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end of 1960, he was routinely gone for long days, leaving Fay miserable and lonely. When Fay learned that Marvin was involved with another woman, she concluded her marriage had failed. Fay made a distraught call to her sister Lisie in San Diego, where Don was fulfilling his postponed military service following completion of medical school. Lisie and her husband welcomed Fay and her two young children unhesitatingly to their tiny, two-bedroom home.

      Fay returned to the East Bay a few weeks later, in early 1961, to rent a small apartment in Berkeley for herself and her two small children. Still despondent, she channeled her pain into a sixteen-line poem and sent it to her close friend Pip. Fay told him she thought haiku would have matched her feelings better, but found herself “too turbulent” inside to express herself in this simple Japanese form, as the rainy winter weather persisted. Nursing her baby gave her pleasure, but her consignment to domestic tasks left her feeling isolated from political movements. She wove into her poem literary allusions that she knew Pip would appreciate. Yet she could not help also sharing her despair at “keeping down the terror ….”³

      Pip grew quite anxious about Fay’s depressed mood. Likely through his connections in Cal’s English Department, Fay was soon offered a job teaching an introductory speech course to undergraduates. Ruby volunteered to help with Neal and Oriane during the week. On Saturday mornings, Fay brought the children to her parents’ home where Marvin would fetch them at day’s end to spend Saturday night and Sunday with him and his current girlfriend. Yet, on weekdays, single parenting still overwhelmed Fay.

      Fay and Marvin’s acquaintances in the Guild were not surprised by their separation. Some thought Fay was single-minded and humorless, difficult to get along with. Marvin’s easygoing nature often seemed to bore Fay. She continued to delight in caustic, verbal sparring with men, which was not Marvin’s style. He, in turn, had developed a reputation as a ladies’ man. Long before she fled to her sister’s, Fay had broadcast her unhappiness to friends, frequently complaining that her husband did not offer her enough emotional support. To a few close friends, Fay confided her own continued obsession with Stanley Moore. Since 1957, Moore’s career had been on the rebound following publication of The Critique of Capitalist Democracy, which synthesized the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. He had meanwhile separated from his second wife. In 1960, Stanley was at work on another ambitious book while Fay battled with postpartum depression and her own unrealized aspirations. Fay had fantasies of ending her broken marriage and reuniting with Stanley.

      A more practical idea for adding meaning to her life soon came to Fay. As she nursed her newborn, and chased after her toddler, Fay followed political developments related to the most recent HUAC hearings in San Francisco focused on exposing Communist affiliations among California teachers. When police had hosed protesters down the steep steps of City Hall and conducted mass arrests, “Black Friday” May 13, 1960 had made national headlines. In April of 1961 Charlie Garry and former prosecutor Jack Berman represented Robert Meisenbach, the lone prosecuted defendant. The trial was all over the front pages and the talk of the Leftist community. By then, Fay had had enough of being a stay-at-home mom and part-time teacher. She asked Garry once again if he might hire her. Garry made Fay an offer on a part-time basis, contingent on her successfully completing a research project for his partner Barney Dreyfus. Garry knew that Dreyfus was far more exacting than he was. As she turned the work in, Dreyfus intimidated Fay by asking, “Are you good?” Fay replied, “I think so,” and that was how she became the firm’s first woman attorney.⁴

      Barney Dreyfus concentrated on criminal defense, constitutional law and civil rights. The third partner, Frank McTernan, was an earnest, New Deal enthusiast who started practice in the ’30s as a labor lawyer and expanded his practice to include civil rights law. By the time Fay started work, the firm’s first black lawyer had left and another associate, James Herndon, had taken his place. Herndon, a past employee of The San Francisco Chronicle, was politically connected in the black community, with many contacts who referred him personal injury work. Fay was impressed — she never expected to bring in clients herself. Marvin, in his own law practice had, by now, learned the same pragmatic lesson most Guild attorneys understood: “P-I cases pay the office expenses, and most political and criminal cases don’t.”⁵

      At the firm, Charles Garry brought in the most revenue. Fay described the dynamics of that Leftist firm: “Charles is the heart, [Barney Dreyfus] is the brain of the human enterprise in which Frank McTernan supplies humility … and Herndon the young blood.”⁶ At the time, criminal defense and personal injury practice were considered combat zones for which women were presumptively unsuited. At day’s end, war stories were exchanged with free-flowing liquor. Gathering evidence in criminal cases sometimes included payoffs to cooperative police officers. That was how Charles Garry and Jack Berman had obtained copies of crucial police reports to help acquit Cal student Robert Meisenbach in the Black Friday case. This rough world, rife with illegal bribes, was not much different from Clarence Darrow’s day.

      For a woman lawyer in the ’50s and ’60s attempting to parent small children, courtroom work was especially difficult. Garry had spent years developing his trial practice skills by working day and night and often slept in his office. Though he made time for a mistress, he rarely saw his long-suffering wife and had no children. Many women who could have easily handled law school in the ’50s opted instead for careers as legal secretaries because of the huge disparity in job opportunities. That included women already working at the Garry, Dreyfus firm when Fay was hired in 1961. The only one Fay met who wielded significant responsibility was the office manager. It was an open secret that she was also Barney Dreyfus’s mistress. While Fay was there, the office manager continually studied for the California Bar, ultimately passed it and left the firm.

      At first, Fay was overwhelmed by juggling her parental responsibilities in Berkeley around her part-time job in San Francisco, despite its flexible hours. Fay dropped her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and three-year-old-son at nursery school each morning. Each afternoon, she would rush from work to pick up Neal and Oriane, shop, make dinner and put them to bed. She told an interviewer years later, “My goal was to get through each day and not go to the looney bin.”⁷ Both Ann Fagan Ginger and Doris “Dobby” Brin Walker, prominent Old Leftists in the San Francisco Lawyers Guild, also raised children for a period of time as single parents. Fifty years later, with a shudder, Ann vividly recalled going it alone after her divorce from labor historian Ray Ginger. “As a single parent for five years, I know how you do it. You go crazy. Doris would say the same thing: ‘Who in the Hell’s got time to have friends?’” Ann quickly added, “I mean that’s a terrible fact. But to be a woman lawyer in this era that we’ve lived through and to be a political lawyer [is a recipe for chaos].”

      Source: FBI file on Fay Stender, Vol. 1

      The FBI began tracking Fay Stender’s civil rights activities after she joined Charles Garry’s law firm.

      Attempting to meet her children’s needs on top of racing back and forth to work often filled Fay with a sense of hopelessness. She started seeing a psychiatrist again, but quit when it became too costly. Her life seemed to reach bottom in the fall of 1961. Fay had sneaked a visit to Stanley Moore in New York a few years earlier and still corresponded with him. Over Christmas, Fay again saw Moore when he came to town to visit his family. She was still estranged from Marvin. Moore invited Fay to spend the next summer with him, but refused to consider another marriage and had no interest in raising children. Fay did not think she could survive another intense interlude with Stanley, only to be dropped at summer’s end.

      Over New Year’s, Fay took a short vacation alone with Marvin to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Despite all their difficulties, she appreciated his ongoing commitment to both her and the children’s financial support. Marvin offered to give Fay money to resume analysis from funds he was about to receive from a family trust. By the spring of 1962, Fay was upbeat. She had just passed the milestone of her thirtieth birthday. She cut her hair to shoulder length, kept her nails painted with bright red polish and decided to buy a car. She felt like a new person and told Stanley Moore she never wanted to see him again. Fay and Marvin took the children on a family camping

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