June Temple

Nov 8, 2004 4:27 PM

Like the others who gave up their nights and weekends for the collectivebargaining campaign in 1961, June Temple was a dutiful foot soldier. Shecould live with the long exhausting hours and no pay -- not even car fare.But for some there were worse privations. She remembers a fellow worker shoutingacross a room: "Can't we even afford coffee?" Temple, though, was no strangerto hardship. "I knew what it was to be without money," she said. "Nobodyhad to convince me that we needed a union. I didn't need to go to socialistSunday school." Just being a teacher was enough incentive. "I took a cutin salary to become a teacher," she said, explaining that her 1954 startingsalary of $2,700 was less than she was making on the evening shift at a Manhattanbank. But as bad as conditions were, the thought of going out on strike wasvery troubling. "I'd gone to Catholic grammar school and the nuns had devotedtheir lives to us. Going on strike seemed like I was deserting the students."Moral qualms or not, when the first strike was called in November of 1960,June Temple was there, the only member of the Curtis HS faculty to actuallywalk a picket line that day. "Joe O'Toole (a teacher from another StatenIsland school) and I managed to convince 18 people not to cross our picketline."