Harv Weisblat
Harv Weisblat's family story spans continents. His father, David Weisblat, descended from three brothers who emigrated from northern Germany around the turn of the century and settled in Canton, Ohio, where they ran a scrap business. Orphaned young, David moved to Cleveland and then to Los Angeles, where he worked for an uncle making fabric shoe bags. Harv's mother, Ida, came from Omaha, Nebraska, where her father had worked in the meatpacking industry after fleeing conscription in the Russian army near Kiev. The family name was reportedly altered at Ellis Island from the region they named as their home. David and Ida met at an AZA convention in Los Angeles and married.
Unable to compete with his uncle west of the Rocky Mountains, David and Ida boarded a train east and were let off in Dallas, then home to a Jewish community of a few thousand. They lived at first in a garage apartment and started a small shoe bag business, with David traveling to sell to small Texas dry goods stores. Harv, the youngest of three children, was born in 1945 and grew up near SMU and later in the Walnut Hill area, attending Hillcrest High School. He remembers a safe, close-knit community, riding the bus downtown as a boy, gathering at Phil's delicatessen, and being active in AZA, BBG, and Congregation Shearith Israel.
Drawn to aviation from boyhood, Harv earned his pilot's license at the University of Texas and enlisted in the Air Force as the Vietnam draft loomed, training at Lackland and at Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Alabama. He later returned home to serve in the Air National Guard for over twenty years while building a real estate career centered on warehouse and partnership investments, and eventually flew for Continental Airlines. His father's early death in 1974 drew him into fulfilling the family's commitment to the JCC rebuild. Harv helped found a small congregation, Nir Tamid, and later joined Temple Emanu-El with his wife Jolene and their adopted daughter. He and Jolene divide their time between Dallas and Scottsdale, Arizona, remaining active in the ADL, the Federation, and Jewish community life.
Full Transcript
okay today is August 21st 2013 I'm Deborah psky and I am here uh interviewing Harve Weiss blad at The JCC of Dallas so tell me a little bit about your background are you a native Dallas site born in Dallas in 1945 okay at the uh at the Old St Paul Hospital uh over not too far from the current bayor that's subsequently been torn down and of course St Paul was rebuilt over by uh by by Parkland it's part of the hospital complex over there now so um how did your family come to Dallas well um my uh my mom's from Omaha Nebraska and my dad
is from kakon Ohio and uh I guess we can go back and and how they got to those locations excellent uh my on my mom's side very interesting actually my dad's side came over first there were three brothers uh and they all came over from uh B bellus uh the the area of North far Northern Germany it looks like that's where that's where we Trac them back to and they came over in uh right around the turn of the century just after a year or so one at a time and they settled in kakon Ohio were in a in a scrap business almost opened up
a little scrap business there uh but kashton is uh pretty not much going on in kakon uh so uh when my when my dad was born he was the youngest of of five um he ended up uh uh actually when he was eight uh his mother my grandmother died and when he was 18 uh my his his father my grandfather died okay so he actually a couple years after that so he moved to Cleveland which was about 80 mil away the big city and from Cleveland um he moved out to Los Angeles where he had an uncle that was um had a little business there
mhm um and he went into business with his uncle actually working for his uncle uh his uncle wisely I guess or made him sign a non-compete agreement that if he ever quit working for him he um he would not be able to go into business anywhere west of the Rocky Mountains wow so uh what kind of business was it uh it was a business making shoe bags the kind the fabric shoe bags that you hang on the inside of your closet door and uh that's what he was doing at that and he was traveling California and uh then my mom then he met my mom
at an Aza convention she came from Omaha uh she's the youngest of of three siblings um and her my grandfather interesting how they got to Omaha my my grandfather was an apprentice in my great-grandfather's butcher shop in just outside of Kiev uh a region called babiar which as you know is a pretty famous region at this point not not with a not uh not good not a positive image but uh at that time it was pre pre-slaughter so U um he was drafted as you know in the in the Russian army the firstborn son uh does not have to go to the Army uh but
any in Sons after that do go to the Army and that's why I that's why the uh Jewish families especially uh if there was a second son born they would trade their son off to other families that had no son right um and that's why it's so hard to trace genetically back but uh they um he was drafted into the well actually he went to work for my great grandfather in his butcher shop as an apprentice my great-grandfather had four daughters one one of which was my grandmother when she was 18 um uh and he was just coming back from basic training being drafted and
as you know being drafted was almost a death sentence back then uh they had to serve 10 years in the army fighting the Zars Wars in Siberia wherever so it was so my grandfather decided that uh uh evidently they they met and they liked each other so my grandfather decided that he would uh secretly book passage U of my uh of of this Apprentice that worked in his butcher shop and his daughter who was 18 at the time um and when he came back he only had two days or three days whatever it was uh and uh he he put him he put uh my
grandfather and my grandmother on board a ship down to the Black Sea then they went from the Black Sea over to England and from England to to New York and uh of course he was awl from the Russian army so I we don't know what ramifications came out of that with his family U but U uh so she's 18 uh they uh it's still unclear whether they were married because it was such a rushed situation or they got married on the ship or the C captain or or we still uncleared out but anyway they came over it was in of course they couldn't afford BOS
so they came over in steerage right and um and my grandmother got very very ill uh they didn't know if she was going to make it in fact uh coming over on the ship but she survived and they they hit New York they can't speak English they can't do anything they have a relative uh in the Lower East Side uh but when they're going through Ellis Island they asked him uh through an interpreter what his what his name was and evidently The Interpreter thought it was uh asked him where they were from and and uh they said babiar we're from babiar so their name became
b a b i o r instead of the way you spell babiar right so so their name was now babier so so um so uh but they also asked him what he did and he said he worked in a butcher shop and he said well we have a job for you and and uh but it's in Omaha Nebraska so you're we're going to put you on a train to Omaha Nebraska and of course he couldn't afford to take his his new bride with him so she stayed in not not even be able to speak English she stayed in uh New York Lower East Side with
with a distant relative uh it took about um almost a year a little less than a year he he went he went out worked in the U reason it was Omaha is because the trail drives came to Omaha that time and the rail head uh was in Omaha they would the Swift and armor and all those other uh rendering plants uh put meat in refrigerated cars and shipped them back East so he had his job there in a uh you know in a plant I think it was for armor uh and uh so he saved up enough money uh sent her the money they got
a train ticket she took the train out to Omaha and they were finally reunited after about a year in the meantime she was learning a little bit of English she always spoke with an accent I never met my grandfather CU he died before I was born really but uh so they started a life in Omaha Nebraska and they had uh three children and uh my my mom was the youngest was seemed to be always the apple of my grandfather's eye and U and what was her name her name was Ida babier and my dad's name was David Wise blat anyway at at 18 she decided
that she had some had a cousin living in Los Angeles so they went out so she decided that she wanted to go to Los Angeles so she went to Los Angeles got a job um uh she well she went to I think she went to secretarial school for a year then got a job in Los Angeles and then my dad and my mom met at an AA convention uh in Los Angeles or at the beach I'm not sure that at that time Los Angeles was a little Community about 8 in 8 Miles Inland from the beach and in order to get to the beach you
had to take a trolley through the bean Fields there was nothing between Los Angeles and the beach and it was Paradise of course they they loved it out there anyway he was working for his uh Uncle which was not a problem uh when they weren't married and they weren't even dating and hadn't even met yet he traveled all up and down California selling for my uncle who were who ran his Factory in Los Angeles and uh but after he met my mom and they got married he didn't want to travel anymore uh or at least he wanted to travel less and my uncle said no
you have to continue to travel so they had a disagreement and uh and they decided to get married my folks decided to get married and he left my uncle and he could not he couldn't only thing he knew how to do was this was this business and but he he he decided that he wanted to go into business for himself making these shoe bags so he had to do it somewhere else so they hopped on a train and uh and they came uh uh through uh Las Vegas which was nothing at the time through Phoenix which was nothing Tucson nothing El Paso nothing and then
they came all the way the train let them off in Dallas and that was the first decent Community with a decent Jewish population I think at the time there was 2 or 3,000 uh was the Jewish population at the time they got off the train and U Got a u o a garage apartment in the back of a home that was owned by uh a family named golden golden uh was in the pickle business uh I don't know if you remember golden pickles or not I've heard of it anyway they they lived for a while up in the garage and they started a a little
a small uh little business and he traveled um he traveled Texas and he went to all the mom and pop uh dry goods stores on on the squares in all these little towns most of them were Jewish owned and uh and uh so he was able to sell and he'd come home on the weekends they'd make the stuff and and ship it off anyway that's how he got his start uh and uh from there they built a f family um uh I I had a sister and a brother I'm the youngest of the three and uh my brother is out in Los Angeles my sister
married a uh she went to University of Arizona and married a fellow that she met out there and they stayed out in Arizona but when she was she had twins and and and an older daughter uh and when her older daughter was four and her twins were two she she actually a little before that she developed leukemia and she passed away when they were two four and two uh so uh so my my brother's still well and he's out in San Diego uh and in the meantime uh it gets back to where I am I grew up here went to school here uh what part
of Dallas did you grow up in actually uh we had a house uh when I was up till I was about 6 years old um near SMU which was just a which was which was really not even in Dallas it was out from Dallas at the time uh it was starting to build up out that way uh on on a street called pomac which was uh which was two streets north of Mocking Bird just off of Hill Crest and they were about two blocks from from the small little campus called SMU and um then uh then in 1951 they there was a new development being
developed out near Walnut Hill um uh and uh they went ahead and by that time he was saved up some money I was since I was the youngest I was six the my brother was 16 and and my sister uh was uh 13 at the time so they moved out to a house uh on Stephanie uh just one house off of Stephanie and thery uh not too about a block from Hillcrest so I went to school in that area went to Hillcrest H Hillcrest High School and uh from there went to University of Texas uh let's what was it like growing up as a Jewish
kid um living it was very we had we really had U it was a wonderful time to grow up in the 50s we would uh you know at 10 years old we would ride the there was no movie theaters there was no Suburban uh shopping centers everything was downtown Dallas you know in downtown and downtown Dallas wasn't you know what it is today but it was but it had the department stores it had the movie theaters it had the restaurants you know uh there was just really nothing uh so uh as a kid I mean everything was safe uh you know we would ride at
10 years old get a buddy and I'd ride the bus downtown go to the show go out to uh uh Jimmy's chili rice and uh eat or hot dogs and then get on the bus and ride the bus home again we do it by ourselves you know uh without you know you wouldn't do that today with your kids you know but but but we could do that then um uh from a Jewish standpoint um we belonged to sherith Israel at the time which uh my first Sunday school was in Oak Cliff before they built the oh okay before they built their campus out on Douglas
or they're building out on Douglas out north and then uh which happened I think I went for one or two years we'd go to Preston Center which was just kind of a Crossing there wasn't much there and we catch the bus the bus would take to the to Oak Cliff every you know while they especially while they were building sherith Israel and uh uh so it was uh it was interesting the people that I met the the names that I remember um I I was just standing out front looking at the board of all the contributors of to the J here and it was a
trip down memory lane with all those names that you know from my childhood all the people in the community at the time mhm and uh it was uh it was it there was a sense of community that we had uh growing up everybody all the parents were struggling and just starting to do well in their jobs businesses and careers and uh we were the Legacy basically of that um a going up through high school at Hillcrest u in uh Ruben Kaplan AA um went up through you know uh bar metzwood confirmed uh AA Sports uh activities BBG you know uh so you were involved in
the Jewish Community completely were your parents involved yes yes they were pretty much my mom was uh pretty much a stay-at home mom but uh uh dad um uh was helped out with the ADL which was a brand new budding Organization for a regional chapter in Dallas at the time and uh he was involved u in the synagogue um and and a couple of other organizations at the time he got involved in The JCC here um especially when they had the uh rebuild uh uh in 1979 he he he was involved in the U initial phases of that now he passed away very young he
passed away when he was 64 in 1974 so um U he was not he didn't get a chance to complete uh his involvement with the rebuild of The JCC at the time and so by that time I had come back out of the service and I stepped in and we uh we stepped up to the plate and and uh fulfilled his commitment uh to The JCC uh in 1979 and subsequent to that we have also continued to support the J uh and various uh Jewish organizations in the community U one of which of course is the the Historical Society absolutely and uh uh let's see
where we stand here now so growing up and down I grew up in Dallas it it was just it was wonderful I mean uh it was a new time everything was new all the houses you know were new the shopping centers were expanding about the time that I went off to college they opened the first mall and that was North Park Mall in 63 I think that was uh so we didn't we weren't any malls but I can remember going to Phil's delicatess and after a date and going to a show and and everybody was at Phils everybody showed up at Phils uh um to
you know all the Jewish kids would would go there after their dates and everything it was it was quite enjoyable we had a great time so then you went to UT so went went down to University of Texas pledged a fraternity down there and uh um and went through four years of school um I need to backtrack just a little bit sure uh um growing up I got I really enjoyed making model airplanes and remote control and flying uh wire motorized little aircraft and so I got I got pretty heavily involved in in that as a hobby when I went to UT um against my
parents wishes and demands by the way they uh there was a u a physics Professor who started a uh a flying club uh they bought several small airplanes uh which you could rent relatively inexpensively at the time and he taught the ground school and so I took that unbeknownst to my parents I and I went ahead and got my uh pilot's license uh I had to work myself because of course my parents were no way they would Finance anything like that so so I got a job when I was in school and most of my money went toward toward that anyway so I got a
so I was involved in in in aviation to some extent at that point as we progressed through college we would come back to the fraternity house uh on Friday afternoons and turn on the TV while drinking a beer or two and uh Vietnam was going on it was the first televised War ' 6667 which I graduated in ' 67 and and uh so uh we had College deferment the draft was initiated and we had College deferments that were um that would go until you graduated or were able to continue your deferment which was they weren't even they weren't offering many continued deferments you could continue
to deferment medical school if you if you uh signed up went in the Army and uh after or Air Force wherever they assigned you uh but my deferment was going to be over and when I graduated and we were going to get by September if I didn't have a continued deferment we were going to get that greetings letter so uh uh you know as as dumb as we were back then we knew that uh this the first televised War ever you knew you didn't want to be in the jungles being you know wall know stepping on bungees and and being sniped at so so I
volunteered uh to go into the air force actually I went down to the recruiter took a bunch of tests and and uh since I had an aviation background um and and an aptitude for it evidently uh I passed all the tests and they said they said and you I said come on and so I so I listed in the Air Force and it was at that time when I told my folks what what happened they were pretty glad that I wasn't going in the Army so they were fairly happy that in spite of their uh insistence not to get involved in aviation that I was
involved in what I needed to do but they were still concerned of course because it was a a military situation and uh uh as a sidelight it was interesting about uh about a week after I enlisted uh I got a I got a draft notification from the Army and so I took it down to the recruiter and I said what do I do with this and he grabbed it and he says here I'll take care of that for you you know so it was uh it was close it was really close and so after being in the Air Force for for a a period of
time for training and going through the uh rigors of flight school and uh and uh officer Officer school and off where did you do your training uh I did my training initial training in in OCS in Lackland and uh did my undergraduate uh uh pilot train tring with our pilot training in in at Craig Air Force Base in Selma Alabama interesting time to arrive in Selma Alabama it was just after the march across the Pettis Bridge the bridge uh I got there maybe three months after the March or four months after the March to start my year of training uh it was uh it was
quite interesting u i I enjoyed the uh inel Alabama there was a small but uh uh U but involved Jewish Community um again that that was still before Walmarts and everything so they you still had the mom and pop stores on the right on the in the square and uh so I met uh quite a few uh of the Jewish Community there uh although I really wasn't you know I was just too busy to uh to get too involved in in that thing the life was uh completely different and uh so I graduated in 19609 in mid 1969 uh was in the Air Force on
active duty uh for some time and then uh transferred into transferred back into uh an air guard unit here at Navy Dallas in Grand Prairie which was very interesting it could have been assigned just about anywhere but uh in order to do that you had to extend your uh enlistment um extend your contract which I gladly did to get back here because at that time my dad had already had acquired an illness and he was not well uh he was managing it but he was not well this was in like 1971 7172 MH and U so I came back here and uh was in the
uh and was in the air guard and I stayed in the air guard for over 20 more years and actually retired out of the air guard oh really so um it was it was quite enjoyable uh it was totally different than being in the air force uh and you know it was it was a camaraderie it was a group it it pretty much stayed uh fairly you know uh pretty much the same people so uh but uh backing up my dad was um in the U he he was not well I went to uh try to help him out to try to work with him
um that was not to be my heart was uh my heart was you know off in the sky so to speak um and then of course when he passed away in 74 which was about 2 years later um uh I pretty had come back come back but but at that time I my life was pretty well set it was I went ahead and got my uh real estate license uh through a Salesman at first for a couple years and then uh with a individual that I had met a few years earlier then then a broker's license but I didn't actually uh go out and sell
real estate uh I I was involved more in putting together Partnerships and finding properties for uh various partners in the community names some of which are on the board out outside there how did you get interested in real estate I mean that you you know you were interested in aviation and you were doing well when my when my dad passed away um he had his office in a in a in a building in his in his little plant in a building right uh and he owned that building so um so it just kind of took off from there we inherited that one small building and
uh and from there we we went to other areas you know uh you know primarily Warehouse properties uh um freestanding Warehouse properties uh that time Brook Hollow was like a brand new uh development or a fairly new development and that's where we were mainly in the Brook Hollow area um and so uh and I was involved with other Partners as well and then as as you get involved uh you know they know who your family is they know who you are they want to be involved at that time people needed real estate in their Investment Portfolio because because of the terrible inflation right uh that
the that the government brought on uh with the war on pover starting with the war on poverty in ' 64 which hasn't cured the poverty but it's just just the same percentages back then or more uh and then Vietnam uh we devalued the dollar greatly back then and it and it reflected in the easiest thing for our politicians to do was to let inflation cure the uh cure the scenario so people needed real estate in their portfolio because that's where they Protected Their assets and back then we were not as litig us as Society right and so people could go in uh we didn't have
to do limited Partnerships people could just be Partners in the partnership uh in their own name right and so so basically that um I'm up through uh uh career politics uh through the career through the Air Force Through the reserves uh but backing up just a little bit when I was in college I also met a gal and uh we fell in love and uh uh decided that we well we didn't decide to get married back then we graduated college and I went off into the air force well she basically decided that I was the one so she moved up here to Dallas got a
job and when I came back off of active duty she stayed here for two or three years we we um corresponded and U when I came back out of the air force uh you know we picked up where we had left off in college and uh just just uh after my dad passed away a few months after my dad passed away we we got married uh in 1974 okay so um uh we were basically she was a school teacher uh she worked at odd various jobs just to get a job to come to Dallas because she was from a small town down near Galveston oh
she she went to the University of Texas also of course and uh and uh we we got married and I was basically started into the real estate she started teaching at that time you you know you needed a secretary so so she was teaching so she had one and a half jobs she had a half a job being my secretary and a full-time job teaching right then I started in real estate got into the reserves uh and so I had uh basically one and a half jobs uh actually the reserves was more like more like 3/4s of a job because uh if you're on flight
status you you we did a lot of we went all over the you know in in this particular thing we were aerial refueling and so we went we went all over the world uh to various locations supporting out of the Pacific we went into Europe especially during Vietnam uh uh we we picked up the slack where the active duty uh had been reassigned uh and then uh we switched airplanes went that went in Central South America even over into Africa some so uh so we went quite a few places but anyway I was gone quite a bit and uh so we never we never had
any kids um and then uh after about 16 years um U I got well after about 14 years uh I got a job with an airline Continental out of Houston uh they recruited me to come fly with them and I knew I was going to get out of the reserves within a couple of years so I so I said I why not I'll keep I'll keep going here so then I had basically she had one and a half jobs and I had I had two and a half jobs so between us we had five jobs basically you know so we were mess you know we
were building up an estate and then finally she decided that uh uh that she just this just wasn't the life for her uh she wanted to go back to her small town and so she said we just got so we had an amicable separation no kids you know after 16 years right and um and so for the next eight years I was single uh in the reserves with the airline and you know and uh and enjoying a a peaceful single life but with no kids and uh uh I met my wife at a Jewish singles convention in Virginia Beach Virginia yeah and I went back
to there because we used to stop there on the way back and forth to Europe you know uh at some of some of the military installations there and so I thought it would be nice to go back and see Virginia Beach it had been a while so I met her and the meantime I retired out of the reserves actually I retired out of the reserves before we got a divorce cuz uh cuz I thought that maybe if I took something off my plate we could maybe try to try to try to save the marriage but it wasn't to be and um uh so uh uh
so I met her at a Jewish singles convention she had a daughter that was seven six or seven six six years old at the time seven I think and um uh this was in the late '90s and uh one thing led to the next and uh I said maybe we we ought to uh think about getting married and and she says well I I I she had been married once before and it was not pleasant evidently so she says well I I don't I want to I want to come up and see if this is what we want we've been doing long distance long distance
is one thing but uh right uh but uh so she uh she moved up here she moved to Dallas from Virginia um but I said I said you know we got to be engaged if you're going to move in and she did she actually had a job uh with the Jewish Day School in Virginia she was the uh com controller of the Jewish Day School uh so her daughter uh could it great they went to she went to work with her and her daughter went to the school and she was in the office so that worked out very well you know while they were there
but once once they graduated here well I mean once she decided to move down here uh uh her daughter had to you know uh we we we put her daughter in Solomon sheor at first and didn't work out very well her daughter was kind of rebellious we had taken her away from the life that she'd known and nothing was going to please her and nothing was going to work out and she so anyway ultimately we ended up putting her back in public school and uh um and uh ultimately I adopted her and um and and then now she's truly my daughter I can tell you
that and um and this is the daughter who's this is the daughter that's about to get married so so this is this is my second chapter in in in my life with a uh with her and uh with Jolene and uh hopefully Jolene will come and and also if her side her uh her side of the story and uh so this is where we are today U involved been involved in the Jewish Community here even even though I was uh gone quite a bit during that during a long period of time uh uh I'd be I'd be away away from home as much as 23
24 days a month wow which was which is a lot that's a lot U but in spite of that or before I really was it U when I was just in the reserves i' I'd be gone maybe only on the weekends and on and in a week or two at a time here and there so I was able to be involved in the Federation and the campaign um and uh but then when I got on with the airline I was just going too much to be involved in uh in in a whole that so I backed off a little bit and then uh now I've
retrenched a little bit started coming back out here uh um involved in the local ADL board and uh uh um a couple of other organizations and of course uh we started uh many years ago we started a little congregation there with about eight families at the time with us with my first wife uh called near to Mid it was out in Carolton and uh we were I think we were one of the original eight founding families which was interesting but even that went by the wayside as I started not being here traveling uh quite a bit and so uh um after we got married Jolene
and I got married I adopted my daughter after about it took about three or four years for the for the for the daughter to really get acclimated and adjusted um and uh we joined Temple Emanuel near to Mid at the time was just too small for her they didn't have the programs that she wanted for Jolene wanted for the for her daughter and uh so we Jolene got actively involved of course in the temple Sisterhood got on the board over there uh they've recently had a capital campaign I've been on the capital campaign uh so you know I've been getting more involved back in the
Dallas Jewish Community uh but at the same time um we found uh a place in Arizona in Scottdale uhhuh and back when the downturn hit we bought a house out there and we go out there uh now that I'm semi-retired uh I go out there uh twice we go out there for about 6 months a year during the winter right and so now I'm involved out there a little bit I'm a guest board member on the ADL and uh this year I think I'm going to be involved in the uh Foundation out there I was in the foundation here for uh for 20 some IDE
years on the board um so uh we started it uh started starting back in the in the early 80s so uh it's I'm going to go ahead and uh and re-involved in in the in the Arizona situation because ultimately I think that's where we want to retire out to out to Arizona we have no more family here uh our daughter is of course going to be just got a job with Omni Hotel s uh opening up a brand new Omni in Nashville so uh no tell them where she's going to end up cuz they move them around quite a bit and of course she'll be
she'll be getting married to uh uh to Jason who uh she she met on board or when she had contracts with Royal Caribbean cruise lines and uh it'll be uh be very interesting to see where we end up but I think what we'll end up having is our retirement home out in in uh in Arizona and uh we'll be have less and L course my folks are buried here at the old sharei Israel Cemetery along with my sister uh and uh we've had roots in the community uh so it's U and I'll still be someone involved in right there's always a in the community a
tie there yeah when you look back on your life um who would you say Your Role Models or your hero a SW well my life was actually two lives my life was one inside the Jewish Community M and then um then outside the Jewish Community because there's not there just not a whole lot of Jews in the career path that I took there's a few but not but you're right not not not a whole lot um in the aviation business there were numerous uh when I first got in there were still a lot of these Old World War II two aviators uh the the the
what they did was just phenomenal uh they were they were they were Larger than Life you know those were the those were the those were the role models that I that kept me going inside the inside the uh Air Force and the air guard um I mean just one right after another just too numerous to name just awesome people just just just what they did and and what they did to serve their country even though a lot of it was because they really had fun doing it and enjoyed it but uh uh what sets the aviators apart from the regular soldiers yeah it's it's and
and I still have um people that I associate with uh from when I was in the service um the second uh life of course was inside the Jewish Community here and the the people that were um that were instrumental growing up the waldman's the the glazers the um you know the the masses the uh the you know box uh the cohens Henry Cohen and and I had yeah these were all people that I grew up uh you know observing and uh seeing how they uh they ran the community interacted in the community and those were kind of my uh my uh my focus my focus
group with inside the Jewish Community CU all those a lot of those names are are are all they're on the board out there but they're gone now so so it's real trip down memory lane looking at that board if you could leave the Next Generation or the generation coming up with advice about life about career about that family what would you tell them well I'm highly concerned about what's going on in Washington today um the only advice I would have is that you're going to have to make it in spite of what the government does not with the help of the government uh because it's
all going to it's all going to come down it's uh we probably going to have another at some point without a crystal ball you don't know when but another high inflation environment like we saw in the 70s politicians can let the inflation do their work for them and not get blamed for it right um so U it's it's the government you just cannot depend nor trust the government nor trust the PE but it's the people in the government you just can't trust them and uh so you're going to have to uh survive inside your own environment prepare for your own uh retirement prepare you know
uh make your own living and just not depend on the government for for very much at all how do you see having grown up here and seeing the Jewish Community then and the Jewish Community now and even you know what you're seeing in Arizona do you think it's changed significantly in terms of oh yes um when I was growing up um there was still uh some uh quite a bit of uh anti-semitic uh attitude uh so you had to depend on yourself you had to circle the wagons right so to speak and do within your own Community um to the extent that our grandfathers and
our father fathers have uh established organizations and and developed a community U inroads uh we've been uh Jews have been much more accepted and tolerated in inside the inside the community they're in every phase of of society at this point and as a result um the assimilation has taken the a lot of Jews out of the Jewish Community basically uh intermarriage U you know uh it's just been a a big change to that to that extent I think uh that we have been accepted in in society in general we have become victims of our own success and uh uh so the kids you know the
children growing up today they don't they don't think they don't need to think about Jewish institutions and Jewish you know and and what what happened back then was that since Jews were not accepted and you know uh for many years they they had quotas in medical school quotas in law school uh U Jews couldn't really get jobs in Corporate America uh so they had to start their own businesses right their own business has became very successful the successful entrepreneurs financed a lot of the Jewish institutions now there are there are still some examples of that but it's it's not as many as it used to
be based upon the population uh especially percentage wise and as a result you might have a lot more lawyers or a lot more doctors you know uh and they might be able to make a nice gift but they don't make the mega gifts that these entrepreneurs used to make uh to to help with the Jewish communities now there's still some that can uh there's still a few that can but uh but but the feeling is not there the feeling is I don't think the the feeling is not there the understanding is not there of of how we got here and uh you know and the
need to to continue to support uh and and Foster this environment uh requires you have to tend to it like tend to a garden uh and if you don't you know I mean the Jews in Germany prior to World War II were highly uh involved in the in the society and the community there and they thought nothing would happen right you know well I mean you can't just take it for granted that nothing is it's going to be good here and it's nothing is going to happen you've got to work at it every day um you got to have organization like AJC and the ADL
and uh uh and organizations like that and this is why organiz like The JCC struggles and that you know it's all struggling it's it's a different environment uh in today and uh I don't know if we're handing off a better environment everybody I don't know if we're handing off a different environment today um you know a good environment for for our children and our grandchildren uh they're going to have to make it they're going to have to face the their own situations uh I hope they never have to circle the wagons again but who knows all I know is that you just can't depend on
the government uh you have to depend on yourself your own Community uh and uh and be as independent as you possibly can corre at the same time working within the within the community uh Jewish and non-jewish absolutely anything else you'd like to add not that I can think of right now well thank you so much this was delightful we will