Play and problem-solving

A workshop for City Year Los Angeles, presented February 9, 2012

  • Why play? What is it?

-new media literacies (NML) definition of play: “the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006, p. 4)

-“Play is a very serious matter… It is an expression of our creativity; and creativity is at the very root of our ability to learn, to cope, and to become whatever we may be” (Rogers & Sharapan, 1994, p. 13).

-Besides being tied to creativity, play is also science – it is the vehicle through which one asks questions, constructs hypotheses, runs trials, analyzes results, and comes to conclusions. Particularly today, as forward-thinkers exhort innovation and policy-makers (solely, and thus myopically) extol the virtues of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the seriousness and practicality of this should be obvious.

-“In almost every example of what he describes as “the sacred,” play is the defining feature of our most valued cultural rites and rituals. As such, for Huizinga, play is not something we do; it is who we are” (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011, p. 97).

  • What is play good for?

A1. Tinkering (agenda-less play) → innovation
-A 10-year-old’s unbounded experimentation led to her discovery of a new molecule

00:00-01:30
A2. Tinkering → discovery

-Junior Toy Inventors in Mumbai’s Expanding Minds Program learned about balance by working with sundry materials.

A3. Tinkering → personal and social enrichment
-This culturally-inspired innovation in Senegal contributed to Sunukaddu staff member/inventor Idrissa’s sense of pride and self-efficacy, as well as the benefit of learners near and far.

NOTE: This final photo is from the RFKLab, a space for innovation and community-building at the RFK Community Schools in downtown Los Angeles. Laughter for a Change uses the NMLs in its Tuesday after-school program with high school students. Improvisation is an excellent context and tool for getting at play and other key NMLs.

B1. Gaming (purposeful play) → innovation

“This is the first instance that we are aware of in which online gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem,” writes Khatib. “These results indi­cate the potential for integrating video games into the real-world scientific process: the ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems” (Young, 2011).

B2. Gaming → discovery

“… certain games afford their players the opportunity to step virtually into the shoes of a specific profession and, through game play, become familiar with its domains of knowledge, skill base, values, identities, and ways of thinking about the world” (Joseph, 2008, p. 263).

For more about Barry’s incredible global learning and youth development program, check out Global Kids!

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B3. Gaming → personal and social enrichment

-Becoming a better critical thinker, friend, teammate, person as a result of play

Can you think of an example to illustrate this?

  • Why? How does that work? Why does play produce such incredible results?

1. Flow: “the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. xiii).

2. Self-efficacy: belief in one’s capacity to produce effects (Bandura, 1977)

Acting in a game demonstrates to players that they can exert power over something, that their efforts make a difference. “Fiero is what we feel after we triumph over adversity” (McGonigal, 2011, p. 33).

3. Capacity-building

Playing enriches perseverance, emotional stamina, mental toughness, and divergent thinking.

4. Community

Game-related talk (processing experience, comparing performance, exchanging feedback, pursuing mastery) builds relationships and community. “Good games… support social cooperation and civic participation at very big scales. And they help us lead more sustainable lives and become a more resilient species” (McGonigal, 2011, p. 350).

  • Play and the NMLs

New media literacies (NMLs) are “a set of cultural competencies and social skills young people need” in a culture that “shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement” (Jenkins et al., 2006, p. 4).

Despite their name, NMLs are neither “new” nor exclusively about “media”; rather, they are time-honored practices that support critical thinking and problem-solving.

-Why? Because NMLs are tools for problem-solving. New and old media alike pose “problems,” such as understanding new gadgets, working with dissimilar collaborators, and interpreting data. NMLs – in these examples, play, negotiation, and visualization, respectively — offer tools to solve those problems.

Other key NMLs include collective intelligence, “the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal”; and negotiation, “the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms” (p. 4)

For more information on NMLs, see newmedialiteracies.org and playnml.wikispaces.com, as well as my publications!

  • Problem-solving

-Problems have an emotional piece to them — they elicit emotional/physical responses in our bodies. Certain strategies can help you to defuse or limit the emotional intensity of a problem. (You can practice these strategies via innovative video game Dojo from GameDesk!)

-Problems also have a practical piece to them — they present real barriers to maximally productive workflow. Which strategies can you invoke for managing conflict and solving problems?

  • ABCDE Exercise

NOTE: My dear friend and mentor, brilliant Garden Nursery School director Jenn Guptill, co-presented this exercise with me back in 2004, when we taught workshops in supporting young children’s conflict resolution for fellow early childhood educators. A-D might be a product of the Safe and Caring Classrooms study group in which we participated, and then we added the E…

-Ask for volunteers to roleplay two characters in a contextually relevant problematic scenario

-These volunteers will play out an encounter in which they address the scenario

-Then they will see what happens when they try out steps A-E

A. Ask neutrally if there is a problem

-Do not assign blame, characterize someone as bad, or assume malicious intent; speak about how things look to you: ”I notice that when I do X, it seems like you do Y.”

-Use “I statements,” explaining how behaviors (NOT the person, just certain acts) they make you feel: “When you do X, it makes me feel like Y.”

-Invite other person to share his/her perspective: ”What do you think is happening?” “What do you think about that?” “What have you noticed?”

B. Brainstorm possible solutions to the conflict

-Both parties ideally should contribute to the brainstorming session

-Ideas should be heard and, ideally, not criticized

-The point is to establish trust and step away from putting people on the defensive

C. Choose which solution you will employ and how you will follow up to assess

-Both parties should agree to the action plan

-The assessment part is key — how will you know if things are working? When will you check in again to ensure that there’s satisfaction and open dialogue?

D. Do it!

-Get ‘er done

E. Evaluate

-This part is often left out but it allows for minor adjustments, guards against strained relations and icy silence/alienation post-confrontation, and renews awareness of/commitment to the solution (because it can be easy to fall back into old habits)

  • Play for Problem-solving Activity

-Break into small groups of 5-6, work through a problematic scenario by using a mode of play

Modes of play:

1. examples from nature — think about plants, animals, etc and see if that helps you to model and problem-solve

2. roleplaying — think about the characters involved in a problem and step into their shoes, act like them and try to think like them in order to problem-solve

3. manipulatives — use assorted objects to model systems and relationships

4. art — express problem, using as few words as possible, via paper, markers, Post-Its, and other art supplies

5. narrative — turn the problem into a simple story, as if you were explaining to a young child or an alien from another planet in order to boil it down to its most essential elements and make new discoveries

6. free play — find another playful mode of exploring your group’s problem!

Possible thematic outcomes:

1. innovation: new solutions

2. discovery: new skills or knowledge

3. personal and/or social enrichment: new relationships and/or intrapersonal understandings

4. other

Possible deliverables:

1. a way to communicate the problem so that the organization (and/or multiple stakeholders) better understand it

2. multiple possible solutions, a long brainstorm session

3. one processual solution and a set of action steps and recommendations for implementation and evaluation

4. an organizational restructuring involving new working groups or work flows or communication processes, etc.

5. other

  • Shareout

What did you come up with?
How did your group members work together (e.g., strategies, roles, conflicts, solutions, etc)?

-Reflections can be enriched by use of ORID (Stanfield, 2000), a protocol for facilitating group discussions that is based on four lines of inquiry: Objective (e.g., “What happened?”); Reflective (e.g., “How did it make you feel?”); Interpretive (e.g., “What is this all about?”); and Decisional (e.g., “What is our response?”).
O: What happened? Which words/phrases/moments do you most vividly remember?
R: How did it feel? Where were you surprised/delighted/frustrated?
I: What is all this about? What does all this mean for us? How will this affect our work? What are we learning from this? What is the insight?
D: What is our response? What action is called for? What are our next steps?

  • Epilogue: City Year L.A. Plays to Problem-solve!

This incredible group of open-hearted, fun-loving, forward-thinking folks enthusiastically embraced the challenge to approach organizational issues from a playful perspective. They harnessed modeling clay, blocks, animal figurines, toothpicks, gumdrops, a Barrel of Monkeys, and narrative form in order to think innovatively and develop viable solutions. Thanks to Shira Weiner for dreaming up and bringing in all of these creative materials, and for inviting me to City Year in the first place! C.Y.L.A., let’s play, hook!

Listen to this recording of the group members’ fantastic solutions!

Thank you for this opportunity and please keep in touch!

Interviews

Transcript from Interview with Ruth Feldman Marcus
Transcript from Interview with Barbara Marcus Felt
Notes from talk with Raymond Marcus


Transcript from Interview with Ruth Feldman Marcus

Wednesday, October 7, 1998

[On Wednesday, October 7, 1998, at 10:30 am, I met my grandmother Ruth Feldman Marcus at Clarke’s, a restaurant in Evanston.  We “brunched” and proceeded to talk for about two hours about her life to satisfy an assignment for my anthropology class.  However, I asked very few interview-oriented questions; rather, I just enjoyed sitting back and learning about my grandmother’s fascinating life.  In order to preserve the integrity of Grandma’s speech patterns, I have made a concerted effort to transcribe every word that she uttered during our time together.  I really didn’t know how to punctuate, i.e., comma versus hyphen versus period, so I just tried my best to fill in whatever notation felt most appropriate.

Conversation occurred before I turned on the tape recorder.  Grandma told me of her initial return to college around the time Mom started at NU.  At first, Grandma approached Kendall College, a junior college in Evanston.  The administration wasn’t very encouraging (she was considering getting a teaching degree) because by the time Grandma would have gotten certified, she’d only have had a couple of years left to work until retirement.  The student body at Kendall was also young, fresh out of high school, typically.  So, she went to Roosevelt University, where there were older students (housewives like herself) and Grandma enrolled in Piano and Art Appreciation.  She didn’t want to take extremely challenging courses because she was unsure about herself academically and still had responsibilities at home, taking care of the house and Grandpa and Uncle Dick and Grandma Sarah.  Grandma Ruth eventually stopped her college, though, as she explains:]

RM: Then Daddy was feeling pressures from the office…

LF: From his office?  I thought he owned the company.

RM: Yeah, but you know, he’s working so damn hard and Barbara going to school and-

LF: And Dickie on his way…

RM: And Dick was, and so… and it wasn’t Women’s Lib yet- I mean, I’ve never said this to anybody.  So he wasn’t, he wasn’t that keen about me going back to college in the middle of all of this.

LF: Daddy isn’t too keen about Mommy going back to work and it is Women’s Lib.

RM: Yeah, well, so what I did, so, and the women wanted me to continue, I made some nice friends, they were younger than me… and uh, I took the music final-

LF: Mhmm.

RM: And I, you know, they must have felt such pity for, considering the old lady, you know. [laughs]

LF: No!  It wasn’t that.

RM: It was, it was starting again because it was the whole, I was learning it the right way, you know.

LF: Mmm, I see.

RM:  And then, while I was waiting, like to go in, I met one of the kids from this Shankweiler, Barbara would remember her, she was, she was the girl from Barb’s class and she had gone into music, and so she was sitting out in the lobby, you know, in the little waiting room in the music school with all of her friends and here I am.  She was just a fantastic music student.  So anyway, they had me play these three, I think three professors were sitting, my hands were shaking like [she demonstrates and laughs].  So anyhow, I passed, I think I got an A in the piano.

LF:  Ooh, good for you.  That’s not easy to do.

RM: It was basic, Laurel, you know.

LF: Yeah, but you had to go back.

RM: I wasn’t a natural, I realize that I-  but anyhow, so that was the end of my college and that was when I decided to go back to work.  I felt like I had to get out of the house already.

LF: Right.  Is that when you went to work for Sears again?

RM: Yeah, and so then, it had been, what, 25 years or something since I’d worked.

LF: And you were a  secretary.

RM: And I was a secretary, so-

LF: That was a great job back then.

RM: Yeah, but I hadn’t worked, and in those years yet, you were still doing shorthand and you were still typing on the typewriter. [laughs]

LF: Right.  They might still do shorthand today.

RM: Yeah, but the shorthand I had learned when I was in high school… Pittman…

LF: Your high school’s name was Pittman?

RM: The, uh, the method of shorthand was Pittman.  And there were like three methods of shorthand.  There was this Munson, which I guess was. Pittman was the hardest one to learn but the easiest to read back.  So, I had been a good student at that, I… So, uh, I wanted to take a refresher course and I called the high school and uh, the only they were using at that time was this Gregg which was a much easier shorthand to read, uh, to learn but harder to read.  Pittman had three levels and light and dark strokes, so it would practically… spell itself out-

LF: Interesting.

RM: -whereas this Gregg was all forms, and so, you could learn it easier because you didn’t have to memorize something, but I think it was more difficult to read back, to transcribe.  Well, there was no… there was no Pittman class, you know, I called the Adult Education I guess… Anyhows, I get a call and they had dug up this little old lady who must have been at that time, she was in her seventies now that I think back, but at this time she was this little old Jewish lady from Rogers Park, I think…  and I don’t know how many people we had in our class, they recruited her and we practically… we’d walk her to the el or to the bus.  We, we watched her like a hawk to make sure [laughs] that she’d make it, you know.

LF: That’s so funny.

RM: And, uh, I forget how  many of us were in the class.

LF: Was it adults exclusively?

RM: It was adults at Niles, uh, uh, did they have a North at the time?  No, it wasn’t North, we had to be going to Niles East.  And we nourished her and so while I was still in the middle of the class, we started in September, I think, I went to Sears cause that was how I’d gotten my first job, you know, so… ago.  They had a Midwestern territory office. On Skokie Highway and Lincoln Avenue which wasn’t far from the house and I thought, “Well, I’ll try it.”  I talked my way into, the same thing that your mom goes up against: I hadn’t worked in 25 years!  And there was this office manager, a Miss Ryan, she was an Irish lady, unmarried, and uh, must have gotten a bang out of me.  So we had lunch at the cafeteria there and she said, okay, then I had only wanted part-time work because I was, you know, Dickie was in his third year, Barb was… and then my mom would come home over the summer, you know… so part-time work, you feel a little less responsible.

LF: You could make dinner.

RM: And that was again, that was before they realized that the housewives would come back, are good employees and they do as much work part-time as their full employees do full-time because they give you a full day and they’re grateful for working and they’re not kids.

LF: They’re efficient.

RM: And they remember the work ethic.

LF: So Miss Ryan said, “Okay, Mrs. Marcus”?

RM: Oh, and I forgot, before that, where I tried Sears, oh this is how it worked, where I tried Sears, I went to a temporary agency and they sent me to Sears-

LF: Oh really?

RM: – to do, to do something.  It might have been around Christmas, before Thanksgiving, they had some kind of typing work.

LF: That’s ironic.

RM: So, it was must have been something quite basic and it was real good for me because it got me to using the typewriter again.

LF: Was it electric by then?

RM: It had to be… Wait!  No, it wasn’t electric.  No, it wasn’t electric, cause I didn’t get to use the electric typewriter till, uh… I’m trying to think when the electric came out… It had to be- no.

LF: I was just curious.

RM: Yeah, no, it wasn’t electric yet, Laurel.  It wasn’t electric yet.  The electric came out while I was working.

LF: I remember you telling me about the transition, between pounding and lightly tapping.

RM: Well, you know… So then that gave me the idea to go to Sears because I got a couple, I got a couple of jobs working for Sears, temporary, cause the lady said, “You like to go to Sears?” -the temporary lady; it was a day here, or two days, you know, something.  And that’s when I went to Miss Ryan and, uh, so she started me, she too, she gave me, she assigned me some job working in this department and I get there and I’m going home and it turns out they want me to file it was in the Law Department.  And I had all of these briefs and so she was going to be you’d be filing till you were blue in the face, all day, and uh… well, anyhow, I did that for a week and I was real upset and I went back to work and I said, “I thought you said,” (I went back to Miss Ryan) “I thought you said you were going to let me, uh, uh, do secretarial work,” I says, “All I’m doing is filing.”  I think I was getting maybe two and a quarter an hour-

LF: Well that’s good.

RM: Oh yeah, so you know where I’m coming from.  That’s why today, everything today, you know, you know-

LF: It must be so ridiculous.

RM: It’s so crazy, you know, and the expression among all us oldsters are, you know, we were “Depression-oriented.”  So then she says, “Well, they were supposed to, uh, you know, let you do both things.”  I says, “I can do a lot more than filing.”  So, she, uh, about a week later, she sent me to the department where Miss Merrill was.. and then again I was only, I was, there was a nice girl there and she was secretary to two people, to Esther Merrill and to another man and so, I was to be her assistant.  You see, Laurel, you gotta work your way up.

LF: Right.

RM: So…

LF: That’s cool that a woman had a secretary back then.  What year was that?  That was about 1968, 69?

RM: Yeah, yeah, she could have bought and sold all these men.  She wrote beautif- she, oh, she had such drive, she was such a dear, she took a liking to me.  Anyway, it wound up that, uh, I think Rosalie who was the girl there, I can’t remember whether she wanted to work for someone else in the department or something and Esther said that she wanted me to work for her and the other fella.  And that’s how it worked out.  I don’t know, maybe by then I was getting two-fifty an hour (laughs).  And she was real nice so my time was real flexible: whenever she wanted me to come, I don’t know, I was working 20 hours a week… oh, and that first summer, Grandma was coming home and I told Miss Ryan that I had to take time off, er, no, Grandma needed surgery that’s when she had, uh, she’d had a rash that was on her rash that was neglected; anyhow it turned into something, we all had a heart attack, cancer, we thought, and so, uh, you know, so it was a whole long story, but anyhow, we went to the surgeon and of course they said that it would have to be removed.

LF: A mastectomy?

RM: A mastectomy and I said, you know, Grandma had bigger breasts than I do and I said, I said, “You know, it’s only a skin thing, maybe you don’t have to take the whole breast off.”  He was a cruel guy and uh, he took, he removed the whole breast and uh, and you know, she never needed follow-up treatment or anything, I’m sure had he not done that, I mean, done what they do…  This was like, barbaric in those days, you know, they figured, “Oh, she was a lady,” I think she had to be in her late seventies, early eighties at the time, they figured, “what does she need it,” you know.  I’m thinking, you know, it’s hard to believe the strides we made.  So anyhow, I had told Miss Ryan, you know, my mom needs surgery… anyhow, I took the summer off and I thought that would be the end of my job.  In the fall, I got a call from Miss Ryan and she says, “Well, when are you coming back?”

LF: That’s wonderful.

RM: Well, but you know, it’s the feeling when you think back and it isn’t that long ago, but you know, women are still asserting themselves. And it’s like today, when I was coming down, it must have been Carol Moseley-Braun on WBEZ and they were, people were calling in and they were asking all kinds of  questions and again they go on this abortion thing.

LF: Oh gosh.

RM: And how does she feel about it and so forth and how far does she think, uh, when is an abortion okay and so forth and then she said that the Supreme Court mandated it and so forth, and uh, she said, you know, regardless of what she believes, she said, you know, she believes that, you know, in her mind, you know, she would never do an abortion but-

Waitress:  Everything all right?

RM: Oh, everything’s great.  Thanks. -But she said, it’s not for anyone- besides, she doesn’t think it’s right for a bunch of people in Congress to dictate what a woman can do and what a woman can’t do, she said.  And uh, she quoted something, I can’t recall, but a woman has her own rights, they can’t tell you, uh… I mean, what you can do and what you can’t do, they’re violating your civil rights.  And so it’s still going on, the women are still fighting.

LF: I know.  [laughs] They definitely are.   I’m taking a class on social inequality and it’s just mind-boggling-

RM: Yeah!

LF: -to see who has the real power in this country.  It mostly deals more with lower class and upper class- RM: Yeah.

LF: -more than men and women-

RM: Oh yes.

LF: -but women are part of the minority structure that have been, you know, denied jobs.

RM: Yes.  So, it’s just amazing, you know, they can’t give it up, I don’t know what bothers them, what bothers them?  Is it any of their business?  And then she says she thinks it’s terrible they wanna make, that a woman who’s been raped, she says, should have to bear that child.  She says, it’s cruel!

LF: What kind of child is it going to be, you know?

RM: Yeah… You know, you don’t know… It’s a crime.  Well, that’s the story.  Well… It’s been such a revolution for women, just since your mom’s time.  The reason it’s so vivid in my mind is ‘cause she was a part of it, she was in the middle of it, you know, otherwise the years wouldn’t stand out so clearly as to when it happened and so forth, but it was while your mommy was probably in her junior year that it all- the Vietnam War brought it all about… But, she created so many problems too, you know, Betty [Friedan] did that, that you could have it all.  But it’s a big sacrifice.

LF: How so?

RM: For a woman, I mean, you get married, you have children, you have your career- you get pulled from all sides.  And if you don’t stay with it, say you start your career when you get out of school and then say you get married and you work, I don’t know how many years, and then you want a family.  And then you, you want to stay home, I mean, is it so terrible?  And so, I don’t know, whether maybe you stay home a while and then you go back and you’ve lost time, you’ve lost your seniority, and then they give you a hard time at some places, you know, “Are you going to have any more children?”  “What if the kids get sick?”  I mean, you know, you’re not the same person you were when you don’t have children and the women get bought.  And what are you supposed to do?

LF: That’s true.

RM: And you know, your mom was conflicted and she stayed home and then when she went back, it was as if she’d never worked, never had experience-

LF: Really, it was that bad?

RM: Sure, and she had to start-

LF: She had a lot of experience.

RM: Yeah, but they wouldn’t recognize it because it was 20 years later or how many years later.

LF: Yeah, but people are still the same.

RM: I know, but, uh, but your mom was working with kids and given the same amount of money as kids that had just got out of college… and the reason  she did get back when she did is that she said if she loses any more time, she’ll never get a job.  So, you know, had she worked all these years, you know, she could’ve been anything by now.  You see?  So then there was a real interesting article by this, Barbara Brottner of the Womenews on Sunday, you know, that section?

LF: Sure, I like that section.

RM: And she wrote that- I don’t know how old  she is, how old her kids are, but she wrote that she’s back after four months, she took a leave of absence and-

LF: For four months to have a baby?

RM: No, I don’t think she had a  baby, she just took a leave of absence to like, to like, refresh herself and she said how much easier it was and she had time for the kids, I don’t know, maybe she had a couple of kids, I don’t know how old they were, the house was more orderly, the children were… evidently she has small children, the kids were calmer, she wasn’t harried, and she enjoyed it and she enjoyed going to the grocery and not being in a hurry, you know, and the long and the short of it is here she is, back again.  She said, you know, Why am I back again?  And she said of course she loves her work and so forth,  and I think she likes the money, she said it gives them the vacation and so forth, and then she says the bottom line is that if she waits for the children to get a little older where they can be on their own, she’ll send in her resume and at a certain age, they’ll throw it in the garbage.  So, she’s implying that you’ve got to stay with it or else you’re out.

LF: How long did you stay with it after you went back and you were working for Sears?

RM: Oh, so I stayed, I worked for about… we had this real nice relationship so my time was real flexible.  I think I worked for about nine years and then Esther Merrill who I worked for; again, she could have bought and sold everyone in the department, the men- she wrote so beautifully.  And the head of the department, whenever he wanted to make a speech or something, he would call Esther and ask her to write it and she was so capable.  But she was a woman too, see, and she was so vital and she was so full of life.  She had to be, I’m trying to figure out how much older Esther is.  I don’t know, maybe six, seven years, and uh… uh… anyhow, there was a rule and she was fighting it: you had to retire at 62.  And they were pushing her out.  She didn’t want to leave in the worst way and they could have, you know, they could have made it until 65 or something, but anyhow, she had to retire and uh, so then when she left I was still in the office, I was going to work for a couple of different people and the store in Northbrook (they were building Northbrook Court) the store in Northbrook, they had a Sears and they needed, they needed everybody and we were interviewing- oh, and before that, the supervisor, you know, the manager of… who had originally hired had gone on to other things and we had a different manager and for the last year or so before I left she had been after me to work full-time.  But I was still afraid and then they started interviewing for Northbrook Court and she says, “I want you to go down and interview.”

LF: You must have been real good.

RM: Then, so, I interviewed… Anyhow, I got the job to be secretary to the manager of the Northbrook store.  And uh, that meant full-time.  But by then, Dickie was in law school already and Mom was married and uh, I thought I’d take the plunge.  And uh, oh, it was such an exp- the store wasn’t quite ready when I went in and it was so exciting.  It was altogether different from working in a corporate office, it was a fantastic experience, very different. They really… and I worked for the manager and the assistant manager and of course, it was a disaster from Day One because the store never took off.

LF: Yeah.

RM: The whole Northbrook Court didn’t take off.

LF: Really?

RM: Oh, it was… The people in the area didn’t want Northbrook Court.  They didn’t want anything so commercial and they fought Sears maybe, I don’t know, maybe 10 years or something, and Sears persevered- they wanted that Northbrook Court.  And so then they made all kinds of rules, one side I think was Highland Park and one side was Northbrook and they made rules you couldn’t cross the str-  make turns to go over to the northern side of it, I think that might have been Highland Park, and it was over who’s going to get the money, the taxes, the whole bit, and they persevered.   And they rammed Northbrook Court and they promised that they’d put up all of this shrubbery and make it so that it wasn’t a commercial enterprise in the middle of that residential area.  And they made such changes, they changed the roads, and Waukegan… Lake Cook and Waukegan didn’t go beyond Waukegan and Sears, they extended Lake Cook to go west and they changed the entrance to go into Edens.  I mean, the whole landscape changed.

LF: Yeah.

RM: But it was, it was a disaster.  And uh, and then after a year, my mom wasn’t well, and uh, I… I went to Florida and came home and decided I’d stay with, I’d stay with Grandma.  And the store was so , uh… it was, you know… Anyhow, so I left, and of course, you know, Sears went out, Montgomery Ward went out, and I think until maybe they put the theaters in, it still has never really taken off.

LF: We used to go there a lot, but maybe that’s because it was close.

RM: Well yeah, but the people there all literally boycotted Sears because these were,uh, wealthier class and you go in to buy a gift from Sears and they didn’t wrap it fancy, I mean, they, they weren’t geared for a North Shore crowd.

LF: I getcha.

RM: And the only thing that they would buy at Sears, they wouldn’t buy the clothes, that was kinda beneath them, was their appliances and stuff.  And they were so demanding, the people, I remember because so many of the complaints would come to the manager, and uh, they denigrated Sears, you know.  And that one lady who put white carpeting in her house called and she said that when the men come, unless they take off the shoes coming in and out, they couldn’t come into her house.

LF: Let’s hear it for the North Shore.

RM: Also, there was a Magnin’s at that time, that was a great store, and they left and there were a couple other, you know… Anyhow, it’s like piece of history.

LF: That’s exciting.

RM: That’s why they put the shows in.

LF: Yeah, well, I thought that the shows was to compete with Old Orchard.  They were supposed to put ‘em in years ago.

RM: Yeah, but, they did that to, to uh… until  they got that through and they had to promise the people all kinds of things and if you look at, if you look at Northbrook Court, on the south end where there’s homes in the back, they had to promise them all the shrubberies and all the things-

LF: The retention pond?

RM: Yeah, so… Anyhow.

LF: How did Grandpa feel about you going back to work?  He wasn’t that positive about the education; did he at least feel different because you were bringing money in?

RM: I felt different.  I had a feeling of, uh, of uh, of independence.  It’s a very difficult thing, Laurel, because I had worked before I got married-

LF: Right.

RM: And uh, I gave some money to my mom and some for me but I was, I was independent, you know.  And then… I didn’t realize, you know, when you get married, maybe I should, you know, we didn’t have that much of an income; actually, I had been making more money.  See, I didn’t always work for Sears.  I worked three years for Sears and then, and then, when the war came along, middle of the war or something, I was recommended to work for this fixture and lamp manufacturers and I was the secretary for the general manager; and that was a Jewish firm and it made such a difference.  And I was working at Sears (my first job) when I was a kid, you know. There was anti-Semitism there, overt.

LF: You told me about it.

RM: Yeah.

LF: They’d ask if you had any holidays to take off…

RF: Yeah.  So anyway, I worked for Turner Manufacturing Company for three years and two of them, of course, Daddy and I- Grandpa and I were married but he was overseas.  And what I should have done probably, and during the war there was a freeze on salaries; but, I started out, when I left Sears, they were going to give me $25 a week which is a lot of money.

LF: Okay.

RM: And  I went to Turner and uh, I think they were going to give me the 25 and after a week or two, I was kind of sorry I had gone and the hours were different and I was so used to Sears and I said I don’t know if I like it so well, so they gave me a raise [laughs].

LF: Woohoo!  There you go, Gram!

RM: But I wasn’t thinking of that, and the long and short of it was, I had a real nice job- I should have stayed!  But Grandpa was coming home and we had never… see, and in those days, the women didn’t work.  So they, I was going to get them, and then they were going to give me a bonus at the end of the year, and they were going to give me, and then after the war, because there had been a freeze on salaries, in 45, you know, after the war ended, the freeze went off, and they offered me, they said they’ll start you off at 45 or 50 dollars and I had said no, Grandpa’s coming home- listen to this!  I think of all these things and I was looking all over to get an apartment before Grandpa came home.  You couldn’t get apartments because everything had stopped during the Depression, and nobody had built anything, and then all of a sudden, all of these fellas are coming home and families are starting and you couldn’t get an apartment for love or money.  And that’s a long story, so then I got this apartment all the way on Kenmore, because my girlfriend’s uncle owned the building, I think I told you, and so it was so far from the West Side, and the place I worked for was on the West Side.  The long and short of it, I says, no, I’m going- when my husband comes home, I’m leaving.  I told them three months in advance, I was being honorable, they thought I had rocks in my head… And then when Grandpa came home, the, you know, it was a family business, they were starting, and he was starting at $25 a week! [laughs] So, and of course, our rent at that time was $42.50 a month, and gas and electric, you know… so, you know, your scale of money was altogether- But still, so you, know, my mom had been very frugal, we lived a nice life, but very- we always lived within our budget.  So we allotted so much a week for food and, and I didn’t take any money for myself, you know, that was the thing, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.

LF: Did you talk to Grandma?

RM: No no, no, I’m talking about after I was married with Grandpa when he came home.  No, with Grandmother it was no problem- I gave her half and I kept half.

LF: But your half went into yours and Grandpa’s account, as opposed to a private account?

RM: No, no, Grandpa’s- the way I saved money when Grandpa was gone, in the army, was he’d send home a check, the army sent overseas pay or something or no,or  they sent the wife, if you had a wife, she’d get $50 a month, so we got a check for $50 a month, and I’d put $25 to it and bought a $100 bond every month that Grandpa was gone.  So we had, I don’t know, I don’t know how much money we had when he came home, cause we had never had a wedding and such- that’s another story.  But, but anyhow, so when Grandpa came home and we were figuring out our money, we were being real frugal, you know, so I didn’t take any money for my own personal needs.  And what I needed for my own personal needs, you know, sometimes you want to go to lunch, you want to, you know, you don’t want to have to ask your husband for everything.  See?  So, it’s a big change.  And you got, you know, not that maybe he would have said no, or what if I had wanted to spend another five- but you just don’t do these things, you know, you’re young and you’ve got idealistic… And, uh, of course he got a car- it wasn’t as if we were poor, but we were living within his salary.  And then, like, at the end of the year he would get a bonus, but still, you , you didn’t figure that, you know, so that’s what I’m trying to say.  So then when I went back to work- there I was!  I mean, you’re independent again and I says to Grandpa, I says, “This is my money [laughs].”  I didn’t give that to Grandpa.  And so I say, you know, I wouldn’t use it for any household things, you know, it was just for me, you know, and I put most of it away in my own account, I have my own account.  So that’s why when went back to work, your uh, you know, it’s a horse of another color!

LF: Yeah.

RM: You’re independent.

LF: Yeah.

RM: Can you follow it?

LF: Yeah sure, that’s how I felt this summer with Dad.

RM: Yeah!

LF: I would never ask him for money-

RM: Yeah.

LF:  -and it made me feel good.

RM: Yeah.

LF: That, you know, if wanted to splurge, I could.

RM: Yeah!

LF: That’s the same way it is now, I put so much in my savings, Dad hasn’t had to give me an allowance or anything like that.  I take care of it myself and I balance my own checkbook.

RM: It’s an altogether different feeling.  So that’s what, you know, so, you know if you’re in a certain category, sad to say, some women have to work in order to pay the rent and the whole thing, but if you’re at a little different level and you’re both equal, you know, you feel differently about having your own income.  So, anyhow, it was kind of an evolution I think in women’s rights and women’s equality… Anyhow, now, Laurel, if you ever need, if you ever need money, don’t ever hesitate, cause I worry, because I know how you are-

LF: Thank you.

RM: -and I know the feeling, and you know, you can’t do everything, you can’t go to school and make money, you know.

LF: A lot of people do.

RM: Well, you’re a freshman, I mean, it’s such a big adjustment… So.

LF: I appreciate it, Grandma.  I’ll let you know if I need anything.

RM: I’m serious.  You know, something, something will come up and you can’t use up all of your savings, you’ve got four years.

LF: I’ll see, hopefully I’m going to try to get something part-time, maybe next quarter.  You know, because, I am still adjusting right now.

RM: Of course!  I mean, you can’t, I mean, it isn’t fair, we didn’t send you to college to support yourself.

LF: It’s so expensive…

RM: Well don’t worry, we’re taking care of that.

LF: Yeah.

RM: So don’t worry about the tuition, it’d be expensive wherever you went.

LF: How did you guys take care of Mom’s and Uncle Dick’s tuitions?

RM: It was no problem back then.  We lived modestly and I was just uh, I was just uh, I always felt, I wanted everything for the kids, you know, and you know, we weren’t uh, Grandpa always made a nice living and we lived modestly, and that was what we always saved our money for.  And Mom, uh, when she had to go to school, I was worried, this was uh, before the girls had gotten so independent and so forth and some of my friends’ girls had gone away to school and gotten homesick.  I was real worried.  And so, first, I wanted Barb- your mom and I were thinking about a girls’ school.

LF: Yeah, I remember, Chatham.

RM: And there were a couple other, there was Lake Erie, and there was another school, and I wanted- I didn’t want- so I was real worried.  And then, uh, and I had told  your mom, you know, whatever school she wanted, she could go to, no problem.  Tuition wasn’t as bad then, I think, I think, I think, even figuring, uh, the difference in money values from then and now, I still think the money proportion is much greater now on a college.  So, uh, when your mommy got accepted here at Northwestern, well, originally she was going to live home because she couldn’t get housing, so it would have been the same if I had send here, if she had gone down to Illinois.  Then the housing opened up and uh, there was never, uh, there was never any problem.  And with your mom too, I think, now if I think back, maybe you know, we didn’t understand, but she too didn’t want to ask for money and stuff.  She was working part-time… you know, I think, I think, you gotta kinda reach the kids, you know, now when you think back, and make her feel more comfortable about accepting your money because you guys get this chance just once, you don’t want to be burdened by other things if we can help it, put it that way.  So, I didn’t, I didn’t realize at the time maybe I could have made her feel, you know, more comfortable about her taking things.  I can’t remember now how we worked it.  Your mom was working, I can’t remember the first year, she taught Sunday school and then, over Christmas she, uh, she worked as a waitress over in Glencoe.  –She’s probably told you these stories.

LF: I knew about Sunday school, I didn’t know about the waitress.

RM: She went in Hubbard Woods and uh, I don’t know, by the time she had to pay for the uniform or something, you had to wear a little apron, a little apron and a cap, I don’t remember-

LF: Oh gosh.

RM: -and there was like a coffee shop, like a hang-out, something like this [Clarke’s], and she’d take the car and I don’t know if they gave her a dollar and a half an hour, I don’t know what, and tips.  So she came home one time, she almost fainted.

[the tape ran out here; in the interim, Grandma explained about Mom’s babysitting jobs during college]

RM: And Dickie when he went to school, Dick too could have gone to any school that he wanted.  And he went down to Illinois.  But Dick had worked… all through, uh, I think maybe from the time he was 16 or something, I don’t know, or 17, when he didn’t want to go to camp anymore. I don’t know how old Dickie was, I think he started going down to Marcus Brush, and he worked over Christmas.  And uh, I can’t remember when Dickie worked.  And so, he had his money, he said and when he went down to Champaign, he said he didn’t need any money from me.  I gotta ask him how that worked, I can’t believe he could have had all of that money, so that he, uh… you know, so we paid his tuition and everything.  I mean, we never pressed the kids but I guess, like you, they felt, uh, they felt funny.  But really you shouldn’t because we want you to go to school and you’re in the school to learn and it’s only such a short time.  You shouldn’t have to be worried by school.

LF: Oh, okay.

RM: But I mean now, you tell me, you just remember that.  I mean, so that’s how it works.  So those people, you know they had that offer, they haven’t come through, huh?

LF: Well, yeah, I emailed ‘em and I called them, and they just don’t have work right now, but when they do, they said they’d send it.

RM: Yeah, well, they can’t, they can’t, I mean, it was too good to be true.

LF: I know.

RM: All right.

LF: When it happens, it’ll probably get busy around Midterms or something like that.

RM: Yeah, maybe, maybe, I don’t know, what was their business, maybe business isn’t so great either, you know, these are crazy times now…

LF: And they sold the company, and-

RM: Oh!

LF: -I’m not sure what’s going on.

RM: That’s probably what it is, it’s transition.

LF: And you get projects, you know, it just really depends on when the clients come.

RM: Yeah, right.

LF: So…

RM: Yeah, there’s no point, you know, they say it would have been nice, but, uh, there’s no point in doing anything about it now, I mean, it’s just too much to give up your school, and I would feel terrible.

LF: It’ll all be okay.

RM: Don’t worry about it.

LF: I’m not worried, I’m really, I’m not. [laughs] I just spent $40 on groceries yesterday, I’m fine.

RM: Yeah, that should hold you for over a year, right?

LF: Yeah.

RM: No, I mean it’s crazy, your money doesn’t go too far.

LF: No, it really doesn’t.

RM: And uh…

LF: You hand over the credit card and you’re shaking, you’re like, “Oh my God…”

RM: Yeah.

LF: But-

RM: I mean, but this is the way it is.

LF: I know.

RM: So I mean, you know, supposedly they’re going to pay you umpteen sums, it seems like a lot of money, and then when you go out in the world today, it’s nothing.

LF: I know.  Oh well.  Water under the bridge…  Tell me something about, like, your early life – When were you born, where were you born?

RM: When was I born?  It’s like the Dark Ages now when I think back.  Uh, it was an innocent time, you know, I was born, uh, you know my brother was eight years older than I was.

LF: Right.

RM: My mother’s had, oh, times were rough and uh, my mother had a real difficult time when my brother, you know, in her uh, in her pregnancy and delivery.

LF: Oh really.

RM: And uh, so, uh, I don’t know, maybe she had decided maybe she was only going to have the one.

LF: Was there birth control back then?
RM: And evidently whatever, you know, we never discussed anything, but whatever it was, she was very careful.  And then my, my aunt, was her sister, you know I keep talking about my cousin Marcelle who was a month older than I am.

LF: Right.

RM: Now she was, you know, my Aunt Helen might have been 10 years younger than my mother, my mother was the oldest one.

LF: Right.

RM: So, my Aunt Helen had, she had a son, Ernest, who was about three, I guess.  She told my mother , Maury was going to be eight, you know, that she was pregnant.  And this is the story my mom tells me, and so when she heard- and they were close, you know, because my Aunt Helen was the first girl, after my mother there were three boys, three brothers, so my aunt was the first girl- so, uh, my mother said, “Oh my God, Helen has a girl and I don’t,” and so she got pregnant and my aunt had Marcie April 25

LF: Oh yeah?

RM: And I was born May 25 and I guess she had a difficult time, like a three-day labor, I don’t know, you hear these stories.  Maybe today they’d do it differently, she tells me that the doctor [?], she could hear it in her subconscious, they said, “Thank God she she’s got a girl.”

LF: [laughs] That’d be the only thing that justifies-

RM: Yeah, so… You  don’t remember my mom cause you were a baby when she died.  But she was a very independent lady, a very loving person.  So I had a real nice childhood, it was like being an only child, Maury was eight years older, and uh… They were Depression years, I mean, but we didn’t know we weren’t, uh… that times were hard because everybody in the area, we were all- everybody was in the same boat.  And we didn’t know that we were living in a Jewish ghetto because your world is small.  We all lived in apartment buildings.

LF: Where?

RM: On the West Side of Chicago, so like, Roosevelt Road- I think you might have heard of that street.  And uh… my folks were very ambitious, my father was a barber, I mean, he was barber and I don’t know if he was, you know, not by- uh, I don’ t know how come he decided on that, but when he came from Europe, uh, it might have been the easiest thing to learn or something.  But he was really, he was a wonderful mathematician and uh, in those- they didn’t have education, they were learned in Hebrew and the Jewish faith of everyday, you know.  So it wasn’t as if they were illiterates, see that’s the difference with Jewish immigrants, even though they didn’t get educations, they were… they, they were learned in the Hebrew-  [waitress enters] Yeah?  Oh, take this.

LF: [laughs] Thank you.

RM: So, uh, and they were ambitious and they- well, it’s a whole long story.

LF:  That’s okay.

RM: Do you have to go back to school?

LF: No, I’m fine.

RM: So I should look at the car outside, I gave it an hour and a half.

LF: Well, do you want to go sit in the park or something?

RM: No, no, because I was going to see if it needed money.

LF: Oh.

RM: So anyhow, when I was born they had built this… the area was brand-new at that time, it’s hard to believe the West Side- it was west, it was west of, of, of  the area where all of the buildings were, it was all big empty lots and so forth and they had built this- well, they had had it built, it was a 13-apartment building and at that time, uh, the rules about how you finance it and everything were very lax, and so you could put down a small amount of money and then pay the mortgage off and then what happened? So I was born in this building-

LF: Oh yeah, were you delivered by a midwife?

RM: No, no.  Well, I shouldn’t say I was born in this building, when I was baby we came to this building.  My mother was in the hospital, with my brother she went in as a, uh, as a… as a clinic case.  You know, so she didn’t have to pay.  And with me already, she was a regular patient.  So, and at that time, she stayed two weeks, you stayed in the hospital two weeks after you were born.  Of course, it was even worse cause they didn’t let you get off the bed.  Things were all together- they didn’t realize that you should move around a lot so really, by the time she came home, she was weaker than when she went in!

LF: Yeah.

RM: Yeah.  But anyhow, so I was born in that area, and there were three apartment builidngs and there was a park, a big park, it was like a playground.  And it was a very happy childhood.  But what happened, the Depression came and they lost the building and uh, we lived there rent-free – it’s a whole long story.  But, so everybody was in the same boat, and –  [looking out the window and noticing people milling around a car] Is that my car?

LF: No, it’s an Acura.

RM: Oh, I must be the next one.

LF: Yeah, you are, you’re the next one.

RM: So, it was a very happy childhood cause the park was across the way, they flooded it in winter and we ice-skated on it, they had a swimming pool and all kinds of equipment and I lived directly across the street.  And the kids, the parents were all so busy, you know, taking care of their own lives and, and you had, let’s say you had 13 apartments, that was this one building, and across the street was this big apartment building.  So you start to think about how many kids-

LF: It must have been at least fifty, you know?

RM: There was a million kids all the time, and nobody went to each other’s houses because the kids didn’t have their own rooms as such, and kids didn’t have toys, you know?  So you were always outside!  And there was always somebody to play with.  And you were never at a loss, you go out, there was this kid, this kid, this kid, or there was the park.

LF: Right.

RM: So it was, you know, really a carefree time, although times were very difficult- nobody had money and some, I didn’t realize now, some of the kids were on char- But, for the most part, Jewish people would rather die than take charity.  But none of us knew that we were… that they were poor, as such.  So… and school for me was a lot of fun because my brother was eight years older and so I had nobody to play with in the house.  My father, in those days, they stayed open- his place of business was a long distance away, so he’d leave the house like seven o’clock in the morning, he wouldn’t be home until eight o’clock or so at night.

LF: Wow.

RM: So he never had dinner with us, he always had dinner separately, my mother would keep the food warm.  And so, the house was very, uh, very lonesome.

LF:  Yeah.  What kind of hours did Grandma work?

RM: Well, Grandma at that time was home until I was about thirteen.

LF: Oh.

RM: Actually, what could she do?  She had no education.

LF: What about the deli?

RM: Well, so wait.  So then when I was, I was going to be in eighth grade, and there was a small little restaurant, a small little restaurant not far from where my father worked.  At that time it was called the South Water Street Market, it was the produce market.  All of the trucks came in with the farm goods and you had buyers, uh, people who had stores, you know, fruit stores and grocery stores and would come and buy the fresh produce everyday.  My father’s barber shop was in that area and this little restaurant- I’m trying to think of how big it was.  It might have been this square, I guess… [indicating area]

LF: Really.

RM: And then you had to walk down two stairs and it had a counter, and some tables, a little kitchen.  It became available and you know, my mother had, you know, they had been wanting to do something.  My mom was a real good, she was a real good cook, she was a real good everything, she was fast, she was… And so, for $600 you could buy that store.

LF: Where did you have the money?

RM: And she got it from my grandfather.  She got it from my grandfather, borrowed the money and bought this little restaurant.  And I was going into eighth grade, Maury was, she wanted him to go to school, he went to this school of accounting downtown, and uh, she would get up about, five o’clock in the morning and the man who lived upstairs, the family who lived upstairs, the man had a, he was in a kind of produce business in that South Water Street Market, and he drove, he had a truck that could, and he would be going down every morning and she would wait for him and he would take her.  And I think, so this little restaurant, the reason she took it it was supposedly short hours, and uh…. She’d open it I think around six o’clock in the morning and then it would close around three o’clock I think, and she cleaned up and then she had to take the streetcar to come home.

LF: Right.

RM: So I don’t know, she’d come home around maybe five o’clcok.

LF: And then would she have to make dinner?
RM: And she usually brought, she usually, she’d be coming home with shopping bags from what she had cooked.  And she went in and she… the cook didn’t come or something, anyway, she let the cook go.  She was very- she was an amazing person, lot of determination, so she did the cooking and she did the shopping and my Aunt Ethel, who was out of a job at the time, came and she was the waitress and… And I would be home alone, you know from the morning until she came home.  And my father didn’t come home until-

LF: Eight.

RM: Til eight, nine o’clock.  But you didn’t think anything of it.  I’d come home for lunch and go back because school, you know, you stayed in school- in the same school, you know, you started and you didn’t have junior high and stuff, so the school was about three, three blocks away and I did everything that I would have done had she been there: came home, I made lunch, and uh… I came home after school, practiced the piano, you can imagine how… And then, and wait for her to come.  Clean up the house, or else go outside in the winter and go shopping- Let me run out, Laurel.  There’s a police car.

LF: Sure. [Tape stops during Grandma’s sprint outside to feed the meter.]

RM: Yeah, so that was, so she lasted, uh… She had the store until she got so sick because she worked so hard.  She was getting up six o’clock in the morning, coming home at five o’clock, and doing everything- you know, I did what I could and on Saturday what I thought was cleaning the house and stuff, I would do that and then go down to the store cause she was there on Saturday til about two o’clock. And there were no washing machines in those days and she was very frugal, every penny she saved and she would wash, now I don’t, she would wash clothes in the bathtub in the house and she would do that on Saturday or Sunday and hang up the clothes on the radiator, I can’t- you know, it’s just, life was so different then and she did everything and she just wore herself down and uh, I think in April of that year, cause she had gotten it around January, the store, in April of that year, something like that-

LF: Do you remember what year it was?

RM: Well, I, I had to be, uh… I was 13 in May so if I was born in ’22, so that was say, ‘35.  The heart of the Depression.  They usually give you different shots in school, you know, for all your- And I don’t know what shot this one was, uh, I think it was a series of three shots or something and you would line up and the doctor would go through all of these kids, and I got an infection, a terrible infection in my arm.

LF: From the shots?

RM: From the shots.  And you never went to a doctor.  You had to be dying to go to a doctor.  So, uh… Evidently the whole arm had to swell.  And uh, and then I had a fever, my mother had to go to work and I’m laying down.  Anyway, the damn thing opened up finally by itself.  I remember my mom took me to the drugstore, [laughs] across the street.  I mean, this is primitive!

LF: Yeah.

RM: And uh… And uh, I don’t know, he said just keep it covered or something, so we put a handkerchief around it, the damn thing is draining, I got an arm like this.   So there was one thing that happened to me.  And then I got, and this all this time, while she was having the store, then I got, over spring vacation, I got a sore throat and I was sick and my mom had had to leave me every morning and go, and I had this high fever and I’m lying by myself in bed.

LF: What about your aunts?

RM: And my Aunt Helen, she’d come, I remember she’d come over to have a look at me, bring some soup or something and go back.  And after, after a week, or more, and I wasn’t getting better, finally called- God knows how my mom had to feel- finally called, uh, a specialist in.  And in those days, the doctor would come to the house.  So, this ENT, he was just starting out, this doctor, and evidently, he was going to be an ENT guy, he came and in my mom’s bedroom- cause she had had a doctor before that and he didn’t see anything, he said it was just a sore throat and he was the one, that’s what happened, he was the one that recommended this ENT guy because he says he doesn’t see anything.  So this ENT guy came to the house, that’s when, and at that time the doctor, she gave him $5 for his visit, and that was a lot of money.  I don’t know what she gave this ENT guy, and it was an abscess under my tonsil, and he did it right in the house-

LF: He did what, a surgery?

RM: Yeah, he told my mom to hold my arms –

LF: Huh!

RM: -and he, he burst the uh, the little abscess.

LF: Oh God!

RM:  In the house!  The blood and the… I mean this is, these are things, I mean, they sound so primitive, right?

LF: Wow!

RM: I mean, he brought some lamps over to see.

LF: [laughing]

RM: So my mom had to go through all of this.  I don’t know what she paid him!  Of course I got better after that! [laughs]  It’d be worse with the abscess.

LF: You’re lucky, yeah.

RM: Cause he said it was ripe already and I’d been sick for two weeks.  So, that had to be over spring break, so I mean, those two things.  So my mom was on the ver- got real sick, I mean, and so thank God they were able to sell the restaurant, in May or something, so they had it about five or six months.

LF: I didn’t realize.

RM: And they had, I don’t know how much money, she paid my grandfather off, she gave him interest- this is how you did things.  And she had, I don’t know how much, cause she saved all that money, it was, you know, money that she herself worked so hard for and she was like, sick, sick all win- sick all summer, I mean, she was like on the verge of a collapse.  She was so determined that she just wore herself out.  And so, I remember, you know, where she’s lying in bed and I’m trying to do what I could and I, I remember I was washing stuff, I remember washing, we gave stuff to the laundry and all the dark stuff, the socks and stuff I remember washing ‘em..  And she really, you know, had tried to protect me, I didn’t do, but I was trying to do what she used to do.  I remember rubbing the dark socks, you know, [laughs] in the sink or in the bathtub.

LF: Yeah.

RM: Well, and, uh, thank goodness she recovered.  And then it took about, another year, in the meantime she still wanted to make money.  It took another year, I was in high school.  I was going to go into my second year of high school and my father- and they had been researching delicatessans and stuff.  My father would go- let’s say, my father would go and evidently there, you go to a broker, I don’t know how he found out, and, and he would go and look at these different stores that would be for sale, different businesses.  And he would sit all day and the count the customers that we coming in the store, trying to figure out-

LF: The turnover?

RM: Yeah, how much money would be, how much it made, how much would be left.  And in my second year of high school he came on this delicatessan.

LF: Wow.

RM: And so he still worked, you see, it was my mom’s, and then it’s another whole long story, my brother had gotten married and couldn’t get a job and so he and my mom opened that delicatessan up and I would come to, when she first got it we were still living on 14th and Kildare.  On Saturday I would go home, I would be home, I would clean up the house in my fashion and then walk to the store which had to be, I don’t know, two, three miles and then the second year we moved from there, we moved to, got an apartment that was like half a block away.  And I would go every day after school.  So that was our home- never used the house.  She worked, and I would take a dollar a week.  Cause you know, money was so hard, you know, she worked, I wouldn’t take money-

LF: Sure.

RM: You know?  And she would tell me, you know, just, just take whatever you need.  And I couldn’t take whatever I needed because how could you take?  But I would stay, I would work, and do whatever, and that lasted until, I was working a year already, I graduated school, and then I was going to go to college.  There was this junior college not too far.  And I started in February and uh, I had wanted to go to Champaign, you know-

LF: What did you want to study?
RM: I was probably going to, what could a girl, I was going to go into teaching or library, library science.  And, uh, but I figured, oh, I suppose I was dreaming, I don’t know what, I said well, I would go in September, I would start at Herzel.  And uh, I went to Herzel which was, I don’t know, two, three miles from the house and I loved it.  And uh, I took short-hand again, I took English, I forget what I took, and uh, it was a lot harder than high school because when I went to high school, I mean, it was in a fancy neighborhood and stuff, but the education wasn’t that great.  And I’d never had English in high school, grammar even. [laughs]

LF: Wow.

RM: I can’t even begin to tell you.  Anyhow, I enjoyed it and I got a job.  They had a program for kids funded by the government, uh… to help kids going to college.  So I applied because one of the girls I was going with said she was applying.  So I applied and I got this grant, and I don’t know what it was going to be, I don’t know, $15 a month, [laughs] I don’t know.  And I got a job working for the short-hand teacher part-time or something.

LF: Right.

RM: And then, I don’t know, I was in school, I only got one mark maybe two months, I started in February, the end of March.  My mom was going to the store and we had a, a late snow storm and it melted and there was ice and she fell on the sidewalk and she broke her wrist.  So, I stopped school-

LF: She couldn’t cook with a broken wrist?

RM: She couldn’t, no.  And I, uh… Not that I could cook but at least I’d be in the store.  And uh, so I quit school, I was working in the store and uh, and uh, I think I was going at night.  I went to night school, I don’t know, I was always shy- you wouldn’t think that, would you?  I went to Austin and I was talking public speaking. [laughs]  Can you believe it?  Well, don’t ask, that was a whole other story.  And working in the store, I think I went once a week to Austin.  And I don’t know how I came on- but you know, education wasn’t that stressed.  And uh, and then my Aunt Molly- do you remember Aunt Molly?
LF: I think so.

RM: Yeah.  She, you know, she had been divorced and she, she was working at Sears on the West Side on [Artington?].  And I knew short-hand, you know.  And so then, when my mom was getting better, I was really thinking I’d go back to school, so this was in May or June.  There was an opening in her department, for a secretary. She gave ‘em my, and she says she’s got a niece, and so I went and, and that’s…

LF: That’s…

RM: And then we had the store for maybe another year, and then the war came along.  And so, first the war came along, and then they were going to make the, I don’t know if you ever heard of it, the uh, is it called the Eisenhower Expressway?

LF: Yeah.

RM: At that time it was called the Congress Street Expressway.  It was just going into, they were just going to start doing it and where our store was was going to be torn down to make way for this expressway.

LF: You get compensated for that, don’t you?
RM: Pardon?  Well, I don’t think they gave my mom what she would have made if she tried to sell it.  But anyhow, they left the store and I was working, so that’s how come I would give her half my salary.   $16 I got a week, I didn’t realize she was saving it for me.  And uh… and then she went out and got a job at Sear’s, she couldn’t read.

LF: Your grandma?

RM: My grandma, after my mom-

LF: I mean, yeah.

RM: That’s what I’m saying, she was an amazing lady.

LF: Your mom.

RM: During the war, you know, there was a shortage of help.  She went in, it was this big warehouse and offices on the West Side that right now, they, they donated all of that land, Sears, for reclamation on the West Side.

LF: Right.

RM: And it was a huge thing, it was almost four or five blocks it went.  So they had their mail order, she went down there, and uh, she worked in the mail order and they hadda, they hadda schedule orders.  And so it went by numbers, you put, you had all these pieces of paper I think by numbers and you had to file ‘em in different cubbyholes, so she could do that.

LF: Yeah, sure.  She couldn’t read Eng- what was her English-speaking ability, wasn’t it kind of-?

RM: She did half and half, but she, you know, she understood English perfectly-

LF: Right.

RM: And she spoke, but I don’t know, you know, it wasn’t as if she didn’t speak English.

LF: Right, I just remember funny stories-

RM: Yeah!

LF: -about her not understanding on the telephone-

RM: Right.

LF: -things like that.  “Barbara no home,” hunh [indicates slamming down receiver].

RM: Yeah, well [laughs], she spoke better than that.  But she spoke, I mean, she’s- you know she would speak half, you wouldn’t know, you would begin in English and end up in Yiddish.

LF: Right.

RM: But no, she was able to, you know, get along in the, in the… American world, put it that way.

LF: She just worked and worked-

RM: Worked and worked, and she was on her feet eight hours a day, you know- this was what we would call “unskilled labor,” no?

LF: Yeah.

RM: And she continued working at that til after the war.

LF: Meanwhile your father was still a barber?

RM: And my father was [laughs]- and he made just a certain amount of money, very little.  And they saved their money, and uh… I don’t know how many years later, they bought, they bought another- my father was always, the idea of real estate.  They bought another building with my Uncle Irving, they didn’t have, my father almost fainted when my mother said- cause that was his hobby, he would go to real estate, there was like a real estate company not far from where we lived and he would go there every Sunday cause that was his hobby, he would go over all the things that were being offered-

LF: Huh.

RM: And sometimes he would sell for them and get a commission.  And there was this one building and there was my Uncle Irving who was interested and they decided to buy this apartment building, I don’t know how many apartments- 26 or something…

LF: Wow.

RM: I forget the amount of money, they didn’t quite have it, my father almost fainted when my mother said that she had umpteen and umpteen thousands of dollars.  He couldn’t believe it.  Of all the money she made working, she saved.  All those years.

LF: In a bank?

RM: In a bank.

LF: Was she earning the interest?

RM: Well, they were paying very little in those years.

LF: I know, but after the Depression, weren’t people scared of banks?
RM: Well, after the Depression, and where all the banks closed, she lost money, my grandfather lost money, she lost money-

LF: And that’s why you had to sell your building.

RM: That’s why the building went into foreclosure is what it was, yeah.  Uh… then new laws were enacted to, to protect you, see, there’s all kinds of new laws went in after that, like insurance laws and so, so the money was in the bank and he never knew about it.  Or I don’t know, was it in a safety deposit box, I don’t know, cause I used to go with her all the time because I would do the writing, you see.

LF: Ah.

RM: And so they were able to buy this and they were, I don’t know, $10,000 shorter, but then Grandpa and I, Grandpa and I were married and we saved our money and we gave them, we borrowed, Grandma- the money that they were short, I forget how much it was, and Grandma paid it back within a year.  So, so that’s, and they figured that from that building they would have an income, so that after the war, they let her go and Grandpa came home and so I wasn’t home with my salary, she took in a boarder.

LF: Really?

RM: [laughs]

LF: She just kept on going.

RM: Can you believe that?  Talk about resourceful.

LF: I know.

RM: She never stopped.  And so, my uncle, my Aunt Helen’s husband, you know, they were always fairly wealthy, he couldn’t understand, couldn’t understand how she did it, and in her later years, you see, she was independent.  Cause she-

LF: She went down to Florida?

RM: Yeah, and it was all her own money because she bought the building, she had her income from the building, and then of course Social Security but if she was getting, if she was getting $50 a month, it was a lot.  And, and we were very fortunate that she was well.  She had Medicare, but we never had, we never had any supplemental insurance, but she never really needed it.  Medicare had just come in- but that’s, that’s the way she [lived it?]  -and she left a nice estate.  From, from pennies.

LF: I know.  What was it like, wasn’t just her father and she who came over from Russia?

RM: And my uncle, my older unc- her, her brother who was next in age who was a year younger, the three of them came.

LF: Where were they living in Russia, I know it was on a farm.

RM: Well, they were living in the, it has to be in the Ukraine area in some, you know, some real small village and I don’t know what city was it- you know, now that you begin, you know, at that time I used to think it was far-flung in the country, but God knows… In those days, you know, the only way you could go was like with a cart and horse, so who knows, if, you know, if the city was-

LF: A couple of miles?

RM: -it would be a, it would be a long way.  But they lived out there and my, my grandfather was like, like an overseer in a wealthy man’s, they would call it the [poor end?], the man was like the big boss or the big owner, a gentile, and he had all this land-

LF: Were they like share-croppers or something?

RM: And my grandfather marked the trees that had to be cut down.  He never did- my grandfather was such a gentleman, and he- Dick reminds me of him, that little build, like Dick, he had a little goatee, and ah… He was never learned and he never did heavy labor [laughs].  And my grandma… And so they had this little farmhouse, this little house, and maybe, I don’t know, two,  you begin to think about it, was it maybe two rooms or something with a big, with a big fireplace, you cooked over the fireplace evidently.

LF: Wow.

RM: You begin to think, this was going back.  My mother was born in… she came to this country in about 1905 or 1906.  We never knew her exact age or when she was born because they didn’t keep records.  It had to be in the… she had to be born, I think I once made up 1892.

LF: You think she was born then?

RM: Yeah, 1890, 1892.

LF: She was about 14 when-

RM: She was 16.

LF: She was 16.  Oh, okay.

RM: And we never did get, you know, the exact year, I think it was about 1906 when they came to the United States.

LF: Well so, 1892 to 1906 is only 14 years.

RM: So then 1890.

LF: Yeah.

RM: 1890.

LF: Wow.

RM: And so you would say “When were you born?”  She knew that she was a spring baby, but she didn’t, they didn’t have birth certificates or anything.  So you know, that’s your back- you know, when you grow up with such a background, it uh, it forms you.

LF: Sure, definitely.

RM: So then when you, you know, then already when I got married and Grandpa, you know, we were like people of means already and so… you know, my mom tried to do everything that she didn’t have for us, so the fact even that I had a high school education, my brother went on to get a, to become an accountant.  And then already, we never had a car, and then already when I, when I got married, whatever I had, I wanted my kids to have more.

LF: Yeah, look at us-

RM: See?

LF: -this is ridiculous.

RM: So I think to myself she would be so proud to see, you know, to see what her grandchildren, what her great-grandchildren have accomplished.  You know, she was so proud of, uh, of Dickie and Barbara and uh… You know, for her, the transition, when you think of it, the transition was so tremendous-

LF: Yeah, they left Russia because of-

RM: Of, of, first there were the pogroms-

LF: The pogroms.  Were they ever effected by those?

RM: Well, I think so.  And uh, they were, they were in this little village, so I don’t think, I don’t think they ever had one come through, but they knew about it all around, their lives were… very precarious.  And  then what they were doing, they were going to recruit the boys.  They figured, the Russian government, they figured that they would get the boys, and, and uh, they would convert the boys, once they got them in the army, they would get rid of the “Jewish problems.”

LF: Sometimes they would kidnap the boys.

RM: Or else they would kidnap them.  So here, so my mom was 16, I think they used to take them at 16, so my Uncle Sam was-

LF: He was 15.

RM: -he was 15 and then my Uncle Morris was like 13, and my Uncle Harry… so she had three boys after my mom and they were all getting to that age.  And so, they had to leave and my mother said that my grandma, she had, uh, she had loving, my grand- her grandmother, so that would that be… that would be my great-great-grandmother, it would be my grandmother’s parents.  They lived in a town, they were fairly well-fixed, you know, and they were heart-broken because they were, my mother said she used to love to go there and they also lived quite a distance, I don’t remember what they did.  So imagine to see their daughter and that time she had about seven- eight kids, leave, and know that you’ll never see them again.  And, you know, when you think of all these things… and they had to, you know, first my mom came with her two brothers- no- yeah-

LF: With her brother and her dad, I thought.

RM: My mom, yeah, three of ‘em.

LF: How did they have the means to buy passage?

RM: Well, they, you know, they, my grandfather worked, they must have saved money-

LF: For a wage?

RM: And they, sure, I mean, oh yeah, I don’t know how he got paid, we never went into it.  And my grandma’s parents, whatever they did too, you know, they weren’t, they were better than peasants, you see, they were always, they were always able to support them, there was always enough food, there was always…

LF: They were lucky.

RM: Yeah, so, uh… And the boys, the boys went to school, but of course my mom didn’t, the girls didn’t go to school.  They didn’t go to the regular school, they went to the Jewish school, the yeshiva, I don’t know what it was called, where all the little Jewish boys went, and they started going when they were-

[The tape runs out now.  Grandma and I continued to talk while I jotted down notes in  my notebook; here are those notes, somewhat reconstructed so that they’re in proper English]

–        Jews “always” knew how to read and write. [This is a generalization; what I think Grandma means is that literary was well-entrenched in the Jewish culture.  We discussed the immigration situation in America later in the day and we agreed that a major difference between Jewish immigrants and those from other backgrounds is that transitioning to American culture isn’t as difficult for the Jews because they already are acquainted with reading and writing and overall erudition in society.]

–        The West Side was the original Jewish ghetto- Maxwell, Roosevelt, and Halsted streets – she didn’t know it was a ghetto back then.

–        Our family entered the USA through Baltimore because Jewish philanthropists (mostly German Jews) like Levi Strauss wanted opportunity to be available.  These philanthropists resettled Jewish immigrants in Georgia and Texas so that not everyone would be concentrated in New York.

–        The family ended up in Chicago because Grandma Ruth’s grandpa had family in Chicago.

–        Immigrant families were very close-knit, providing security, comfort… Jewish people were so grateful for all they could get here and “they wanted to be American so bad, sometimes I think they threw away the baby with the bathwater- they became citizens right away… they just wanted to be part of the American culture.  Even their Jewishness they tried to modernize.”

–        Parents and value system were Grandma’s largest influencing factors.

–        “I wasn’t that far-seeing- for all of my independence… I wanted to live so-called American dream” [this is in reference to quitting her job after the war] – it was a responsible job and very demanding and she had to be a housewife as well.

–        They were different media messages during Grandma Ruth’s and Grandma Sarah’s eras- while Grandma Ruth was married, if a woman had to work, it was a slight on her husband, that he couldn’t support her; while Grandma Sarah was married, if a woman worked, she was enterprising.

–        Grandma Sarah used to tell Grandma Ruth, “When I wanted you to work, you didn’t work.[after WWII]  Now I don’t want you to work, you’re working.” [later in Grandma’s life, when she went back to Sears]

–        Said Grandma, “I was on the cusp of two worlds.”

–        Grandma Ruth’s birthday was May 25, 1922.

–        She was 23 when Grandpa came back from the war.

–        Grandpa Ray lived next door to Grandma Sarah’s deli, so his whole family would come in and sit, talk, and socialize- “In the gentile world, it was like a tavern.  Here it was a Jewish deli.”

–        During the war, Grandma was thinking of joining the government and going overseas- Grandma Sarah said no, “she thought I was nuts.”

–        Grandma mused to herself, “Why didn’t I go to night school while Grandpa was in the army?”

–        “We were so ambitious for our children.  You got to the United States and there were so many doors that were open that were not open in Europe.  So if you had the slightest bit of ambition…”

–        Grandpa Ray went to Wright Junior College and he was going into accounting.

–        The Marcus Brush company opened post-WWII.

–        Oscar’s [Grandpa Ray’s father] cousin had a brush factory in New York, so Oscar sold the brushes and paints.  Art [Grandpa Ray’s older brother] joined him in Chicago.

–        So how did Grandpa Ray get into the company?  “Art got an attack of appendicitis in the spring season in Detroit and looked at Raymond, gave him the car, the different stops, and said to him, ‘You’re it.’”

–        Grandpa would be gone for six weeks at a time.

–        The GI Bill of Rights gave soldiers college for free and $50 a month- “that’s where you got the educated class after the war.”

–        Buster [Bernie, Grandpa Ray’s younger brother by six years] went to the University of Illinois

–        Ray didn’t want to go to school, he felt that he was a man already- he was starting a business, he was married.

–        “Grandpa could have been anything.”

–        Art was 10 years older, he wasn’t going to listen to Buster, who was “just a kid,” despite Buster’s business course.

–        They had incredible patriotism for America.

–        “We [Jews] have come so far- so many professions are open, there are quotas in schools.”

–        “Your mom could do anything, I keep trying to convince her- also Dick.  If she put her mind to it, there isn’t much she couldn’t do.”

–        “The thing that I’m most proud about- I’m first generation, your mom’s second generation, you kids are already third generation.  For me, it’s like you came over on the Mayflower!  Our family has been here 100 years already.”

–        Grandma learned how to drive when she was pregnant with Uncle Dick.

–        Grandma Sarah wanted to learn how to drive, but the man who was teaching her brought her out to Devon Avenue [a very busy street] her first time out and scared her off- still, that was incredible that an older woman would want to learn how to master that new piece of technology.

–        They were all guided by the American Dream- “we were programmed, and we fell for it.  That’s what we were put here for, that’s what we felt.”

–        Grandma Sarah used to tell Grandma Ruth: “You get all your pleasure from your children.”

–        Grandma kept Barbara out of school for two weeks when she had a cough.

–        There were nine kids in Russia, Aunt Ethel was born in the United States, she was four years older than Maury.

–        A Jewish mother is devoted (self-sacrificing), giving all to her children and she didn’t think anything of it, she wouldn’t think twice.

–        “Our whole family was gentle, and the kids are the apple of your eye.  My mom always put the kids first.”

[Following this conversation, Grandma and I went for a walk around downtown Evanston and strolled by Lake Michigan.  We continued to talk about the Jewish cultural heritage and my life at college.  I showed her the student union and my dorm room.  I dearly love my grandma and it was a wonderful visit.]


Transcript from Interview with Barbara Marcus Felt

Sunday, November 8, 1998

LF: So, Mom, what do you remember about how Grandma Sarah died?

BF: Well, she died February first, which took my mom and I-

LF: 1981?  1982?

BF: 1982, just before your second birthday, which took us by surprise ‘cuz we kinda felt that if she’d made it by February, she had come through the winter, and it didn’t seem fair to die just as spring when was coming.  But the day before she died, she insisted that Grandma Ruth drive her to our house out in Glenview to say goodbye to me and Grandma Ruth didn’t quite get what “goodbye” meant, but said “okay,” because she was so insistent that she was coming- she had “to go to Barbara.”  And she came and we all sat around the kitchen table and talked and fooled around and generally had a very nice time – no, it was during the day.

LF: So I was there, right?

BF: Yeah, and um, she was very insistent when it came time to say goodbye that she was saying goodbye, but she was also walking out the door, so we didn’t take it too seriously.  I think that was the occasion also that I was in the height of my macrobioticness, and-

LF: Your what-ness?

BF: …Had stored both sugar and salt in glass containers because plastic gives off bad karma.

LF: Are you serious?  Plastic gives off bad karma, you believe in that stuff?

BF: Well, bad vibes.

LF: Okay.

BF: You know, it’s, it’s less stable than glass and it can… like, [laughing]Tupperware is bad for you… So, I had, Grandma took sugar in her coffee, which nobody really did in the house but her… and I kept on putting in teaspoons of salt. [laughs]  And she kept making faces at me and I just put in another one until she finally indicated we better [ ? ] and we all really had a good laugh.

LF: Now didn’t she like to keep the sugar cube between her teeth?

BF: Yeah, but I didn’t have any sugar cubes.

LF: Right, but she did that.

BF: Yeah.

LF: That’s kinda cool.

BF: And uh, so, that was the end, the last day of January, and then she left and the next day I got a call from my mom that Grandma Sarah was gone.  And Grandma couldn’t say “died,” she kept saying “gone,” and I kept saying, “Then call the police,” and she kept saying, “But she’s gone,” and I said, “I understand, you need to call the police,” and then she finally said, “Barbara, she’s gone,” and I said “Oh, she’s dead, I’ll be right there.”  And, what happened was, in the middle of the night, Harry must have come for her.  And, because she wandered, Grandma had taken to double-locking the doors, she had a couple of deadbolts on the front door.

LF: Did she ever get out and wander in the neighborhood?  Or, what do you mean by “wandered”?

BF: She had.

LF: Oh, so that’s why you really thought, “Call the police,” that makes sense.

BF: Yeah, ‘cause it had happened before, but only during the day, when the doors had been unbolted.  So then my mom took to double-bolting the door… and she had walked out of the house, undoing all of the locks, without her glasses on, but she never went anywhere without her glasses because you know,  us glasses-wearers, and without her teeth, and she never went- she never let anybody see her without her teeth.  So…

LF: Didn’t she also have a cane or a walker?

BF: No.  So, we think that Harry really came for her and she didn’t need her glasses or her teeth.

LF: Had she mentioned to Grandma or you before that she was going to see Harry-

BF: Yes, she had told us both that Harry was coming for her.

LF: That’s specifically what she was saying?

BF: And my mom said that she had gone that night, room to room, looking for him.

LF: And then, I thought, I recalled that she had a heart attack and died before she hit the snow?

BF: That’s what they told my mom.  So, I think that’s true.

LF: So, Grandma woke up in the morning and found her mother dead on the lawn?

BF: Actually, a neighbor found her.

LF: Now, when was it, was it like 1986 or something with the whole, alleged, brain tumor episode?

BF: Sarah, yeah, ’86 cause she was… maybe she was two and a half, so it was right before your birthday that we did at the Rugen Center, because-

LF: Oh, I remember that, with the puppet show?

BF: Yeah, ‘cause I had the angiogram on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.  And we thought, for a couple of days, that it could be a brain tumor or a brain anneurism.

LF: Because of your eye?

BF: My eye was puffy, it was probably my… whatever-it-is, my little malformation.

LF: Your birth-defect.

BF: I think I probably had a sinus infection that was causing a lot of pressure.  And, I had a dream that my Grandma Sarah, my Uncle Maury, and my Grandma Gussie all came and stood at the foot of the bed and said, “Don’t worry, not yet.”

LF: That’s what they said?  Do you remember them saying anything else?

BF: No, but just feeling reassured, that it’s not time yet.

LF: Do you remember the order that they were standing in?

BF: No, but probably Uncle Maury was next to Grandma Sarah.

LF: Right.  So not your Uncle Harry or Grandma Gussie’s husband?

BF: Oscar.

LF: Oscar, right.

BF: Oscar might have just died or he wasn’t dead yet.  No, but I guess those were the three people that-

LF: -you were closest to.

BF: I had a close relationship to.  So that’s so strange that they then came for Ethel.

LF: Right, I’m going to have to ask Grandma about the specifics of that story… Any impressions about the importance of family and the role that it’s played in your life and stuff like that?

BF: It’s key, it’s everything.  It’s really all that really matters and it keeps getting… it gets confused, and then it gets clearer again.

LF: What gets confused?

BF: You know, when you think about working, or what you did with your life, work, yourself, it gets unknotted again when you’re with these people.  Just about work really isn’t important.  We keep saying they oughtta pass a law that you can’t move more than a certain number of miles away, cause I think it would be so nice if Helena was around, you know, someday when my parents aren’t around, who remembers them.  You just want to be with the other parts of your family that you really just all are connected to.  Cousins, I think, you all have the same kind of genetic input and it’s just special.  So, it’s too bad that things keep getting further and further, farther and farther lumped.

LF: Yeah, well, you know, transportation is-

BF: Yeah, but I mean, it’s not like growing up with them.

LF: Did you grow up with cousins?
BF: No.  [both laugh]  Just Helena and Freddie wasn’t really available.  And then Bonnie moved, and Roger and Kenneth weren’t very comforting.  Although now when I see Roger, you know, you realize you share a lot, but not cause we really did anything much together just because we both had our parents’ relationship.

LF: Do you think, because of the way that you were raised, the selflessness of Grandma and stuff like that, that prompted you to become someone who worked in the family, you know, the social worker and counseling?

BF: Yeah, I think so, because you’re aware of relationships and people and I also think my brother and I are pretty non-competitive and more compassionate and empathetic rather than, um, out for ourselves and more than selfish, more selfless, which pulls you into an area of work that expresses that connectedness rather than non-connectedness.

LF: That’s interesting that both you and Uncle Dick are going through maybe professional changes that reflect that more.

BF: And I think as your children grow older, and the pressures at home are different but aren’t as time-consuming, that that opens up a window, at least in a woman’s life, to think again about who you are.  –His reconsideration, he’s always been a little unhappy at work but now that Kemper’s been sold, that’s what’s prompted this change, so there’s like a natural change in his career perhaps.

LF: It would be easy to get out.  So he’s thinking about becoming a history teacher?

BF: No.  Actually, he just interviewed to join a law firm downtown where he would be the head of a contract-writing department, so it definitely would not be adversarial.  And, uh, hopefully he’d make more money and then store that away to enable him to make another choice later on.  Or, if he’s able to do it with two hours a day on the train, maybe that’s when he’ll write his novel.

LF: But you’re thinking about teaching.

BF: Yeah, someday.  Oh, that’d be a great way to retire, teach child-development or something in college.
“Sure,” says, Sar, “My goal is to get out of school, your goal is to stay in school?”

LF: So you might take classes at National-Louis with that teacher?

BF: That’s what I have to investigate, that opportunity.

LF: So bringing women’s issues to bear would be part of the curriculum that you want to teach and you’re looking for?

BF: Mhmm, because most of the people that impact on child-development are females.

LF: Do you think that you got strong roots for becoming a feminist at home from Grandma?

BF: Yeah, both Grandma’s.  I mean, uh, your Grandma Ruth, my Grandma Sarah, all’s matriarchal at home in that all the men were always out and gone and it was always the women who guided the family.  And the importance of women and female relationships.

LF: Grandma talked to me a bit about some of your experiences working in college.  So you worked as a Sunday school teacher, she talked about how you were a waitress.

BF: Uh-huh.

LF: What else- oh, you worked in the library.

BF: Yeah, that I did, like, two, three years worth.

LF: Anything else?

BF: Uh, baby-sat.

LF: Oh, right.

BF: No, I think that was it. –Oh, and then every summer I was a counselor at Camp Chi.

LF: Right.  So was that pocket-money for you or did you help pay for the tuition?

BF: No, I think it was just spending money.

LF: So did you feel weird about taking money from Grandma and Grandpa, or did you want to work?

BF: Oh, I wanted to work, you know, that way I felt when I bought stuff, at least I had earned it cause they had said, “We’ll take care of your education.”

LF: You didn’t get any financial aid, did you?

BF: No, we didn’t really qualify.

LF: But you won a scholarship to grad school?

BF: Right, so that enabled Daddy and I to get married.

LF: Oh, you mean the money that wasn’t put into tuition, Grandma and Grandpa used for the wedding?

BF: No, that school was paid for so that when Daddy and I got married, I wasn’t a financial burden on him.

LF: Oh.  Hmm, interesting.

BF: And I got a paid field placement that second year of graduate school.

LF: Right.

BF: [laughs] Now when I think about what I earned, it’s probably ridiculous.  But, uh, it was thirty years ago or whatever – money was counted differently.  I think stamps were going up the year we got married from seven cents to 10 or something-

LF: Are you serious?

BF: So Grandma wanted to quick get out invitations out before the stamps went out. [laughs]

LF: Did we do that, from 25 to 29 for my Bat Mitzvah?

BF: Maybe.  [laughs again]

LF: Now it’s 32, what is this?  From seven cents to 32 cents, that’s almost a four-time increase – it’s more than that, almost five.  Well, that’s probably it.

BF: Well, I know where to reach you if I remember anything more, but I love that Aunt Ethel and I had the same dream.


Notes from Talk with Raymond Marcus

Tuesday, December 22, 1998

Ray graduated high school in 1939 and then studied two years at Wright Junior College

Friday night, at hospital with Art b/c of appendicitis

Sheffield Bronze Paint Co. just gave Art and Oscar new territories (if they have territories, they get the commission off of the mail-orders in that area, even if they did no influential selling whatsoever) and were afraid that the management would take the territory away from them (in reality, they were so happy to have men to take the territories that they probably wouldn’t have taken them away, but “hindsight is always 20/20”)

Art and Oscar are all upset, what are we going to do, what are we going to do, and they look at Ray

Monday morning, Ray was on the road, traveling for a month at a time

“that was the end of my education – the beginning of my education”

Oscar gave Ray $25 a week for food, hotels, and gas

Dinner cost 35 cents, consisted of either roast beef or roast pork (Grandpa, a Jew, always ate the roast beef; it wasn’t until the war, he said, that he realized that the other ain’t so bad), mashed potatoes with brown gravy, white bread, and green beans

Hotels were a $1/night, $1.50 on weekends; they were “flea-bags,” and the bathrooms were in the hall; it was on the weekends that Grandpa would pay the extra for the bathtub in the room and bathe himself

Gas was the hardest commodity to come by in the war; Art had a friend who would sell them gas though (he worked somehow with black-market food stamps); if you could get places, there was always business (despite the fact that aluminum paint was only sold to individuals who had government approval – people with industrial or rural uses, i.e., factories or barns)

After Art recovered, there were three men selling

Oscar bought Ray a Business Coupe, a two door, two-seat car and– accordingly, their territory expanded to encompass North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, etc.

Ray’s age-group was the first batch of 21-year-olds to be drafted; of this group, Ray’s draft # was 13

Initially, Ray enjoyed the army much more than his life as a salesman; being on the road alone was very lonely and not the most fun work in the world; in the army, he was interacting with guys his own age; also, Ruth explained that in those days, everyone was very patriotic; the worst thing was to be declared 4-F, unfit for service

luckily(?), they never gave Ray an eye-exam, so Ray was accepted into the army; when he was applying for OCS, Officer Candidate School, a doctor took a look at Ray’s glasses and recognized how great was his correction; he asked Ray if he really wanted to go through with this, and Ray replied that it was a heck of a lot better than what he was doing; the doctor (who was Jewish) approved Ray’s physical

repeatedly throughout the war, Ray was recommended but not accepted into the officers’ training program; anti-Semitism is a probable cause for such treatment

Ruth and Ray married when Ruth was 21, Ray 22; this marriage took place, approximately 6 months after Art’s and Shirley’s (Art was 26 at the time)

Art and Ray were sent overseas and Shirley got pregnant right away with Kenneth; her parents gave up their apartment to Shirley and moved in behind the small corner grocery store which they ran

During the war, Oscar would sell paintbrushes out of the basement of the home, and all of the Marcus salesmen would bring them along on their paint-selling routes

Ray said that Art told him to slip a paintbrush in his pocket and offer a low price to the customer after the paint sale had transpired; they were able to undersell other competitors because there was no middle-man; they didn’t have to hire salesmen, they were the salesmen; because of the difficulty in buying paint, the Marcus men would sell more brushes than paint; after the war, Oscar decided to go legitimate

They bought and fixed up a beautiful building located at 2823 S. Michigan Ave.

It was close to the projects and rumored that the city government was going to sprawl out, but City Hall assured the Marcus’ that this wouldn’t happen; after 5 years, the government “condemned” the building, paying the Marcus’ back what they paid but no more; the city used that building as an office for a number of years after it was condemned

After the war, Shirley wouldn’t let Art travel

Although he genuinely enjoyed it and was good at it (as Grandma said, “he liked to kibbitz”), he worked at the desk and it was up to Ray to continue traveling (which, according to Ray, Ruth didn’t like very much)

Joe Salzer, a candy-manufacturer (but it wasn’t very good candy-his biggest client was Winn-Dixie) who worked in a building 3 doors down for the Marcus’s old base of operations, approached them with an offer

He wanted to buy a building at 444 W. 23rd St., but didn’t have enough money; the Marcus’s fronted $20,000 and were granted office-space and a very low lease for 10 years time; they helped each other out and maintained a very good relationship; currently, Salzer’s son is a dentist and his office is located across the hall from Ray’s son-in-law, Dr. Felt


Riches

Ruth Feldman Marcus toasting with daughter Barbara Marcus Felt, niece Helena Feldman Erlich, and granddaughter Laurel Felt | May 21, 2011

Today is my great-grandmother’s Yahrzeit. She died on February 1, 1982, at the approximate age of 90.

In commemoration of Sarah Rich Feldman, mother of my mother’s mother, I am sharing this family history. It tells about the Riches’ turn-of-the-century immigration from the part of Russia that is now the Ukraine, and documents their American tale.

I wrote this piece during my freshman year at Northwestern University. As a prologue, I wrote:

On Wednesday, October 7, 1998, at 10:30 am, I met my grandmother Ruth Feldman Marcus at Clarke’s, a restaurant in Evanston. We brunched and proceeded to talk for about two hours about her life to satisfy an assignment for my anthropology class. However, I asked very few interview-oriented questions; rather, I just enjoyed sitting back and learning about my grandmother’s fascinating life… Following this conversation, Grandma and I went for a walk around downtown Evanston and strolled by Lake Michigan. We continued to talk about the Jewish cultural heritage and my life at college. I showed her the student union and my dorm room. I dearly love my grandma and it was a wonderful visit.

I still dearly love my gramma and just had a wonderful phone visit with her yesterday. Among the things she told me: “Laurel, from Day One you’ve been a delight” and “There are some meshuggeneh drivers out there in southern California.”

This piece was also informed by: a conversation with Gramma, Mom, and Dad on Sunday, March 17, 2013; an interview with my mother, Barbara Marcus Felt, on Sunday, November 8, 1998, which, like my interview with Gramma, I recorded and transcribed in its entirety; and a talk with Raymond Marcus, my grampa, on Tuesday, December 22, 1998, which I did not tape record. If memory serves (?), I felt that adding that layer of formality might make Grampa loath to talk. He died a year and a half ago, though, and we lost him to dementia several years prior; I wish I’d made that tape.

For any of you with the opportunity, record your grandparents. Their stories, and our families’ love, are the riches we inherit.

P.S. I have added to this narrative over the years, incorporating facts gleaned from Grandpa’s eulogies and recent conversations with Gramma. Specifically, I revised in real-time during an after-dinner chat on Sunday, March 17, 2013, and incorporated notes from our formal interview which took place on Wednesday, March 20, 2013.

————————

In 1906, an ocean-going vessel landed at port in Baltimore and allowed its weary passengers to debark.  Among the immigrants clambering ashore were four Ukrainian peasants, a father and his three eldest children.  Back in their homeland, Jacob Rich had held a responsible job, carefully selecting trees on a baron’s estate to be felled by lumberjacks.  His family had lived comfortably in a modest farmhouse that boasted two rooms and a generous fireplace.  Bessie, his wife, cooked their meals over the hearth and often received visits from her town-dwelling parents.  Those days, however, were over.  Jacob Rich, his 16-year-old daughter Sarah, 15-year-old son Samuel, and 14-year-old son Morris had survived the long passage across the Atlantic, but their struggles were far from over – money still had to be earned, Bessie and the five younger children still had to be sent for.  Conditions in Russia had been steadily worsening for Jews.  Pogroms instilled fear into the heart of every villager and conscription into the tsar’s army threatened every 16-year-old man.  Jacob Rich had made up his mind: his family’s future spelled out A-M-E-R-I-C-A.

The four Riches moved to Chicago and settled near relatives. A deeply religious man, Jacob couldn’t find work in the non-Sabbath observing secular world, where employees were expected to work until after sundown on Friday and all day on Saturday. Instead he operated as the shamas, or servant, at the synagogue. Jacob wrote to Bessie back in Russia saying that he didn’t like America and wanted to go back. Bessie replied that if the kids wanted to come back, that was fine, but if the kids liked America, then it was just too bad for Jacob.

The two boys went to school for a year or two, abandoning their studies around the age of 16. An American social worker wanted Sarah to go to school for at least a year too, but finances couldn’t allow it. Someone had to work. Sarah found employment in a factory rolling tobacco leaves for cigars. The next year, they had scraped together enough money to purchase six ocean passages for their mother and siblings and across the ocean they came.  Bessie’s parents remained in the Ukraine and, heart-broken, watched their children depart, never to return.  Jacob and Bessie’s ninth and final child, Ethel, was born in Chicago in 1910.  Approximately three years later, Sarah married Harry Feldman and gave birth to a son, Maury.

Sarah’s brother Sam married a woman named Ninny. They had a son, Milton, who was a year younger than Maury. Sam and Ninny didn’t get along and were in the process of a divorce. But Sam was crazy about his son and his desire to be near the boy, according to Ruth, is the reason why Sam married and divorced Ninny three times. When Sam and Ninny were split up but Sam had Milton for visitation, Sarah would watch Milton (along with Maury) during the day.

The Feldman’s lived in an apartment building owned by Sarah’s parents, Jacob and Bessie Rich. Ruth remembers, it was located in the middle of the street, at Colon (sp?) Avenue & 14th Street. Sarah’s myriad siblings resided nearby and little distinction was drawn between nuclear and extended family.  Because Ethel and Maury were so close in age (four years apart), Sarah cared for them both and the aunt and nephew were raised as brother and sister.  Sarah was extremely close with her sister Helen, 10 years her junior but the first girl born after a succession of brothers: Sam, Morris, and Harry.  The story goes that when Helen, already mother to three-year-old Ernest, announced her pregnancy with a second child, Sarah thought to herself, “Oh my God, Helen will have a girl and I won’t. If Helen has a girl and I don’t, I’ll never forgive myself.” So Sarah became pregnant as well.

Helen had a daughter named Marcella (Marcy), born April 25. After three excruciating days of labor, Harry and Sarah Feldman’s daughter was born exactly one month after her cousin, on May 25, 1922; they named their baby Ruth. The two girls were close friends throughout their childhoods, despite the differences in their parents’ wealth. Marcy’s paternal grandfather had founded a successful egg candling business. The business flourished and, after the untimely death of his wife, he remarried a “society lady.” This second wife facilitated the Katz family’s entry into a different level of influence. Marcy’s father Isidor (Iz), inherited the business from his father; Marcy consequently, the household was well provisioned.

Ruth’s childhood was more modest than her beloved cousin Marcy’s but more advantaged than her own brother Maury’s had been. Whereas Sarah had been treated as a charity case for Maury’s birth, she was charged as a regular patient for Ruth’s delivery. Harry and Sarah had worked unremittingly during that interim between children, carving out a niche in the Jewish ghetto that they called home. Located on the West Side of Chicago and bounded by Maxwell, Roosevelt, and Halsted streets, the entire community toiled to achieve “the American Dream.”

Looking back, Ruth realized, “We were programmed and we fell for it.  Jewish people were so grateful for all they could get in the States and they wanted to be American so bad, sometimes I think they threw away the baby with the bathwater- they became citizens right away… they just wanted to be part of the American culture.  Even their Jewishness they tried to modernize,” she explained.  “We were so ambitious for our children…  You go to the United States and there were so many doors that were open that were not open in Europe.”

Despite her family’s relative poverty, Ruth’s childhood was very happy. Ruth remembers that her aunt Mary Rich married a 16th Street butcher named Morris Lipman, so the family benefited from discounts on meat. Ruth enjoyed playing with her cousin Marcy and, because there were two large apartment buildings in the area as well as a park across the street, Ruth also had lots of playmates and room for running.

“They flooded it [the park] in the winter and we ice-skated on it, they had a swimming pool and all kinds of equipment and I lived directly across the street.  And the kids, the parents were all so busy, taking care of their own lives and… there was a million kids all the time, and nobody went to each other’s houses because the kids didn’t have their own rooms as such, and kids didn’t have toys,” explained Ruth.  “So you were always outside!  And there was always somebody to play with…  It was a carefree time, although times were very difficult,” she concluded.

Indeed, against the backdrop of the Depression, resources were scarce.  Before the economy’s collapse, Harry and Sarah had managed to gather enough money to buy the apartment building on 14th and Killdeer in which they resided.  When the stock market crashed in 1929 and hundreds of banks subsequently closed, the young couple lost their small fortune; as a result, their building went into foreclosure. The significant aspect of this difficult period, though, was its universality: “We didn’t know that we were living in a Jewish ghetto because your world is small… Everybody was in the same boat.”

Although Ruth’s father Harry had a very fine mind — for example, he boasted an extensive knowledge of Hebrew, possessed great mathematical aptitude, and was passionate about music — he earned his living from his hands, not his head. (Perhaps you could say, from other people’s heads?) Harry worked as a barber in the far-off South Water Street Market.  Leaving every morning at seven o’clock and returning at eight in the evening, Harry slaved to earn his living.  “He never had dinner with us, he always had dinner separately, my mother would keep the food warm,” Ruth remembered. On Sundays, Harry would spend time at a real estate company, occasionally selling property and raking in a modest commission; he was always on the lookout for affordable realty.

When Ruth was in eighth grade, a small restaurant in the South Water Street Market went up for sale.  Sarah, an excellent cook and eager to make money, determined to buy the $600 diner.  Jacob helped to supply her with the cash needed to make the purchase; Sarah paid him back shortly thereafter, with interest — “This is how you did things,” Ruth pronounced.  Ethel happened to be out of a job at that time and so Sarah hired her as the waitress.  Rising at five a.m., opening shop at six, operating the business until three o’clock and then still responsible for cleaning and shopping, Sarah wouldn’t return home on the streetcar until five o’clock every evening.  Ruth spent many hours alone each day, deprived of the company of her hard-working parents or her independent older brother.

Due to economic necessity, Ruth was obliged to care for herself even in sickness.  She was 13 years old and the year was 1935– the heart of the Depression.  Medical professionals used to give schoolchildren different vaccinations during class-time.  All of the kids would line up and the doctor would go through and administer a series of three shots.  After one of these episodes, Ruth developed a terrible infection in her arm.  “You had to be dying to go to a doctor,” Ruth declared, so her infection was cared for inadequately and eventually her entire arm swelled.  A fever followed and because Sarah had to run the restaurant, Ruth was left to convalesce alone.  The infection luckily opened up by itself and Sarah bandaged Ruth’s arm with a handkerchief. They purchased some medicine at the drugstore across the street and the arm continued to drain until it reached a healthy state.

However, Ruth wasn’t in the clear yet.  During spring vacation of that same year, she developed a sore throat.  Ruth’s Aunt Helen would come to visit, feeding her chicken soup and keeping Ruth company, but ultimately Aunt Helen had to leave and tend to her own household.  After a week of zero improvement, despite the expense and taboo against it, Sarah called a doctor.  He said that he didn’t see anything wrong and claimed that Ruth was merely suffering from a cold.

After a second week of illness, he recommended an ENT have a look at the young patient.  A specialist arrived and examined Ruth, who was lying prone in Sarah’s bedroom.  “God knows how my mom had to feel,” Ruth remarked.  Diagnosing an abscess under her tonsil, the ENT proceeded to perform the necessary surgery to burst it. “In the house!” Ruth exclaimed.  “The blood and the… these are things, I mean, they sound so primitive, right?”  He brought over a couple of lamps and instructed Sarah to hold Ruth’s arms.  Since the abscess was “ripe already,” Ruth recuperated thereafter.

These two maladies posed a serious strain to the Feldman household, physically, emotionally, and financially.  Sarah was powerless to care for her sick child and would rush home every evening to nurse her. As a loving mother, worries and frets probably occupied her thoughts during the daytime.  The actual costs of medicine and doctors’ visits were also substantial. As is the case in many contemporary American households, a single illness can devastate a family’s finances.

Sarah’s mother Bessie passed away when Ruth was a child (although Ruth can’t remember exactly when); if Bessie’s passing had occurred prior to Ruth’s illness, this might additionally explain why Sarah was so anxious to protect her daughter’s health. Ruth recalls that Bessie was diabetic and Bessie’s daughter, Ruth’s aunt Ethel, had to administer the insulin shots. On Yom Kippur, a day when Jewish tradition instructs healthy adults to fast (but sick adults to eat), Bessie refused her insulin shots. She died two days later.

When they weren’t battling germs or poor health, the Feldman women would put their noses to the grindstone seven days a week. Weekends consisted of laundry and house cleaning, in addition to working in the diner until two o’clock on Saturdays.  After nine months of this regimen, Sarah herself became quite ill from sheer exhaustion and sold the business. “She was so determined that she just wore herself out,” Ruth summarized.

Two years later, when Ruth was 15, Harry discovered a delicatessen on the market.  Sarah, along with Maury who was newly married and jobless despite a degree in accounting, bought the place (at Crawford & Harrison (or was it 5th?)) and ran it together for the next five years. Ruth worked in the family deli on Saturday’s and everyday after school. There she eventually met her future husband, Raymond Marcus.  Ray’s family lived next door to the deli and would visit often, sitting and talking and socializing with the regulars.  Ruth described the deli as the Jews’ equivalent to a tavern.

Ruth’s high school experience was non-traditional. Although the teens in her neighborhood went to nearby Marshall High School, Ruth took several streetcars to attend Austin High School. She and her cousin Marcy had decided that they wanted to be classmates and Austin, located in Marcy’s (wealthier) neighborhood, was a newer and more prestigious school. Disappointingly, Marcy’s family moved away after the girls’ freshman year, leaving Ruth with a long commute and somewhat foreign group of classmates. Geographic diversity was not the only unique feature of Ruth’s high school career. She was also a member of the class of 1939-and-a-half. This “and-a-half” appellation reflects the day’s solution to overcrowding. With too many students and too few funds to build more schools, existing institutions would operate year-round and serve two populations of learners. Ruth’s school year began in February (and ended in August?).

During high school, Ruth took a typing and shorthand class. Her prescient teacher, Miss O’Loughlin, knew that the Depression’s economy would require her students to work — even those, like Ruth, who planned to go to college. Because office work paid much more than unskilled labor, Miss O’Loughlin was providing her students a route out of destitution, perhaps even saving their families. Ruth was so gifted at typing that, by the end of the year, Miss O’Loughlin recommended Ruth for a one-month job at the school for which she earned $30.

Due to her lack of handiness, Ruth marvels at her typing proficiency. She remembers how difficult it would be to make corrections to her documents, especially if she was making simultaneous copies, which required a top sheet of paper, a carbon behind it, a white sheet of paper behind that, another sheet of carbon behind that, and finally a third white sheet of paper. In the case of a typo, you would have to put a white sheet of Correct Type in front of the flawed piece of paper and then hit a key, which would transfer white correction fluid onto the error, thus erasing it. This had to be done individually for each copy, which was a very tedious process. Years later the Underwood typewriter, with a built-in erasing function, came onto the market. In addition to this convenience, its touch was also much different — it didn’t require as much forceful banging on the keys.

Upon graduating in the top 10 of her high school class, Ruth decided to get out from behind the deli counter.  She was in love with learning and had wanted to go to the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana to study teaching or library science but had settled on Herzel Junior College, an institution not far from her home.  Ruth had received a government grant with which to study English, Shorthand, and various other subjects.  Her higher education was cut short, though, when Sarah slipped on an icy sidewalk following a late snowstorm and broke her wrist.  Ruth consequently quit school so that she could fill in for her mother at the delicatessen.  She attended night school once a week, taking classes such as Public Speaking, but that didn’t last long.

Once Sarah recovered, Ruth contemplated returning to school; however, just then her Aunt Molly had arranged for Ruth to be offered a job as a secretary at Sears to two young men, Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Ulmer. They must have been in their early 30’s, Ruth remembers. Mr. Calhoun had two or three children, and Mr. Ulmer was married but his wife couldn’t get pregnant. “And I was a kid, what do I know from such things, you know? The seriousness or whatever,” reflects Ruth. Ruth was offered $16 per week, an abnormally high wage at that time — her friends were making $11 or $12 per week. Ruth remembers running to the phone, her hands shaking, and repeating to her mother, “Sixteen dollars, sixteen dollars, sixteen dollars!”  The government had recently forced Sarah and Maury to sell the deli, at a price significantly below market value, in order to construct the Congress Street Expressway, currently known as the Eisenhower Expressway. So Ruth offered her mother $8 per week, half of her salary; unbeknownst to Ruth, though, Sarah merely kept this money for safekeeping.  Commented Ruth, “I didn’t realize she was saving it for me.”

During the war, Sarah also worked for Sears, but as “unskilled labor”; unable to read English, Sarah filed papers in a large warehouse according to a numerical system. Sarah took in a boarder as an additional source of income as well.

Ruth’s aunt (who always felt more like a cousin to Ruth since she was only 12 years Ruth’s senior) Ethel Rich also worked outside the home. Ethel was a thin, busty, American-born blonde who loved wearing high heels and defying expectations. The smart, street-wise Ethel moved out to California and became a steelbroker — unheard of for a woman! — and experienced great success. She was known for talking tough with tradesmen and businessmen and never giving an inch. Early in her life, Ethel had fallen in love with a non-Jewish man named Jimmy. Despite their mutual affection, Ethel refused to marry Jimmy because she knew that marrying outside the Jewish faith would break her parents’ hearts. The lovers parted and Ethel never married. Ruth laughingly recalls Ethel saying, “That’ll be the day when I wash some man’s socks!”

Ruth only worked for Sears for three years before transferring to Turner Manufacturing Company, a fixture and lamp manufacturer on the West Side.  Ruth didn’t realize when she visited Turner that a job opportunity would present itself. She had no intention of leaving her position at Sears, but the head of Turner, who determined that she could well serve his company, offered her $25. When Ruth informed Sears that she was leaving, they offered her a raise of $25 per week, but Ruth had given her word to Turner and she left. Said Ruth, Turner “was a Jewish firm and it made such a difference.”  At Sears, “there was anti-Semitism there, overt.”  Still, the bureaucratic Sears had well-defined hours and everyone left at five o’clock. At the upstart Turner, Ruth didn’t go home until the job was done and so she wound up working far more.

Ruth stayed on at Turner for another three years before quitting due to the incipient arrival of her husband Raymond from overseas.  Turner offered to double her pay if she stayed on after the war; she had been receiving $25 per week and they offered her $45 or $50 once the freeze on salaries was lifted.  Ruth was resolute, however; “I told them three months in advance, I was being honorable, they thought I had rocks in my head… And then when Grandpa came home, you know, it was a family business, and he was starting at $25 dollars a week! I should have stayed!” Ruth laughed.  But, “in those days, women didn’t work.”   Advertisers were pumping out propaganda that stigmatized employment for proper housewives.  Besides, Ruth had serious work to do.

On September 30, 1943, the second day of Rosh Hashanah and the third to last day of Ray’s 15-day furlough, the couple had decided that they couldn’t wait any longer to be wed; a judge married them that afternoon at City Hall.  Ruth’s grandfather, Jacob Rich, was quite disturbed by this irreligious ceremony and contacted some friends of his within the Jewish community.  Ruth Feldman and Raymond Marcus were married a second time, a day later, in the kitchen of a rabbi who lived on Chicago’s West Side.  Because the two had never lived together before Ray was shipped overseas, it was up to Ruth when the war ended to find an apartment in a city rife with young couples and devoid of new construction.  According to Ruth, “…you couldn’t get an apartment for love or money.”

Ruth prevailed because her girlfriend, Miriam Rubin, had an uncle, Harry, who owned an apartment building on the North Side. Miriam was supposed to get an apartment in that building but her husband Harold was delayed in his discharge from the Navy. So Miriam offered the apartment to Ruth. As he did with his own kin, Harry allowed Ruth to rent the apartment without greasing his palm with some extra cash. This generosity was extreme and unusual since the limited supply of apartments enabled landlords to collect up to $500 in kickbacks. As each of his nieces and nephews came home and/or came of age, Harry offered them an apartment in his 13-apartment building, 4302 W. 14th Street. So a great community of young people and developed, including Myra Liss, Miriam Rubin and others.

Their apartment consisted of two-and-a-half rooms: a small kitchen (with a half stove and four burners), a dinette, a living room, a bathroom — and no closets! Ruth’s mother-in-law Gussie had expected Ruth and Ray to move in with her husband Oscar and herself. Ruth regarded this as a less preferable option than establishing her own household and so she accepted the closet-less apartment with gratitude.

Ruth made the most of their modest space. An in-a-door bed with uneven legs was situated in the living room. Ruth took out the bed, used the in-a-door bed’s shallow recess as a closet (which crumpled the inside sleeve of every shirt they hung in it), and built her own bed. She got a boxspring and a mattress, put it on four legs, covered it so as to look like a couch, and shoved it in the corner of the living room. That’s where Ruth and Ray slept.

Raymond Marcus was also heir to a wealth of rich family history. Benjamin and Bessie Marcus were the originators of a family tree spanning six generations; for over 50 years, their progeny have gathered periodically to celebrate the Marcus Family Club. Benjamin was a devoutly Orthodox Jew who spoke only Hebrew and Yiddish and davened, or prayed, three times per day. He worked as a cobbler in Russia, handcrafting shoes and boots. His wife Bessie was also born in Russia between 1860 and 1870, and wed Benjamin in 1885. Dyeing wool for neighboring peasants was Bessie’s trade, a shrewd method for supplementing the household’s modest income. Since Bessie had given birth to five children, extra income was always welcome.

The Marcus’s reasons for immigration were the same as the Rich family’s. During the Russo-Japanese War, conditions for an average Russian soldier were bad; conditions for a Russian Jewish soldier, though, were even worse. With pogroms and rampant discrimination constantly plaguing his peace of mind, Benjamin immigrated to America in 1904 or 1905. Accompanied by his 15-year-old son Sol, the men settled in Chicago where Bessie’s brother owned a shoe store.

In 1907, Bessie joined her husband and son in Chicago, bringing 18-year-old Becky, 11-year-old Oscar, seven-year-old Irving, and five-year-old Esther. Because Benjamin was employed as a saddle-maker, the family was able to live above his workplace –- a stable. Their residence lasted through the winter but by the time summer arrived, they vacated their quarters. The stench of the manure and the irritation of the flies, coupled with Benjamin’s refusal to violate the Sabbath by working on Saturdays, forced them to leave. He was later employed as a boot-maker in a small shop and bought the business after its owner passed away. Bessie probably did not labor outside the home while her children were young, but she eventually worked for Hart, Shaffner, and Marx in Chicago. Benjamin passed away in 1897, Bessie in 1942.

Oscar, who was Benjamin and Bessie’s second-oldest son, married Gussie Levin in Chicago; the year was 1916. The couple had four boys: Arthur (Art), 1917-1988; Raymond (Ray), 1921-2010; Leonard, 1926-1926; and Bernard (Buster), b. 1927. Oscar and his oldest son, Art, were salesmen for Sheffield Bronze Paint Company. As the organization’s “Midwestern men,” Oscar and Art traveled long distances by car (a novelty in those days) and sold paint door-to-door.

Ray needed to allocate very little time to studying during his high school days at Crane — the vocational institution was hardly an intellectual challenge. For fun, he participated in a singing group with his friends Jack London, Lester, and Harold. He graduated in February of 1939. According to his 1939 high school yearbook, Science and Craft:

“Ray” is the apprentice pharmacist whose ambition is to marry “a gal jus’ like the one Dad did.” Chums: London, Davis. Activities: Chem Club, Glee Club, Operetta Chorus, Courts, Intramural Basketball, Volleyball, Free throw, S. & C. Rep. of Activities

Following graduation, Ray studied at Wright Junior College and completed one full year.

It was a Friday night in the spring of 1940 that Ray’s life changed forever.  Art had just suffered from an attack of appendicitis and the family was gathered at Art’s bedside.  Sheffield Bronze had recently awarded Art and Oscar with new territories to cover, simultaneously a financial boon and a temporal burden.  With the receipt of new states, the Marcus’s were entitled to commissions from all of the forthcoming mail-orders, even if they had played no role in influencing those purchases; however, they were also obliged to extend their routes.  The father and son feared that the management would revoke the new territory due to Art’s incapacity, and worried aloud about what they would do.  Slowly, their gazes turned to Ray and before he knew it, the keys, merchandise, and maps were in his possession.

It was years later that the Marcus’s realized Sheffield Bronze’s sheer joy to have any men at all covering the far-flung Midwestern states.  They probably wouldn’t have taken the territories away, Ray conceded, but “hindsight is always 20/20.”  And so, he surmised, “that was the end of my education -– the beginning of my education.”  Monday morning, Raymond Marcus, aged 20, was on the road and traveling for a month at a time.

Oscar gave him $25 a week for food, hotels, and gas.  At that time, dinner was priced at 35 cents, consisting of either roast beef or roast pork, mashed potatoes with brown gravy, white bread, and green beans.  Since Ray was Jewish, he always opted for the kosher roast beef; it wasn’t until he was served pork in the army that he realized “the other ain’t so bad.”

Hotels were a $1.00 per night.  Ray described his lodgings as “fleabags,” small, seedy rooms with communal bathrooms in the hall.  During the weekends, he indulged a bit and doled out $1.50 per night for a room with a bathtub.  Thus, he was able to bathe twice a week.

Gas was the hardest commodity to procure in the war.  Art had a friend who would sell the family gas through a system that involved black-market food stamps.  The general rule was, If you could get places, there was always business waiting for you.  This was true despite the fact that aluminum paint was only sold to individuals who had government approval, i.e., people with industrial or rural uses.

Along with peddling paint for Sheffield Bronze, the Marcus’s also cultivated a little business of their own.  A cousin manufactured paintbrushes in New York and was eager for salesmen to vend his product.  Therefore, he would ship boxes of brushes to the Marcus’s home in Chicago and the men would slip a paintbrush in their pocket whenever they were attempting to sell paint; after a deal had been closed, they would offer the customer a low price for the brush.  Because there was no overhead in this operation (they did not need to rent a storehouse or hire outside help), the Marcus’s were able to undersell their competitors and turn an attractive profit.  Eventually, it became so difficult for the average consumer to buy paint during the war because of the aforementioned government restrictions that the Marcus men wound up selling more brushes than paint!

Oscar bought Ray his own Business Coupe, a two-door, two-seat car, when Art came back to the business.  Because they now had a team of three salesmen, the Marcus territory expanded even further to encompass North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and other Plains States. In his military discharge, Ray described his wholesale salesman job thusly:

“Worked as a wholesale salesman for Sheffield Bronze Power Co. of Cleveland, Ohio for two years from 1940 to 1942. Kept record of sales, collected cash for same and took specifications for industrial firms for paints manufactured to order. Kept complete record of traveling account for office records. Drove own car and covered about 35,000-40,000 miles per year.”

Ray’s days of selling were interrupted by World War II.  In 1942, Ray’s age group was the first batch of 21-year-olds to be drafted; within this group, his draft number was 13.  Ray initially enjoyed his life in the army much more than his life as a salesman.  Being alone on the road was a very lonely and somewhat boring occupation for a young man.  As a soldier, Ray was interacting with people his own age.  Also, as Ruth explained, everyone was very patriotic in those days and “the worst thing” for an eligible man was to be declared 4-F, unfit for service.

Luckily(?), Ray escaped that fate.  He had been eating carrots by the pound in a desperate effort to improve his vision, knowing full well that his eyesight was probably poor enough to deny him admittance into the service; the military, however, never administered an eye-exam.  Consequently, he was accepted into active duty and served his country for three years.  When Ray applied for Officer Candidate School (O.C.S.), a doctor finally took a look at his vision.  The doctor recognized the magnitude of correction in Ray’s eyeglasses and asked him if he really wanted to go through with this application procedure.  Ray replied that it [O.C.S.] was a heck of a lot better than what he was doing and so the doctor (who happened to be Jewish) signed Ray’s physical.  However, despite this approval and repeated recommendations, Ray was never accepted into the officers’ training program.  Anti-Semitism is the probable cause for such treatment.

*Instead of the officer route, Ray worked in a unit that repaired military vehicles. He drove a truck stocked with machine parts, which he cleverly named “Ruthless.” To explain his military occupation, Ray wrote:

“Clerk, Parts, Automotive:
Received, stored and issued automotive equipment accessories, spare parts and tools. Received incoming parts and prepared stock record card. Stored parts in proper bins in such manner as to facilitate easy taking of inventory. Issued and distributed parts to personnel in accordance with written memorandum. Had working knowledge of parts including description, nomenclature and interchangeability of parts.”

While Ray lamented the perfunctory to abysmal education he had received in high school — those were Depression times and since teachers were “paid” by I.O.U.’s, they hardly taught and never assigned homework (which would have required them to spend extra time grading) — Ray’s high school experience might have saved his life. The vocational theme of Crane equipped Ray with vital and highly specific mechanical skills. His lonely days driving across the Midwest as a traveling salesman also gave him unique experience behind the wheel and probably demanded that he tinker with his own vehicle, or else be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

At one point during his years of active duty, Ray was maimed — but not in the conventional way. The story goes, a heavy, industrial battery fell out of the back of Ray’s truck and landed square on his foot, crushing several of the bones. As Ray convalesced in the infirmary, an officer who was striding through the ward, passing out Purple Hearts to the wounded soldiers, came upon him. He offered Ray this badge of honor but Ray refused it, feeling that he didn’t deserve such a medal since his injury wasn’t received during combat.

Ray was present for D-Day + 1, and only when prodded would he recount grimly the scene that he had witnessed. He defied his superior’s orders that day, refusing to deliver parts to tanks further inland by driving over the bodies that studded the beach, defiling the sanctity of the dead and torturing the living. There is no question that Ray suffered during World War II. But Ray came home.*

At the time of their marriage, just before Ray was shipped overseas, Ruth was 21 years old and Ray was 22.  Their wedding occurred approximately six months after Art’s and Shirley’s.  The two newlywed brothers were immediately sent to Europe and Shirley became pregnant with her first son, Kenneth (Roger was born a few years later in 1946).  Her parents, who ran a small corner-grocery store, consequently gave their apartment to Shirley and moved in behind the business.  Ruth’s married life didn’t change as materially; she continued to work and to live with her family, and was therefore faced with the aforementioned housing crisis upon Ray’s return.

Meanwhile, Oscar continued to sell his cousin’s paintbrushes out of the basement of his home.  After the war, when all of the boys thankfully returned from overseas, Oscar decided to “go legit.” Bernie, affectionately referred to as Buster, was the third and youngest son in the family.  Despite serving in the Navy and receiving his degree in business from the University of Illinois, Buster didn’t seriously take part in the Marcus Brush Company, for being the “baby brother” discredited his opinions in Art’s eyes.

Although Art genuinely enjoyed traveling and excelled as a salesman (“he liked to kibbitz,” Ruth explained), Shirley wouldn’t allow Art to spend extended periods of time away from their young family; consequently, Art worked behind the desk and Ray settled behind the wheel.  Ruth didn’t much like her husband traveling either, but once again, they were in a situation in which they had to sacrifice for the greater good of the family.

The Marcus’s pooled their money and bought and fixed up a beautiful building located at 2823 S. Michigan Ave.  This structure was close to the housing projects and a rumor was circulating that the city government was going to sprawl out and confiscate their land.  City Hall assured the Marcus’s that this wouldn’t happen but five years later, the government “condemned” the building and bought it from the Marcus’s, denying profit on the sale.  The city of Chicago continued to use that building as an office for a number of years after its “condemnation.”

There were several victims of this political machination.  Joe Salzer was a candy-manufacturer and worked in that building just three doors down for the Marcus’s base of operations.  Although, according to Ray, Salzer’s product wasn’t exactly gourmet (“Joe’s biggest client was Winn-Dixie,” Ray related), he wished to stay in the business and approached the Marcus’s with an offer.  Salzer was seeking to buy a building at 444 W. 23rd Street but didn’t have enough money.  The Marcus’s helped him to purchase it by fronting $20,000 and were granted office space and a very low lease for 10 years’ time.  The two entities supported each other and maintained a very good working relationship while they worked side-by-side.  Coincidentally, Salzer’s son became a dentist and his practice is located in the same building, in fact across the hall, from that of Ray’s dentist son-in-law, Dr. Rick Felt.

Perhaps buying buildings was in the air.  Concurrently, Harry longed to share ownership of an apartment complex along with his wealthy brother-in-law Irving, Helen’s husband; however, Harry was short $10,000.  From her years of labor and frugality, much to Harry’s surprise, Sarah was able to furnish him with most of the deficit.  Ruth chuckled, “…my father almost fainted when my mother said that she had umpteen and umpteen thousands of dollars.  He couldn’t believe it.  All the money she made working, she saved.  All those years.”  The rest of the money Ruth and Ray borrowed from the bank on the Feldman’s behalf, and Sarah promptly repaid them within a year.  The rent checks from the apartments provided Harry and Sarah with a steady income and enabled Sarah, after Harry’s death in 1959, to live as an independent woman of means.

After Maury’s tragically premature heart failure in 1961, Sarah summered in Skokie with the Marcus’s and wintered on the beaches in Florida.  Ruth and Ray’s two children, Barbara Lynn, born March 23, 1948, and Richard Jay, born four years later on January 21, 1952, remember fondly the days when they all lived together.

Barbara was born when Ruth and Ray still lived in that little two-and-a-half bedroom apartment on the North Side. Ruth got a crib and set it up behind a screen in the dinette — that was Barbara’s “room.” On hot summer nights, the three would head down to the beach and, along with many many other families, sleep on a blanket on the sand.

When Barbara was five years old, Ruth took her for a pre-kindergarten eye exam. They told Ruth that Barbara could barely see. “I couldn’t believe it, I went from one doctor to the other doctor. You know, a kid at five already, to need glasses…” Barbara was self-conscious when she began school, the only five-year-old with eyeglasses. When he was eight, Dickie had to wear glasses too. The first generation of contacts were introduced when Barbara was in high school. They were so thick, it was impossible for Barbara to tolerate them. She tried so hard, though. Ruth believes that the kids’ eyesight was even worse than their father Ray’s, worse than her brother Maury’s. Ruth remembers that her father, Harry, refused to wear glasses, despite his poor vision, because he couldn’t stand the feel of them. Either Harry was near-sighted or incredibly lucky, because he used to cut men’s hair with sharp shears and shave them with a straight blade.

A favorite family tale harks back to Sarah’s days in Russia. The clan was celebrating Pesach, or Passover, a holiday commemorating Jews’ freedom from slavery in Egypt. Several customs are observed for this occasion; the seder, the holiday meal and its associated rites, follows a specific order (the word seder means “order”) and special foods are prepared and consumed to retell the liberation story. A glass of wine must be poured for the prophet Elijah and, at a certain point in the service, the door should be opened to allow him to enter. One year, a member of the Rich family rose from the table, threw open the door to the farmhouse, and… heard footsteps! The assemblage stared wide-eyed at each other, unable to believe their ears. Slowly the footsteps grew louder and louder, closer and closer. Each waited on tenterhooks, scarcely daring to breathe. And then suddenly…

“MOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The cow, with his head in the door, looked around to see how the other half lived.

Another cherished story also involves a case of mistaken identity. Although Sarah spoke English, she was most comfortable conversing in Yiddish, her native tongue.  On one particular occasion, Barbara was at a friend’s house and placed a call to her mother.  Sarah, however, answered the phone, and so Barbara began, “Hi, Grandma, this is Barbara.”  To this Sarah promptly replied, “Barbara no home!” and slammed down the phone.

Barbara attended Niles East High School and enrolled as a freshman at Northwestern University in 1966.  After receiving her bachelor’s degree in English, Barbara won a scholarship to study social work at the University of Chicago.  Her brother Dick also attended college, graduating from the University of Illinois as an American Studies major in 1974 before proceeding to law school at Loyola University Chicago.

Ruth also resolved to attain higher education.  Kendall College, a junior college in Evanston, was her first stop; however, the administrators discouraged her plans to become a teacher and suggested that she would be out of place among their youthful student body.  So, she applied to Chicago’s Roosevelt University.  Doubtful of her academic abilities and preoccupied with continuing to keep house and look after her family, Ruth registered for Piano and Art Appreciation.  Despite “ace-ing” the Piano final, she realized that she wasn’t “a natural” and set her sights on earning money.

Ruth took a refresher course in Shorthand and was employed as a temp. Quite by chance, Ruth was placed again in the offices of Sears and was hired away as a part-time secretary under a female executive.  Following a nine-year stint, Ruth transferred to Northbrook and worked full-time as the secretary for the Manager and Assistant Manager of Sears’s newest store.  Retirement ensued in 1979 when her mother became seriously ill.  Upon Sarah’s passing, she left behind a substantial estate considering that it had been built “from pennies.”

The physical circumstances concerning Sarah’s death were quite dramatic. On January 31, 1982, Sarah announced that Harry was coming for her.  Because she was quite advanced in age, Ruth merely interpreted her mother’s statement as an indication of senility; however, Sarah was adamant.  She had to say goodbye.

At that time, Barbara and Dick were both married and living nearby.  Barbara had wed Richard Felt, also a Skokie native, on August 3, 1971.  Their son, Benjamin Maury, was born on July 2, 1976, days after Dick’s marriage to Susan Milner on June 27, 1976.  Laurel Jeanne, born March 25, 1980, was almost two years old when Sarah bade her family farewell.

Barbara remembered, “…the day before she [Sarah] died, she insisted that Grandma Ruth drive her to our house out in Glenview to say goodbye to me, and Grandma Ruth didn’t quite get what ‘goodbye’ meant, but said okay, because she was so insistent that she was coming– she had ‘to go to Barbara.’ And she came and we all sat around the kitchen table and talked and fooled around and generally had a very nice time…

“I think that was the occasion also that I was in the height of my macrobiotic-ness,” continued Barbara.  The macrobiotic diet is a Japanese regimen that, among other things, teaches its followers about the stability of different materials.  As a result, Barbara “had stored both sugar and salt in glass containers because plastic gives off bad karma, ” or at least, Barbara amended, “bad vibes.”  When Sarah paid her last visit to Barbara’s home, she requested sugar in her coffee. Sarah would usually place a sugar cube between her two front teeth and drink the sweetened coffee in that old-fashioned manner.  However, Barbara didn’t have any sugarcubes, so she could only offer her grandmother sugar–- or what she thought was sugar– by the spoonful.

No one in the household used sugar often, so it was quite easy to confuse which glass container held which condiment. “…I kept on putting in teaspoons of salt!” Barbara laughed.  “And she kept making faces at me and I just put in another one until she finally indicated we had better stop and we all really had a good laugh…

“She was very insistent when it came time to say goodbye that she was saying ‘goodbye,’” said Barbara slowly, “but she was also walking out the door, so we didn’t take it too seriously.”   That night, Sarah continued to warn Ruth that Harry was coming for her; in fact, Barbara revealed, “…my mom said that she had gone that night, room to room, looking for him.”  Long after the family had gone to sleep, Sarah awakened and rose from her bed.  Previously, she had wandered away a couple of times during the day and was eventually found roaming the neighborhood alone; as a result, Ruth always double-bolted the door. “Without her glasses on, but she never went anywhere without her glasses, because you know, us glasses-wearers,” reminded Barbara, “and without her teeth, and she never went– she never let anybody see her without her teeth… she walked out of the house, undoing all of the locks…”

The police reconstructed the subsequent series of events.  In the dead of morning, February 1, 1982, Sarah Feldman stepped out onto the snow-covered lawn.  She moved forward a few paces, suffered a massive heart attack, and immediately expired, dead before she reached the ground.  A neighbor discovered Sarah’s body a few hours later.

“…I got a call from my mom that Grandma Sarah was gone.  And Grandma couldn’t say ‘died,’ she kept saying ‘gone,’ and I kept saying, ‘Then call the police,’ and she kept saying, ‘But she’s gone,’ and I said, ‘I understand, you need to call the police,’ and then she finally said, ‘Barbara, she’s gone,’ and I said, ‘Oh, she’s dead, I’ll be right there.’ And, what happened was,” Barbara narrated, “in the middle of the night, Harry must have come for her…  We think that Harry really came for her and she didn’t need her glasses or her teeth.”

Despite Sarah’s warnings, her passing still “…took us by surprise, because we kinda felt that if she’d made it by February, she had come through the winter, and it didn’t seem fair to die just as spring was coming.”

Barbara and Rick’s second daughter, born August 17, 1984, was named Sarah Marna in honor of her great-grandmother.   Dick and Sue’s first child, Leanne Sarah, born September 21, 1983, was also named in memory of Sarah Feldman.  Their son, Joseph Gordon, entered the world on December 5, 1987.

Even without namesakes, however, Sarah’s memory was kept alive.  On March 19, 1986, Barbara had a dream in which several of her deceased relatives communicated with her from beyond the grave. A sinus infection coupled with a small malformation in Barbara’s eye was causing a lot of pressure in her skull; however, doctors had not yet diagnosed those symptoms.  She had an angiogram on St. Patrick’s Day “and we thought, for a couple of days, that it could be a brain tumor or a brain aneurysm.” Then, Barbara related, “I had a dream that my Grandma Sarah, my Uncle Maury, and my Grandma Gussie all came and stood at the foot of the bed and said, ‘Don’t worry, not yet.’”

Sarah’s youngest sister Ethel also received ghostly visits before she passed away in 1996.  “She had wanted to make the year 2000 so bad,” Ruth sighed.  “It was the last thing in any of our minds that she’d get sick, she was healthy all her life.”  But Ethel also had been a smoker all her life and lung cancer gradually metastasized and crept into her brain.  Weeks before her death, several matters were unresolved with Ethel’s estate and her mind was ill at ease.  A nighttime nurse was employed to take care of her and reported Ethel’s restless nights.  She used to cry out in her sleep, “No, Sarah, I’m not ready yet!”  One day, she also called the Felt house and asked Barbara if one of the kids would name a baby after her. Speechless, Barbara didn’t know how to reply and felt that she couldn’t speak on her young daughters’ behalf. But Laurel, who was sitting beside Barbara, thought of her paternal grandmother Eleanor, whose name also started with E, and replied, “Of course! Tell her yes.” And so Barbara passed along the message that childless Ethel’s name and memory would live on. With this settled, and Ethel’s affairs finally put in order, she promptly announced that Sarah and Maury were coming for her.  Ethel dozed peacefully through that night and failed to wake the next morning.

Just a few months ago, Ruth dreamed that she had a conversation with her mother.  Sarah appeared to her just as Ruth had remembered Sarah looking during the later years, right before the illness that finally claimed her life.  Ruth thought that perhaps Sarah was coming to take her to “the other side,” but the two women merely sat and chatted.

Today [that is, 1998], Ruth and Ray live in Hollywood, Florida, during the winter months and spend the rest of the year in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.  They are active at the Jewish Community Center (JCC), share golf as a common hobby, and visit with their children and grandchildren quite often.  Since they all live in northern suburbs of Chicago, Barbara and Rick Felt in Glenview and Dick and Sue in Buffalo Grove, getting together for family dinners is something that the group enjoys doing regularly.  Ruth and Ray are also extremely close with Maury’s children and grandchildren.  Maury and his wife Rose had two daughters, Helena and Freddi.  Helena and her husband Michael currently live in California, as do their three children, Michelle, Hillary, and Joshua.  Michelle and her husband Brian are the proud parents of two-year-old Tyler, while Josh and his wife Penny and Hillary and her husband Billy are all four newlyweds.

“Family first” was Sarah’s, Ruth’s, and indeed this entire clan’s, dominant ideology.  The story of their lives was predicated on the notion that there’s no sacrifice too great to make for one’s family, particularly for one’s children.  Ruth attributed this depth of commitment to the group’s foreign background, noting that immigrant families tend to be close-knit, providing their members with the much-needed security and comfort absent in a foreign environment.  She also believed that the value was learned from the Jewish religion, citing the self-sacrificing nature of a praiseworthy Jewish mother.  Regardless of the source, however, this family deserves credit for embracing the doctrine so completely and nurturing it through years of assimilation.

From generation to generation, parents lavished love upon their offspring, and the children in turn honored their parents. The need to protect their children inspired Jacob and Bessie to set out for America.  Bessie’s parents mourned her absence.  Desire to provide opportunity for Maury and Ruth fueled Sarah and Harry’s years of industry.  Loyalty promoted Ruth and Ray to abandon their plans for higher education and work for their family’s businesses.  Following her mother’s example, Ruth said, “When I got married, whatever I had, I wanted my kids to have more.”  During Barbara and Dick’s years in college, they refused to take adequate allowances from their parents and instead worked as undergraduates.

These strong feelings of familial attachment were perpetuated as the children chose mates who shared their love for kin. Rick’s devotion to his parents, Eleanor Harris Felt and Justin Felt, was one of the qualities that drew Barbara to him, and this affection was displayed when he brought his mother to live with them during her last five months of life, after the sudden and unexpected passing of Rick’s father. Sue also dearly loves her parents, Charles and Mayta Milner, residents of nearby Lincolnwood, Illinois, and they in turn dote on all of the grandchildren.

Said Barbara, regarding the importance of family, “It’s key, it’s everything.  It’s really all that really matters and it keeps getting… it gets confused, and then it gets clearer again… You know, when you think about working, or what you did with your life, work, yourself…”   The influence of her family’s values played a role in Barbara’s decision to put her career on hold for 15 years during her children’s youth.  While she adores her three kids and cherishes the time that she spent at home with them, Barbara simultaneously wishes that she could have found a way somehow to progress professionally. Ruth testified, “Your mom [Barbara] could do anything, I keep trying to convince her– also Dick.  If she put her mind to it, there isn’t much she couldn’t do…

“Our whole family was gentle, and the kids are the apple of your eye.  My mom always put the kids first,” Ruth averred.  Indeed, Sarah used to tell Ruth, “You get all of your pleasure from your children.”  But living for one’s children, through one’s children, and looking to them for one’s solitary source of joy is as harmful as it is helpful.  Absolute self-sacrifice can both endanger children’s mental health and stunt a parent’s individual development.

Barbara concluded, though, that most doubts and problems get “…unknotted again when you’re with these people… Work really isn’t important.  We keep saying they oughtta pass a law that you can’t move more than a certain number of miles away because I think it would be so nice if Helena was around, you know, someday when my parents aren’t around, someone who remembers them.  You just want to be with the other parts of your family that you really just all are connected to.  Cousins, I think, you all have the same kind of genetic input and it’s just special.  So, it’s too bad that things keep getting further and further, farther and farther lumped.”

In her own children’s case, however, the benefit of growing up alongside cousins was granted.  Young Sarah and Leanne are best friends and plan to be bunkmates for their second summer at Camp Chi, the same overnight camp that their parents attended.  In fact, before becoming Sue’s sister-in-law, Barbara was Sue’s counselor one summer!  Joe often tags along with the two girls, and occasionally Laurel joins in the fun and organizes games for all of them to play.  Benjy and Joe, although separated in age by 12 years, still like to spend time together doing “boy stuff.”

Barbara’s vocation is social work and she currently works full-time, counseling families with young children, educating nursery school instructors, and teaching parenting classes.  She believes that the way she was raised, observing her mother’s selflessness, benefiting from her love, probably prompted her to work with families.  Growing up in that manner, explained Barbara, “you’re aware of relationships and people.  And I also think my brother and I are pretty non-competitive,” she continued, “more compassionate and empathetic rather than out for ourselves, and more than selfish, more selfless.”  This qualification then “…pulls you into an area of work that expresses that connected-ness rather than non-connected-ness.”

Feminism has also played a significant role in the formation of this clan “because most of the people that impact on child-development are females,” stated Barbara.  “All was matriarchal at home in that all the men were always out and gone and it was always the women who guided the family…”  Both Sarah and Ruth displayed their competence domestically and professionally, raising their children, tending to their housework, and earning wages in the job market.  These achievements would have been impossible if they had defined themselves as members of “the weaker sex” and devalued their intrinsic potential as human beings.  It can be argued that the relative success of this lineage relied heavily on the contributions of its women.  According to Barbara, “the importance of women and female relationships” was crucial.

But, Ruth confided, “The thing that I’m most proud about– I’m first generation, your mom’s second generation, you kids are already third generation.  For me, it’s like you came over on the Mayflower!  Our family has been here 100 years already.”  More significant than the family’s physical subsistence in this country, though, more inspiring than its ascendancy from rags to riches, more remarkable than its transformation from a handful of unskilled laborers to a group of educated professionals, is the survival of its moral fabric– the preservation of familial love throughout the decades.

P.S. At the end of our visit on March 17, 2013, Gramma came back into the kitchen (instead of getting her coat, as she had intended) to tell me something.

RUTH: I couldn’t do this without your mother; she’s always there for me. And your father is always right there too.

BARBARA: That’s what we do.

RUTH: And that’s FOR TRUE! I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, guys: I’m just going to hang around.

BARBARA: See, she’s not going to leave me alone, even when Laurel retreats to California.

RUTH: And has about a dozen kids.

BARBARA: She’d better, we’re counting on it.

RUTH: Your daddy’s got his tongue hanging out, waiting for little kids. “Mit kennish oyz glochen de velt.” — You can’t even out the world. (reflecting on her Yiddish) I’m getting closer to my family, they’re all waiting for me.

BARBARA: There’s no hurry.

RUTH: And don’t ask me where I’m talking Yiddish in my old age. Like I said, they’re all up there laughing at me!

*Text added by Laurel Felt from recollection, February 2, 2012

Justification

As I tore apart my computer in search of texts to enrich my article for Learning, Media, and Technology, I found this piece which I delivered (or didn’t — I have a habit of jumping off-book and riffing in front of a live audience) before the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees on April 15, 2011.

I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place, and thought that the way we raise children is central to any/all such undertakings. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, I studied Education & Social Policy, with minors in political science and French. I did original, on-site research for my honors thesis, visiting child care centers in Paris, Oslo, and urban Chicago. I reviewed the way each culture balanced the social-emotional and the cognitive — Were they tensions in opposition? Were they intertwined partners?

Spongebob Squarepants got me to graduate school. My friend Jenn and I were babysitting a bunch of five-year-olds and, while we happened to be on the street of a housing project in Boston, I suspected that this scene could have unfolded anywhere in America, maybe anywhere around the world…

Here we go round the mulberry bush… the ice cream truck chimed. My friend Jenn asked the kids what they wanted.

“Spongebob!” they cried, eyes glued to the image of a frozen treat shaped like he who lives in a pineapple under the sea.
“They’re out of Spongebob,” Jenn explained patiently. “What’s your next choice?”
“Dora!”

POP! Goes the weasel!

That’d be Dora the Explorer, another children’s TV character who the youngsters could ice cream-ily cannibalize. Now, I’d been a kid who worshipped at the electric fireplace, effortlessly memorizing movie & TV dialogue, gobbling books, acting in plays. But I always, ALWAYS, had firm ideas about chocolate and vanilla. Was something different going on here?*

I started out by looking at the extent to which young people interacted with electronic media, analyzing children’s media content according to unsavory themes, like aggression, materialism, xenophobia, and stereotypical gender roles, which I continued at USC. Then I became interested in influencing the content itself, first through disseminating research to studios with Dr. Stacy Smith, then by supporting entertainment-education efforts with Dr. Sheila Murphy and Hollywood, Health & Society. From there I became interested in what people do with the content, and that’s what led me to Dr. Henry Jenkins and, in a sense, brought me back to square one. How do we make the world a better place, shift the way we raise children, address the social-emotional and the cognitive?

This skills-rich approach seems the way to go, in my opinion. Not only is each person, each community, and each moment in time distinct, but people hate being told from on high what to do. It doesn’t make sense to come up with one fixed set of solutions, one “universal” plan, and tell every person out there to do it. It just doesn’t work. But let’s say you help them to develop skills, fundamental capacities for diverse application. Then individuals’ and communities’ possibilities are limitless. They can realize their own potential, and build their own solutions that reflect their unique circumstances.

At RFK Community Schools, via the Explore Locally, Excel Digitally after-school program, I’m helping those skills to take hold. The skills pertain to social-emotional competence (SELs; self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making), and new media literacies (NMLs; defined as “a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape” (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Weigel & Robison, 2006, p. 4)). Despite the words “new” and “media” in their label, NMLs are neither new nor exclusively for or about media. They’re especially useful in the context of new media, but they’re fundamental, time-honored, digitally agnostic skills. They’re about enriching learners with useful, versatile capacities that help them think sharper, work better, and appreciate fuller the ethical ramifications of their actions.


As thirteen-year-old me once sang in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, playing the role of Mrs. MacAfee in Harand Theater Camp’s summer 1993 production of Bye Bye Birdie, “I don’t know what’s wrong these kids today!”

Numbers

“A dominant group, controlling the production of knowledge, shapes the construction and distribution of numbers, in order to convey authority and legitimize certain perspectives” (Wilkins, 2008, p. 17).
“Dating is a numbers game” (conventional wisdom).

Our country may be terrible at math and lousy when it comes to balancing its checkbook — but boy does it love numbers! Numbers are messianic; numbers are truth. And, in certain circumstances, numbers can be bought and sold to the highest bidder! Step right up, step right up, shape em, bend em, bring em home to your kids. Insignificant details or calls to action — pick your flavor! They can even julienne fries!

The problem, of course, is there might be no “there” there. Not only do I distrust the methods that produced most numbers, but I distrust the interpretation of their significance. An unpublished manuscript by Dr. Karin Wilkins (2008) urges numerical literacy: “This literacy needs to advance us toward asking the fundamental questions that resist obedient acceptance of numbers as objective truth” (p. 21). A recent (and heavily trafficked) Op-Ed by Paul Krugman declares plainly, “nobody understands debt.”

In other words, the emperor has no clothes on; and who made him emperor anyway?

My colleagues and I have been on a literacies quest. We’ve been crusading for the new media literacies, which is related to media literacy and social and emotional literacy; now I think we have to add numerical literacy into the salad bowl (don’t you call it a melting pot!).

I also might have to launch my own Torpedo of Truth Tour when it comes to dating. Through literature reviews and participant-observation, I can affirm that dating is not merely a “numbers game.” Its sampling frame, communicative modes, discursive material, and experimental activities differ widely according to participants’ narratives or “dating scripts.” Thus, driving up your numbers will never produce the desired outcome if you’re fishing in the wrong pond, or dangling the wrong bait, or misunderstanding the nibble on the line. Considering contextual variables is more demanding to do, and more tongue-twisting to mention, than parroting a pithy formula, but them’s the breaks. Reliable facts rarely make good soundbytes.

We need to stop valuing mnemonics above reality. The world is gray; accept it. And somebody get that emperor a robe, for crying out loud. It’s getting embarrassing…