Heidi Rain Oleszczuk

In the 1970s, I worked as an assistant to two editors in the fiction department of Holt, Rinehart & Winston, up the block from the Mercantile Library on 47th Street. When TV networks started to get sued for discrimination against their women employees, CBS took the matter in hand and created the Women’s Advisory Council consisting of two representatives from each of their seven divisions (of which Holt was one) to meet with an Executive Council monthly about what women were demanding and how to get it for them. As a Holt representative, I met with the Council several nights a week to plan for our monthly meetings with top management. These were a bunch of truly well-meaning guys who sincerely wanted to ameliorate an unfair situation. The women were earnest, too, high strung go-getters in a rather misogynistic corporate environment striving to rise in the system and get treated fairly. Being somewhat less ambitious, I found it easier to relate to the men who were mostly VPs and pretty comfortable with where they sat in the hierarchy - affable, friendly and fun to be with. I developed a crush on a Black divorced VP with a son he referred to as “Trip” - as in “ . . . the third.” Though it never came to anything, early on in our almost-courtship, he gave me one of the best gifts I’ve ever received - unaffordable to me at that time on the salary of an assistant-to-the-editor (i.e., secretary): a $25 membership to the Mercantile Library.
My most elevated moments happened when I upon entering the Library, Mr Something (don’t remember his name but we always maintained a certain professional chivalry between us) would call me over to the main check-out desk. “Ms. Ruthchild” (my name at the time), he would say, “we have a few recommendations for you.” And they always hit the spot.