I'm Adopting A New Grandma

A friend introduced me to Mollie at a party. He's gay and knows her through the Response group at Valley Beth Shalom, in which she's very involved. She lost her son, Nathaniel to AIDS in 1989 and has since become involved in many organizations, like the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles and Project Chicken Soup (PCS), where she cooks kosher food for anybody - Jew or Gentile - living with HIV/AIDS, and delivers it to their houses.

I first interviewed Mollie at PCS on Fairfax, where at almost 89 she still drives over the hill from the valley to work every Sunday. Somehow I accidentally deleted the footage, so I drove to her house last night where we could talk some more. Although I was upset about losing the first interview, in retrospect I'm glad it happened; Mollie fed me homemade chocolate chip peanut butter cookies and sent me home with blueberry bread. She's also a pretty awesome woman with whom I was lucky enough to spend time.

Born in New York City in 1920, she had to always find ways to make money. As the middle child of three girls, "I didn't have the privilege of the older, nor the spoiling of the younger. So I had to sort of fight for myself." She and her mother used to walk half a mile to save a penny on a "particular food item." At five-years-old, Mollie would hang out at her uncle's drug store which had phone booths inside the store. "People would get calls and I'd run and get the people to come to the phone and they'd give me 2 cents, 3 cents... and if someone gave me a nickel, that was a lot of money." She liked having her own money so she didn't have to ask her mother for the dime to see a movie or get a piece of candy.

At 18, she met her husband. They courted for awhile as he was working hard to support his family. When WWII broke out they got engaged. They were both determined to not give in to temptation before marriage and therefore when they would see each other they would be chaperoned by family. When I asked her if it was difficult for him to resist her, she said, "Many times we were in the middle of conversation and he'd get up suddenly and say, 'Oh, I gotta go' and he'd leave." Thinking the war would only last six months, they waited to get married; but six months flew by, the war was still raging, and he was about to be shipped off. He told her her wanted to marry her right there and then. So, they got married at the USO with a local rabbi - no white gown or the "usual flashy stuff that goes with a wedding, but that didn't affect our love." It was during the marriage where she realized how much she loved to cook. In 1953, with three small boys, they moved to California. 22 years later, the morning after they hosted a really fun dinner party, Mollie's husband died of a heart attack at age 56. Completely shocked, Mollie had a lot of support from her friends and co-workers at a school for disabled children where she worked. "When I finally got over the devastation and the realization that I was gonna be on my own from now on, I decided that I couldn't bring him back but I was going to make the most of the rest of my life."

And, Mollie did. She traveled all over the world, spending a great deal of time in Japan after discovering a free program which brought older Americans into Japanese homes to live for weeks at a time.

Her son Nathaniel, a graduate from Albert Einstein Medical School in NY, was the first doctor to practice treating and researching AIDS. He died of the same disease he tried to eradicate. Mollie had always suspected that he was gay but "I sort of denied it." Still, when the truth came out, Mollie told her son that she loved him and whatever would make him happy would make her happy. "It took him awhile to get adjusted to my acceptance because children don't see their parents the way other people do." Mollie joined PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and then met her son's boyfriend, Michael who she looks at as a "fourth son." When Nathaniel was very sick, Mollie flew to NY to see him. Michael had been spending every night on the floor of the hospital room to be with Nathaniel. "They had a little ceremony in which they exchanged rings and all the other doctors and the nurses came in. And when I saw those two I said to myself, 'There's no rabbi, priest, minister... no one in the world can tell me that this kind of love is wrong - this kind of love isn't real. This kind of devotion can be taught to a lot of straight couples who don't know how to act towards each other.'"

Mollie Pier, age 88.

On career:



On death: