Chapter 15 - THE SETTLEMENT
The settlement was approved after seven months.
Mom received shares worth more than ninety million dollars.
The number meant almost nothing to her at first.
She asked how many workers needed medical care.
How many descendants carried student debt.
How many surviving seamstresses still rented homes.
Rebecca reminded her:
“You do not have to give away what was stolen from you.”
“I know.”
“I am deciding what I want it to become.”
Mom created the Morrow Hands Foundation.
Half her settlement funded former garment workers and their families.
Medical care.
Education.
Housing assistance.
Legal support.
The other half remained hers.
I insisted.
For forty-one years, she had lived modestly because powerful people convinced her survival should be enough.
Restitution was not greed.
It was recognition.
Mom purchased a small house near Lake Michigan.
Not a mansion.
A bright home with a sewing room facing the water.
She replaced her old cane with one carved from walnut.
She bought no luxury car.
She did buy the finest sewing machine available.
Then she placed her original black machine beside it.
“Which one do you prefer?” I asked.
“The old one.”
“Why buy the new one?”
“Because I can.”
The answer made us both laugh.
Ava became the first independent curator of the new Mercer & Reed design archive.
She insisted the position be awarded through an open process.
She interviewed beside twelve other candidates.
She won because she knew garments as evidence.
Celeste joined the new ethics board.
She received no automatic executive position.
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For the first time, a Mercer had to apply.
She accepted that.
