Abraham Lincoln Brigade Memorial, San Francisco

Yelping for a dinner venue the other night, I saw a note on Google maps about the existence of an Abraham Lincoln Brigade Memorial near the Embarcadero in San Francisco, where I am this week.

In high school, when my mom and I were particularly active in the Unitarian church, we became friends with Max and Mary Parker. Max, a New York Jew if ever there was one, was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer who decided it was more important to go fight fascism than anything else he might’ve done and so he did. I don’t know exactly how he and Mary, his Irish Catholic wife, ended up in the Unitarian fold, but it was neither surprising nor uncommon.

As an old man , he proudly told stories of how he traveled to Europe from an America both mired in economic depression and willfully oblivious to the deep dangers of European fascism. Denied entry into various ports, they eventually found a way to get into France, hike over the Pyrenees, and join the Spanish resistance.

Captured, he had few options but to survive and hope for some sort of liberation. In his two years in the POW camp, he and the other prisoners made their own lyrics to well-known songs, parodies of the horrors they lived through every day.

When will the kitchen have in stock

A grapefruit or banana?

Cook shakes his head and whispers low

That mystic word… manaña

At the same time as I learned Max’s story, another member of our congregation took it upon himself to create a recording of those songs, and my mom and I got to sing back up. I don’t think there were any women in the camp in Spain, but I suppose many of the prisoners weren’t all that much older than I was at that time.

The record we made was eventually released on the Folkways label, and somehow or other supposedly made its way into the collection of the Smithsonian Museum… My one brush with artistic immortality.

Some of the members of the Abraham Lincoln brigade were communists, many of the rest were Jews, or liberals, or worse. As a result, their sacrifice has received little attention over the years. I was surprised to find out this monument even existed, and I certainly would not expect that there are many more in other places.

Having discovered the monument, I walked there in the predawn light the next morning, and again the following evening. As I looked at the monument itself, which is positioned next to the spectacular Vaillancourt Fountain, I was moved to tears for multiple reasons. The monument itself was constructed of marble plaques engraved with quotations from prominent Brigade members, but at least one third of the plaques are missing or destroyed. Still, the quotes that remain are powerfully moving, as is the realization that I can look through a missing plaque space to see the carefully packed shopping cart of one of San Francisco’s many, many homeless people.

The monument, the quotations, and the realities that surround this little park, situated amidst such great privilege in San Francisco, reminds me that it’s never too late for each of us to fight the good fight, even a little, in any way we can.