BY VILLAGE SUN STAFF | A memorial service for Bernice Goldstein Grayson will be held at St. John’s in the Village church, at 218 W. 11th St., on Sat., Oct. 7, at 4 p.m.
Grayson, who died June 5 at age 96, founded Mother Truckers movers around 1969. The company was based at 110 MacDougal St. They used women drivers and women as some of the movers.
According to a 1970 article in The New York Times, Grayson, who at the time went by Crabtree, the name of her ex-husband, was “a former model, primitive dancer and concocter of Funky No. 1 cologne, which she sells in her office… .”
“I believe that people who are moving like to see pretty girls on the job,” she was quoted as saying. “It can help make what might otherwise be a very hectic day become more pleasant.
“We’re feminine — not feminists,” she told the Times. “Whenever I go along on one of the jobs, I try to dress very elegantly, complete with a floppy hat and French perfume.”
A native New Yorker, she got into the moving business when she and her husband, an English immigrant, bought a truck in 1954 for $150. In 1961 they divorced. She stayed in moving, and a few years later, started up Mother Truckers.
One of her drivers, Carrie Payne, a recently graduated psychology major, told the Times the work offered an education about human nature.
“I learn more about people in this job than I would if I were actually practicing psychology,” she said. “And besides, this whole moving thing is a trip.”
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