we never know when the important things are going to happen. When Alfred and I first met at that wedding, neither one of us was expecting anything major to happen. But it did." Following their wedding, Alfred and Rhina Moskowitz moved into an apartment in the racially mixed neighborhood of Flushing, Queens. Both continued teaching in New York City's public school system. The Moskowitzes were also very active and influential members of the United Federation of Teachers from the time it was first being created. Espaillat later recalled, "Our house was strike headquarters in our district more than once. The experience left both of us feeling strongly loyal to the labor movement everywhere, to workers in every field and across racial, ethnic, gender, and all other lines, as necessary to justice and the protection of workers' rights." Alfred Moskowitz deferred to his wife's fame within American poetry by allowing her to continue publishing under her maiden name in literary magazines. In legal paperwork, however, Espaillat would always sign her name as Mrs. Alfred Moskowitz. The Moskowitzes also participated in the American Civil Rights Movement and in protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. They remained together until Moskowitz died in February 2016; the couple had three sons. In a 2017 interview, Espaillat commented, "I think that outside the fabric that we belong in, that we’re part of, we really don’t mean very much. As a matter of fact, now that I lost my husband last February, I’m having a hard time feeling like a whole person, because it had been sixty-three years of a really good, happy marriage, and once you’ve had that kind of thing, you feel: 'Where’s the rest of me? He’s gone, suddenly there’s nobody on the other pillow.' I don’t think that feminism consists in thinking of yourself as nobody’s anything. I think it consists in precisely being somebody’s something and counting. Whatever doors you open for yourself are fine, but I think what really matters is whatever doors you succeed in opening for other people. Whatever good you do in the world makes you a person. I don’t think that existing for yourself alone is all that valuable. So maybe I’m a backward person. I guess I’m an unfeminist in that sense, but I don’t care." Current status While being interviewed by New Formalist poet and literary critic William Baer, Espaillat expressed an intense