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Pola Yolles
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Pola Yolles, a member of
the Honest Weight Food Co-op since our earliest days back in the
mid-1970s, died on February 8. She was 80 years old.
Pola and her husband Mark--it's almost impossible to write about one
without writing about the other-- joined the Co-op before most people
think of the Co-op as having started. Nowadays, most people date the
Coop's start to the spring, when the Coop was incorporated. But when
Honest Weight actually started is a bit more nebulous. It started as a
buying club, and grew out of some earlier buying clubs. And of course,
meetings and purchasing had already started before incorporation. The
Coop's records indicate that Mark and Pola joined this Co-op in
February of 1976--before the Co-op's official start date. The month of
this writing marks the 34th anniversary of their involvement here.
When she and her husband Mark joined Honest Weight, they were a bit
older than most of the people who were involved in the Co-op. Mark
would come from work in his tie and jacket and Pola, too, dressed
differently than most of the scruffy younger people around the Co-op.
But they always shared the same commitment to the kind of organization
that the Coop was and the food that it carried. Mark and Pola lived
back then in the mansion neighborhood, the same neighborhood that many
of the Coop members of that era lived in. And they continued to live
there until fairly recently, with part of their home on Elm Street
serving for a time as a youth hostel and at other times as an apartment
which was often rented to fellow Co-op members.
Pola was always a Co-op floor worker. Back in the old days of the Quail
Street store, before the days of the Coop stocking triple-washed
spinach, spinach would come to the store right from the farm, and it
was gritty with the sandy soil it was grown in. And washing it was no
easy matter, as the Co-op didn't have the multiple sinks we have now.
Cleaning it was tedious, cold, wet work. To make the job more bearable
and have the time go by faster, produce workers would have spinach
washing races. Pola, with her white hair and small build, may not have
been the oddsmaker's pick for fastest spinach washer ...but she was! In
more recent years--the last 15 or so, that is--Pola was mostly a
grocery stocker. And she kept doing it despite her recent ill health,
last working as a stocker this past summer.
But Pola was not a member who just did her store work. She also
regularly came out to Co-op meetings. It's quite possible that no one
has been to more general membership meeting for the Co-op than Pola and
Mark. She also served for a short time on the Board of Directors, back
when that body would meet mostly at people's homes. Pola was a constant
presence at the Honest Weight Food Co-op. She was quiet much of the
time, but she could be quite passionate. She was memorably outraged by
the Co-op's practice of lining bulk bins with plastic, which she was
concerned would leach chemicals into the food.
Pola and her husband Mark were among the members honored at the Co-op's
membership dinner in November of 2004 for their 25+ years of Co-op
membership. Pola is survived by Mark, her children and her
grandchildren. Space does not allow, but there is so much more that
could be written about Pola--as deeply as she is tied into the history
of this place. And as important as the Co-op was to her, it was just a
small part of her life. She was a woman of great intelligence and
compassion who was interested in so many things. She will be terribly
missed.
–Nate Horwitz
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