*I still owed money on the Escort GT I bought new. I kept it for another six years until someone hit me and totaled it. The accident occurred one morning while I was on my way to work at the AFL-CIO archives in Silver Spring. The archive experience was during my study at Maryland’s library school.

**Things were getting tight. But it all worked out by June. I didn’t have to move or to borrow money from Lucinda. One of my more interesting affairs during this period was with a young Liberian woman, Mydea Reeves Karpeh, whom I met February 12, 1988. As an organizer for 1199, I managed its fledgling educational program and the local provided its hall space for classes, which I oversaw. Mydea, one of the adult teachers, was hired on a part-time basis by the Baltimore City Community College and was commuting from a suburban community outside of Washington, D.C. We became good friends, especially after she moved to Baltimore that year.

In December 1985, Mydea and her son Tuan fled Monrovia for the United States and arrived in New York City. Her son was then six years old. In 1986, she moved to Washington, D.C., to obtain a social security card and a regular job. Though she fled Sergeant Samuel Doe's regime in fear of her life, she was not able to obtain the status of political refugee until eight years later in 1993, three years after a war began in Liberia to oust President Doe.

Mydea had been a government official since 1976, four years before the coup, working in the Institute of Public Administration. After the coup, from 1980 to 1983, she worked in the Administration of Education; and then until 1985, she was the Director of Personnel and then Human Resources Manager for the Liberia Corporation, handling development, personnel, and benefits. She also sat ion the Board of Union of Producers and Suppliers of Electricity (UPDEA).