By Elinor Brecher, Editor – LD9 PC, Precinct 214
Esther Blumenfeld and Mimi Pollow
Can’t make it to improv night at the comedy club? Drop by PCDP headquarters any Tuesday morning, where volunteers Mimi Pollow and Esther Blumenfeld will happily crack you up – by cracking each other up. Think The Odd Couple meets The Golden Girls.
The two have been answering phones, greeting visitors and batting one-liners back and forth since they began volunteering together a couple of years ago. How long did it take them to realize they liked each other?
“Five minutes,’’ says Mimi.
“I never liked her,’’ Esther deadpans. Then they laugh.
Marilyn Reid “Mimi’’ Pollow is a U.S. Navy veteran who spent most of her life in the Washington, D.C., area. She served as a communications watch officer at Naval Station Norfolk, earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, then became a banker and accountant. She moved to Tucson two years ago, is dog mom to two Lhasa apsos, and is single. She practices yoga, makes jewelry, has two tattoos, and lives in LD10.
“My real claim to fame is that I worked in over 40 elections in Virginia,’’ she says. “When I moved here, I wanted to get involved with the Democrats to elect Democrats.’’
Like Esther, Mimi is a prolific contributor to the Arizona Daily Star’s letters-to-the-editor page. Last summer she suggested that the media observe one Trump-free day a week.
“The republic will not suffer from this one-day-a-week fast, but many of us will rejoice in the lack of chaos,’’ she wrote.
Esther Richter Blumenfeld turned three years old aboard the ship carrying her family to the United States from Germany in May 1939, six months after Nazi thugs destroyed her rabbi father’s synagogue during Kristallnacht: the Night of Broken Glass.
She grew up in the Midwest, became a humor writer, wrote a magazine column, and co-taught a course at Atlanta’s Emory University titled, “Adding Humor To Your Life: The Salt-Free, Low-Calorie, Polyunsaturated, All-Natural Guide To Feeling Good.’’ Check out her books and plays at http://www.ebnimble.com/.
Her husband, Georgia State University professor Warren Blumenfeld, died in 1998, four years after they retired to Tucson. He wrote a book titled, Jumbo Shrimp & Other Almost Perfect Oxymorons (Perigee Trade, 1986).
Esther, who lives in LD9, has a son, a daughter-in-law and a grand-cat. She began volunteering 15 years ago when HQ was on Broadway when, she says, volunteers had to provide their own chairs.
Volunteering at HQ makes her feel “not so frustrated with what’s going on,’’ and is an effective way to boost the party’s image, she says.
During the Obama administration, a man called to say that he couldn’t find the number for Republican headquarters. After Esther found it for him, he told her: “Democrats are nice people!’’
She might not have converted him, Esther says, “but I know he liked Democrats better that day!’’