Al is the son of a Hoosier Republican farmer/teacher who damned FDR all the way to the bank to cash his AAA check, Al arrived on planet earth just before the crash of 1929 and, at only ten years old, he helped his family to weather the depression by working as a farm laborer. Near the end of WW II, he acquired a Railroad Retirement Board social security number by doing what his grandfather had done, working on the railroad. Jobs in bridge building, food service, insurance fraud investigations, and classroom teaching provided means for higher and higher education, as did a tour in naval intelligence during the Korean War. He completed his Ph.D. degree using the GI Bill, scholarships, and teaching positions to support the wife and family that came while he was attached to the Fifth Naval District command in Norfolk.
In 1959, degree in hand, he followed Horace Greeley’s advice to go west to join the faculty of San Fernando Valley State College, now CSUN, where he taught until his retirement in 1995. At Northridge he combined teaching, research, and textbook writing with activism in Democratic politics. He became president of the Northridge Democratic Club in 1963, an elector in the Electoral College in 1964, a regional officer in the CDC, and an intermittent delegate to the California State Democratic convention. His outspoken stand against escalation of the Vietnam War temporarily alienated him from mainstream politics and led to a long-term avocation in Renaissance and Baroque recorder music. Fully back in the swing of things by the 1980s, he combined political activism with political database building , maintaining the data base for the Nuclear Freeze in Southern California. He was also involved in many local and congressional elections in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1987 he became a commuter professor and (temporarily) absentee landlord, moving, with much political baggage, to Oxnard. GOOD Club officers quickly snagged him at the county fair, and he was appointed by Mayor Lopez to the Oxnard Public Library Board. Then it was the Ventura County Living Wage Coalition and CAUSE, the County Democratic Central Committee, and the California Clean Money Campaign. In the 1990s he served two terms as president of the GOOD Club. As a member of the Ventura Country Democratic Central Committee he worked on the executive board to provide inexpensive electronic voter data to clubs and candidates. In 2001 he was named Volunteer of the Year for Region 10 of the party for coordinating county voter registration. From 2004 to 2006 he served as precinct coordinator of the GOOD Club, receiving major recognition from labor, the party, and legislative bodies. Then, recovered from an illness, he again became president of the GOOD Club and resumed activity in the County Democratic Central Committee and the Fair Elections Campaign.
Behind this activism has been the conviction that the social contract that mitigated the economic collapse of the 1930s, the (con)federalist vision that U.S. provided the world and especially Europe at the end of WW II, and the domestic programs that treat all Americans as stake holders have been indispensable to our achievement of a “more perfect union,” domestic tranquility, and national security. Successful capitalism must provide incentives to more than a few winners who commandeer the rest. Our social fabric has been systematically undermined by the Friedmans and the Reagans whose deeds contradict their creeds.
Responsible parenthood and custody of our natural endowment are likewise indispensable perquisites for a rule of law that recognizes real persons, not corporate collectives, as participants in our polity. Activism is a commitment without end. Some dedicated band must fight for equity lest civilized society wither. As a professional historian, Al is all too aware of the historical record of imperial adventurers whose waste of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness constitute boundless marches of folly commonly celebrated as national epics.
Married for 28 years to Susan, Al has two sons and a grandson in Sacramento and a daughter in Oakland. Marriage added three stepsons and two granddaughters, who now reside in Palo Alto.
Allen Dirrim with editorial help from Dori Maria Jones.
