Has Milwaukee forgotten Golda Meir?

Has Milwaukee forgotten Golda Meir, the “mother” of modern Israel and former citizen of the city?

I asked this question as a new arrival in the city this past September, knowing of her international fame and discovering that she had lived here as a youth.

Meir (1898-1978) was certainly known and loved in the 1960s and 1970s in this city that educated her after she arrived from the persecutions of Tsarist Russia. She is memorialized in a few places in Milwaukee.

During the time she was prime minister of Israel (1969-1974), she visited in 1969 the middle school she had attended on Fourth St., and the school was re-named the Golda Meir School in 1979.

At about the same time, officials of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee decided — against some opposition — to name its new library in her honor. When this library was opened on Aug. 5, 1979, then Governor of Wisconsin, Lee Sherman Dreyfus, declared it Golda Meir Day.

However, when I called to the library to look at its archives, very few students seemed to know of Golda Meir.

Only one out of six random students in the college library were able to tell me who she was. Only members of the Departments of Jewish and Arabic studies knew of her career and importance in modern history.

Milwaukee is famous in Israel as the City of Golda. Has Milwaukee, however, forgotten probably her most famous citizen and daughter?

Interest sparked

Personally I have taken an interest in Jewish history for many years. I am a composer, and had written an oratorio called “Hear O Israel” which tells the story in music of the return of the Jews to Israel. This led me to research modern Jewish history in some depth, in Europe and in Israel.

My interest in Meir was sparked when I was taking a walk in the middle of the city near the old Schiltz brewery, a little after our arrival here from Florida with my family to take up some new work in early September.

When I noticed that a plaque on the side of the school facing the brewery said that Golda Meir had attended the school, I was amazed. Why had I not heard of this? I had read a book about Wisconsin history before moving to the City, but it had not mentioned Meir’s name.

I decided to join the Brookfield Library and to investigate. This in turn led me to visit the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, the archives at UWM, and to meet some of the people mentioned above.

I learned that she was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and had memories of a pogrom before she came to Milwaukee in 1905. I discovered that she had become a political activist in fourth grade, when she organized an effort to raise funds for children who couldn’t afford textbooks.

I learned how she had become a Zionist in Milwaukee and eventually moved with her husband Morris to Israel in 1920. And I discovered how much she did for Israel, raising funds during the War for Independence, serving as ambassador to the Soviet Union, becoming labor minister, foreign minister, and finally prime minister.

Although she was known and loved here at the time of her premiership in Israel, it would appear her memory seems to have faded from the city.

Surely this should not be the case for such a formidable woman who showed such immense courage and compassion, and who was such a remarkable modern political leader?

Wisconsin has famous citizens and some infamous ones, It was the birthplace of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, of musicians Liberace and Les Paul, and the boyhood home of James Lovell, the Apollo 13 astronaut.

TV personality Oprah Winfrey was born in Mississippi but spent her childhood in Milwaukee. More notoriously, Sen. Joseph McCarthy of the famous McCarthy era was born in Wisconsin and attended Marquette University.

However no one listed as a famous citizen or inhabitant of Milwaukee would have had any of the profile of Golda Meir on the world stage in the 20th century, nor her prominence in the shaping of the modern political world.

Surely it is time to make her memory accessible to the modern citizens of the city of her youth.

Perhaps a competition could be organized amongst the art colleges of the city to design a public memorial that would express some of her great character.

By this and other works to commemorate her, she could inspire young citizens to follow her example in acts of single-mindedness and dedication in their own generation.

Milwaukee should not forget Golda Meir.

Cormac O’Duffy, Ph.D., is a researcher in the education department of the University of Limerick, Ireland, and is presently working in New Jersey as a church musician. His oratorio “Hear O Israel” was performed in Israel in 1988 and can be heard on You Tube.