Love and Hunger

In 1951, Thomas McGrath married Alice McGrath (née Greenfield). Born in Canada to Russian Jewish parents, Alice and her family moved to Los Angeles in 1922, where she attended school and soon became active in progressive issues. She is most well known as the executive secretary for the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, and is portrayed by Tyne Daly in the film version of the events, Zoot Suit. In her later life, McGrath continued to show passion and dedication to social causes. In the 1980s, she made 86 trips to Nicaragua; she helped raise funds for the homeless and helped obtain medicine for the embattled country’s hospitals. (You can find an LA Times tribute to her tireless activism here: http://articles.latimes.com/.../la-oe-lozano6-2009dec06)

The McGraths divorced in 1958, with Tom leaving Los Angeles for New York soon thereafter. His archives contain heartbreaking correspondence between the two, and his despair over the split is registered in two children's books he wrote during that time; one is dedicated to Alice and her two children, Danny and Laura, and the other features the two children by name as the narrative's primary characters. Late in Thomas McGrath's life, he and Alice reconciled and rekindled a deep and durable friendship. Alice McGrath passed away in November 2009 in Ventura, California.