Lynn, a retired flight attendant of 35 years, who’d also left her passport at home. We were directed to the swanky Air France lounge, an oasis of free food and booze. Sometimes fortune favors the passport‑less.

At the Air France lounge in my boot, new best friend Lynn, 3 kinds of water

My injured leg earned me VIP wheelchair treatment at airports. But the boot was not a fun accessory on the 12‑hour flight.

Stopover in Paris: arriving, rated highly, Charles de Gaulle had the coolest toilets

Midnight in Marrakesh: I swapped currency at the airport, shared a taxi to the old town medina with an amiable French couple and met Ali, the hotel night man, who navigated the medina’s narrow alleys like a supernatural GPS. I could never have found my riad (hotel) without him. Ali seemed never to sleep. He served us breakfast in the morning.

In the old walled city medina: cats and motorbikes, donkeys. No cars will fit

This all-women trip, sponsored by Lewis and Clark College, introduced us to Moroccan culture in ways that didn’t require hiking. I was delighted to chat with English language students whose cosmopolitan takes deepened my cultural understanding.

In the medina: door and interior, the only graffiti I saw

We met Nora Fitzgerald Belahcen, founder of the Amal Women’s Training Center, whose mission is to train indigent women to earn a living. Highlights included a tagine cooking class and a delicate tea ritual using herbs plucked from the garden. Dinner was cooked and served by a crew of deaf women in the sign‑language café, one of many projects inspired by the Amal culinary school for women*.

On a seven‑hour drive to the Atlas Mountains, motion sickness upgraded me to front‑seat conversationalist; the female Moroccan guide and I talked about Islamophobia, women’s roles in Morocco and architecture. I was amazed at the earthen buildings and walls. “We call this adobe,” I said. “What do you call the building material?” She replied, “Mud.”

On the way to the Atlas Mountains

Limited mobility changed the trip but didn’t ruin it. I discovered lounging is an underrated travel activity. As my cohort hiked, a van whisked me to scenic spots so I could sit and be part of the (stunning) landscape.

Exploring the old kasbah. These mud buildings last hundreds of years.

Indigenous guides introduced us to Amazigh (Berber) culture, inviting us for meals and entertainment in women’s homes. The women dressed us up for a mock wedding, drew us in to the song and dance, and in those moments we ten Americans weren’t tourists, we were favored guests.

Our guide Fatimazahra dressed up for the mock wedding

Three of us traveled on to Portugal, visiting Lisbon, Sintra and mountain schist villages. A highlight for me in Lisbon was the Resistance Museum where I could sit and take in the history of the Portuguese 1974 revolution and the concurrent freeing of their African colonies.

We were surprised to see the mountains planted in eucalyptus (for paper production), which burned in a terrible fire in 2025. Then, early this year, a huge storm knocked down trees and power lines and flooded villages, damaging the hiking trails. We Californians recognized this familiar pattern of climate’s cruelty.

We persisted; my ankle felt a bit better and I was able to hike among the old schist villages with the help of an ankle wrap and hiking poles.

On the way home and back in the boot, at the Madrid airport (I can now say I’ve been to Spain), planes were delayed and gates shuffled, yet an army of orange‑vested attendants formed a conveyor belt of compassion for the disabled. We were a support group on wheels. On packed planes I miraculously avoided catching anything despite the coughing babies.

The grand finale: midnight in Santa Rosa, about to be dropped off at the airporter bus stop, I strategized how to get home. Plan A: Lyft—no reply. Plan B: taxi—too late. Plan C: a heroic 2.5‑mile pilgrimage, halted when the bus driver passed me a phone number and I met Eric, the night driver‑cum‑savior who rescued me from walking‑home doom.

Silver linings: reunions that felt like coming home, friends new and ancient, strangers who became angels, tiny airport luxuries, lessons in culture, and real, workable tweaks for travel with an injury. But perhaps the best was bonding with my sister travelers and our knowledgeable guides.

No regrets. If anything, I’m grateful I muddled through—because the mess made room for unexpected warmth. I’m glad I didn’t cancel.

WordPress is not letting me upload photos, so I’ll post this and add more later.

*If you’d like to support the Amal Women’s Training Center, consider donating: https://www.amalnonprofit.org

Sonoma County Gay Pride

June 6, 2026 Santa Rosa

Holly and I watched the parade and hung out with friends at Beer Baron on 4th Street. We perused the many booths at the square but didn’t stay for the stage entertainment. I went on to a party at the Sitting Room, the feminist library, to chat with women writers and readers. A very good day all around.

Sebastopol Senior Center has lots of programs for queer seniors

Tina Dungan and Magi Fedorka woman the gay history timeline booth

Bo Laurent, founderof the Intersex. Society of North America. Her T shirt reads “Building a world free of shame, secrecy and unwanted genital surgery

The awesome SF Cheer practicing acrobatics.

Gearing Up for a May Day Protest

My Regular Pagan Holiday Post

50th anniversary celebration of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. Photo: IF DDR

May 1 International Workers Day

Beltane, the pagan holiday

April 25 Portugal’s Freedom Day

International Workers’ Day on May 1 had its start in the USA. The observance was first proclaimed after scores were killed in police raids on nonviolent workers agitating for the eight-hour day in Chicago in 1886. In the U.S., anti-socialist sentiment and political pressure has limited its observance. But other—many other—countries in the world celebrate this holiday that honors the people who actually work to build our societies and cultures and infrastructure!

This May Day, Americans are organizing a massive day of nonviolent, economic disruption to protest the pillaging of our environment, the dismantling of our democracy, and the shredding of our social safety net at the hands of the billionaire class.

We are on the way to Morocco for a women’s hiking trip in the Atlas Mountains, and on May Day we’ll be in Portugal. Both of these countries celebrate International Workers Day with marches, community gatherings and a day off work. I hope to parade with the Portuguese in Lisbon.

Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said “Today we celebrate with all workers: those who produce, create and contribute to a more productive and socially responsible country.”

Perhaps we Americans can take inspiration from the Portuguese revolution. The 1974 revolution, known as the Carnation Revolution, was a nearly bloodless military coup that overthrew the Estado Novo regime, ending over 40 years of fascism. It marked the beginning of Portugal’s transition to democracy and led to the independence of several African colonies.

The Carnation Revolution got its name from restaurant worker Celeste Caeiro who offered carnations to soldiers when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship. Other demonstrators followed suit and placed carnations in the muzzles of guns and on soldiers’ uniforms. In Portugal, April 25, Freedom Day, is a national holiday that commemorates the revolution.

Taking a Little Break from Posting

Where We Are Now: A Recap

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 113

Dear Readers,

For the past year and a half, I’ve been tracing the life of my mother, Florence Wick, her service as a Red Cross clubmobiler, and her improbable intersection with the war hero Audie Murphy. Flo made a huge scrapbook after the war and I’ve been using that and her war diary to tell the story. I’m also telling Audie Murphy’s story using his autobiography To Hell and Back.

I’m pausing now to catch my breath, but the story is far from over.

Patches and insignia of some of the combat groups Flo served with, along with her dogtag, tacked onto the inside covers of her scrapbook

To recap:

In May 1944, Flo joined the American Red Cross Clubmobile program and sailed for Naples on a hospital ship. A month later, she stood in the streets of Rome as it was liberated, alongside General Mark Clark. By high summer, she was at an army camp near Pozzuoli, leading a four-woman crew, serving doughnuts and coffee to soldiers on the brink of the invasion of southern France.

By late August, they were in France, chasing a front that refused to hold still. Somewhere in that rush, Flo fell in love—with a lieutenant named Gene. They planned to marry in October. A mortar shell ended that future before it began.

Winter came hard—1944 into ’45—frigid, dangerous, unrelenting. Flo and her crew followed the Third Infantry Division through France, often within earshot of the guns. It was here she handed coffee and doughnuts to a young soldier named Audie Murphy—not yet a legend, but already carrying the weight of one.

He would become the most decorated American soldier of World War II. Flo, meanwhile, captured something just as lasting: she took the only photograph of Murphy at a field awards ceremony. The photo became a famous icon.

In January, the division crossed the Rhine and drove into Germany. Flo kept working—serving men rotating through rest camps, offering small comforts in a landscape torn apart. At the war’s end, she witnessed the liberation of Dachau concentration camp and Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s alpine retreat.

She stayed on through the occupation, stationed in Austria and Germany. When she could, she traveled—Switzerland, England, German cities and towns, Brussels, Copenhagen, Paris—brief glimpses of a world trying to knit itself back together. She ended her stay with a visit to relatives in Sweden.

And that’s where we are now.

There is still much to tell. Flo’s scrapbook is bursting with post-war miscellany. How did Flo and Audie adjust to peacetime back in the USA? How did the war affect them and those who fought in combat? How did Audie Murphy become a movie star?

I’ll come back to the rest—after a little rest of my own.

To start the story from chapter 1: https://mollymartin.blog/2024/11/04/my-mother-and-audie-murphy/

Sweden: She Had to Visit Them All

Lugnås, Stora Myran, Jönköping, Lidköping, Skövde

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 112

A Trip to Lugnås, Grandma’s Home Village

Flo got leave to visit Swedish relatives in Feb 1946. She and I returned in 1979.

Church and cemetery at Lugnås. The church was built in the 12th century.

It was still there when we visited in 1979.

Lidköping

Flo visited cousin Karin in Lidköping and we saw her again in 1979. She was a lesbian who adopted her younger caregiver. They traveled the world together.

Town square Lidköping. “500 years old in 1946”

Flo and I with her first cousins Greta and Elizabeth, Ingebritt and son

Ch. 113: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/11/taking-a-little-break-from-posting/

Visiting Relatives in Sweden

Flo First Arrives in Mariestad

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 111

Our Swedish relatives live near the southern shores of the two great lakes, Vänern and Vättern. Our grandmother, Gerda, grew up on a farm called Stora Myran, near the village of Lugnås.

Gerda’s father, Lars Persson (d: 1910) was first married to Sara Jonsdotter, who died in 1871. His second wife was Sara Nyberg (d: 1924). Altogether they had 16 children, and you can see why I have trouble keeping track of them all. Some died and most, including Gerda, emigrated to the US. Two daughters, Julia and Amalia, stayed in Sweden.

Luggage tags from Flo’s travels in Sweden

The Swedes gathered in Mariestad to welcome Flo

Flo captioned these pictures “Mariestad, Sweden (Aunt Amalia’s home)”. This is where she stayed while visiting the relatives.

Sometimes they traveled by ski. Cool contraption to replace poles, maybe like training wheels?

Aunt Amalia (I think), one of the two daughters who did not emigrate

Cousin Britta threw a party and made a cake that says Welcome Florence

Cake and coffee reprise. Cousin Ingabritt, Molly and Flo visiting in Jönköping, 1979. Flo died four years later in 1983.

Ch. 112: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/08/sweden-she-had-to-visit-them-all/

Stockholm: First Stop in Sweden

Flo Requests Compassionate Leave to Visit Relatives

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 110

Sweden maintained official neutrality in the war but made pragmatic concessions to Nazi Germany—exporting crucial materials and allowing troop transits to occupied Norway and Finland—while also expanding its military, sheltering thousands of Jewish and political refugees, training Norwegian resistance fighters, and sharing intelligence with the Allies. As the war turned, Sweden steadily curtailed cooperation and nearly ended trade with Germany by late 1944. Historians debate this legacy: some see pragmatic neutrality that preserved independence and enabled humanitarian acts; others criticize compromises that prioritized economic interests over moral responsibility.

Flo and I traveled to Sweden and Norway in 1979, and we visited all the Swedish relatives still living that Flo saw in 1946. We saw Flo’s mother Gerda’s birthplace, and the towns Flo had visited. From talking to Norwegians I got the feeling then that they had not yet forgiven the Swedes for cooperating with the Nazis during their five-year occupation of Norway. In 1979 there were still those, like my mother, who remembered the war. Perhaps the younger generations no longer hold a grudge.

“This is the best place I’ve been in all Europe,” wrote Flo

Flo’s Photos of Stockholm February 1946

Postcards of Stockholm

Ch. 111: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/06/visiting-relatives-in-sweden/

How Can Women Make a Living Wage Without a College Degree?

Opening Up the Building and Construction Trades to Women

Indigenous women in Ironworkers Local 725, Canada. Photo: Lightframe

The Club for the Deaf’s attic on Valencia Street reeked of scorched timber. Char and blackened beams swallowed the light; soot clung to everything. We crawled, backs bent low, balancing on sheets of plywood stretched across the ceiling joists. As electricians rewiring the place after a fire, we worked while thunderous punk music rattled below — the deaf crowd savoring the music through their feet.

It was just one of many electrical jobs Cheryl Parker and I did together.

Cheryl belonged to Sonoma County and the San Francisco Bay Area in a way that was both rooted and radical. She came from land and labor, and she spent her life insisting that women — especially lesbians — had a right to both. I knew her as a close friend, a sister tradeswoman, and a fellow building inspector. Our lives overlapped on jobsites, in lesbian bars, and in the long conversations that happen when you are trying to make a life where none has been laid out for you.

I first met Cheryl when she was working at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. She was already doing skilled electrical work there, and she was also helping to raise two daughters with her lover. That combination — determination on the job and deep commitment to chosen family — was classic Cheryl. She was grounded, political without posturing, and absolutely unwilling to shrink herself.

We later worked together through Wonder Woman Electric on several jobs. At lesbian bars in San Francisco, while everyone else was dancing, Cheryl and I would be off to the side talking about electrical work — arguing over grounding, circuitry, and the strange logic of systems hidden behind walls. No one wanted to sit with us. We didn’t care.

Cheryl came out of an Italian American family deeply tied to Northern California agriculture. Her grandparents emigrated from northern Italy, homesteading land outside Cloverdale. Her father was a fruit tramp who met her mother, Irene Gianoli, while picking fruit. Cheryl grew up in Cloverdale, one of three children. She had been a high school cheerleader and a member of the riding club, but she was never ornamental. Strength came naturally to her.

In the early 1970s, Cheryl entered the political and cultural ferment of the Bay Area. At City College of San Francisco, she met Joan MacQuarrie in a women’s history class. They became lovers and political partners, asking a question that would shape the rest of their lives:

How could women make a living wage without a college degree?

That question led them straight into the building trades — places where women were barely tolerated. Cheryl went on to be a leader in the Tradeswomen Movement, organizing to bring more women into the construction trades and jobs that women had not been allowed to do.

In 1972, Cheryl became the first woman cabinetmaker in Local 550, hauling ninety-pound doors. She later became the first woman to enter the electrical apprenticeship at Mare Island, working in confined, dangerous spaces including nuclear submarines.

Cheryl went on to own her own business, teach at the Center for Employment Training in Santa Rosa, and receive Sonoma County’s Tradeswoman of the Year award. But her real legacy was collective. She was a founding member of Women United for Apprenticeship, and she fought — loudly and publicly — for enforceable standards to get women into union trades. When apprenticeship officials claimed women couldn’t do the work, Cheryl, a tall woman, stood over them with the authority of someone who already was.

Her path also led to many firsts in public service. Cheryl became the first female building inspector in Richmond, then the first senior female building inspector in Oakland, and later the first supervising female building inspector in San Leandro. In Richmond she led the city’s comparable worth campaign, bringing feminist labor politics directly into municipal government. In the late-1980s, we founded a network of women inspectors, the FBI — Female Building Inspectors — mentoring others who were just beginning to cross barriers we had already broken.

Female Building Inspectors after Cheryl’s time

Cheryl lived openly as a lesbian, embedded in women’s and lesbian communities, from tradeswomen groups to the Oakland-Berkeley Women’s Union. She argued about everything. Friends said she should have been a lawyer. In 1986, at 38, she gave birth to her son Tyson, and he became another fierce center of her life. I got to be her birth coach, an amazing experience.

We started Tradeswomen Inc. in 1979. The nonprofit is still going strong.

Cheryl Parker died of ovarian cancer on July 9, 1992, at the age of 44.

Visiting my friend as she was dying and sick from chemo, I repeated an old chestnut, that I’d prefer to die quickly of a heart attack rather than suffer. She said something profound: “Don’t be so sure. Just think of all the love I’ve received and all the love I’ve been able to give as I’m dying.” Cheryl lived just nine months from her diagnosis to her death. Much love flowed in all directions and my view of death was transfigured.

Cheryl understood something early that many still resist: solidarity has to be built and no one breaks barriers alone. I carry her with me — in the work, in the arguments, in the memory of two women at a bar talking about grounding while the music played on.

Cheryl helped make a path where there wasn’t one before. I was lucky to walk part of it with her.

Mary McAuliff Revealed

A Reader Helped Find More Infomation About the Clubmobiler

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 109

Mary McAuliff joined Captain Flo’s clubmobile crew at the end of 1945. Aside from the pictures in Flo’s album, I could find no information about her. Then a reader from Asturias, Spain reached out with more particulars. He sent some pictures and news stories, and also details about his research.

Mary McAuliff in the clubmobile. Photo: Flo Wick

Mary McAuliff, born August 27, 1920, was from Brooklyn, New York. Her father was a doctor. She had departed for England in February, 1945. She sailed back to the U.S. from Le Havre, France arriving May 28, 1946. She was married in 1947 to William Robert Palmer at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Flatbush. They had two daughters. William died in 1959. Mary died at 99 in 2019.

Most clubmobile and WWII American Red Cross archives were destroyed in a fire. The only accessible list of clubmobilers is in the book The ARC in the Storm, by Marjorie Lee Morgan, but the book does not include all the women. I learned that the best way to find the clubmobilers not listed in the book is from ships manifests. Here are the passenger lists that included Mary and Flo.

Mary’s is the last name on the list, which tells date of birth and address

Here is the passenger list from Flo’s ship. She is fourth from bottom

Ch. 110: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/04/stockholm-first-stop-in-sweden/

Trip to Denmark and Sweden

First Stop Copenhagen

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 108

Flo stopped in Copenhagen on her way to visit relatives in Sweden. In a postcard home Flo wrote, “Copenhagen is a lovely city and the food is wonderful–milk, steaks, ice cream.” The city had escaped the ravages of war as few other European cities had.

Permission from the consulate. Flo was born in 1913, not 1915.

Denmark was invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. The Danish government opted for a swift surrender to avoid destruction, leading to a period of occupation where they maintained some autonomy and collaborated with German authorities. Denmark supplied food and resources to Germany, but resentment grew among the population against this cooperation.

As occupation continued, resistance movements emerged, notably organizing the rescue of around 7,200 Jews, who were smuggled to Sweden in 1943. Denmark was liberated by British forces on May 5, 1945, after five years of occupation. The aftermath prompted national discussions on collaboration and resistance, significantly influencing Danish society and identity in the post-war era.

“I wish you were here with me,” Flo wrote to her mother.

Ch. 109: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/01/mary-mcauliff-revealed/

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