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4b59f73eb04eddb60356d3eec8aebbea
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Marty Krasnov
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-27.xml
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5.4 June 22, 2016 Marty Krasnov, June 22, 2016 LVTNT-27 1:59:22 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Marty Krasnov Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 KrasnovMarty_20160622 1.0:|15(5)|30(7)|45(7)|60(2)|73(15)|90(9)|105(13)|122(2)|135(10)|158(6)|179(12)|196(5)|211(7)|226(8)|243(10)|256(4)|271(4)|286(4)|303(5)|320(7)|335(7)|350(11)|365(14)|382(11)|401(5)|416(15)|435(10)|452(2)|469(10)|486(3)|503(10)|520(8)|533(5)|548(11)|563(5)|578(10)|591(9)|606(14)|621(4)|632(10)|645(10)|660(15)|675(6)|692(2)|707(9)|726(16)|743(8)|760(13)|779(6)|796(12)|813(10)|828(2)|847(5)|862(12)|875(7)|892(9)|911(14)|930(12)|947(6)|964(14)|983(9)|998(16)|1019(5)|1036(7)|1055(6)|1072(7)|1095(9)|1112(13)|1129(14)|1144(7)|1163(11)|1182(11)|1201(4)|1216(6)|1233(4)|1250(2)|1265(2)|1284(5)|1299(10)|1318(6)|1335(5)|1354(8)|1369(13)|1384(9)|1401(4)|1428(8)|1447(7)|1462(4)|1479(11)|1500(3)|1519(3)|1536(2)|1551(8)|1572(3)|1589(15)|1608(9)|1625(8)|1646(9)|1665(8)|1684(11)|1705(4)|1722(9)|1745(10)|1762(6)|1779(3)|1794(6)|1809(14)|1826(12)|1843(8)|1862(16)|1881(6)|1896(5)|1911(10)|1926(9)|1945(5)|1968(7)|1987(15)|2002(7)|2013(13)|2020(6) 0 https://youtu.be/y-5xsqEILEI YouTube video 0 Family History SC: Today is June 22, 2016. First I’d like you to put yourself into some kind of context. What’s your full name, when were you born and where were you born? 
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 ; MK: I’m Marty Krasnov, I was born in 1938 in the Jewish Hospital of Philadelphia.
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 ; SC: Over your life where have you lived? Sort of to see an arc of where you’ve lived from Philadelphia perhaps to where you are now?
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 ; MK: I believe it was 1940 when the family moved to Allentown, and I basically have lived here ever since. 0 1053 Women Working Culture SC: Do you know where any other people worked in this country, whether the women worked because they were poor?
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 ; MK: My mother, apparently, always had to work, and she went to night school so I presume, but she didn’t talk much about it. I think she worked in a department store. My father and his older brother Joseph and, I presume, my grandfather because there's a safe . . . but we had one time, Isadore Krasnov & ; Sons. My grandfather was Isadore. I don’t know why they had this huge safe because they didn’t have too much at the time. They started peddling on the street and started making blouses and dresses in their own home, and I guess the business kind of grew. 0 1291 Education SC: Would you now talk about where you have gone to school and where you’ve worked from the time you were a little kid, all the way to when you started working? 
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 ; MK: My recollection of growing up was in what would today be referred to as the Jewish ghetto, which was somewhere between South Fulton or S. 15th St. to South 17th St. I grew up on 16th St. and, even today, some of the people you’ve interviewed grew up on that street. And I know almost every house when I drive by, who lived here, who lived there and what have you. 0 2021 More Family History GE: Can you give me the names of your parents and grandparents?
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 ; MK: Sure. I’m gonna take these pictures out so you can look at them. I knew I was going to show these pictures to someone. I have them, and we have many more and you’ve seen pictures very similar to these. We’ll start with my family, as children, my older sister, as you can tell, my sister, Roz, that is me, my older sister, Roz. She is living in New Jersey and she is seven years older than I, and my sister, Mitsi Goldenberg, living in Florida. Parents passed away, my father was 85. He died on my birthday in 1980 and my mother passed away in 1995 and she was 88.
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 ; GE: What were their names?
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 ; MK: Sam, Samuel and Fanny, with a Y.
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 ; GE: So, it’s Samuel Krasnov, and his father was Isidore?
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 ; MK: Isidore, and my mother’s father was Marcus, and I’m named after my mother’s father
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 ; GE: And what was your mother’s maiden name?
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 ; MK: Abramson. And this is when she was a little girl in Russia with her governess and brother. Both of those were born in Odessa. And this is her family in Russia. My Uncle Leon is on the left. 0 2363 Who Ran the Business GE: So Marty, we’re just going to continue now and talk more about the business. You shared with us a little bit about the origins. If you want to share with us a little bit more, I don’t know quite who is in the business, in your family?
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 ; MK: The business was set up with basically . . . I don’t know exactly when my grandfather died, but he wasn’t really active in the business. He didn’t speak the language. My father, and I guess his older brother, picked it up rather quickly, I’m not sure how quick. They both spoke with a little dialect, you know, that we’re all used to hearing from that generation. So, basically, it was my Uncle Joe and my father, and, at the start of the business, my dad was the “inside manufacturing person” and my uncle was the sales and marketing person. 0 2628 The Business During the War GE: And so the two had the military contract throughout the war?
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 ; MK: Surefit had. We were the only ones making slipcovers up until the end of the war and because the retail stores wanted slipcovers, somehow this Comfy was able to get fabrics or what have you. My dad’s whole factory was dedicated to the war products so they couldn’t flip back. They didn’t have the capacity to do that. And there are a number of old-time employees who stayed with the company for many many years, and I was able to get a flavor of what they did during the war. They employed hundreds of people in this silk mill on Sand Island in Bethlehem. 0 2946 Transition from Wartime to Peacetime for the Business GE: Marty, want to share with us a little bit, what was the transition from wartime to peacetime like for your father’s business?
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 ; MK: Well I think they did rather well during the war because of the contracts they had with the government and it kept a lot of people out of the Army. Maybe some of them wouldn’t have survived, I don’t know. The other thing about the war and shortly after, well even prior to the period, when I came into the business, and I’m a young know-nothing who thought I knew everything, Wharton graduate and all of that stuff. I asked, we have too many relatives working here. I remember everyone, because they were mostly immigrants, they talked loud, and we had an intercom system. I felt a little embarrassed because everyone would hear shouting, even when we would go to my grandmother’s house in Philadelphia every weekend. To me, as a kid, everyone was talking loudly. He hired a number of relatives. My attitude towards that was, you know, this is not a good thing because they’re not necessarily the best qualified.
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 ; Only later did I realize that he was doing a good thing and providing jobs. Many of them were hired during the Depression. After the war, he brought a number of relatives and others that survived the war, Holocaust survivors in, and provided jobs to them. 0 3162 Steady Growth of the Business GE: So it sounds, from what I’m hearing, that it was a little bit recession-proof. It didn’t really go up during good times that strongly or down during bad times. It was pretty steady.
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 ; MK: It was kind of steady.
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 ; GE: Steady but growing.
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 ; MK: Steady but growing. You know the ups and downs and what have you. My dad was very conservative. At that time, the major customers were the national chains like Sears, Montgomery Wards, and every major city had their homegrown department store and they sold to most of every city’s homegrown department store.
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 ; GE: And it sounds like it was nationwide. 0 3623 Marty's Active Involvement in the Business GE: So you really started actively in the business about 1960?
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 ; MK: 1960 and my brother in-laws, both brother in-laws, were in the business. And we also had my three cousins from my Uncle Joe. He had passed away in 1957 and the family, like a lot of situations, it wasn’t a good fit. And we bought them out in 1963. Our family acquired their interest and it was at a time where, I think, there was a recession or something. We lost some key people because of the family, not a feud, but it was a problem that existed.
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 ; GE: What did they end up doing?
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 ; MK: One ended up teaching, one lived in Philadelphia, two of them worked in New York, but one commuted from Philadelphia. He ended up teaching in Philly and he died at an early age. 0 3818 Diversification of Products MK: Now, from that time on, in more recent years, the company diversified in other products and had a very nice growth rate.
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 ; GE: Want to tell us about that?
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 ; MK: We were a little concerned about the slipcover industry and the furniture covering industry because we also went into furniture throws. As the market expanded, with the K-Marts of the world, they couldn’t handle the slipcovers, per say, but they could handle furniture throws. We were producing, I remember, ten thousand throws a day.
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 ; GE: And what is a throw, versus a slipcover?
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 ; MK: A slipcover is a fitted slipcover, with the cushions.
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 ; GE: And it kind of has that elastic edge, right?
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 ; MK: Well, they’re a little different today. But the way we did it, we did it with mostly knitted stretch slipcovers. 0 4065 Struggles with Competition MK: We acquired a little competitor that had a . . . from Beatrice Foods that sold certain discounters on consignments that we were able to have service people now go in and count the inventory. We controlled it and we got bigger margins. Then, around the early 70s, we could see that some of these major catalogs and department stores started going out of business. The Wanamakers, the Gimbels, and we were doing slipcovers with them as well, but not to the extent that we were doing it with Sears and Montgomery Ward. We had the opportunity and we decided we should diversify so we bought a company that was manufacturing bedspreads in Japan and it was a very niche market.
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 ; We couldn’t compete with the big mills, the Burlington or J.P. Stevens, with selling bedspreads and that was even pre-comforters. They owned the space and what have you in the stores. So we found this niche market where they call it outline quilting where the stitching is done around the design, so it brought it out and they called that outline. 0 4379 Opportunity for 60 Minutes Interview MK: At one point, I get a call from 60 Minutes and they want to interview me. They were doing a whole thing on the twin plants in Mexico, the assembly operations and I said, “all the major companies, Philips, General Motors, Ford, none of them use their own names. In Mexico, they use a different name, but they were employing thousands and thousands of people. Why don’t you interview them?” They wanted to come into our facility. It was a girl with an English accent on the phone and she said, “well we’d really like to interview you about it” and I said, “It’s not all bad. This Mexico opportunity that a lot of American companies are taking advantage of, if it wasn’t in Mexico, it would be in Asia. The law is that you can assemble US products, and you don’t pay duty when they come back. You only pay duty on the added value which is the labor.” 0 4543 Expanding into Women's Apparel MK: Then we eventually went into women’s apparel because we were making our knitting when the lycra pants became very popular with the women’s fashion. We had a knitting operation because of our stretchy fabrics that we made. We started selling that fabric, lycra fabric, and then we said, because of Mexico, we might as well manufacture the whole product. Through the period, the business grew steady and it was pretty sound. We had such a diversity of products and a diversity of customers. Our largest customer when we sold it in 1990 was J.C. Penney, that represented 6% of our business, so we had a lot of good attributes to it. And the reason we sold the company, much of it was through my initiating the processes. 0 4620 Multi-Generational Business MK: Both brothers in law were 10 years older than I. I was 50 at the time, they were 60. I had 2 nephews in the business, and my children were young, and my sister Mitzi just had girls. We didn’t have any direction that the family would go. I remember the problems we had with my uncle’s son, and I said, you know, we’re having a pretty good run. There’s a time. When the first generation comes up with the idea, and they’re the ones that struggle through it, and they’re uneducated. So they get it to a point and then the second generation comes in and they’re educated. They still have some values because they remember growing up in a row house and what have you. And they move it to the next level. The third generation could start running into problems because now you’re not dealing with brothers and sisters, you’re dealing with cousins. I went through a number of family succession seminars, and I had that implanted that someday--my dad had already passed away, and my mother had Alzheimer’s so we didn’t want her to know. 0 5110 Operations in Mexico GE: So a couple of questions about the business. When you were in Mexico, that’s where the assembly was taking place and you said you had about 500 people?
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 ; MK: Yes.
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 ; GE: Back here in Bethlehem, how many people were still here?
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 ; MK: We still had about 400-500 people here.
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 ; GE: And they were just doing everything but assembling?
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 ; MK: Well they were assembling slipcovers. We were still manufacturing furniture throws and slipcovers in Bethlehem.
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 ; GE: This was the other pieces? What was being assembled in Mexico?
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 ; MK: The bed coverings. The outline quilting. We had that niche and that whole niche was very labor intensive. So that was our only way we could sell a product because we were one of the first ones to go into outline quilting and the stores, you had a flower and you just bring the quilt around it. And you see that today. Now it’s a lot of automatic equipment that does that. They program it, but at that time, it was all very extensive labor. 0 5327 Unions SC: And the other question was, which labor union would it have been?
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 ; MK: The United Textile Workers of America. It was a smaller union, and we always had a pretty good relationship with them. We had strikes, I remember we’ve had strikes, but nothing really long-lasting.
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 ; GE: Just so I understand, you started out with Slipcovers, then you very much did the throws, the quilting became a niche that you were producing in Mexico, then you were also doing the throw pillows and curtains, right?
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 ; MK: Yeah, we always did that. Now what had happened, as our bed covering business grew, it was around that time where Sears went out of the catalog business. They gave up a five billion dollar business overnight. Five billion is what they were doing in their catalog. The Sears catalog was an icon. Montgomery Wards went belly up, so we ended up with, in terms of catalogs, and again, this is all pre-internet days. If the internet would have been existing then, in fact, I had started my own catalog. 0 5485 Sales Force GE: Now tell me a little bit about how the sales force worked. It sounds like one of your brothers in law headed that part.
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 ; MK: Yeah, we had our main sales office. The showroom was on 34th Street, between Madison and 5th Avenue. That’s the later years, when I was there. We had offices on 26th Street when I first started, but that goes back. They were very attractive showrooms, and we displayed a lot of the bed coverings and furniture throws because the catalog people didn’t need showrooms. We had a showroom in Chicago for a number of years, and we had a showroom in California for a number of years. We had a warehouse in California. We had, initially, full time sales people, but then that became a very expensive thing, and we had a few full-time sales people that catered to the major accounts, but then we gravitated towards sales reps to handle other lines, as well. 0 6573 Jewish Involvement in the Industry GE: And the last question I’m going to ask before Sue asks you the final couple of questions, why do you think Jews were overrepresented in the needle-trade industry? This was an industry where they were really overrepresented.
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 ; MK: Well, I guess there was a number of reasons. I think they started out like my father, in their own homes, because it was easy to get a sewing machine. They came from Europe. They made their own clothes, so they had some inclination, you know, about that. They certainly couldn’t get jobs in banks. Most of them were uneducated anyway. They didn’t go to college, many didn’t even finish high school. They started these companies, but it was easy to get into. You buy a couple of sewing machines, and you go into it. 0 6710 What Has Made You Feel the Most Creative? SC: So, the last two questions are, what has made you feel the most creative in your life?
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 ; MK: Well I think I inherited some of that from my father. When I retired and moved to California, I decided that, other than golf, I had to be a little productive and use my head. So we have a, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Osher program. Osher was an individual, and if you look it up, google Osher, they run senior citizen classes at universities. They have a terrific program in the desert because of so many retirees, and we were connected with Cal State of San Bernardino. I always managed to take courses there. 0 7053 What Do You Value Most in Life? SC: And this is very short. What do you value most in life?
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 ; MK: Well, I value humor, obviously family and what have you. But I value humor and I kind of gravitate to the deprived. I’m a Republican, leaning to the right on financial and way to the left on social. That kind of describes me. But, I appreciate, particularly in the later years, my parents, the struggles they went through, and that provided for a good life to me and my family. You could value a lot of the good things, and you could become very verbal, but basically, I like good humor and I like nice people, and I’m tolerant, too. People have different viewpoints. So what? Let it be. I’m kind of like laid back. And that’s my story. 0 MovingImage Marty Krasnov talks about how his father got into the furniture slipcover manufacturing business as well as how the company got the “SureFit” name. During World War II, the firm switched from making slipcovers for furniture to making parachutes for the military because the specialized equipment SureFit already owned to produce slipcovers was easily retrofitted to make parachutes. Marty and his brothers-in-law sold the business in 1990. SureFit is one of the very few brands that still remains. Interview with Marty Krasnov, June 22, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is June 22, 2016. First I'd like you to put yourself into some kind of context. What's your full name, when were you born and where were you born? MARTY KRASNOV: I'm Marty Krasnov, I was born in 1938 in the Jewish Hospital of Philadelphia. SC: Over your life where have you lived? Sort of to see an arc of where you've lived from Philadelphia perhaps to where you are now? MK: I believe it was 1940 when the family moved to Allentown, and I basically have lived here ever since. SC: And can you tell me a little bit about your family history? What you know, first of all, perhaps about your father's family as much as you know. Where they came from, how they got to the United States, and when they got to the United States? MK: My father and his family were from an area in the Ukraine called Unum, (u-n-u-m). Or u-n-a-m, I'm not quite sure. The city still exists, I looked it up once or twice and it was heavily populated by Jews, and they must've had some religious institutions that attracted people from other areas to visit periodically. My understanding is, his father ran a general store. The only story that my father ever told about that is when he was a little kid, they had a crawlspace, and they had cartons where people would sit and sit around a stovepipe or whatever, and he constructed a gadget where you pull a string and a needle would go through the seat, and whoever was sitting there would jump. It's the only story I ever heard about this general store. Somewhere, at the age of 14 or 15, it's my understanding that to avoid the military school, and the Czars, and you've probably heard this from prior interviews, that was a time that they filtered a lot of these kids out of Russia through an underground railroad. He went through Italy so he ended up in Italy somehow and he had an uncle in Philadelphia. The family still remained in Russia. He had an older brother who I think was married at the time but maybe not. My father was born in 1895. I believe he was about 15 or 16 when he came over so that would've placed him coming here around 1910-1912, something in that timeframe. An interesting story, and this is an oral story that we heard, it was passed down in our immediate family. There are always question marks about it but this occurred with my father's grandmother, and we tried to put a date on it which would've been like the 1840s. They lived in a shtetl outside of this town, Unum. They had an ox and a cart and that's how they went from place to place and they were heading back to the shtetl in a blizzard. It was getting dark and when they got back to their home the baby who was a two-year-old or a one-year-old was missing and by now it was dark and you cannot go back. They didn't have flashlights or anything, and I guess they had a lot of children in anticipation of events like this and they presumed that the baby would freeze to death. We don't know what went through their mind. Obviously it must have been quite emotional. The next morning the villagers, the people in the shtetl, got up at daybreak and they went back the same way and they reached a certain point in the road and they see this black bear, and they startled the bear and the bear ran into the woods and at that spot, the baby was there, breathing, living, and in good shape. So they called this baby, which was my great-grandmother or my great great grandmother, I'm not really sure, the miracle baby of Unam. I and my older sister tried to find out if there's anything documented but obviously there wasn't. Whether it's a fable or whether it happened or not, it's a family story. Then my dad came over. He had an uncle living in Philadelphia at the age of 15 or 16, and incidentally, in Russia, my dad went to a yeshiva as a kid. That's how he got his education, so he was learned in the religion. Not overly religious himself, when he got here, but he was educated very well. He spoke Hebrew fluently, he spoke Yiddish. That's how they communicated in those days in the Ukraine. And he began working at the same textile factory as my uncle. So that brings them up to right before the First World War, and during the time that spanned when he got here and the First World War. His whole family came over and at that time, I know my uncle was married because my dad was drafted. Obviously he wasn't very anxious to go back to Europe. They didn't draft my uncle because he was the eldest and married. There was some regulation that absolved the eldest who was married from being drafted. My grandfather didn't speak English. The family consisted of my father and my uncle, Joe, who was the eldest, and he had another brother, two other brothers that were younger, and a sister. One of the brothers died from influenza that I never knew, but I knew all the other siblings of his. Another story, he was always very slight. I don't think he weighed more than a hundred pounds or a hundred and twenty pounds his whole life. There were certain weight requirements to meet when he was drafted and so they put him in Philadelphia. There's a place called the Camac that was the schvitz [Yiddish for baths] and they took him to the Camac the night before his physical. They wouldn't let him out of the [sauna] room so he would lose that extra eight pounds or five pounds. Then, at night, he was so thirsty, he snuck down to the kitchen and drank it all back, and he was drafted. They sent him to Fort Lee, Virginia. And the story is there were all these immigrants that they sent. All kinds of languages, you know, and he mentioned something strawfoot. They used to call it strawfoot, because they put a straw on the right leg or the left leg so the immigrants knew because they couldn't say right, left because half of them couldn't understand what was right or left. So they'd know that the straws were all supposed to march at the same time. And everyone went to sick call every day, except my father, he never went to sick call. A week before, he actually fainted and they took him to the hospital. He had like a sun-stroke, and they figured, well, he's credible because they never saw him in sick call before. And a week later, all of the others were shipped over to Europe and my dad never went. They just missed him. So that brings us to that point in time. My mother's family was quite interesting and we seem to know a little more about her because she spoke more than my dad. She was born in Odessa and, prior to her being born, her aunt married into the largest tea company in Russia. My grandfather, who I never met, was employed by them, and they sent him to South Africa, and he was there for seven years. And he wanted my grandmother, at the time living in Moscow, my mother had not been born yet, to move to South Africa. Things were good there, life was good there, the weather was nice, and it was cheap living but she wouldn't move out of Moscow. So seven years later he went back and the tea company moved him to Odessa, and that's where my mother and uncle Harry were born. It was a pretty large family of siblings. She had five brothers and she was the only girl, and the youngest in the family. We have pictures of her with a governess. I have one here and you can tell the way, the photography of the whole family, they were very well dressed, and you can tell they were reasonably affluent and had a good life in Russia. They sent the oldest son, Leon, my uncle Leon, they sent him to Switzerland to medical school. but Leon was a philanderer and a womanizer, and they didn't realize at the time that he wasn't really going to medical school. What he was doing was hanging out at the Bern Library with Trotsky and Lenin. We don't know much about what went on there but they were able to rescue him when they immigrated to the United States, so he never got too much involved and lived a happy life in Hartford, Connecticut. When my mother was eight years, old, the tea company sent the family to the United States and on the way, the ship, I guess they came through the Baltic, hit an iceberg, and they had to wait six months in Norway for the ship to be repaired. During that six-month period, the Revolution occurred, and the tea company was nationalized. And they're heading to the United States with a promise that they're gonna get aid by the tea company, but that doesn't exist anymore. I didn't know very much of this as a child. All I know is that my mother was brought up in a very poor environment in Philadelphia. Her mother was an invalid, her father had passed away, I guess was heartbroken, a couple of years after they arrived. My mother was born in 1908, I believe, and the Revolution was in 1917, so, when she passed away in 1995, she was 88. We found a diary that she had kept as a girl, and there were references in Yiddish about money that was supposed to arrive from London this month, and it didn't come and it didn't come last month. So the family didn't have access to any of the monies that were promised because obviously, there was no money. She was brought up in Strawberry Mansion, in Philadelphia. As I say, we visited and she still had a brother that lived in the same house that she was brought up in. My perception of her background was being very very poor. She went to Temple University at night, she was the only daughter, and she had to take care of her mother who was an invalid. I don't remember my grandmother, she died when I was two years old or so. The only grandparent out of all four was my grandmother, Rose, and she died when I was eleven years old so I knew her pretty well. I have pictures of both sides of the family. So I'm bringing it up to a point when they were raised in this country. SC: Do you know where any other people worked in this country, whether the women worked because they were poor? MK: My mother, apparently, always had to work, and she went to night school so I presume, but she didn't talk much about it. I think she worked in a department store. My father and his older brother Joseph and, I presume, my grandfather because there's a safe . . . but we had one time, Isadore Krasnov & ; Sons. My grandfather was Isadore. I don't know why they had this huge safe because they didn't have too much at the time. They started peddling on the street and started making blouses and dresses in their own home, and I guess the business kind of grew. There's a story that we were told, not by my father, but by one of the other relatives that during the First World War they manufactured these sailor blouses for women, and they were able to get large quantities of the fabric. Then the war ended and no one bought these blouses, and they couldn't pay their bills. And it was the fear of going to debtors' prison, I guess, that my grandmother insisted that they pay off every penny. She didn't want her husband and her two boys to go to prison. I guess they had that mentality. So that's a period that's kind of hazy with me. I guess they persevered in manufacturing. I think they probably got moved out of their home, and began to build this business in the blouses and dresses, from what I understand. The reason they got into the company, which I inherited, Surefit Products, was, my grandmother asked my father, who was always very good with his hands and creating things, an inventive kind of thing. My grandmother asked him to bring some fabric home to cover the sofa. In Europe they covered stuff with sheets, that's just what everyone did. And my father took this fabric and he made a slipcover out of it. And her reaction after he put it on -- he did the measurements and everything -- She said, in Yiddish, "This sure fits". So that's how the name came about. And they went to Lit Brothers, which was a major department store in Philadelphia at the time, and they put it on consignment and they did rather well with it and that was the beginning of Surefit Products and the slipcover business, which eventually grew into a pretty large company. SC: Would you now talk about where you have gone to school and where you've worked from the time you were a little kid, all the way to when you started working? MK: My recollection of growing up was in what would today be referred to as the Jewish ghetto, which was somewhere between South Fulton or S. 15th St. to South 17th St. I grew up on 16th St. and, even today, some of the people you've interviewed grew up on that street. And I know almost every house when I drive by, who lived here, who lived there and what have you. I'll tell you one humorous story about living there. Across the street from us was a family, George Somach. They were in the bridal business and George was a prominent person in town and certainly, in our synagogue. He was president of Temple Beth El for many years ; they named an auditorium after him, Somach Auditorium. I guess it was 1951, and I remember that because that's when the Philadelphia Whiz Kids [nickname of the Phillies team that year] played in the World Series and in those days when you had your wisdom teeth out, they took you to the hospital. And I'm in the hospital and George Somach was apparently in the room across from me. He had a heart attack, and he was in some plastic oxygen thing. They had this terrific invention, something new the hospital had, where they'd roll a TV in your room, you'd put a nickel in, and you could watch TV. It was wonderful, and I'm watching the baseball game. As a young kid, it was important, and I ran out of change. Mr. Somach, George, had a nurse in his room all the time. When I went in, she [the nurse] was on a coffee break, and I opened up the plastic because I panicked and I said, "Mr. Somach, I'm Marty Krasnov." He's in a daze, he didn't even know who I was. I said, "Sam Krasnov's son, I need some nickels, do you have any change? I'm watching TV. I need nickels." And he says "look in my pants. They're in the closet." So I go in, and I put my hand in his pocket. The nurse comes in, so now, they have my mother come to the hospital. He [George Somach] falls asleep. He doesn't know that he even told me to look in his pants. They're not going to wake him up and start inquiring from him, and I remember my mother taking me aside in the hospital, and saying "we don't have to tell your father about this." And I mentioned that story to George Somach's grandkids. One of them is a lawyer in town, and he didn't know. No one knew about this story, but anyway ; 16th Street was quite interesting because it was a great place to grow up. Just a wonderful area, there were all these row homes and, just from my perspective, even today, when we meet Alan Steinberg, whom you know. We were talking recently about it and it was just a terrific place. Everyone knew everyone else, the kids just enjoyed themselves. My next-door neighbor was Dr. Weiner, and we used to hide behind the trees when he came home from his dental practice. He had a very turbulent marriage, first marriage, and literally, pots and pans would come flying out the front door, and we'd be behind a tree or a car, watching this at 5:10 every day, and this is the background that I had. And then from there, right after my bar mitzvah, and I was one of the first ones at the new synagogue, at Beth El, that was bar mitzvahed. We had a little disruption during it because a dog came in and caused some fuss when I was up doing my thing. Rabbi Greenburg and Cantor Sherer, they were the officiators. So at age 13 right after we moved to Muhlenberg and Walnut Street and this was away from the rowhouse. We had a mulberry tree there and my sister had started college, she was home. My other sister was three years older so she was 16 or something and he [my father] remembered how to make wine. He thought he remembered how to make wine at his general store as a kid back in Unam, in Russia, and he put canvas under the mulberry tree and he had my sisters and I stamp with our feet. We thought this was kind of neat and I remember it was a real major happening because my sister Mitsi, I guess was going to a prom or something, and her feet were all purple and that didn't come out. It was just a big tado going on, to me it didn't mean anything. And then he mixed a little of this and a little of that and it tasted like mulberry juice. It didn't taste like wine. But we had a happy childhood-- we went to summer camps, and we had all the fine things that we could ever want. SC: So was the Surefit established in Philadelphia, then moved up here? MK: Yes, I understand they moved over a weekend, because they had some major union problems. I presume they moved to Bethlehem because it's a needle trades . . . being a female industry, and the Bethlehem Steel workers', their wives were good workers. And they moved to an old silk mill on Sand Island, and I think they bought it in 1940 or so or '39. I know I was told we moved here when I was 2 so it would've been 1940. I think they moved the company maybe a year before I was born, so that's how they ended up in Bethlehem. SC: Would you talk a little bit about your education? MK: Sure. I started out-- in fact, I was just telling this story to my cousin, the other night-- who was visiting from Cleveland. They were talking about their grandchildren in kindergarten and I had a vision of my first day in kindergarten, which was at the Swain School. In those days it was at the Masonic Temple, in the basement. They had a couple rooms for kindergarten. Mrs. Swain ran it and right next to it was a radio station because we used to always look through the glass and see the broadcasts there. I have this vision, that the first day, I went, living on 16th Street, which was close by the Masonic Temple, hiding under the bed, and my mother couldn't get to me and so she called Mrs. Swain. Mrs. Swain, Esther Swain, came to our house on 16th Street and negotiated with me to come out from under the bed and how wonderful the school is. I imagine she was successful. I don't have a recollection of crawling out. I just have a recollection seeing this strange woman and I, with an eye stare, I'm under the bed, and she's leaning under the bed. So then I went to grade school, all through junior high to Raub. So, living on 16th Street, I'd walk to school, and then when we moved to Muhlenberg and Walnut, I would take a bus to school. I went to Allen High, and then I went to Penn, University of Penn, Wharton School, so that was my education. My wife, who's not here, she, kind of a fun story about how I met her. I met her in El Paso, Texas, and she went to college for two years. I went to music school and we got married. So my education stopped. I graduated in 1960. I had foolishly, I had nothing to do in the summers so I took extra courses at Temple and Lehigh. When I was a senior, I only had maybe two classes and I began working for the company in New York and commuted back on Fridays, I arranged. So now I had a party weekend every week without having that depression Sunday night about going back to school on Monday. I graduated in 1960 with my class, and l still have some very close friends from Penn. GAIL EISENBERG: Can you give me the names of your parents and grandparents? MK: Sure. I'm gonna take these pictures out so you can look at them. I knew I was going to show these pictures to someone. I have them, and we have many more and you've seen pictures very similar to these. We'll start with my family, as children, my older sister, as you can tell, my sister, Roz, that is me, my older sister, Roz. She is living in New Jersey and she is seven years older than I, and my sister, Mitsi Goldenberg, living in Florida. Parents passed away, my father was 85. He died on my birthday in 1980 and my mother passed away in 1995 and she was 88. GE: What were their names? MK: Sam, Samuel and Fanny, with a Y. GE: So, it's Samuel Krasnov, and his father was Isidore? MK: Isidore, and my mother's father was Marcus, and I'm named after my mother's father GE: And what was your mother's maiden name? MK: Abramson. And this is when she was a little girl in Russia with her governess and brother. Both of those were born in Odessa. And this is her family in Russia. My Uncle Leon is on the left. GE: This is your mom's? MK: This is my mother's family and this is all her brothers. GE: So this little boy here? MK: That's my Uncle Sam, my Uncle Harry, my Uncle Leon here and my Uncle Eli. my grandfather Marcus, my grandmother Bertha, and my mother Fanny. So she looks like she's about two years old here and this picture then would be around 1910. When she was 8, that's when they left Russia, and the way they are dressed. and this picture of the governess and my mother. They were very affluent at the time, relatively speaking. GE: Your parents are Samuel and Fanny. your father's father was Isidore, what was his wife's name? MK: Rose. And that's this family here. And I don't know who all these other people are but, these two here, Isidore and Rose. The only grandparent I really knew was my grandmother Rose, who we called Bubbie [Yiddish for grandmother] , and she's the one who said " this sure fits", in Yiddish. GE: So Samuel's parents were Rose and Isidor, and with Fanny, her father was Marcus? MK: Yes, Marcus Abramson. GE: And Bertha. MK: And Bertha GE: And Marty, your siblings were Roz and Mitzi? MK: And that's it, and I'm the baby. And all three of us are living and in reasonably good health. GE: So Marty, we're just going to continue now and talk more about the business. You shared with us a little bit about the origins. If you want to share with us a little bit more, I don't know quite who is in the business, in your family? MK: The business was set up with basically . . . I don't know exactly when my grandfather died, but he wasn't really active in the business. He didn't speak the language. My father, and I guess his older brother, picked it up rather quickly, I'm not sure how quick. They both spoke with a little dialect, you know, that we're all used to hearing from that generation. So, basically, it was my Uncle Joe and my father, and, at the start of the business, my dad was the "inside manufacturing person" and my uncle was the sales and marketing person. My uncle lived in Philadelphia, and we lived here in Allentown at the time. My understanding, and I know, factually, they manufactured the slipcovers. In those days, they were able to use only woven fabrics because the furniture was not that diversified. Their market was, I guess, lower middle class, and that was the Goldblatts and the Lit Brothers and Gimbels, the department stores of that ilk They, eventually, as furniture became a little more diverse, they began a knitting mill. A lot of the slipcovers at that time were stretch fabrics and then they got in a big way in furniture throws, which you just threw fabric over the furniture with fringe and what have you, but that was later on. During the Second World War, because of the shortage of fabric and materials, they manufactured exclusively for the government. They had prime contracts for parachutes and pup tents because the product was bulky, like slipcovers, and they had the equipment that could handle larger type products. So they manufactured, as I said, parachutes and pup tents and, I guess, any canvas type products. It kept a lot of the employees out of the war because they were making strategic products for the military. And that, during the war, was when their main competitor opened up. The door opened for competition while they [Surefit] were doing all military work. A company called Comfy, out of Baltimore.The slipcover industry was not like the apparel industry with very niche type products and very small markets. So basically, it was just the two companies that eventually competed head-on against each other. GE: And so the two had the military contract throughout the war? MK: Surefit had. We were the only ones making slipcovers up until the end of the war and because the retail stores wanted slipcovers, somehow this Comfy was able to get fabrics or what have you. My dad's whole factory was dedicated to the war products so they couldn't flip back. They didn't have the capacity to do that. And there are a number of old-time employees who stayed with the company for many many years, and I was able to get a flavor of what they did during the war. They employed hundreds of people in this silk mill on Sand Island in Bethlehem. At one point in time, I knew when I was working and came into the business, we were the second largest manufacturer in Bethlehem. The first was Bethlehem Steel with 25 thousand and then it was Surefit, maybe with five, six hundred, seven hundred people at the time. The company, I recall, one of the big problems with Sand Island is that Sand Island is located between the Lehigh River and the Lehigh Canal. I loved it as a kid, going there on Saturdays, sitting in the office and shooting paperclips with a rubber band and the trains would go by and things were happening, both on the canal and the Lehigh River. Sand Island was right in between. I was a sophomore in high school or a senior in high school, and I know my father had given me his old company car that had a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it, but it was my car. This was great. And they had - I forget which hurricane it was - and they've had floods before there. This one was really bad and I drove my father and there was the hill-to-hill bridge. The only way to get to Sand Island was down a ramp where Fritch Fuel is. They eliminated that ramp now, and they built a bridge from the North Bethlehem side, but at that time, you could only go with this ramp, and I remember we parked at the bottom of the ramp and walked all the way to the factory. They had a system where, if there was a potential flooding, they had ten people that would come in, but we were there for three days, and they wanted to rescue us by helicopter, which I was all for. I could see myself climbing a ladder, you know, this is terrific, but there were too many telephone wires. So they finally got us by Red Cross boat, but they threw lines across the canal and that's how we got food and water. There were ten of us that were there for three days. For me, it was very exciting, I was in high school and this was not the average day, you know. But, obviously, it was very devastating and shortly after, a year or two after, 1956, so the flood was, I think, around '55. If you look at the history books, it was a terrible flood. My car that he gave me ended up in Easton. That's the thing that upset me the most, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory that they lost, it was my car that I had lost. SC: Hurricane Hazel. Because I was really little and I remember my parents going to their friends house and my brother was watching me to help them get water out of their basement. MK: Yes, it was a major one. I remember during the Korean War, they apparently had a Navy contract for bathrobes, because we had more bathrobes at home, Navy bathrobes. Anything that had a little hole or a tear, they couldn't put through production, so we ended up with all of these bathrobes. GE: Marty, want to share with us a little bit, what was the transition from wartime to peacetime like for your father's business? MK: Well I think they did rather well during the war because of the contracts they had with the government and it kept a lot of people out of the Army. Maybe some of them wouldn't have survived, I don't know. The other thing about the war and shortly after, well even prior to the period, when I came into the business, and I'm a young know-nothing who thought I knew everything, Wharton graduate and all of that stuff. I asked, we have too many relatives working here. I remember everyone, because they were mostly immigrants, they talked loud, and we had an intercom system. I felt a little embarrassed because everyone would hear shouting, even when we would go to my grandmother's house in Philadelphia every weekend. To me, as a kid, everyone was talking loudly. He hired a number of relatives. My attitude towards that was, you know, this is not a good thing because they're not necessarily the best qualified. Only later did I realize that he was doing a good thing and providing jobs. Many of them were hired during the Depression. After the war, he brought a number of relatives and others that survived the war, Holocaust survivors in, and provided jobs to them. So, at the time, I didn't appreciate what he was doing, and only later, as an adult, it sank in that it was a very noble thing, and expected, and it was a responsibility of his. Following the war, this would be in the late 40s and 50s I think, the business was successful. People had money. The thing about the slipcover business was, when times got bad, people had a tendency to, instead of buying furniture, they'd buy slipcovers. And then, when times were good, you have that large population that can't afford new furniture anyway, so they would maybe buy used furniture. There was a need for it, a market for it. The business flourished, but they had their ups and downs. GE: So it sounds, from what I'm hearing, that it was a little bit recession-proof. It didn't really go up during good times that strongly or down during bad times. It was pretty steady. MK: It was kind of steady. GE: Steady but growing. MK: Steady but growing. You know the ups and downs and what have you. My dad was very conservative. At that time, the major customers were the national chains like Sears, Montgomery Wards, and every major city had their homegrown department store and they sold to most of every city's homegrown department store. GE: And it sounds like it was nationwide. MK: Yes. GE: And that was both you and Comfy? Or were you more into certain regions? MK: Both. And some other little companies that started too. They were more lower end. I started in 1960 and at that time, the business was doing maybe $20 million. Which I guess, in today's dollars, would be pretty good, and we employed, I'd say five to six hundred people. After the flood of '55, he acquired a company called Laros. I don't know if that name strikes a bell. It was in Bethlehem. Major, major employer. Laros name is, I think he built the YMCA in Bethlehem . . . a very prominent individual, and their silk business kind of waned. So they sold out to Warnaco, the brassiere people. When they bought the company, bought the building, and it was about a 230-40 thousand square-foot building. Three stories. And we added on and eventually it ended up about 300 thousand square feet. GE: With Sand Island? Or instead of? MK: No, they kept the building on Sand Island. Eventually, the year 2000, the building was vacant, because we had already sold the business. But it was a building ; I brought in the Rouse company. The Musikfest was interested in buying the building and converting it. What they did now at Steelstacks, they were thinking of putting up a boardwalk, and I was in conversations. We brought the James Rouse company. They were the ones that did the Boston Faneuill Hall and Baltimore Harbor and the timing was wrong. But at the time, the building was this old silk mill with a thousand windows on both sides. It had to be boarded up, and we had fires every other day. Kids would go in, and we had an escaped convict living there for a month. It was just driving me crazy and then we called in the Amish. Someone said "get the Amish, they'll tear it down for you" because we thought the land would be nice to keep, on Sand Island. The problem with the Amish is you can't call them, they don't talk on the phone, but eventually, we finally got someone. We had asbestos in the building so that didn't pan out. I got so disgusted and it was just aggravating to me. I said the city was good to us all these years, I'm gonna give the building back to the city, which I did. And I know we were in California, about two months after I had given it to the city and they had the largest fire they ever had in Bethlehem. The building burnt down. And I'm sure, the powers to be, I'm not accusing anyone, but they instructed the fire department, "don't be too anxious to go down and put it out." When I owned it, I'd get calls all the time. That's just a side note about that Sand Island property, but they ended up with this property on River St.[?] One of the fun things, Laros, during the Second World War or Korean War, how they got into this, I don't know. They manufactured white corpuscles, synthetic white corpuscles, and they formed a company called Pahrmacan [?] which I think is still in business. I don't know what they do, but, up until 10 years ago they were. When they sold the building to us, the Pharmacan had a two story section in the building, not large, where they had this very sophisticated equipment that manufactured this. So the deal was, at the time, Warnaco would rent our River Street property, Sand Island property, for us, so they were really narrowing their operation down and they did that for a couple years, but this Pharmacam had to remain in our building for x number of years. Fun thing about that was they had an experimental lab, just a hut within our building, all glass. And you look in and you see all these people with white uniforms with masks and rabbits. Well when we'd bring customers to take a tour, which we often did because we had an interesting operation, they would say "what is that?" "Well that's our testing lab, we test all our fabrics. We give them to the rabbits." And they had to believe us, no one is going to make a joke and have all these people there with rabbits so we had a lot of fun with that and eventually they closed that down. GE: So you really started actively in the business about 1960? MK: 1960 and my brother in-laws, both brother in-laws, were in the business. And we also had my three cousins from my Uncle Joe. He had passed away in 1957 and the family, like a lot of situations, it wasn't a good fit. And we bought them out in 1963. Our family acquired their interest and it was at a time where, I think, there was a recession or something. We lost some key people because of the family, not a feud, but it was a problem that existed. GE: What did they end up doing? MK: One ended up teaching, one lived in Philadelphia, two of them worked in New York, but one commuted from Philadelphia. He ended up teaching in Philly and he died at an early age. He was on drugs, I don't know. My other cousin, I'm not quite sure what he ended up doing, and my third one, who I knew more about, because he lived in Allentown. His name was George Krasnov. He went into the knitting business and then I think he brought his kids in and, like all of the textile knitting businesses, they went by the way, you know. Interesting, Surefit is a very viable company today. GE: When did your father retire? MK: He never retired. He died at age 85. That was it. Like many of the fathers of people you interviewed. Only this generation retires early. GE: So he, you, and your two brothers in-law? MK: Yes. GE: And who stayed in charge of the operation and who took over more of the sales and marketing? MK: My oldest sister's husband was in New York. We always had national sales managers and that was the structure. My sister Mitzi's husband was more in production and I was in the finance part. And, that was how it was after we acquired the other family's interest. Now, from that time on, in more recent years, the company diversified in other products and had a very nice growth rate. GE: Want to tell us about that? MK: We were a little concerned about the slipcover industry and the furniture covering industry because we also went into furniture throws. As the market expanded, with the K-Marts of the world, they couldn't handle the slipcovers, per say, but they could handle furniture throws. We were producing, I remember, ten thousand throws a day. GE: And what is a throw, versus a slipcover? MK: A slipcover is a fitted slipcover, with the cushions. GE: And it kind of has that elastic edge, right? MK: Well, they're a little different today. But the way we did it, we did it with mostly knitted stretch slipcovers. After the department stores started going by the wayside, we began selling more and more to the catalog people-- slipcovers per se, the fitted slipcovers. Each had individual cushions, they were solids or printed, and they stretched, and we fit x number of styles of furniture. We couldn't fit all of the styles. So, we sold to Spiegel, Sears, Montgomery Ward, and Penneys had their own catalogs. Any catalog in the country, at a time, this is pre-internet. And Sears catalogs and Montgomery Ward catalogs, these were huge things. Then it evolved where we would basically, it was a great way to present the product, and we would present it in room scenes. So you'd show a living room with our slipcovers and then with draperies and toss pillows, but we were the largest resource for Spiegels for toss pillows. We had maybe 10-12 pages of slipcovers and every page had toss pillows on it that matched the slipcovers and people would just buy toss pillows and draperies, like window treatments. We were selling a whole coordinated room, so that's when that business started taking off, in a bigger way, even though we were losing the department store business. In place of that, came the discounters. All of a sudden, the discounters started showing up, the Zayres, Korvettes the Kings, and we sold them all. And that's how we sold the furniture throws. A throw is 60 by 90 for a chair, sofas, 70 by 140, so we had different sizes, four sizes of a furniture throw. We laminated it with foam so they wouldn't slip and you put either a ruffle or a fringe around them. It was a simple bulky product. As I said, I remember because I'd see these things coming down the chute every second. I said "My God, everyone's buying one of these things every second." So the business began to grow and, as the discounters grew, that became a major factor. We acquired a little competitor that had a . . . from Beatrice Foods that sold certain discounters on consignments that we were able to have service people now go in and count the inventory. We controlled it and we got bigger margins. Then, around the early 70s, we could see that some of these major catalogs and department stores started going out of business. The Wanamakers, the Gimbels, and we were doing slipcovers with them as well, but not to the extent that we were doing it with Sears and Montgomery Ward. We had the opportunity and we decided we should diversify so we bought a company that was manufacturing bedspreads in Japan and it was a very niche market. We couldn't compete with the big mills, the Burlington or J.P. Stevens, with selling bedspreads and that was even pre-comforters. They owned the space and what have you in the stores. So we found this niche market where they call it outline quilting where the stitching is done around the design, so it brought it out and they called that outline. And they used big, long-arm sewing machines and we acquired a very small company in Japan, and we operated in Japan for maybe 2 or 3 years. Then it was tough because it was not into a price point that meant anything and so we moved it to Korea. We had a little more success there because the labor rates were much much lower and all our fabric came from Japan so we were able to function. But, as it became popular, we realized that long term, if we're gonna make a business out of this, we've got to move it closer to the country. First of all, it costs too much money sending people over all the time. It's a bulky product so we had to ship by container which would take two months. We sold, for example, Sears a Diane Furstenberg design and it was the best selling bedspread they had, and we couldn't meet the deliveries. Then the next year we had too much because of the requirement. It was too difficult. We were like "we've got to get this thing closer, we've got to go to a real low labor market because the labor involved is very expensive", so we said, "ok we'll change. We'll buy all our fabrics here in this country now", and we changed the whole operation. We went to Haiti and that was really a forte I had. I enjoyed doing that, going to a country and having no idea. Korea was already set up. I wasn't too involved in that, but Haiti I was. The problem with Haiti is that we had to get our polyester batting from Puerto Rico because you couldn't ship it from the states because it was too expensive. And Puerto Rico was a big brassiere industry and that's where they used all this polyester. Well the guy that owned the only factory ended up with a hernia, and he was in the hospital for a couple weeks, and he closed the factory, so this is not good. So we closed Haiti and, at the time, we were able to go into Mexico on the border at Juarez, Mexico. I basically set that up and researched it and got the whole thing going and, as I said, it was pretty good at that time. That's when everything started growing in our bedspread business and, eventually we ended up with 600 employees in Mexico, manufacturing outline quilted products. We were the first ones to do all of these kinds of Americana quilts where you put all of those pieces together. Anything that could be labor intensive. At one point, I get a call from 60 Minutes and they want to interview me. They were doing a whole thing on the twin plants in Mexico, the assembly operations and I said, "all the major companies, Philips, General Motors, Ford, none of them use their own names. In Mexico, they use a different name, but they were employing thousands and thousands of people. Why don't you interview them?" They wanted to come into our facility. It was a girl with an English accent on the phone and she said, "well we'd really like to interview you about it" and I said, "It's not all bad. This Mexico opportunity that a lot of American companies are taking advantage of, if it wasn't in Mexico, it would be in Asia. The law is that you can assemble US products, and you don't pay duty when they come back. You only pay duty on the added value which is the labor." I said, "As an example, we were in Asia, and in Asia, we had to use all foreign fabrics and what have you. Now, we're in Mexico, we're using all US fabrics. We're employing people because we have to cut the fabric in the United States." You can't cut in Mexico, and I said "We're employing many, many more people here in this country because we're in Mexico and other vendors are benefitting as well." "Well that's an interesting viewpoint", she says, "Can we interview you?" I said "excuse me, I've got to take another call and think" and I look out my window and from my window, at our factory. I could see 4-5 miles of Bethlehem Steel and I said this is not gonna be a good idea. It's a no win, so I declined. It was my chance to be on 60 Minutes. But the business flourished. Then we eventually went into women's apparel because we were making our knitting when the lycra pants became very popular with the women's fashion. We had a knitting operation because of our stretchy fabrics that we made. We started selling that fabric, lycra fabric, and then we said, because of Mexico, we might as well manufacture the whole product. Through the period, the business grew steady and it was pretty sound. We had such a diversity of products and a diversity of customers. Our largest customer when we sold it in 1990 was J.C. Penney, that represented 6% of our business, so we had a lot of good attributes to it. And the reason we sold the company, much of it was through my initiating the processes. Both brothers in law were 10 years older than I. I was 50 at the time, they were 60. I had 2 nephews in the business, and my children were young, and my sister Mitzi just had girls. We didn't have any direction that the family would go. I remember the problems we had with my uncle's son, and I said, you know, we're having a pretty good run. There's a time. When the first generation comes up with the idea, and they're the ones that struggle through it, and they're uneducated. So they get it to a point and then the second generation comes in and they're educated. They still have some values because they remember growing up in a row house and what have you. And they move it to the next level. The third generation could start running into problems because now you're not dealing with brothers and sisters, you're dealing with cousins. I went through a number of family succession seminars, and I had that implanted that someday--my dad had already passed away, and my mother had Alzheimer's so we didn't want her to know. So in 1990, we contacted Bear-Stearns, an investment banking company in New York that is no longer here. We met with them and worked out values. Our main thought was basically to try to bring in a foreign buyer. Number one, we thought we'd get more money. Number two was we could keep it a secret as long as we could from our customers and employees of the company that it was being offered for sale. Certainly for our employees, we didn't want them to know. Everyone was doing well. And they liked what they saw, after we established a value so there was no real conflict of interest. They had formed a leveraged buyout group. They had bought the first one that was a real success that was [??]. And they liked what they saw with us, a nice growth, diversity of product, and customers, so they made an offering, and we sold it to them, and I had a five-year contract. This was 1990 and, right prior to the selling, the country went into a pretty deep recession, and I didn't like the way they [the new owners] reacted to it. They were making decisions that were short-sighted. You know, you would struggle through it, but they would get rid of this and do that and I was very upset about it. And I said to them, this isn't for me. It was easy to say because we had money in the bank and I realized what I wanted to realize. My two brothers in-law stayed on for maybe another six months and it became unpleasant. They got rid of employees, and we had a lot of guilt with it. I did, I had a lot of guilt, and I thought it was just best to part ways. So I had very little contact. I still don't have any contact. Most of the people are gone, it's been 26 years. Bear-Stearns got caught up in that bubble. The company was sold two or three times, but I understand they're doing decently, and now the internet has been a big help to them. If you Google "Surefit", you'll see their website and it's quite impressive. They still sell to Target and Wal-Mart. They did get in a lot of trouble because of those two accounts, which represented well over 50% of their business at one time, and when they started manufacturing everything in China, they kept their warehouse. They moved out of our building a couple of years after we sold it. I was still here in town and I ended up with 22 tenants and, because it was an ancient building and these were not quality tenants, a couple were, I said "what do I need this for?" so I sold the building. We gave away the Sand Island property to the city. Interesting story was at the beginning of my rental process, all of a sudden, I became a realtor. The Women's Junior League, I guess it is, came to me and said, we had very few tenants in the building, so they said, "We're bringing a dinosaur exhibit into the area and we would like to rent, but we don't have any money to pay you. The reason we like your space is because you have this two-story room and it's perfect for the main dinosaur." So I negotiated with the Women's Junior League and, what they agreed to do was, through their volunteers, they were going to put up partitions and do this and do that, which would enhance the value afterwards. We broke up some of the spaces after they left that we could now lease. So it worked out fine. They were there for 6 months. It was in conjunction with Lehigh University. They had all kinds of computer stuff. I don't know if any of you went to that dinosaur exhibit. They had 100,000 children go through from all over and it was a big thing in the area. It attracted other people and everyone was in that building. I sold the building in 2000, and we started spending our winters in California. So after this whole story, I have been fortunate to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And my story is very similar, I'm sure, to many people you interviewed, in terms of the families and the backgrounds and how they ended up here. GE: So a couple of questions about the business. When you were in Mexico, that's where the assembly was taking place and you said you had about 500 people? MK: Yes. GE: Back here in Bethlehem, how many people were still here? MK: We still had about 400-500 people here. GE: And they were just doing everything but assembling? MK: Well they were assembling slipcovers. We were still manufacturing furniture throws and slipcovers in Bethlehem. GE: This was the other pieces? What was being assembled in Mexico? MK: The bed coverings. The outline quilting. We had that niche and that whole niche was very labor intensive. So that was our only way we could sell a product because we were one of the first ones to go into outline quilting and the stores, you had a flower and you just bring the quilt around it. And you see that today. Now it's a lot of automatic equipment that does that. They program it, but at that time, it was all very extensive labor. GE: So when you were doing that, Burlington and J.P. Stevens were not doing that, correct? MK: Correct. It was not an important market to them. They couldn't compete with U.S. labor, and I don't think they were anxious to go offshores in those days. They had unions and what have you but we had a union here too, a textile union. In Mexico, well, we actually ended up with a union in Mexico. The wage rates made it possible for us to get into that business. We didn't take jobs away. We actually created jobs because of this. We had a large warehouse in El Paso, Texas. Because my wife was from El Paso, it made it kind of, not easy, but I was familiar with both sides of the border at that time. SureFit had closed that many, many years ago, but that was actually during the recession. That was one of the things that they began to minimize, but today, I'd be concerned about driving into Juarez. I had no qualms about it when we were there, but it's not a pleasant place to be today. SC: What was the address of the building in Bethlehem? MK: Its East, Broad, and Wood streets. And we still have a company called Broad and Wood Realty because, when we sold the building, we did a tax-free exchange, and we kept the entity, and we owned property because of that and some other company buildings. We owned property in Florida and Pittsburgh. Commercial property. SC: And the other question was, which labor union would it have been? MK: The United Textile Workers of America. It was a smaller union, and we always had a pretty good relationship with them. We had strikes, I remember we've had strikes, but nothing really long-lasting. GE: Just so I understand, you started out with Slipcovers, then you very much did the throws, the quilting became a niche that you were producing in Mexico, then you were also doing the throw pillows and curtains, right? MK: Yeah, we always did that. Now what had happened, as our bed covering business grew, it was around that time where Sears went out of the catalog business. They gave up a five billion dollar business overnight. Five billion is what they were doing in their catalog. The Sears catalog was an icon. Montgomery Wards went belly up, so we ended up with, in terms of catalogs, and again, this is all pre-internet days. If the internet would have been existing then, in fact, I had started my own catalog. When we saw that we were losing Sears and Wards, I put together a "Slipcovers of America" catalog and we'd advertised in House Beautiful and what have you. It was growing at the time we sold the company, and we did room scenes as well, but we didn't have enough substance in it. I wasn't willing, knowing we were going to sell the company, to really invest a lot of money in advertising and bringing in customers. So that thing eventually dwindled through Behr Sterns' as well. In any event, yes, we did, up until the time we sold, and after we sold, in Bethlehem, they still manufactured slipcovers, draperies, decorative pillows, and furniture throws. GE: Now tell me a little bit about how the sales force worked. It sounds like one of your brothers in law headed that part. MK: Yeah, we had our main sales office. The showroom was on 34th Street, between Madison and 5th Avenue. That's the later years, when I was there. We had offices on 26th Street when I first started, but that goes back. They were very attractive showrooms, and we displayed a lot of the bed coverings and furniture throws because the catalog people didn't need showrooms. We had a showroom in Chicago for a number of years, and we had a showroom in California for a number of years. We had a warehouse in California. We had, initially, full time sales people, but then that became a very expensive thing, and we had a few full-time sales people that catered to the major accounts, but then we gravitated towards sales reps to handle other lines, as well. It was a difficult product to sell, very difficult. During this time, we have a little side-story. We also did a lot of work with foam because of the furniture throws and we had products that used foam to some extent. How we got involved with it, I don't know, but it's interesting. We end up signing a contract with Jane Fonda on her exercise mats. She put out the video, if you recall her video, which was the most popular video ever sold because it made sense. It was the first one that people had to use every day. It's not like how to cook something or a recipe and you use it once. This one, you watch the video every day. What was the name of her video? GE: It was a workout video. MK: Yeah, Jane Fonda's workout. Well we signed this contract for the events, and I saw on your little thing that you wanted a side-story, so I'll give you one. Karl [Home] Video was the one who really put her in business. He was the one who came up with the idea of taking her exercise thing and distributing it. They came to us, after we signed a contract, and they said, "We will give you exclusive rights to her video for the department stores". Well, many department stores didn't have sporting good departments and our salesmen would go nuts. Who do you sell this to? That never really took off but we had exclusive rights to her thing. I met her once and the one who did all her work was a bathing suit company out of Long Island, and the son got infatuated with her. Same immigrant father and the whole bit but the son got lost in this Hollywood bit, and they were Penneys largest supplier of bathing suits and, two years later, they were out of business. They hired Theoni Aldredge [?], a Broadway costume designer and she was the designer for hers, which was way overpriced. We did the mat and it was just simple different colored stripes, a workout logo, and a nice packaging, and we didn't know who to sell it to. She got a royalty, and we sold it to a few sporting goods chains and what have you. But, I remember, when she was doing all the PR leading up to the big event at the Shubert Theatre, where they brought in, (the bathing suit son brought in) the chorus line, the actual original Chorus Line people and they each wore her outfits and what have you. I remember we were sitting behind his father, who didn't look very happy about this because they footed the bill. So we did the mats for maybe 3-4 years with Jane Fonda. When she started out with the PR, she started in Burdines in Miami, and they cancelled her appearance because of all the problems with the veterans, and she went to Atlanta and they cancelled that. As she made her way up the East coast, word spread and they didn't want to have anything to do with her. Now she is going to have an appearance at Bloomingdales or Saks in New York, and she was interviewed the night before and she says, "Look, I'm tired of this, I've paid my dues" or whatever her rationale was and she said "I'm showing up. I'm gonna be there". Little did anyone know, but they called her and said, "You're not coming. You come and all your merchandise is going out." They couldn't afford to do anything with it, so the whole thing was not a successful project from every aspect. And that's just a side note. We didn't expect to make a lot of money, I guess, but someone in our organization said "Hey this is an opportunity." They knew someone and that was it. One of our sales managers who lived in Chicago by the name of Gordon Toland was very friendly with Hillary Clinton's father. Hillary Clinton's father worked in Scranton Lake [?[ and then they moved to Chicago. He became a sales rep for the airline upholstery industry, and our sales manager, of course they're kind of in the same industries, were neighbors. I remember being at a barbeque there and they invited the neighbors, but I don't have a clear picture of Hillary being there or anything. But, years later, they were very close friends, and they were always invited to Clinton's Governor's home in Arkansas. Years later, President-Elect Clinton was in Santa Barbara, California, and, I guess, the Tolands were out there with the Rodhams. There's a picture my sister has of her, my brother-in-law, Hillary and Bill, standing behind a sofa. Hillary's mother is sitting on the sofa with her feet up, drinking a beer out of a bottle, and the father is sitting next to her. So I presume our sales manager took this picture because he wasn't in it. And, I'm not a Hillary fan because of that. GE: Interesting. Marty, on a totally different note, tell us a little bit about your civic involvement and your community involvement. MK: Well, I've been on a lot of committees over the years. When I was young, I co-chaired the Campaign Federation for the campaign with Arnold Finkelstein. I was on the Federation board for many, many years. I remember us starting the George Feldman Achievement Award. Some of the things were very moving. Of course, it was during some of the wars. I remember the Wilkes-Barre flood, and they had a special meeting where about two dozen men went to the Jewish Community Center in the boardroom and they raised, within 10 minutes, $100,000 to send to the Wilkes-Barre Jewish Community Center. Things like that were very touching. We had a parlor meeting in our home. We had a shag rug that I remember. One of the older guys who had a cigar, and we didn't know until after they all left, but he put the cigar out in our shag rug. My wife was beside herself. But, we participated in that. That's how I got to know Ivan[Schonfeld] real well. We went on a mission with him in 1990, right after we sold our business, I remember. There were ten of us. We went to Hungary and brought a planeload of Russian immigrants into Israel. They had a video, like you are doing. This woman accompanied the mission, with the idea they're going to show this, which they did, to a full meeting at the center. And, no one really paid much attention while she was videoing this whole, ten-day mission from Hungary to Israel. And I was the one that carried her tripod, and I felt a little responsible. They were all guys except for Elaine Lerner, she was there. You know Elaine Lerner? GE: I know the name. MK: She was just wonderful. We were in the Old City, and I was dying for an ice cream. We were in the Armenian section and I see this ice cream store, and Ivan's on his megaphone, "We're going to the Knesset, get on the bus, everyone on the bus!" and I said, "Elaine, I'm dying for some ice cream." She says "I'll deal with Ivan. You go in and get yourself an ice cream cone." So I come out and the streets are all these cobbled streets, and I trip, and the cone falls down. And I remember her, she was patting me on the back like my mother saying "It's alright Marty. We'll get you another ice cream cone later." But that's how I got to know Ivan real well, and he was great because he was the director of the Federation for many years. Other involvement in the Jewish communities and mostly the Jewish institutions. I was on the board there, but later on, I cut everything off and became very inactive. I kind of paid my dues and, of course, we're in California now, six months a year. Hobbies, I play golf, I'm living a nice life. GE: We no longer have much of a thriving textile industry in this community. How do you think the Jewish community has been affected by that? MK: I think the needle trades was the big industry. Maybe the second, they owned a lot of retail stores, Hess Brothers' and boutique type things. The medical industry has replaced the needle trades industry, but I think its effect is that a few things have changed. The area is spread out and there's too many other activities for children growing up. They don't mingle as much. We were in a concentrated thing. Everyone knew everyone. It's spread out today. I guess there's advantages and disadvantages to that. I know the institutions are all hurting money-wise because it was a different ballgame then. The people that had the money were the manufacturers and they contributed willingly. Professionals have a tendency of not doing that. A lot of them are new to the area. I guess it's good and bad. I think it's put a strain on a lot of the institutions, from the synagogues to the Jewish Community Center.There were a lot of big egos from people who owned manufacturing. And the egos translated into their own institutions because they were the major contributor. I think things have to change. The concept of a campus of institutions makes sense where, in my mind, I'm not really into the numbers today but, just on the surface, I think it would be nice to have the Jewish Community Center and the day school certainly should be combined in some way or another. More of that consolidation. Times are changing. That generation has died off and is dying off. You've got to service the needs and today it's open. One of the questions, did I ever have any real anti-semitism growing up as a child? I don't recall. Maybe because we were isolated but in high school, I don't remember any incidents that bothered me or were lasting or made an impression. I'm sure there was a lot. I know we lived on 16th Street and sold our house, unbeknownst to us to Thompson [?]. His father owned the deli and ran the deli at the old JCC. He worked for Bethlehem Steel, and he worked for my dad for a couple years. He worked for Bethlehem Steel in the 30s, and he was a member of the Communist party, which was not unusual. Then the FBI got him as an undercover to stay in the party and, when I was in high school, they had the hearings in Washington. The father now had a little sandwich shop next to our high school. We always used to go there for lunch. The newspaper came out, I forget his first name but his last name was Thompson and he was called in to testify in Washington. That's the only anti-semitism was in this window, "Down with the Jews", and it was two weeks until he went to Washington to testify and, during that two-week period, he was not allowed to expose who he was, and the only one, we heard later, I'm sure he told his wife, was Rabbi Greenburg. He had to let someone know that he was doing this for the FBI. During the testimony, we found out our house on 16th Street was sold to a veteran who had a repair shop for radios and TV. Well maybe not TV then, but radios. And he was head of the Communist Party of Eastern Pennsylvania and, where we used to play ping pong in our basement, they used to have all these big meetings going on with the Communist Party. This was all going on during the height of the Cold War. There was a certain feeling that we were going to be bombed. So our house was used for Communist meetings. GE: And the last question I'm going to ask before Sue asks you the final couple of questions, why do you think Jews were overrepresented in the needle-trade industry? This was an industry where they were really overrepresented. MK: Well, I guess there was a number of reasons. I think they started out like my father, in their own homes, because it was easy to get a sewing machine. They came from Europe. They made their own clothes, so they had some inclination, you know, about that. They certainly couldn't get jobs in banks. Most of them were uneducated anyway. They didn't go to college, many didn't even finish high school. They started these companies, but it was easy to get into. You buy a couple of sewing machines, and you go into it. In the New York area, of course, in the needle trades, there were so many Jewish women involved with that because they learned it from their mothers and, as I said, it didn't take much to buy 3 or 4 sewing machines and many of them, like my father and his father, they started peddling on the streets. They didn't have any options, in terms of employment. They didn't speak the language. That was another thing. So, why not other things to get involved? They did. It's not like all of them got into the needle trades, but it was an easy entry. GE: Thank you. These are our last couple of questions. SC: So, the last two questions are, what has made you feel the most creative in your life? MK: Well I think I inherited some of that from my father. When I retired and moved to California, I decided that, other than golf, I had to be a little productive and use my head. So we have a, I don't know if you've ever heard of the Osher program. Osher was an individual, and if you look it up, google Osher, they run senior citizen classes at universities. They have a terrific program in the desert because of so many retirees, and we were connected with Cal State of San Bernardino. I always managed to take courses there. One class I decided to take was creative writing. I knew I had a little talent, based on emails and letters I write. So I took this course in creative writing, and basically, the course had maybe 30 people in it.We met once a week for eight weeks and she gave us, sometimes, topics. Other times, just freelance and you go and write and you email it to the instructor, and she'd review all of them and she'd read three or four of them in the class. It seemed like every week she'd be reading one of mine. And I'm not a good writer, but the stories were bizarre and some of them were very touching. And I did come in-- the Palm Springs Writers' Guild has a contest-- and they sent my story in and I got honorable mention, which would be the last thing in the world I ever thought I would get. I started writing all of these stories. Then, afterwards, the class formed our own writing group,, and we had a mentor that published and she liked our small group. We only had four people in our group, and we'd meet every week and basically, during four-five months, we'd do this all the time, and we wrote. So that's when I realized that maybe I was a little creative, and I enjoyed it. And my wife thinks some of the stories are very good. Not necessarily well written. She helped me on some of them. This is cute, before I leave there's a restaurant that is terrific for breakfast and lunch where we live in the desert, Louise's, and I go there one day. It's lunchtime and I run in by myself and a friend of mine is sitting on a chair in front of the restaurant, reading a book. "What are you doing, John?" He said, "Well, I already ate, I'm waiting for the car dealer to call. When they're finished, then they're gonna pick me up." Then I said, "Keep me company, we'll go inside." So we go inside the restaurant and I said, "We'll go sit at the counter so we can eat fast, and I'll take you to the dealer." So we sit at the counter. They hadn't cleared his dishes because he had just finished and all of his dirty dishes are at one end of the counter. And in the interim, a woman sits down next to his dirty dishes. I sit next to the woman, and he's sitting next to me. He sees the empty dishes so he goes over and his glass still had half a glass of iced tea and he brings it back. The woman sees what's happening, and she gives me one of these things and her eyes are wide open and she said, "Can you believe that? Did you see that? Can you believe that?" I said. "Well, I've known him for many years. He doesn't buy his own drinks." Then, the waitress comes and he orders a refill. She gives me another one of these and says, "I can't wait to tell my friends, this is incredible." Well it ends and, we're one of the few people that still get Reader's Digest, 100 words or less, and I write this story. Fitting it in under 100 words, that was tough, and I thought this was really neat, and I submitted it. I couldn't fit in the refill. That really bothered me. I was sure I was gonna win $100 from this and other people read it and they said, "This is terrific". I never heard from Reader's Digest. It's their loss. So I have some creativity. SC: And this is very short. What do you value most in life? MK: Well, I value humor, obviously family and what have you. But I value humor and I kind of gravitate to the deprived. I'm a Republican, leaning to the right on financial and way to the left on social. That kind of describes me. But, I appreciate, particularly in the later years, my parents, the struggles they went through, and that provided for a good life to me and my family. You could value a lot of the good things, and you could become very verbal, but basically, I like good humor and I like nice people, and I'm tolerant, too. People have different viewpoints. So what? Let it be. I'm kind of like laid back. And that's my story. SC: Thank you very much. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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Marty Krasnov, June 22, 2016
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Marty Krasnov talks about how his father got into the furniture slipcover manufacturing business as well as how the company got the “SureFit” name. During World War II, the firm switched from making slipcovers for furniture to making parachutes for the military because the specialized equipment SureFit already owned to produce slipcovers was easily retrofitted to make parachutes. Marty and his brothers-in-law sold the business in 1990. SureFit is one of the very few brands that still remains.
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LVTNT-27
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2016-06-22
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
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Marty Spiro
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5.4 June 23, 2016 Marty Spiro, June 23, 2016 LVTNT-34 00:46:51 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Marty Spiro Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 SpiroMarty_20160623.mp4 1.0:|11(2)|30(2)|45(8)|64(12)|81(2)|96(9)|115(5)|134(2)|153(6)|172(2)|191(13)|212(8)|231(3)|252(5)|269(13)|286(7)|303(10)|322(10)|341(7)|360(5)|377(14)|398(11)|419(8)|438(17)|453(12)|470(14)|489(4)|506(6)|521(13)|540(3)|557(11)|576(8)|591(8)|612(5)|627(14)|642(8)|665(6)|690(15)|725(13)|746(12)|765(9)|804(2)|825(5)|848(8)|881(9)|896(5)|911(6) 0 https://youtu.be/bWPHZ8lGbjQ YouTube video 0 Introduction—Marty Spiro's Family History SC: Today is June 23, 2016. An interview with Marty Spiro. Could you tell me your full name, and when you were born and where you were born first.
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 ; MS: Martin Fred Spiro. Born in Brooklyn, New York, 1933.
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 ; SC: And could you talk about your early life as far back as you know, and in doing so then perhaps start with your parents, grandparents, as many as you know, where they were from, when they came to this country, and then anything that you know about them: their education, what they did in life.
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 ; MS: Okay. Well, in 1905, my paternal grandfather came to New York, couldn't speak English. Came from Lodz, Poland, and became a peddler. and I asked him years later, I said, ‘Grandpa, you couldn’t speak English. How could you be a peddler and sell clothing?’ And he smiled and said ‘I went to the new Italian district in New York where they couldn’t speak English, and they thought I was the American.’ So in a few years he started a business, a knitting mill business, with his two brothers-in-law and became very successful. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary, about the same time, as a kid, he was 10 years old and was going to visit his uncle for the summer in New York, decided he never wanted to go back. 0 285 The 60s: Early Business Ventures MS: And after college, I worked at Otis Elevator for years and decided it wasn't for me ; I was an industrial engineer but I saw that in a large corporation, I didn't have the personality or the social skills to advance in the huge corporation like that. So around 1960, the opportunity came in Allentown with my brother-in-law, and I started a T-shirt factory, a small T-shirt factory. My brother-in-law is Dave Sussman. And we started about 1960 and struggled because we really didn’t know too much about the business. Everything we made we lost in mistakes. But about two years later, we started making money and became very profitable, and we did very well. And about 17 years later, we decided to split. My brother-in-law wanted to go into more styled goods - higher risk, higher profit. I was more conservative. I was content to be in the basic, simple, sportswear business where it never went out of style, and you didn’t have as much risk, didn’t have as much profit - that’s fine with me. So we each went our separate ways, and then I bought one of our contractor’s factories, called Hy Litwak, so I bought his factory, and it turned out, we found out early, Dave and I, he was very good on the outside. He was good at selling ; I was worse than terrible at selling, awful. I was very good at running the factory, where that was his shortcoming. So it was a good partnership: he was on the outside, and I was on the inside. 0 456 A Lucky Break—Meeting and Forging a Friendship with Department Store Buyer, Candy Seward MS: And about a year later, after I went on my own, I got a call out of the blue. And this is relevant to the book The Outliers by...
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 ; SC: Malcolm Gladwell.
 ; 
 ; MS: That’s right, Malcolm Gladwell, where his thesis is that people who really have made it, all have gotten help of one kind or another, either from people, or from situations, or from just luck. Well I had luck. A year after I went on my own, I got a phone call. The lady said that ‘my name is Candy Seward. I’m the buyer for Tallhimers. I've been trying to find out where your new place was.’ So I said, I know who you are. I’ve seen your name on orders for many years. She said ‘I’d like to see you in New York next week. I'll be in New York for Market Week, and I have an office at the AMC building,’ the Associated Merchandise Corporation. They were New York buyers for major department stores around the country. The largest being Federated Department Stores. So she said ‘my office is on the 11th floor, and I'd like to see you at whatever time.’ And I said sure. So I went in and met her, and she showed me what she wanted and writes out an order for about 400 dozen, a very large order. And I said ‘do you want a sample before I make it?’ She said ‘no, just ship me the same thing you’ve been shipping for years, it’ll be fine.’ So I did, and I had no illusions that I had sold her, that I became a salesman. She bought from me, but I didn't sell to her. So I never went after the other Federated on the 7th ave, seventh floor or any of the other department stores. Because I still felt after 17 years, you know, I’m not going to fool myself, I don’t know how to sell, so I never went after anybody else. 0 1054 Selling to Donna Mateer SC: Okay, would you go back and talk about your anecdote about Philadelphia?
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 ; MS: In Philadelphia, Mike Miller, my Pennsylvania salesman, said ‘I’m going next week to see Donna Matier at Strawbridge and Clothier there. She's a very good buyer, she's never bought from me. I go every year, she's very polite, looks at the line and gives me time and never buys, but I never give up. So she never buys, I never give up, so someday I'll get it when she needs me.’ So I said ‘okay Mike. So if she turned you down again, go through this ritual: ask her if she's going next week to the Omni Hotel in Florida for the import show, and she will say yes because all the AMC buyers are going to Florida, and after she says yes, say do you know Candy? You don't need a last name. It's like Madonna or Cher, you know no last name needed, do you know Candy? And she will say yes. Then the third thing is, ask Candy about our company.’ And he came back, and I said what happened? She didn't buy, and I said, did you go through the questions? He said ‘yes’ I did. And I said why don’t we see what happens. Two weeks later I get a call: ‘My name is Donna Mateer, I’m the buyer from Strawbridge and Clothier. I'll be in New York at the AMC building. I forgot what floor she was on and I’d like to see you.’ So I go, and she gives me a large order, and then I went back, I show it to Mike, and I said it is your account, you get the commissions, but she said she'd rather deal with the owner of the factory than the salesman. So he said great. So as long as I stayed in business, she became a very large customer and got to know her and her husband. 0 1214 "Marty the Knockoff Man" MS: And then a few years later, I had what some people would call an epiphany. I was in New York, Candy wanted me to make some new styles for her. So I made it, I made a sample, I brought it in, and I'm showing it to her, and I said this garment that was knitted was on a thirty-six gauge interlock machine with thirty singles comb cotton. And she said, look, I know what you're saying, don't tell anybody else that. I said ‘why not? Aren’t they interested in what they’re buying?’ She said ‘no,’ she said ‘I’ll tell you what they’re interested in. They're interested in good reviews from the merchandise manager every six months, promotions, bonuses, and raises. They don't care what machine made this garment.’ I said ‘oh my God, this is, why didn’t I know this 20 years ago, I could have been a salesman.’ So she said ‘your job is not selling garments, your job is to make the buyer look like a star in her department store. If you do that, the business will come. You make her look good where she can get good reviews, promotions, raises, and bonuses and you'll do well.’ 0 1606 From Sportswear to Banking—Becoming the Director of the American Bank MS: It lasted for a long time, and 1982 I discovered I had a gift for analyzing bank stocks, financial statements. And I started investing in that. And without this one lady, leveraging Candy, I could analyze all I wanted, I wouldn’t have any money to buy. So I was able to buy bank stocks, and in the five years, I was doing better investing than I was in the factory, so I sold my factory in 1987, and got out of that business. And then went into bank investing and went on the boards of a couple of banks. Then about nineteen or twenty years ago, Mark Jaindl, who was doing the same thing as I, as well as being in the turkey business, he was investing in bank stocks-- Mort Levy had introduced us a few years ago. We hit it off. He would analyze a financial statement, I would make notes, and then we’d compare, and we worked together very well for five years. Then Mark left the family business. He went to work as an investment banker in New Jersey for a large firm and they bought other companies. And one of the companies they bought was a company in Texas that had a contract with the federal government to rationalize all these threats that they closed down and that meltdown when the thrifts were borrowing short and lending long and the interest rates rose, and they were losing money and some of them were seized by the government. 0 1807 Family History (cont'd) SC: Could we go back beginning to tell names of your parents, grandparents, etc. If you know actually when they came, you did say that, where they came from, if you didn't say it.
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 ; MS: Yeah, I told you that my paternal grandfather came from Lodz, Poland. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary.
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 ; SC: What were their names?
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 ; MS: My maternal grandfather was Max Weinberger, and my grandfather, my father's father, was Harry Spiro, and went by his Yiddish name, Yicheel, so my father and my Uncle Manny used to call him ‘Cheel.’
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 ; SC: Do you know their wives’ names?
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 ; MS: Yes.
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 ; SC: Their maiden names?
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 ; MS: My grandmother's, my mother's mother's maiden name was Goodfriend, and my father's, my grandmother, my father's mother was the Throap or Trop. 0 2212 Jack Spiro's Knitting Mill in Lowell, MA GE: So now this is actually about your, really more about your dad, I had a couple of questions. I thought that was really interesting that you mentioned that there were incentives that you went to Lowell, your family and do you know anything about the incentives-- was that from, who that was . . . how that was structured . . . how that worked that your dad set this knitting mill up in Lowell, Massachusetts because that's obviously the big textile area before Brooklyn. 
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 ; MS: There might have been tax incentives in Massachusetts for them to come up. I'm sure there must have been tax incentives. And I think the state paid to move the factory up there.
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 ; GE: Okay, okay, and so your family was there it sounded like for about 15 years?
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 ; MS: 1936 to 1950.
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 ; GE: Okay, so about 14 years, and then you said they came here and they opened a knitting mill, is that correct? T-shirt?
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 ; MS: Well they opened...my uncle opened a knitting mill as part of his business...
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 ; GE: Right, right.
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 ; MS: ...and my father worked for him.
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 ; GE: Okay, so it was a knitting mill, not a T-shirt company.
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 ; MS: No, it was part of the T-shirt company. 0 2321 1960: Starting the Business with Closeout Cloth GE: And what you and your brother-in-law started was that similar to that T-shirt business?
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 ; MS: No, no. What we did, we bought closeout cloth. Somebody made a mistake. The shade of blue was a slight different from what the buyer wanted, they wouldn’t take it, so we went to dealers who bought that, and there was a big one in Allentown, S. Levine and Sons. We did business with Levines and New York fabric companies that bought closeout cloth, so we had a big break on the cloth. The labor we had to pay the same as anybody else, but a big [cost] break was the cloth. And on the main floor, budget sportswear if the shade of blue was a little bit off, it didn’t matter. Blue was blue. So we just make sure that if there were 30 stores, one shade of blue would go to one store and another, so you wouldn’t have twenty different shades of blue in the same rack- - it looks awful. So that was our big edge on cloth. So when the lady brought me that skirt to make, it was like the cost was like 90% cloth was our big…
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 ; GE: Competitive advantage.
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 ; MS: ...advantage. And the sewing was practically nothing, so we had a tremendous profit item on that one. That was great. 0 2464 Business Timeline GE: Okay, and so just to get a little bit of a timetable then you were in business with your brother-in-law from 1960 to 1977.
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 ; MS: Yes.
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 ; GE: And then on your own from 1977 to 1987?
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 ; MS: Yes.
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 ; GE: And then at that point you sold your business, and I'm assuming that was early enough that your business was able to sell at a good price?
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 ; MS: Yes. And I had no idea, but it wasn't too long after that, three years after that, that all that business moved to the Orient… 0 2511 Marty Spiro's Contractors GE: Right, so some of the contractors that you worked with, some of the sewing contractors that you were giving them business in the area, who were some of those names?
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 ; MS: One was, let’s see, I know one was Reilly [?], but I know some went to Gerson Lazar, who needed some business, and then a fella named Mickey Stupak in Allentown. And there was a place in Egypt, Pennsylvania. I forgot the fella’s name, but we used him, and we used Hy Litwak before his factory and then Shirley Israelite had a factory, a contracting factory, we used her. And those are the ones that come to mind.
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 ; GE: Right, okay, okay, good so you kept, you became their customer for a while.
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 ; MS: Yes. 0 2686 Marty Spiro's Creative Inspirations and Values SC: So the last two questions, first of all, what has made you feel the most creative in your life? 
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 ; MS: Creative? Well I guess in the business you’re supposed to say I guess being financially successful, it gives you a sense of self-worth. It isn’t the money, it's just knowing that you’ve accomplished something with your life, been creative. If I had made less money, I would have had the same satisfaction. But knowing that I succeeded in what I did, that's what gives me some pleasure.
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 ; SC: And the last one is what you value most in life?
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 ; MS: I always say seeing that my children and my grandson have grown up to be wonderful people, and my daughter-in-law is a wonderful person. 0 MovingImage Marty Spiro talks about being a manufacturer in women’s popular priced sportswear. After about twenty years in business, Marty serendipitously developed a close business relationship with Candy Seward, top buyer at Thalhimers Department Store, based in Richmond, VA. Candy had a national reputation for being the number one buyer in the country. So when Candy endorsed Marty and his product line, buyers from other department stores listened. Marty’s business grew tremendously. Interview with Marty Spiro, June 23, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is June 23, 2016. An interview with Marty Spiro. Could you tell me your full name, and when you were born and where you were born first. MARTY SPIRO: Martin Fred Spiro. Born in Brooklyn, New York, 1933. SC: And could you talk about your early life as far back as you know, and in doing so then perhaps start with your parents, grandparents, as many as you know, where they were from, when they came to this country, and then anything that you know about them: their education, what they did in life. MS: Okay. Well, in 1905, my paternal grandfather came to New York, couldn't speak English. Came from Lodz, Poland, and became a peddler. and I asked him years later, I said, 'Grandpa, you couldn't speak English. How could you be a peddler and sell clothing?' And he smiled and said 'I went to the new Italian district in New York where they couldn't speak English, and they thought I was the American.' So in a few years he started a business, a knitting mill business, with his two brothers-in-law and became very successful. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary, about the same time, as a kid, he was 10 years old and was going to visit his uncle for the summer in New York, decided he never wanted to go back. So he stayed here, and my mother was born here. My father was born in Lodz. A year after my grandfather came here, my grandfather had enough money to send for my grandmother and my father, so they came over, and they had three more children born in this country. And the knitting mill was very successful. In 1936, they were given a lot of incentives to move to Massachusetts. So when I was three years old, we moved to Lowell, Massachusetts. And in New York, the name was Spiro {saying the "I" as a long E sound}, and in Lowell, everybody said Spiro saying the "I" as a long I sound }. So my father said okay sounds okay, but I have relatives who were Spiro {long E}, my sons went back to Spiro {long E}, and I have relatives in France who were Spira, S-P-I-R-A. What happened was three brothers left Lodz around the same time in the early 1900s. One went to France, one went to Canada, and my grandfather went to New York. So I have relations in Canada and in France who I've met. And I grew up in Lowell, went to Lowell High School, and around the time I was 17, the knitting business failed, and my father, his end was running the factory so he could get jobs running factories, which he did. And then a year later, my uncle had a T-shirt factory in Allentown where they bought cloth, cut it, and sewed it. And when my father became available, they asked him to come down. They bought knitting machines, and my father ran the knitting mill. And about that time, I went off to college. And after college, I worked at Otis Elevator for years and decided it wasn't for me ; I was an industrial engineer but I saw that in a large corporation, I didn't have the personality or the social skills to advance in the huge corporation like that. So around 1960, the opportunity came in Allentown with my brother-in-law, and I started a T-shirt factory, a small T-shirt factory. My brother-in-law is Dave Sussman. And we started about 1960 and struggled because we really didn't know too much about the business. Everything we made we lost in mistakes. But about two years later, we started making money and became very profitable, and we did very well. And about 17 years later, we decided to split. My brother-in-law wanted to go into more styled goods - higher risk, higher profit. I was more conservative. I was content to be in the basic, simple, sportswear business where it never went out of style, and you didn't have as much risk, didn't have as much profit - that's fine with me. So we each went our separate ways, and then I bought one of our contractor's factories, called Hy Litwak, so I bought his factory, and it turned out, we found out early, Dave and I, he was very good on the outside. He was good at selling ; I was worse than terrible at selling, awful. I was very good at running the factory, where that was his shortcoming. So it was a good partnership: he was on the outside, and I was on the inside. It worked very well. And when we decided to split, he found somebody to run the factory and I hired salesmen. And it was going along very well. He was probably doing better than we did before. I was doing as well as I did before. I was happy. And then I had enough business to keep the factory going. And about a year later, after I went on my own, I got a call out of the blue. And this is relevant to the book The Outliers by... SC: Malcolm Gladwell. MS: That's right, Malcolm Gladwell, where his thesis is that people who really have made it, all have gotten help of one kind or another, either from people, or from situations, or from just luck. Well I had luck. A year after I went on my own, I got a phone call. The lady said that 'my name is Candy Seward. I'm the buyer for Tallhimers. I've been trying to find out where your new place was.' So I said, I know who you are. I've seen your name on orders for many years. She said 'I'd like to see you in New York next week. I'll be in New York for Market Week, and I have an office at the AMC building,' the Associated Merchandise Corporation. They were New York buyers for major department stores around the country. The largest being Federated Department Stores. So she said 'my office is on the 11th floor, and I'd like to see you at whatever time.' And I said sure. So I went in and met her, and she showed me what she wanted and writes out an order for about 400 dozen, a very large order. And I said 'do you want a sample before I make it?' She said 'no, just ship me the same thing you've been shipping for years, it'll be fine.' So I did, and I had no illusions that I had sold her, that I became a salesman. She bought from me, but I didn't sell to her. So I never went after the other Federated on the 7th ave, seventh floor or any of the other department stores. Because I still felt after 17 years, you know, I'm not going to fool myself, I don't know how to sell, so I never went after anybody else. So I shipped her the goods, went very well, she gave me reorders, she gave me orders for other styles, and I had to put on a night shift. And that was fine. And then we're going along like that, maybe another year later, two years later, my Pennsylvania salesman, a fella named Mike Miller, was in the factory, and he said 'next week I'm going to Pittsburgh and there's a show, a knit goods show in an armory, and I'm taking a booth. It's very interesting, there are hundreds of vendors there and you might find it interesting.' So I said all right, so I flew out in the morning, came back in the evening. And I talked to Mike in his booth, and I walked up and down the aisle looking at the different competitors. Some of them were competitors, and I was very pleased to see that most of my competitors were higher-priced than I was, so I wasn't worried about them. And then I saw one company that had a very extensive line, larger than mine with very very competitive prices. So I said, I congratulated the salesman on his line. I said this is a terrific line. I said I'm very impressed, and he said 'my company does something different from other companies. Instead of our designer' - they had a designer - 'instead of our designer coming up with a line, we fly out the best buyer in the country once a year, and together, the two of them develop a line.' I said 'well that's interesting - who is this buyer?' And he said 'well I don't know her last name, but she's from Virginia and her name is Candy.' And I said oh that's nice. So I thought oh my God, I'm doing business with the best buyer in the country, and I don't know it because I had nobody to compare her with. So she was my only customer. So the next time Candy called to meet her in New York on the 11th floor, I said - and by this time I got familiar with the building, and I knew that Federated had an office, one of their offices on the seventh floor was somebody who arranged hotel accommodations at some hotel in New York where they had a deal with large a supply of tenants. And the 12th floor was a cafeteria, where the buyers came in the morning, got to meet each other from around the country and go over things and go out into the market. So I said 'Candy, can we meet on the 12th floor in a cafeteria at 8 o'clock?' And she said sure. So I said 'you know why I am asking, don't you?' And she said yes, but it's alright. So 8 o'clock in the morning, the two of us met. We were the only ones in the cafeteria. We took a long table for ten people. We sat at the end, I took out some shirts, and one by one the buyers are coming in, and they see Candy and me at this table. They come over [and say] 'hi Candy, what are you doing?' 'I'm looking at Marty's fall line.' 'Oh, do you have room for me at the table?' And in twenty minutes the table was full. So they're all watching and they're asking questions ; 'oh I do very well with him.' So these are ladies, they happen to all be lady buyers, and all of them were getting calls from vendors around Broadway and that area. 'Please come into my showroom. I want you to see the new things.' 'Well I don't have time this trip ; I'll try to do it next trip.' These people are coming to me. 'Well I have some time at 3 o'clock ; I'm on the eighth floor, can you meet me?' So I'm booking appointments, and I'm booking appointments for the next day. So I call my wife. I say 'I'm staying over' because I have appointments for both days. So I sold everyone who was at the table. So now I had, it was too much for my plant day and night. I had to give out work to contractors, so I bought a Ford Econoline Truck, hired a driver, we cut the goods and we sent them out to the various contractors, so it became a very large business. And all from this one person. I felt 'well I'm selling them, but I'm leveraging her' her reputation. And I asked her years later cause we're still friends, and I stay over, they retired in the West Coast of Florida, and coming back on the auto train, I stay overnight with Candy and her husband, and we have dinner and then go to the auto train in Sanford the next morning. So I asked a few years ago why she shared cause she was very generous with the other buyers telling who she bought from, what she bought, what she paid. And she still came out with the best numbers of any buyer in the whole AMC clientele, always, no matter, she could tell everybody everything, and she still came out with the best sales figures. So she was like the goddess of retailing, so I said maybe three years ago, I said 'did any other vendor leverage your reputation as much as I did?' She said, 'no, nobody did.' And I think the reason for that was everybody else who sold was a good salesman. They didn't need help, or they felt they didn't need help. I knew I stunk at that, so I was looking for help, so I leveraged her reputation and did very well with that. And then one time Mike was in the factory saying 'next week I'm going to Philadelphia and then I'm going to see the buyer there, Donna Mateer, I've been calling on it for years-- SC: Okay, would you go back and talk about your anecdote about Philadelphia? MS: In Philadelphia, Mike Miller, my Pennsylvania salesman, said 'I'm going next week to see Donna Matier at Strawbridge and Clothier there. She's a very good buyer, she's never bought from me. I go every year, she's very polite, looks at the line and gives me time and never buys, but I never give up. So she never buys, I never give up, so someday I'll get it when she needs me.' So I said 'okay Mike. So if she turned you down again, go through this ritual: ask her if she's going next week to the Omni Hotel in Florida for the import show, and she will say yes because all the AMC buyers are going to Florida, and after she says yes, say do you know Candy? You don't need a last name. It's like Madonna or Cher, you know no last name needed, do you know Candy? And she will say yes. Then the third thing is, ask Candy about our company.' And he came back, and I said what happened? She didn't buy, and I said, did you go through the questions? He said 'yes' I did. And I said why don't we see what happens. Two weeks later I get a call: 'My name is Donna Mateer, I'm the buyer from Strawbridge and Clothier. I'll be in New York at the AMC building. I forgot what floor she was on and I'd like to see you.' So I go, and she gives me a large order, and then I went back, I show it to Mike, and I said it is your account, you get the commissions, but she said she'd rather deal with the owner of the factory than the salesman. So he said great. So as long as I stayed in business, she became a very large customer and got to know her and her husband. Very nice people and did a big business with Strawbridge and only because she asked Candy, and Candy said yes, you can do very well with him. And my business probably doubled and became quite successful. And then a few years later, I had what some people would call an epiphany. I was in New York, Candy wanted me to make some new styles for her. So I made it, I made a sample, I brought it in, and I'm showing it to her, and I said this garment that was knitted was on a thirty-six gauge interlock machine with thirty singles comb cotton. And she said, look, I know what you're saying, don't tell anybody else that. I said 'why not? Aren't they interested in what they're buying?' She said 'no,' she said 'I'll tell you what they're interested in. They're interested in good reviews from the merchandise manager every six months, promotions, bonuses, and raises. They don't care what machine made this garment.' I said 'oh my God, this is, why didn't I know this 20 years ago, I could have been a salesman.' So she said 'your job is not selling garments, your job is to make the buyer look like a star in her department store. If you do that, the business will come. You make her look good where she can get good reviews, promotions, raises, and bonuses and you'll do well.' I said, oh my, it's so simple, why didn't I, I never had thought of it. So I said, 'how do you suggest how to go about doing this?' She said 'well, for instance, quite often a vendor will short ship.' He doesn't have the right, he doesn't have all of the colors, so the buyer orders red, white, navy, pink, blue, maze, and the factory is short on maze and it's going to be two weeks late. Meanwhile the buyer puts an ad in the paper with the six colors and the merchandise manager sees there is only five colors on the racks. Where's the other color? Aw the damn vendor, he's going to be two weeks later on that. Well lady, you're supposed to be in a rapport with the vendors. You're supposed to know this before it happens. And she's thinking there goes my bonus, there goes my review. So Candy said 'the minute you know you're going to be late on something, you call the buyer and say 'look I don't have the yellow, I've got lilac, I've got fuchsia, I've got mint. You can substitute or just cancel the color because I don't have it.'' So they do accordingly and that way the buyer can go to the merchandise manager and say the vendor is going to be late on the yellow, I substituted lilac. Now the merchandise [manager] knows this buyer is on top of the business, you know, good reviews and the other things will follow. So the buyer is connected to me now. This guy is making me look good, I better stick with them. And so that worked out, I remember one time the Shillito buyer. The Shillito is big, was big, I'm not sure whether they still are in business in Cincinnati, Ohio. And the buyer there called up one day: 'I'm coming to New York next week, I'm going to bring you a crystal pleated skirt I'd like you to make.' I'd never made skirts. I said 'what's a crystal pleated skirt?' 'I'll bring one in and I'll show you.' So it was a polyester skirt, and it was sent out to a contractor with an oven or an oast that they folded these things up into an accordion type thing, and they put it in the oven and the synthetic melted a little bit and put the permanent pleat in the garment. So you had to cut it and put a hem in it cause it wouldn't pleat right, you couldn't put a hem in it after it was pleated, so we hemmed it and I found a contractor in New York, we shipped and came back, and it was a simple garment to make. And it was just white and navy. She said that's the only colors that would sell. So I started making that for her and showed it to the other buyers, and they started buying also. And then one of the buyers came to me, they came to me with velour. Nobody will know what that is anymore, but it was a fabric. It was very hot for a few years, and they put me into that business. So the buyers were coming to me. And then one time I was meeting with a bunch of buyers, some bought from me, some hadn't. And I bought a style that I concocted. I design something, so I'm showing it to them. The Shillito buyer starts laughing and she says 'baldheaded designer,' she said 'we do not need you to tell us what to buy ; you're Marty the knockoff man.' That's what they call me. 'What's selling good on the second floor in Branded Goods, we're on the Main floor in budget sportswear. What's hot on the branded good upstairs, we want you to make for less money on the main floor. That's what you do. So don't bring us any designs.' So the buyers who hadn't bought from me see that she's on such good terms with me that she can laugh at me and call me 'baldheaded designer.' So they started buying. I developed a tremendous business. It lasted for a long time, and 1982 I discovered I had a gift for analyzing bank stocks, financial statements. And I started investing in that. And without this one lady, leveraging Candy, I could analyze all I wanted, I wouldn't have any money to buy. So I was able to buy bank stocks, and in the five years, I was doing better investing than I was in the factory, so I sold my factory in 1987, and got out of that business. And then went into bank investing and went on the boards of a couple of banks. Then about nineteen or twenty years ago, Mark Jaindl, who was doing the same thing as I, as well as being in the turkey business, he was investing in bank stocks-- Mort Levy had introduced us a few years ago. We hit it off. He would analyze a financial statement, I would make notes, and then we'd compare, and we worked together very well for five years. Then Mark left the family business. He went to work as an investment banker in New Jersey for a large firm and they bought other companies. And one of the companies they bought was a company in Texas that had a contract with the federal government to rationalize all these threats that they closed down and that meltdown when the thrifts were borrowing short and lending long and the interest rates rose, and they were losing money and some of them were seized by the government. And there were lots of loans that the government didn't know what to do with, loans and foreclosed property, and they hired this firm in Texas to sell it for what they could. Sell these bad loans and the property, get the most out of it on the commission basis. So Mark got to see every kind of loan imaginable. It was a four and a half billion-dollar virtual bank. And then his father came to him a few years later to try to get him back, and Mark said 'to start a bank, I'll come back.' And Mark and Fred - Fred was a terrific guy, I miss him - and they asked me to go on the board of American Bank, where I'm still a director. And that's where I am today. SC: Could we go back beginning to tell names of your parents, grandparents, etc. If you know actually when they came, you did say that, where they came from, if you didn't say it. MS: Yeah, I told you that my paternal grandfather came from Lodz, Poland. My maternal grandfather came from Munkacs, Hungary. SC: What were their names? MS: My maternal grandfather was Max Weinberger, and my grandfather, my father's father, was Harry Spiro, and went by his Yiddish name, Yicheel, so my father and my Uncle Manny used to call him 'Cheel.' SC: Do you know their wives' names? MS: Yes. SC: Their maiden names? MS: My grandmother's, my mother's mother's maiden name was Goodfriend, and my father's, my grandmother, my father's mother was the Throap or Trop. I've seen it spelled both ways. But in this country, it was Throap. In Europe--and some moved to Israel-- it was T-R-O-P, so her name was Chaya Rivka, or Anna. Oh, no, no, no, Ida was her name ; Ida Spiro. It was Harry and Ida. And Chaya Rivka was her Hebrew name. And she could speak Polish for the rest of her life. She told me my father, who came here at 3, spoke Polish but lost it all and was fluent in Yiddish and English. And that my parents, like a lot of parents, they didn't want the children to speak Yiddish - you're in America now, speak English. So Yiddish was their secret language, so I never learned, my sister never learned. SC: Did they come from the same regions as their husbands? Do you know anything? MS: No. I don't know how my parents met. I think it was probably at one of these social clubs. I'm not sure. My father lived in Brooklyn, and my mother lived in East Side, New York. My father had graduated, my grandfather he, after he started making money, he moved to Brooklyn. SC: And so the social clubs, were they promoted in the Jewish community? MS: Yes. By then it was, by that time they were insulated. They kept to themselves. It's not that way anymore. Thank Goodness. SC: Do you know anything about their education, the people back from their parents? MS: My mother did not go to college. When she graduated high school she went to work for, I think, the phone company. And my grandfather went to, my father went to Brooklyn Polytech and he loved machinery and wasn't a good businessman, but wonderful with machinery. And [he] taught me how to wire up factories. I did the electrical work in our factories and a lot of the mechanical work. I learned how to fix machines. So I was good at that. But that was it for their education. SC: And back, in where they came from, do you know anything about those people, where they were, their education? MS: Well the, no, the ones in Hungary were destroyed in the Holocaust, and the ones who didn't get out in Lodz are gone. So my cousin in Paris, who is an eye surgeon, his father, Jacques, what his name was Poland but it became Jacques in France-- he wrote a page for each of the seven relatives who were killed in Poland in the Holocaust, so there is a page for each of them in the Yad Vashem, which my cousin Kathy from Canada, who is the family researcher, she can find anything, including the manifests of the ship that brought my grandfather into the country. And it's all on the Internet, so I have the statements that my cousin's father had submitted to Yad Vashem. So anybody who didn't get out is gone, and as I say, the ones that we know about are on my father's side: the US, Canada, and France. And my French cousin comes over a couple times a year. He's going to retire eventually from surgery and bought a place in Miami Beach. He's got the penthouse of someplace near the ocean. But he comes over once a year, nice fella. GAIL EISENBERG: Okay so Marty, you did a really fine job, but there's just a few questions, I just wanted to go back.... MS: Go ahead. GE: ...and see if you could fill in a little bit. So now this is actually about your, really more about your dad, I had a couple of questions. I thought that was really interesting that you mentioned that there were incentives that you went to Lowell, your family and do you know anything about the incentives-- was that from, who that was . . . how that was structured . . . how that worked that your dad set this knitting mill up in Lowell, Massachusetts because that's obviously the big textile area before Brooklyn. MS: There might have been tax incentives in Massachusetts for them to come up. I'm sure there must have been tax incentives. And I think the state paid to move the factory up there. GE: Okay, okay, and so your family was there it sounded like for about 15 years? MS: 1936 to 1950. GE: Okay, so about 14 years, and then you said they came here and they opened a knitting mill, is that correct? T-shirt? MS: Well they opened...my uncle opened a knitting mill as part of his business... GE: Right, right. MS: ...and my father worked for him. GE: Okay, so it was a knitting mill, not a T-shirt company. MS: No, it was part of the T-shirt company. GE: Okay. MS: So they needed the cloth, instead of my uncle buying the cloth, they knitted it themselves. GE: Okay, and so how is that business . . . then did they close the business before you and your brother-in-law went into it or? MS: They moved it, they moved their business to Reading. GE: Okay, and that became a separate business from-- MS: It became a separate business. GE: Okay. MS: They moved to Reading, and my father retired, so it was a separate business. GE: Okay. And what you and your brother-in-law started was that similar to that T-shirt business? MS: No, no. What we did, we bought closeout cloth. Somebody made a mistake. The shade of blue was a slight different from what the buyer wanted, they wouldn't take it, so we went to dealers who bought that, and there was a big one in Allentown, S. Levine and Sons. We did business with Levines and New York fabric companies that bought closeout cloth, so we had a big break on the cloth. The labor we had to pay the same as anybody else, but a big [cost] break was the cloth. And on the main floor, budget sportswear if the shade of blue was a little bit off, it didn't matter. Blue was blue. So we just make sure that if there were 30 stores, one shade of blue would go to one store and another, so you wouldn't have twenty different shades of blue in the same rack- - it looks awful. So that was our big edge on cloth. So when the lady brought me that skirt to make, it was like the cost was like 90% cloth was our big-- GE: Competitive advantage. MS: ...advantage. And the sewing was practically nothing, so we had a tremendous profit item on that one. That was great. And then I saw Levines. I saw one of the brands had orlon, wool pleated skirts and some of the same patterns that Levine had. And so I thought I'll make up some of those, I'll show them to my skirt buyers. And we bought those and sold those garments also. That was also a big number for me. GE: And so your competitive advantage or what you felt was your advantage was really that you had much lower material cost-- MS: Yes. GE: ...in producing. MS: That is correct. GE: Okay, and so just to get a little bit of a timetable then you were in business with your brother-in-law from 1960 to 1977. MS: Yes. GE: And then on your own from 1977 to 1987? MS: Yes. GE: And then at that point you sold your business, and I'm assuming that was early enough that your business was able to sell at a good price? MS: Yes. And I had no idea, but it wasn't too long after that, three years after that, that all that business moved to the Orient-- GE: Right. MS: ...and there was no more knitting here so you couldn't buy off-price cloth because there was no cloth. It was all done overseas. GE: Right, exactly. MS: And I had no knowledge of that at the time. GE: Right, so some of the contractors that you worked with, some of the sewing contractors that you were giving them business in the area, who were some of those names? MS: One was, let's see, I know one was Reilly [?], but I know some went to Gerson Lazar, who needed some business, and then a fella named Mickey Stupak in Allentown. And there was a place in Egypt, Pennsylvania. I forgot the fella's name, but we used him, and we used Hy Litwak before his factory and then Shirley Israelite had a factory, a contracting factory, we used her. And those are the ones that come to mind. GE: Right, okay, okay, good so you kept, you became their customer for a while. MS: Yes. GE: Okay. And I guess the last thing is that I was told from actually from Ivan that you had an interesting story in terms of the velour. I don't remember, I'm trying to remember, he said to ask Marty, I don't remember, it was a mistake you made, like either you were short in a color and you did a black back, and he said that it ended up becoming a very successful product. MS: He remembers that, I don't. GE: Okay. MS: I don't remember that. GE: Oh, okay. MS: But I'm sure it happened. But that lasted for a few years. It was a very good item. GE: Right, I do remember. Okay, I don't think, so we'll just ask you the couple last questions. And I'll just ask you. So you didn't make the material-- MS: No. GE: Where it was your uncle's business too-- MS: My business was buying the cloth. GE: You bought the cloth, and it's just that you bought overruns which were damaged or whatever. MS: Well it wasn't damaged. GE: But overruns, or whatever. MS: Maybe it was finished too wide. It was supposed to be finished thirty one inches but they finished it thirty inches wide. GE: Right, right. SC: That's very appropriate today, it's recycling. MS: It's what? SC: It's environmental. It's recycling. Rather than if it were, it's perfect. So the last two questions, first of all, what has made you feel the most creative in your life? MS: Creative? Well I guess in the business you're supposed to say I guess being financially successful, it gives you a sense of self-worth. It isn't the money, it's just knowing that you've accomplished something with your life, been creative. If I had made less money, I would have had the same satisfaction. But knowing that I succeeded in what I did, that's what gives me some pleasure. SC: And the last one is what you value most in life? MS: I always say seeing that my children and my grandson have grown up to be wonderful people, and my daughter-in-law is a wonderful person. To see them grow up to be fine people gives me the most, well there's not too much satisfaction when you're 82, to see that, to see my two kids, my two boys and my grandson and my daughter-in-law. My younger son married a girl from Taiwan, so, she taught him Mandarin Chinese which he won't admit to, but he speaks Mandarin and is bilingual and is eight years old, and very bright, very nice kid, so he'll do well. So that gives me my most pleasure. SC: Thank you so much. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:46:51
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Marty Spiro, June 23, 2016
Description
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Marty Spiro talks about being a manufacturer in women’s popular priced sportswear. After about twenty years in business, Marty serendipitously developed a close business relationship with Candy Seward, top buyer at Thalhimers Department Store, based in Richmond, VA. Candy had a national reputation for being the number one buyer in the country. So when Candy endorsed Marty and his product line, buyers from other department stores listened. Marty’s business grew tremendously.
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LVTNT-34
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2016-06-23
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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https://textile.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/2b5488abf6191e3e0f09fbed47f64681.png
f14545078f5d94613c6ee576617d37cd
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Title
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
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Maxine Klein
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-06.xml
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5.4 April 8th, 2016 Maxine Klein, April 8th, 2016 LVTNT-06 10:16 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Maxine Klein Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 KleinMaxine_20160408_revised.mp4 1.0:|23(4)|46(10)|65(17)|86(9)|113(6)|134(11)|161(10)|188(3)|221(17)|240(13)|245(9) 0 https://youtu.be/I6G8bjDJq9c YouTube video 0 Introduction—Maxine Klein: Women's Health Nurse Practitioner SCB: Today is April 8th, 2016, an interview — a second interview — with Maxine Klein. Maxine, would you talk about your career as a nurse? 
 ; 
 ; MK: Yes, thank you. I went to school as a nurse, excuse me, when I was thirty-eight. And why I did that essentially two — well many reasons, but two of the main reasons — one of them, I was involved in some community projects, the- at the Center Hakol, the development of the newspaper, Hakol. And my partner and I decided we wanted to be paid for this job because it was enormous, and they told us, no, they weren't going to, so we both decided we would go and become professionals of some sort or another. I always felt that I wanted to be more than Mrs. So and So ; growing up at the time that I did, the first half of my life, we were programmed into the old ways of becoming secretaries or teachers or nurses and- but mainly wives and mothers. And then the Women's Movement happened in the middle of that, and all of a sudden women were supposed to be more than that. At first I resisted this, but then I decided that I thought I would like to be more than that, too, and have my own identity. 0 121 First Job at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Center MK: So I finished in three years and- and then I- my first job was at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Center. I never really wanted to work in a hospital, I always felt that I wanted to use the nursing authenticity, shall we say, as a segue into something else. It was a sort of a quick and legitimate way to get that authenticity. And I was always interested in education, but I didn't want to be a school teacher either. So my first job was at Good Shepherd Rehab, which is a lot of patient teaching as well as patient care. That was a- a- a what was that? Seven to three job, which was very difficult for me because I still had my family. 0 172 Second Job Following Loss of Husband—Working as an Oncology Nurse Specialist MK: A month after I started there, I also passed my- my boards, and my husband died suddenly on August 8th. I had started there in the beginning of July and he died on August 8th. So I left that day and I did not return there. And I took about six months to kind of reorganize myself because he was involved in several businesses, et cetera, and all that had to be straightened out, and my children's lives were in the middle of this and that as well. And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I didn't want to work in a hospital, I didn't want to work full time because I had these other- Anyway, close friend of mine arranged for me to interview with one of the local oncologists who was looking for a nurse to come in and give his patients what he couldn't do — education, time, contact with family, help to understand what the patient needed about their treatment, about the disease, etc. So I went and interviewed and he hired me. It was David Prager who was a wonderful oncologist and is now deceased. And I worked for him and his partners for seven years as an oncologist nurse. I became an oncology nurse, I became an oncology specialist and I helped design patient education as well as some courses for visiting nurses to come through to learn how to do some- certain techniques. And it was very exciting, for me, it was very, very exciting. And very helpful, I was helping people in a time when they needed it and if it was end of life and they needed help and had to have a good death as well. So it was- It was- And I think it was a sort of a healing process for me, too. Having lost my husband, the whole process was somehow therapeutic as well as it turned out. 0 301 Twelve Years Working as a Women's Health Nurse Practitioner for Planned Parenthood MK: I began to realize that I was losing a sense of perspective. My friends were telling me, oh, they had a bad cold or their shoulder was hurting and this and that, you know, “I can't do it.” And I'm thinking, “Are you kidding? What are you telling me this for? I’m dealing with people making life and death decisions!” And I started to lose touch with the main real world. And I thought, you know, either I'm getting healed or something, something needs to change, I'm going off on the wrong end here. So I- I left that job. I worked for a little while as head of the hospice volunteers. I didn't like that much. Then I volunteered at Planned Parenthood. My daughters all went to Planned Parenthood and I volunteered doing all sorts of things there for about a year. And then the- the manager at the Allentown clinic said that the- the clinician was going to leave Planned Parenthood, would I be interested in becoming a nurse practitioner? And they would pay for me to go. There was a special program with Planned Parenthood and the University of Pennsylvania and the United States government to try to get clinicians into places where- that serve the underserved. So it was a speed up kind of thing. And I could become a women's health nurse practitioner in one one- one year’s time, which would give me a certificate, not a Master's Degree, and I didn't need anything other than my Associate’s Degree and my RN license. And so I thought, okay — nothing else is happening right now. A year will go by and either I will be a nurse practitioner or I won't. So I said, yes, I'll do it. 0 480 Maxine Klein's Creative Inspirations SC: What has made you feel the most creative in life? I know we asked you this before, but sometimes it changes. 
 ; 
 ; MK: I don't remember you asking me that. 
 ; 
 ; SC: Maybe we- 
 ; 
 ; GE: No, we did.
 ; 
 ; MK: But I don't know what I said. 
 ; 
 ; GE: I don't remember. 
 ; 
 ; SC: And that doesn't matter. 
 ; 
 ; MK: Oh, I'm sorry. 
 ; 
 ; GE: That’s okay, just leave it.
 ; 
 ; MK: Most creative? I think, I think interacting with other people, helping people to see the world the way they need to see it sometimes takes a lot of energy and creativity on my part. 0 592 Maxine's Values SC: And what do you value in life? 
 ; 
 ; MK: Well, probably the love of my family and my children and all the people that I, I know and love — that's definitely the most valuable to me. 0 MovingImage Maxine, the younger sister, talks about being influenced by the women’s movement in the 1970s. From that, Maxine returned to school, became a registered nurse and, later, a nurse practitioner. Maxine enjoyed a fulfilling career working with a local oncologist’s office and later at Planned Parenthood.
 ; Interview with Maxine Klein, April 8th, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is April 8th, 2016, an interview -- a second interview -- with Maxine Klein. Maxine, would you talk about your career as a nurse? MAXINE KLEIN: Yes, thank you. I went to school as a nurse, excuse me, when I was thirty-eight. And why I did that essentially two -- well many reasons, but two of the main reasons -- one of them, I was involved in some community projects, the- at the Center Hakol, the development of the newspaper, Hakol. And my partner and I decided we wanted to be paid for this job because it was enormous, and they told us, no, they weren't going to, so we both decided we would go and become professionals of some sort or another. I always felt that I wanted to be more than Mrs. So and So ; growing up at the time that I did, the first half of my life, we were programmed into the old ways of becoming secretaries or teachers or nurses and- but mainly wives and mothers. And then the Women's Movement happened in the middle of that, and all of a sudden women were supposed to be more than that. At first I resisted this, but then I decided that I thought I would like to be more than that, too, and have my own identity. So I decided I would go to the community college because I still had three children that I was responsible for and my husband. And I- it was a two year program to become an RN, I did it in three years so that I could organize my life. That- I was at school from eight to four, whether I had class or not ; I did all my work at school and then when I came home at four, I was with my family for the rest of the evening and I didn't have to be distracted with any other work. And this seemed to work quite well. So I finished in three years and- and then I- my first job was at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Center. I never really wanted to work in a hospital, I always felt that I wanted to use the nursing authenticity, shall we say, as a segue into something else. It was a sort of a quick and legitimate way to get that authenticity. And I was always interested in education, but I didn't want to be a school teacher either. So my first job was at Good Shepherd Rehab, which is a lot of patient teaching as well as patient care. That was a- a- a what was that? Seven to three job, which was very difficult for me because I still had my family. A month after I started there, I also passed my- my boards, and my husband died suddenly on August 8th. I had started there in the beginning of July and he died on August 8th. So I left that day and I did not return there. And I took about six months to kind of reorganize myself because he was involved in several businesses, et cetera, and all that had to be straightened out, and my children's lives were in the middle of this and that as well. And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I didn't want to work in a hospital, I didn't want to work full time because I had these other- Anyway, close friend of mine arranged for me to interview with one of the local oncologists who was looking for a nurse to come in and give his patients what he couldn't do -- education, time, contact with family, help to understand what the patient needed about their treatment, about the disease, etc. So I went and interviewed and he hired me. It was David Prager who was a wonderful oncologist and is now deceased. And I worked for him and his partners for seven years as an oncologist nurse. I became an oncology nurse, I became an oncology specialist and I helped design patient education as well as some courses for visiting nurses to come through to learn how to do some- certain techniques. And it was very exciting, for me, it was very, very exciting. And very helpful, I was helping people in a time when they needed it and if it was end of life and they needed help and had to have a good death as well. So it was- It was- And I think it was a sort of a healing process for me, too. Having lost my husband, the whole process was somehow therapeutic as well as it turned out. However, at the end of that time, I did seven years, I began to realize- am I going on too long? GAIL EISENBERG: No. SC: No, keep going, please. MK: Oh okay. I began to realize that I was losing a sense of perspective. My friends were telling me, oh, they had a bad cold or their shoulder was hurting and this and that, you know, "I can't do it." And I'm thinking, "Are you kidding? What are you telling me this for? I'm dealing with people making life and death decisions!" And I started to lose touch with the main real world. And I thought, you know, either I'm getting healed or something, something needs to change, I'm going off on the wrong end here. So I- I left that job. I worked for a little while as head of the hospice volunteers. I didn't like that much. Then I volunteered at Planned Parenthood. My daughters all went to Planned Parenthood and I volunteered doing all sorts of things there for about a year. And then the- the manager at the Allentown clinic said that the- the clinician was going to leave Planned Parenthood, would I be interested in becoming a nurse practitioner? And they would pay for me to go. There was a special program with Planned Parenthood and the University of Pennsylvania and the United States government to try to get clinicians into places where- that serve the underserved. So it was a speed up kind of thing. And I could become a women's health nurse practitioner in one one- one year's time, which would give me a certificate, not a Master's Degree, and I didn't need anything other than my Associate's Degree and my RN license. And so I thought, okay -- nothing else is happening right now. A year will go by and either I will be a nurse practitioner or I won't. So I said, yes, I'll do it. I had to move to Philadelphia for four months, which I did, and then did the rest of my internship at- in Easton at the Easton Clinic, and I became a women's health nurse practitioner. And then I worked for 12 years. At the time that I did it, I thought, how long am I really going to work? You know? I mean, well, if I work two years, it'll make it worthwhile. But I worked twelve. And it was most exciting and most gratifying and it kept me young, kept me in touch with all different ages of people and what was happening, and I could do a lot of teaching in a really short amount of time to a patient population that really, really wanted that teaching. So it was very gratifying and I'm glad I did it. And then when I was sixty-five, I decided I think I'm getting tired and I had some health issues and I thought, I'm going to retire before they kick me out. So that's what I did. I retired from Planned Parenthood. So now I'm looking for my next career, shall we say. Is that enough? GE: Yes. SC: Well, may I ask you--? MK: Sure. SC: What has made you feel the most creative in life? I know we asked you this before, but sometimes it changes. MK: I don't remember you asking me that. SC: Maybe we- GE: No, we did. MK: But I don't know what I said. GE: I don't remember. SC: And that doesn't matter. MK: Oh, I'm sorry. GE: That's okay, just leave it. MK: Most creative? I think, I think interacting with other people, helping people to see the world the way they need to see it sometimes takes a lot of energy and creativity on my part. GE: Can I ask you- Can you, can we just mute that? MK: Yes, I can turn it off. GE: Yeah, let's turn that off and just say the- 'cause what you said is beautiful, perfect, I just don't want to have that-No, no, no. I'll get it for you. [cross chatter irrelevant to interview] SC: So, what has made you feel the most creative in life? MK: I was- I think working with other people, helping people to solve their problems, helping them to understand what they need to understand. It takes a lot, for me. it takes a lot of creativity and getting outside of myself and trying to be in somebody else's skin to- to help them. I think I feel the most alive when I'm doing that. I don't know if that's the same as being creative, but that definitely makes me feel most alive and most energized. SC: And what do you value in life? MK: Well, probably the love of my family and my children and all the people that I, I know and love -- that's definitely the most valuable to me. SC: Do either of you have any questions? Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:10:15
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Maxine Klein, April 8th, 2016
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Maxine, the younger sister, talks about being influenced by the women’s movement in the 1970s. From that, Maxine returned to school, became a registered nurse and, later, a nurse practitioner. Maxine enjoyed a fulfilling career working with a local oncologist’s office and later at Planned Parenthood.
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LVTNT-06
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2016-04-08
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
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Mort Miller
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-14.xml
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5.4 June 25, 2014 Mort and Judy Miller, June 25, 2014 LVTNT-14 38:08 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Mort Miller Judy Miller Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 MillerMort_MillerJudy_20140625.mp4 1.0:|17(7)|34(9)|51(15)|68(15)|85(10)|104(15)|125(10)|144(5)|159(13)|176(11)|197(4)|220(5)|237(10)|252(12)|267(10)|280(10)|299(10)|312(11)|329(4)|346(14)|363(12)|384(5)|407(2)|426(18)|445(11)|458(6)|471(14)|494(7)|513(6)|526(9)|547(6)|570(10)|587(2)|604(17)|625(6)|650(2)|661(6)|670(7)|671(10) 0 https://youtu.be/x5z3Qfqn_Lk YouTube video 34 College Experiences MM: When I graduated from Allen High, I applied to four schools: Columbia, NYU, Penn, and Lehigh. I got into Columbia, NYU and Penn. I did not get into Lehigh because Lehigh in those days had a 2% quota. For every hundred students they took in, two were Jewish. I had an interview and they had my records 9th through 12th grade, and it listed the Hebrew Institute of Boro Park. The man who was interviewing me said, ‘Hebrew Institute of Boro Park, what kind of school is that?’ And I figured that’s it I’m not getting in. And I didn’t. I got into two Ivy League schools but did not get in there.
 ; 
 ; GE: And then if you could just recap for us, since we talked about it off tape, what you did as far as your educational career. 
 ; 
 ; MM: I started out as an accounting major. I was still an accounting major when I was drafted in the middle of my sophomore year. When I came back after the war, I stopped being an accounting major and became just a general economics major. I took liberal arts classes whenever I could. 0 201 1943-1945: Time in the Eighth Air Force MM: I was drafted in March of 1943 ; I had my basic training at Miami Beach. I was then sent to Finance School at Wake Forest College. I was then sent back to Saint Petersburg, Florida. Then I was sent overseas to a little town called Sudbury, which was north of London. I was there for almost two years then I came back to this country. The group that I was with, the war was over, but we were still fighting in Japan. My group was scheduled to be sent to the pacific. They gave us a thirty day leave and we came home. While I was on that thirty day leave, they dropped the atomic bomb and the war was over and three months later I was out of the army. I was in the Eighth Air Force in England. 0 263 The Family Business GE: So now, tell us about the business. So as you said, it was first started by your father and his brother, it sounds like. 
 ; 
 ; MM: It was started by my father. He then brought his brother from Poland to this country, and took him into the business immediately, and made him a partner. They remained together until 1943 or ‘44 and then they split up.
 ; 
 ; GE: By that time did the two of them pretty much retire?
 ; 
 ; MM: No. My uncle remained in business. My father did retire in 1945 but then he went back into business in 1947. 
 ; 
 ; GE: And now if you want to share with us about you and your brother-in-law.
 ; 
 ; MM: Yes. We were both working for my father, and my father then merged his business with a cousin in New York. And part of the agreement was when they merged the businesses, that there would be no children in the business. So my brother-in-law and I left, and we started our own business. 0 384 1948-1979: Millcrest Manufacturing GE: Tell us about what products. 
 ; 
 ; MM: We started out originally manufacturing panties and then we switched to ladies sleepwear. 
 ; 
 ; GE: Why did you make that switch?
 ; 
 ; MM: I think we just started manufacturing overseas and panties were not very labor intensive. But they began to manufacture them in the Caribbean and it was difficult to compete with that. On the other hand, sleepwear was being manufactured only in this country, and that we could compete with. 
 ; 
 ; GE: Were you a contractor or were you a manufacturer?
 ; 
 ; MM: We started out as contractors. We remained as contractors for a few years. 0 484 Sears, Cresty, Newberry, & ; JCPenny MM: We sold to many of the major chains. We sold to Sears, Kresge, Newberry, JCPenny, most of the major chains. And we also sold to many of the department stores around the country through buying offices. Our product was a low-end product. 
 ; 
 ; GE: What was the label? What was the brand?
 ; 
 ; MM: Well the label was Ardru Undergarments. A-R-D-R-U. That came from, my son was Andrew and my nephew was Sheppard. We took the last part of both of their names and made it Ardru. That was the name we sold uner.
 ; 
 ; GE: Was it exclusively under that name?
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 ; MM: The name of the company itself was Millcrest [Manufacturing].
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 ; GE: But the product, the brand was Ardru. Did you also do private labeling? Did you do store brands or everything was under Ardru?
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 ; MM: Everything was under Ardru. 0 740 Relationship to Unions GE: You said it was never unionized?
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 ; MM: For forty years they tried to unionize us, and they were never able to. 
 ; 
 ; GE: Why?
 ; 
 ; MM: We provided wages that were as good or better than union wages. We provided all the same benefits, and in some cases even better. We had complete healthcare. All of our employees were registered with Blue Cross/ Blue Shield. And they paid nothing toward that. We also had something that appealed to people. We did not have seniority. In the union shop, if you were a collar sewer, and they ran out of collars, you were sent home. In our shop, if you were a collar sewer, and we ran out of collars, we had you sewing sleeves. So we never sent anybody home and that appealed to many people. 0 855 Problems Between Partners GE: And how would you say the relationships were between you as the owner and the managers and the people working there?
 ; 
 ; MM: I think everything was really good. The only one I didn’t get along with was my brother-in-law. I ran the sewing. My brother-in-law took care primarily of the cutting of the fabric and the pattern making.
 ; 
 ; GE: So he took care of the first part?
 ; 
 ; MM: And then I did the sewing. 
 ; 
 ; GE: What were the difficulties?
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 ; MM: He was not an honest man. Had a sense of cheating. He was Syrian. He had this Arab mentality. He lied. He lied quite a bit. He misinformed. I didn’t particularly like him, and he didn’t particularly like me. 0 1102 1979-1989: Millcrest Contracting GE: Who was it that you became contractors for? Like were they ones in the area here?
 ; 
 ; MM: No, they were in New York. Our biggest was Katz up in Pennsylvania, and they were big manufacturers. They owned the factory in Coatesville that we bought from. We did a great deal of contracting for them.
 ; 
 ; GE: At this point did you still have both factories for them?
 ; 
 ; MM: No, we closed the Coatesville factory ; we had both of them up until right before I retired. That was one of the things I did every week or twice a week. I drove down to Coatsville and took care of things there. We closed that a few years before I retired. Also the other thing was that my two nephews, my brother-in-laws’ sons, came into the business and for a while one of the sons was managing the plant and living in Coatesville. The other one was working here with us. 0 1280 The Workforce MM: The largest part of the workforce were the Hungarian women. The Hungarians were native to Bethlehem. Then there was the Hungarian revolution where the Russians invaded Hungary, and a lot of Hungarians got out because they had family and friends in Bethlehem so they came to Bethlehem. A lot of them came to work for us. 
 ; 
 ; GE: Was it primarily women?
 ; 
 ; MM: Yes.
 ; 
 ; JM: There was a name.
 ; 
 ; SC: Windish.
 ; 
 ; JM: Yes.
 ; 
 ; GE: Was that the community?
 ; 
 ; SC: Yeah they came from Slovenia.
 ; 
 ; MM: The majority were Catholic. 0 1407 The End of Millcrest Contracting GE: Tell us about the ending of the business.
 ; 
 ; MM: The business had declined, I was 66 years old, and I’d decided that I had enough. I told my brother-in-law that I wanted out. One of the things we had done at that time was we had sold the building so I was no longer involved in that, just the business. I told him I wanted out, and he wanted to stay in the business because his sons were in it. So he bought me out at a fair price. 
 ; 
 ; GE: How long did his business continue?
 ; 
 ; MM: Well he stayed in business I think 3 or 4 years after that. The building was sold, and he at that point had to move out. He opened another factory, and he was there for about 3 years. And then he stopped as well. 0 1487 Mort's Employees Win the Lottery MM: An interesting thing, one day one of the women working there said I’m going out to buy lottery tickets, anyone want to contribute? Thirty-five women gave her a dollar a piece, and my nephew gave her a dollar. They won two million dollars. I think everyone who was in the pool got something like $65,000. Those days that was a fair amount of money. When they closed the business, the Morning Call ran an article about how they won the lottery and a year later they were closing. 0 1567 Impact of the Industry on Women GE: At this point, this was a very prominent industry in the area from around the 1930s to 1980 or so. How do you think the area has been affected by its life?
 ; 
 ; MM: Not that much in a sense that most of the work was through the women. There were very few men so the husbands were not really affected. I guess, the women who wanted to work were able to get jobs. One of the things about the industry was there was always a shortage of sewing machine operators. The other thing was that almost from the very beginning, coming back to the 1900s, the women who worked in sewing were primarily immigrants. By the time I got ready to retire and the industry started to close up here, the children were now second or third generation. They were going to school, going to college, they were able to do other things. And so that was dwindling as well. 0 1689 Judy Miller's "Hole in the Wall" Outlet Store SC: But, did you ever work with the business at all?
 ; 
 ; JM: Yes. When did I start that? I think Nancy was in high school. So in the 70s. And I had an outlet store, and it was called The Hole in the Wall. And it was a hole in the wall. 
 ; 
 ; SC: In the factory building?
 ; 
 ; JM: At the factory building, on the ground floor. It was a true outlet. I sold ribbons and lace and all leftover rolls from the lingerie business. I had ends of piece goods, rolls of piece goods. I froze in that building because it wasn’t heated. I had a space heater. I did have a telephone. I didn’t make a lot of money, and I was open only two days a week. I had a lot of customers. 0 1941 Volunteering in the Jewish Community SC: We didn’t talk about volunteering in the Jewish community. Did you do that?
 ; 
 ; JM: The blood bank was with the Jewish Community Center. I did flowers with Ida Kinberg at the synagogue for Oneg Shabbat. She was our across the street neighbor, and she did that, and I always helped her cut and do flowers. I did Hadassah. I can’t remember. . . . what you have done for me is... wow.
 ; 
 ; SC: It’s wonderful, isn’t it? To think of everything. 
 ; 
 ; JM: Yes. 0 1998 Judy's Values and Creative Inspirations SC: Okay, the two filmy questions that I always ask, “What do you value most?
 ; 
 ; JM: That I’ve been so lucky, and I’ve had a good life. I really do. I’m getting teary. I don’t usually cry easily.
 ; 
 ; SC: You’ll make us teary, too. The other is, what has made you feel the most artistic or creative?
 ; 
 ; JM: I guess flowers. I did have more of a garden before we moved here. We never talked about that at our house.
 ; 
 ; SC: Oh, tell us about your house. 0 2198 Donation to Cedar Crest College SC: So he has the mechanical skills, and you have the decorating?
 ; 
 ; JM: Well, he’s wiring. We had all kinds of wiring because we had HiFi. We had CDs. And Mort didn’t tell you, but we had 350 LPs that we gave to Cedar Crest College. 
 ; 
 ; SC: Oh, that’s nice.
 ; 
 ; JM: I wish we would’ve kept some vinyls.
 ; 
 ; SC: So you turned vinyls into CDs?
 ; 
 ; JM: Yes. First, they were cassettes. 0 MovingImage Mort Miller talks about growing up around his father’s contract sewing business. Later, Mort partnered with his brother-in-law to open their own contract sewing factory. Originally they made women’s underwear, later they switched to making women’s lingerie, which wasn’t as price competitive.
 ; 
 ; Interview with Mort and Judy Miller, June 25, 2014 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is June 25, 2014. Interview with Mort Miller, tape number 2. GAIL EISENBERG: Mort was just sharing with us a little bit about his college experience. Tell us again about your experience. MORT MILLER: When I graduated from Allen High, I applied to four schools: Columbia, NYU, Penn, and Lehigh. I got into Columbia, NYU and Penn. I did not get into Lehigh because Lehigh in those days had a 2% quota. For every hundred students they took in, two were Jewish. I had an interview and they had my records 9th through 12th grade, and it listed the Hebrew Institute of Boro Park. The man who was interviewing me said, 'Hebrew Institute of Boro Park, what kind of school is that?' And I figured that's it I'm not getting in. And I didn't. I got into two Ivy League schools but did not get in there. GE: And then if you could just recap for us, since we talked about it off tape, what you did as far as your educational career. MM: I started out as an accounting major. I was still an accounting major when I was drafted in the middle of my sophomore year. When I came back after the war, I stopped being an accounting major and became just a general economics major. I took liberal arts classes whenever I could. JUDY MILLER: How about the fraternity? GE: If you'd like to share with us that's fine. MM: I had belonged to two fraternities which is something no one did. The way that happened was the fraternity that I was in originally was suspended during the war, and when I came back they were closed. Then my best friend, who belonged to Kappa Nu, said 'come on join us.' So I went there and spent the rest of my time in Kappa Nu. So I was actually in two fraternities. GE: And tell us briefly about the war experience that you had just shared with us. MM: I was drafted in March of 1943 ; I had my basic training at Miami Beach. I was then sent to Finance School at Wake Forest College. I was then sent back to Saint Petersburg, Florida. Then I was sent overseas to a little town called Sudbury, which was north of London. I was there for almost two years then I came back to this country. The group that I was with, the war was over, but we were still fighting in Japan. My group was scheduled to be sent to the pacific. They gave us a thirty day leave and we came home. While I was on that thirty day leave, they dropped the atomic bomb and the war was over and three months later I was out of the army. I was in the Eighth Air Force in England. GE: So now, tell us about the business. So as you said, it was first started by your father and his brother, it sounds like. MM: It was started by my father. He then brought his brother from Poland to this country, and took him into the business immediately, and made him a partner. They remained together until 1943 or '44 and then they split up. GE: By that time did the two of them pretty much retire? MM: No. My uncle remained in business. My father did retire in 1945 but then he went back into business in 1947. GE: And now if you want to share with us about you and your brother-in-law. MM: Yes. We were both working for my father, and my father then merged his business with a cousin in New York. And part of the agreement was when they merged the businesses, that there would be no children in the business. So my brother-in-law and I left, and we started our own business. Subsequently, three of the partners' children wound up in business. Even though that was the initial condition. But we remained in the building we started in. A few of the people who came to work with us were people that had worked for my father. One of them in particular who worked for my father for many many years, she [Mary] became our floor lady. She was a great floor lady. GE: Tell us about what products. MM: We started out originally manufacturing panties and then we switched to ladies sleepwear. GE: Why did you make that switch? MM: I think we just started manufacturing overseas and panties were not very labor intensive. But they began to manufacture them in the Caribbean and it was difficult to compete with that. On the other hand, sleepwear was being manufactured only in this country, and that we could compete with. GE: Were you a contractor or were you a manufacturer? MM: We started out as contractors. We remained as contractors for a few years. We had a gentleman who sold for us in New York. He was an older man. He retired. So we took on a new salesperson. We had a New York office on Madison Avenue. And he took over the office and then asked to become a partner, which we accepted. He ran the sales out of New York. And so the manufacturing began. GE: So you were their exclusive supplier? MM: It was our business. We manufactured ladies sleepwear. We sold to many of the major chains. We sold to Sears, Kresge, Newberry, JCPenny, most of the major chains. And we also sold to many of the department stores around the country through buying offices. Our product was a low-end product. GE: What was the label? What was the brand? MM: Well the label was Ardru Undergarments. A-R-D-R-U. That came from, my son was Andrew and my nephew was Sheppard. We took the last part of both of their names and made it Ardru. That was the name we sold uner. GE: Was it exclusively under that name? MM: The name of the company itself was Millcrest [Manufacturing]. GE: But the product, the brand was Ardru. Did you also do private labeling? Did you do store brands or everything was under Ardru? MM: Everything was under Ardru. You know there was one store brand, it was Sears. I think Sears, JCPenny was its own name, Kresge was its own name. GE: So the ones that were its own name, you used the store name. Any difference in those products? Between Ardru and Penny or Ardru and Sears? MM: Sears we only made them one star. Just that same one year in and year out. Made of the same material, exactly the same garment. Huge, extra large. But yes they were different than we sold to other people. GE: So there, in these cases, the store specified. MM: In cases of major chains. For other stores, it was ours. To be honest, they were knockoffs of more expensive garments. GE: How was the relationship between your end, the operations end, and the sales end? Were there any conflicts? MM: No, we worked well together. GE: What was your brother-in-laws' name? MM: Charles Dweck. D-W-E-C-K JD: He's a Syrian Jew from Brooklyn. GE: So the two of you started in the business together in 1947? MM: '48. GE: Can you just give us a sense of how things went through the fifties, sixties? MM: Everything went well, it was smooth. At our peak, we put in Bethlehem about 125 people. We also put another factory in Coatesville. GE: Coatsville is where? MM: Coatesville is northwest of Philadelphia. 50 miles. Primarily west. GE: So more like Reading? MM: No, it's south of here and slightly west. SC: Close to Lancaster. MM: Yeah. We had almost about 175 people working there. GE: You said it was never unionized? MM: For forty years they tried to unionize us, and they were never able to. GE: Why? MM: We provided wages that were as good or better than union wages. We provided all the same benefits, and in some cases even better. We had complete healthcare. All of our employees were registered with Blue Cross/ Blue Shield. And they paid nothing toward that. We also had something that appealed to people. We did not have seniority. In the union shop, if you were a collar sewer, and they ran out of collars, you were sent home. In our shop, if you were a collar sewer, and we ran out of collars, we had you sewing sleeves. So we never sent anybody home and that appealed to many people. One of my operators, she and two sisters and a nephew and a niece worked for us. Her husband was the president of the Bethlehem Steel Union. And I used to say to her, Margaret, how does your husband feel about you working in a non-union shop. She said, Mort, we've talked about it, and he said, "Margaret, you like the people, you like the shop, they give you everything you would get at a union shop, stay there." So here I had this woman whose husband was the president of the Bethlehem Steel Union. GE: And how would you say the relationships were between you as the owner and the managers and the people working there? MM: I think everything was really good. The only one I didn't get along with was my brother-in-law. I ran the sewing. My brother-in-law took care primarily of the cutting of the fabric and the pattern making. GE: So he took care of the first part? MM: And then I did the sewing. GE: What were the difficulties? MM: He was not an honest man. Had a sense of cheating. He was Syrian. He had this Arab mentality. He lied. He lied quite a bit. He misinformed. I didn't particularly like him, and he didn't particularly like me. GE: How long did you two stay in business together? MM: We stayed in business for 40 years. I retired first. And the reason I retired was that offshore manufacturing had become big, and the business was going down. The man we had selling at the New York office, was 10 years older than I was. And he retired. And we closed the sales office and had no one to run the sales office. GE: When was that about? MM: That was the 1980s. GE: How old do you think he was when he retired? MM: My partner [New York]? He was exactly 65. GE: When were you born? MM: 1924. So he was born 1914. GE: So '79 he retired. MM: And we went for the next 10 years, until I retired, we were contractors. Except Sears. GE: Okay Sears was the one client you were able to keep. This is still pajamas? MM: Once we started contracting, we manufactured other things like blouses, t-shirts, almost anything. GE: And your women had the skills? MM: Yeah. GE: So the one customer you still managed was Sears but you became a contractor for others. Who was it that you became contractors for? Like were they ones in the area here? MM: No, they were in New York. Our biggest was Katz up in Pennsylvania, and they were big manufacturers. They owned the factory in Coatesville that we bought from. We did a great deal of contracting for them. GE: At this point did you still have both factories for them? MM: No, we closed the Coatesville factory ; we had both of them up until right before I retired. That was one of the things I did every week or twice a week. I drove down to Coatsville and took care of things there. We closed that a few years before I retired. Also the other thing was that my two nephews, my brother-in-laws' sons, came into the business and for a while one of the sons was managing the plant and living in Coatesville. The other one was working here with us. GE: When did they come into the business? Like in the '70s? MM: Probably the early '80s, I would imagine. GE: So when would you say were the best times? MM: Best times I think were the early '50s probably to the early '80s. GE: Okay so during that whole time it was still thriving? MM: Yes. GE: And then in the 80s was when you saw steady decline. MM: Yes. JD: Tell them about the workforce. MM: The largest part of the workforce were the Hungarian women. The Hungarians were native to Bethlehem. Then there was the Hungarian revolution where the Russians invaded Hungary, and a lot of Hungarians got out because they had family and friends in Bethlehem so they came to Bethlehem. A lot of them came to work for us. GE: Was it primarily women? MM: Yes. JD: There was a name. SC: Windish. JD: Yes. GE: Was that the community? SC: Yeah they came from Slovenia. MM: The majority were Catholic. SC: There were Windish Catholics and Windish Lutherans in Bethlehem ; there were two groups. MM: They gradually were replaced by Puerto Ricans and there were some Portuguese. GE: Was there anything done to accommodate the women, since many of them were moms? Anything that was often needed to accommodate them and the families or children's schedules? MM: If they had to take time off, I would certainly allow that. JD: One woman worked until the day before she had her baby. Helen Donovan. MM: We didn't really do anything special but if they needed something, we worked with them. GE: Tell us about the ending of the business. MM: The business had declined, I was 66 years old, and I'd decided that I had enough. I told my brother-in-law that I wanted out. One of the things we had done at that time was we had sold the building so I was no longer involved in that, just the business. I told him I wanted out, and he wanted to stay in the business because his sons were in it. So he bought me out at a fair price. GE: How long did his business continue? MM: Well he stayed in business I think 3 or 4 years after that. The building was sold, and he at that point had to move out. He opened another factory, and he was there for about 3 years. And then he stopped as well. GE: How about his children? MM: His one son left earlier and had jobs, I think he was living primarily in Connecticut. And the one son stayed with him until the day that he closed the business. An interesting thing, one day one of the women working there said I'm going out to buy lottery tickets, anyone want to contribute? Thirty-five women gave her a dollar a piece, and my nephew gave her a dollar. They won two million dollars. I think everyone who was in the pool got something like $65,000. Those days that was a fair amount of money. When they closed the business, the Morning Call ran an article about how they won the lottery and a year later they were closing. GE: When the business closed, how many people were still working there? MM: I'm guessing about 75. GE: Okay, and then just a couple of other more broad questions. At this point, this was a very prominent industry in the area from around the 1930s to 1980 or so. How do you think the area has been affected by its life? MM: Not that much in a sense that most of the work was through the women. There were very few men so the husbands were not really affected. I guess, the women who wanted to work were able to get jobs. One of the things about the industry was there was always a shortage of sewing machine operators. The other thing was that almost from the very beginning, coming back to the 1900s, the women who worked in sewing were primarily immigrants. By the time I got ready to retire and the industry started to close up here, the children were now second or third generation. They were going to school, going to college, they were able to do other things. And so that was dwindling as well. GE: So it was becoming even more acute, the shortage of operators. MM: Yes. I think the fact that there were no longer these kinds of jobs didn't affect the women of the area very much because they didn't want to do that. GE: Thank you. Interview with Judy Miller, June 25, 2014 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: So you were talking about your volunteer work. But, did you ever work with the business at all? JUDY MILLER: Yes. When did I start that? I think Nancy was in high school. So in the 70s. And I had an outlet store, and it was called The Hole in the Wall. And it was a hole in the wall. SC: In the factory building? JM: At the factory building, on the ground floor. It was a true outlet. I sold ribbons and lace and all leftover rolls from the lingerie business. I had ends of piece goods, rolls of piece goods. I froze in that building because it wasn't heated. I had a space heater. I did have a telephone. I didn't make a lot of money, and I was open only two days a week. I had a lot of customers. People would come in-- oh, he forgot to tell you, Mort was a contractor for Christian Dior-- I sold some of their leftover things. That was when I met the woman who had said she rode our elevator in the factory because her friend's father owned the silk mill, when it was a silk mill. Anyhow, I sold whatever our leftovers were. And somehow, my brother-in-law always managed to-- shrink the patterns. SC: Oh, we've heard that before. JM: As a matter of fact, our scrap went to the Sheftels ; they were our neighbors. GAIL EISENBERG: Right, that was his business. SC: It's wonderful how everything connects. If I could just interrupt for a second. I can't tell you how many families have said, "What do you value most? Family and a community." JM: Well, we were a close-knit community. Okay, back to my business, people would come in for laces because they were making confirmation dresses and wedding gowns. I would sell it by the yard and measure it out. It was so basic. Oh that's the other thing, my father-in-law was the king of repossessing doors, and the doors were the tables. SC: About what year did you start the outlet? JM: This says '86, but I think I must have started earlier. GE: You said your daughter was born in 1956, and you said you did it when she was in high school. So that would be '72, '73. JM: Yeah. SC: And that was the heyday of outlets, too. JM: Yes. GE: How long do you think you ran that business? JM: From when I started until Mort retired. It wasn't that much of a business, but it put me on the payroll. At the time, my sister-in-law, Charles' wife, his sister Shirley, was working in the office. We did have an office. That's about it for the factory. SC: You said you did volunteering. We didn't talk about volunteering in the Jewish community. Did you do that? JM: The blood bank was with the Jewish Community Center. I did flowers with Ida Kinberg at the synagogue for Oneg Shabbat. She was our across the street neighbor, and she did that, and I always helped her cut and do flowers. I did Hadassah. I can't remember. . . . what you have done for me is... wow. SC: It's wonderful, isn't it? To think of everything. JM: Yes. SC: Okay, the two filmy questions that I always ask, "What do you value most? JM: That I've been so lucky, and I've had a good life. I really do. I'm getting teary. I don't usually cry easily. SC: You'll make us teary, too. The other is, what has made you feel the most artistic or creative? JM: I guess flowers. I did have more of a garden before we moved here. We never talked about that at our house. SC: Oh, tell us about your house JM: Well, we were married in 1952, Christmas. We lived in the Highland Street Apartments at 22nd and Highland and Livingston. Andy was born there. Then we bought a lot, and he said we are going to build a house. And I said wonderful, we are going to build a split level because when I was a home service representative, I loved the split levels. I always lived in apartments, and Mort always lived in two-story houses. So this was our, we made a mistake, that we should have bought a ranch house so we wouldn't be here [living in an apartment] because I decided that we would move before we needed to. We could still be in the house, we are both fine. GE: So where was your house? JM: Right around the corner from here. 3030 Tremont Street. On the corner of Marshal and Tremont St. GE: You moved there in '55? JM: No, '54. We built the house because I knew everything. I was a home economics major and it ended up that I had to redesign my kitchen too, but that was okay. SC: Because kitchens change so much. JM: No, it wasn't that. I was getting electric shocks from my refrigerator because where I had it was at right angles to the stove, I mean the sink, and when I did something, I think. I don't remember how long after we did it. SC: It's always nice to redo a kitchen. JM: Yeah, we are lucky. 46 years we had the house. SC: So he has the mechanical skills, and you have the decorating? JM: Well, he's wiring. We had all kinds of wiring because we had HiFi. We had CDs. And Mort didn't tell you, but we had 350 LPs that we gave to Cedar Crest College. SC: Oh, that's nice. JM: I wish we would've kept some vinyls. SC: So you turned vinyls into CDs? JM: Yes. First, they were cassettes. SC: This was beautiful - thank you so much. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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Mort and Judy Miller, June 25, 2014
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Mort Miller talks about growing up around his father’s contract sewing business. Later, Mort partnered with his brother-in-law to open their own contract sewing factory. Originally they made women’s underwear, later they switched to making women’s lingerie, which wasn’t as price competitive.
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LVTNT-14
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2014-05-25
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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cbd8291a3fef5f0a8a77c47788a9fadc
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
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Mort Miller
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-25.xml
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5.4 May 31, 2016 Mort Miller, May 31, 2016 LVTNT-25 19:42 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Mort Miller Judy Miller Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 MillerMort_20160531 1.0:|21(2)|40(3)|55(12)|80(7)|101(7)|124(9)|149(14)|166(16)|187(2)|210(4)|233(8)|260(8)|285(10)|304(9)|327(12)|348(15)|365(8)|378(10)|399(10)|412(7) 0 https://youtu.be/rLHvGqO_Ork YouTube video 0 Introduction—Mort Miller GE: So right now, it's recording.
 ; 
 ; SC: Yes, it's going on, yes. OK. OK. Today is May 31, 2016, and we'd like to start with and continue with what your full name is, where you were born and where you lived in your life.
 ; 
 ; MM: My name is Morton Jay Miller. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 12th, 1924. 0 38 Family History SC: And we'll go back now into your family history. As much as you know about your family history. Where did they come from? Where did they work, et cetera? 
 ; 
 ; MM: My father was an immigrant from Poland. He lived in a town called Kolno, which is 50 miles northwest of Warsaw. He arrived in this country in 1910. My mother was born in this country, in Brooklyn, and her father came to this country in eighteen eighty-five, I think. And her mother came about when my mother's mother, my grandmother came about the same time. I never saw my Polish grandmother. She died in Europe. My father, my grandfather — my maternal grandfather — did come to this country, and I did know him.
 ; 
 ; SC: Do you know where they specifically lived or and also what they did as far as work is concerned here? From the time they left Poland or what they were doing in Europe and then came to this country?
 ; 
 ; MM: My father, he came here in 1910, for a while lived with relatives in Mount Vernon, New York. And then he started a business shortly after he came here, manufacturing raincoats. And he did that until 1917 when he was drafted into the army for World War One. My mother was born in Brooklyn. She lived in Brooklyn until she, until she, moved actually to Allentown, which was in 1938. That's when our family moved from New York, from Brooklyn, to Allentown in 1938. 0 448 Education MM: I said I was born in Brooklyn in community of Boro Park, which was almost 100 percent Jewish community. Interesting community in the sense that it was. . . and to this day, it's the only community in the United States that was started by Jews, in the late eighteen 1800s, and to this day has never been anything but Jewish. Today it is ultra-orthodox, as a matter of fact. Anyway, I went to a Hebrew school, a yeshiva, started in kindergarten, went through ninth grade. When I was at that point, I was 14 years old. At that point, my parents moved to Allentown. My father had a business in Brooklyn, but in 1934 he moved it to Allentown, and he commuted for four years. His sister moved here with him, so he had a place to live. And in 1938, our family moved to Allentown. And I've been here ever since. I attended Allen high school. And I then went on to the University of Pennsylvania. And in my beginning of my sophomore year . . . the war had started my freshman year. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was drafted. I was in the Army for almost three years, came back and then finished school. And I graduated from Penn — University of Pennsylvania — in nineteen forty-seven. The Wharton School. 0 546 Success of Miller Underwear (Father's Business) SC: Yes. And so what- do you have any memories of your father's business when you were young?
 ; 
 ; MM: Not really, we were very little involved with his business. It was a very successful business. Even during the Depression, my family was financially, reasonably well off. We never suffered from the Depression at all. And I think it was a good-sized business that employed about two hundred and fifty people. This was in Brooklyn and then employed almost the same number when they moved here to Allentown. At that time, he was no longer manufacturing raincoats, he was manufacturing ladies sleepwear, and eventually when I graduated from college, I went into my father's business for two years. 0 661 Serving in the U.S. Air Force JM: I think you didn't tell them what you did in the Army.
 ; 
 ; MM: Would you want to know that? 
 ; 
 ; SC: Yes, that would be wonderful.
 ; 
 ; MM: Right. In the Army, I was in the Air Force. I was not a flier because I had gone to the Wharton School. I got into finance, and I spent two years overseas in England, which is the best possible thing. I was stationed, again, 50 miles from London. And there was a train that ran directly from the town that I was stationed in into London. And every month I got a four-day pass to London. I spent four days in London every month for two years. 0 752 Miller Underwear (cont'd) GE: You want to tell us a little bit about your father's business once in Allentown.
 ; 
 ; JM: Why did he come to Allentown, tell them that? 
 ; 
 ; GE: And also, once in Allentown, you and your brother-in-law went into your own business. Was that where he stayed with his son, with another son in business, or what was what? And what was the sequence of your father's business?
 ; 
 ; MM: OK, my father moved as best as I say here in nineteen thirty-four. There was a depression and things were difficult. And to be very honest, he moved here . . . he was unionized in New York, in Brooklyn, and he moved here to escape the union, which he did. A union did try to unionize them here in Allentown. They were never able to. He remained in business until nineteen forty-five, at which time he sold the business and retired. He then bought a building, good-sized building, in Bethlehem on Seneca Street. And after two years, in nineteen forty-seven, he decided that he was too young to be retired. And he went back into business and he then merged his business with a cousin who was- had a business in New York. And they manufactured not sleepwear like where they manufactured children's pajamas. And that's all right. And he remained in that business until nineteen forty-nine, I think, at which point he became ill, and he can no longer work. And he then sold his interest in the business. 0 964 Origins of the ARDRU Label MM: The name on the label, on the garments that we sold was ARDRU Undergarment – A-R-D-R-U. We got the name . . my nephew was Shepherd, we took the last three letters of his name, and our son was Andrew, we took the last two letters of his name and it became ARDRU undergarment and that was the label that was on our . . . 0 1061 Millcrest Manufacturing Company—Benefits of Nonunion Work MM: As I say, we started our business in 1949, and we were nonunion, and the union did try to unionize us, the ILG, and they tried for 40 years, and were not able to. And one of the interesting things was one of the women who worked for me, she and two of her sisters and a niece, all worked for me, and her husband, this woman's husband was the president of the Bethlehem Steel Union. And I said to her, I said, Margaret, your husband is the head of the Bethlehem Steel Union. How does he feel about all of you working in a non-union shop? And she said, Mort, we've talked about this. And my husband says to me, they're good people, you like them, they treat you well, they pay you the same wages and give you the same benefits as a union. You don't have to work in a union shop, stay where you are.
 ; 
 ; JM: Tell them why a union, I mean nonunion shop was good for the women?
 ; 
 ; MM: One of the advantages of working in our shop as opposed to . . . women had particular jobs in a union shop. If you were a collar setter, you set collars. If you were a cuff setter, you set cuffs, but you did nothing else except that. And if there wasn’t any work for collar setters, you were sent home. 0 MovingImage Mort Miller talks about growing up around his father’s contract sewing business. Later, Mort partnered with his brother-in-law to open their own contract sewing factory. Originally they made women’s underwear, later they switched to making women’s lingerie, which wasn’t as price competitive. Interview with Mort Miller, May 31, 2016 GAIL EISENBERG: So right now, it's recording. SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Yes, it's going on, yes. OK. OK. Today is May 31, 2016, and we'd like to start with and continue with what your full name is, where you were born and where you lived in your life. MORT MILLER: My name is Morton Jay Miller. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 12th, 1924. SC: And we'll go back now into your family history. As much as you know about your family history. Where did they come from? Where did they work, et cetera? MM: My father was an immigrant from Poland. He lived in a town called Kolno, which is 50 miles northwest of Warsaw. He arrived in this country in 1910. My mother was born in this country, in Brooklyn, and her father came to this country in eighteen eighty-five, I think. And her mother came about when my mother's mother, my grandmother came about the same time. I never saw my Polish grandmother. She died in Europe. My father, my grandfather -- my maternal grandfather -- did come to this country, and I did know him. SC: Do you know where they specifically lived or and also what they did as far as work is concerned here? From the time they left Poland or what they were doing in Europe and then came to this country? MM: My father, he came here in 1910, for a while lived with relatives in Mount Vernon, New York. And then he started a business shortly after he came here, manufacturing raincoats. And he did that until 1917 when he was drafted into the army for World War One. My mother was born in Brooklyn. She lived in Brooklyn until she, until she, moved actually to Allentown, which was in 1938. That's when our family moved from New York, from Brooklyn, to Allentown in 1938. SC: So and the other side of your family, do you know what the grandfathers did working? MM: Yeah, I'm not sure, my grandfather came from Odessa. And he came to this country when he was only 16 years old, I think, or 18 years old, and he found some sort of work selling plumbing materials. And he eventually went into business for himself, did rather well, and he acquired some real estate in New York, in the Lower East Side of New York. And that's basically how they supported themselves. I don't know anything about really about my maternal grandmother. I don't know exactly where she came from, in Europe, it was Russia, and I'm not really sure where. JUDY MILLER: Your mother's family was from Odessa? MM: Well, I don't know about that. MM: Well, maybe. SC: Thank you. MM: My father's family came from Kolno. JM: And what did they do there? MM: My father's family in Europe had a flour mill in the little town of Kolno. I would say the town was about 50 miles from Warsaw and it was two thirds of the town was Jewish. And unfortunately, it was only six miles from the German border, and when World War II started, within a few days, all the Jews in the city would be killed. None survived. I think my father did have family in this little town. They were all killed during the German occupation. SC: But he had already left. MM: He left in 1910. JM: His sister . . . [unintelligible] MM: He left after the war, that was World War I, but here they were killed in World War Two. SC: Yes. So so the family- the sister and brother were both okay. MM: Yes. But they had other family. He had a father, had three sisters, all who came to this country and one brother who came to this country and his father. JM: Tell the story that they went to Germany. The story that the grandmother was a smuggler. SC: Was a smuggler . . . oh MM: So they lived only six miles from the German border and they had this flour mill, and they used to send wagon loads of flour into Germany. And the wagon would go with flour and my grandmother, apparently would hide a few things in the wagon, which were then sold in Poland. And they would come back with things in Germany, and they would come back with things from Germany. SC: They could smuggle some people away from Germany. They didn't wouldn't have thought of that. MM: No, no, no, no, no. No need to smuggle. SC: Not then. JM: There's no need to . . . [unintelligible by Judy Miller] . . . She brought pearls and fabric . . . because fabric was really essential because no one was manufacturing them. MM: My father had a cousin in this little town who went to Germany and went to medical school in Germany. And my father used to often go to Germany and visit with him. And as a result, my father was reasonably fluent in German. SC: It's coming. I'm watching the red button. So let's go to your youth. Can you talk about what you did as a young boy, where you worked, if you worked anywhere through your entire life? But stop at when you got, you know, when you started working as an adult. MM: I said I was born in Brooklyn in community of Boro Park, which was almost 100 percent Jewish community. Interesting community in the sense that it was. . . and to this day, it's the only community in the United States that was started by Jews, in the late eighteen 1800s, and to this day has never been anything but Jewish. Today it is ultra-orthodox, as a matter of fact. Anyway, I went to a Hebrew school, a yeshiva, started in kindergarten, went through ninth grade. When I was at that point, I was 14 years old. At that point, my parents moved to Allentown. My father had a business in Brooklyn, but in 1934 he moved it to Allentown, and he commuted for four years. His sister moved here with him, so he had a place to live. And in 1938, our family moved to Allentown. And I've been here ever since. I attended Allen high school. And I then went on to the University of Pennsylvania. And in my beginning of my sophomore year . . . the war had started my freshman year. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was drafted. I was in the Army for almost three years, came back and then finished school. And I graduated from Penn -- University of Pennsylvania -- in nineteen forty-seven. The Wharton School. SC: Yes. And so what- do you have any memories of your father's business when you were young? MM: Not really, we were very little involved with his business. It was a very successful business. Even during the Depression, my family was financially, reasonably well off. We never suffered from the Depression at all. And I think it was a good-sized business that employed about two hundred and fifty people. This was in Brooklyn and then employed almost the same number when they moved here to Allentown. At that time, he was no longer manufacturing raincoats, he was manufacturing ladies sleepwear, and eventually when I graduated from college, I went into my father's business for two years. And then my brother-in-law and my sister had just gotten married. This was in nineteen forty-seven. In nineteen forty-nine, my brother-in-law and I started our own business. I remained in business until I was sixty-six years old. I retired in nineteen ninety. What's that? JM: What's the name of the name of the business? MM: It was Millcrest Manufacturing Company. SC: Would you spell that? MM: We also manufacture primarily sleepwear, and we sold to department stores and chain stores all over the country. It is Millcrest. All one word, M-I-L-L-C-R-E-S-T Manufacturing. SC: And that's where we have, we- Is there anything that you can think of? JM: We had a story. Yes, yes. Yes. I think you didn't tell them what you did in the Army. MM: Would you want to know that? SC: Yes, that would be wonderful. MM: Right. In the Army, I was in the Air Force. I was not a flier because I had gone to the Wharton School. I got into finance, and I spent two years overseas in England, which is the best possible thing. I was stationed, again, 50 miles from London. And there was a train that ran directly from the town that I was stationed in into London. And every month I got a four-day pass to London. I spent four days in London every month for two years. SC: Do you know the name of the town that you were in south of London? MM: Yes. It was not south of London. It was north of London, Sudbury, Sudbury and East Anglia. Another story, I was just talking with a friend a few days ago, we were only about 20 miles from Cambridge, and a friend and I, on a number of occasions, would go into Cambridge and spend time there and go through the various buildings at the university. We met a few people. We never really got friendly with anybody there. SC: That's a pretty area, East Anglia Base. MM: Yeah, I've been back to my air base three times. Security back there and my children have actually been back with us. GE: You want to tell us a little bit about your father's business once in Allentown. JM: Why did he come to Allentown, tell them that? GE: And also, once in Allentown, you and your brother-in-law went into your own business. Was that where he stayed with his son, with another son in business, or what was what? And what was the sequence of your father's business? MM: OK, my father moved as best as I say here in nineteen thirty-four. There was a depression and things were difficult. And to be very honest, he moved here . . . he was unionized in New York, in Brooklyn, and he moved here to escape the union, which he did. A union did try to unionize them here in Allentown. They were never able to. He remained in business until nineteen forty-five, at which time he sold the business and retired. He then bought a building, good-sized building, in Bethlehem on Seneca Street. And after two years, in nineteen forty-seven, he decided that he was too young to be retired. And he went back into business and he then merged his business with a cousin who was- had a business in New York. And they manufactured not sleepwear like where they manufactured children's pajamas. And that's all right. And he remained in that business until nineteen forty-nine, I think, at which point he became ill, and he can no longer work. And he then sold his interest in the business. And move to El Paso, Texas, as a matter of fact. The reason for that being that he had developed a terrible skin condition -- terrible, he had broken out all over his entire body. They could not do anything to cure Father. He went to a doctor in New York and the doctor said, Mr. Miller, there's only one thing that's going to cure you. You have to move to El Paso, Texas. My father said, are you crazy? And he said, that's the only thing that's going to cure you. In fact, he was so desperate, he moved to El Paso, stayed there for two or three years, and it did cure him. And he came back and it never came back after that. SC: Is there a reason why El Paso. . . MM: Yes, it has a very dry because it's a very dry state. Yeah. Yeah. It's warm most of the time and very, very dry and sunny. [some conversation about Phoenix--hard to hear and not relevant] GE: What was the name of your father's. . . MM: Actually, it was Miller Underwear, and he also had the trade name of Millcrest, which at that point he had stopped using, and my brother-in-law then took that as the name for our business. SC: Do you have any other questions about the business? JM: [hard to understand . . . talk about the name of the label] MM: The name on the label, on the garments that we sold was ARDRU Undergarment -- A-R-D-R-U. We got the name . . my nephew was Shepherd, we took the last three letters of his name, and our son was Andrew, we took the last two letters of his name and it became ARDRU undergarment and that was the label that was on our . . . [chatter by everyone . . . hard to understand] MM: It was Stanley's father, who combined his business with my father's business. They had a factory in New York that they wanted to get out of that also. And they moved here. A distant cousin. [chatter by everyone, unimportant, and hard to understand] SC: OK, so you were talking about that Harry gave them donuts. Could you talk about the union and say, you know. MM: As I say, we started our business in 1949, and we were nonunion, and the union did try to unionize us, the ILG, and they tried for 40 years, and were not able to. And one of the interesting things was one of the women who worked for me, she and two of her sisters and a niece, all worked for me, and her husband, this woman's husband was the president of the Bethlehem Steel Union. And I said to her, I said, Margaret, your husband is the head of the Bethlehem Steel Union. How does he feel about all of you working in a non-union shop? And she said, Mort, we've talked about this. And my husband says to me, they're good people, you like them, they treat you well, they pay you the same wages and give you the same benefits as a union. You don't have to work in a union shop, stay where you are. JM: Tell them why a union, I mean nonunion shop was good for the women? MM: One of the advantages of working in our shop as opposed to . . . women had particular jobs in a union shop. If you were a collar setter, you set collars. If you were a cuff setter, you set cuffs, but you did nothing else except that. And if there wasn't any work for collar setters, you were sent home. We didn't do that. If you, if you were a collar setter, and we had no collars, you could do something else. So our people were never sent home. They were never unemployed. And that was really an advantage. And also, they didn't have to pay dues to the, to the union, which was. . . JM: You want to hear that? Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:19:42
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Mort Miller, May 31, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
Mort Miller talks about growing up around his father’s contract sewing business. Later, Mort partnered with his brother-in-law to open their own contract sewing factory. Originally they made women’s underwear, later they switched to making women’s lingerie, which wasn’t as price competitive.
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LVTNT-25
Date
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2016-05-31
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.
-
https://textile.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/600c21ee3c2957dcd2139aa0f958bb4e.png
be954921574ef1ae663af9664b822c7f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Murray Platt
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-17.xml
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5.4 July 26, 2012 Murray Platt, July 26, 2012 LVTNT-17 55:10 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Murray Platt Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 PlattMurray_20120726 1.0:|23(7)|48(4)|81(2)|116(11)|143(11)|170(3)|193(7)|222(6)|251(5)|272(8)|301(4)|326(5)|345(10)|372(8)|397(2)|418(13)|443(14)|474(3)|495(13)|514(11)|535(8)|558(4)|579(5)|604(7)|627(16)|654(15)|677(12)|700(10)|727(9)|748(8)|775(6)|800(5)|813(15)|838(6)|859(7)|882(18)|901(5)|926(19)|957(5)|982(5)|1005(5)|1030(5)|1063(6)|1104(5)|1133(7)|1158(4)|1189(4)|1214(4)|1239(15)|1264(11)|1279(10)|1302(3)|1325(9)|1348(6)|1375(9)|1376(2) 0 https://youtu.be/OcDadcjftl4 YouTube video 0 Introduction—Murray Platt SC: Mr. Platt, would you tell your full name, birthday and where you were born?
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 ; MP: Murray Platt, born in Brooklyn, New York, 1925.
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 ; SC: What was the address in Brooklyn? Do you remember?
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 ; MP: I know we moved pretty often. In those days, rents were very cheap, but most people had no money. They’d give you like three months free rent. What happens is that you lived in a place for a couple months, the first months were free. Then in a couple months you had to pay the rent and until they came to kick you out, you found another place. 0 54 Family History SC: Can you talk a little big now about your family background? As far back as you know - your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and what their names were and where they lived?
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 ; MP: Only my maternal grandfather, his name was Isadore Platt. He came here as a young man. I never knew anything about great grandparents.
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 ; GE: Wait, your maternal grandfather?
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 ; MP: My mother’s father.
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 ; GE: His name wouldn’t have been Platt.
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 ; MP: It’s always confusing because my mother remarried. My biological father died when I was real young. My mother remarried an Isadore Platt, not my grandfather, but cousin with the same name and I assumed his name. My birth name was not Platt.
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 ; SC: What was it?
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 ; MP: Tuller. T-u-l-l-e-r. 0 394 Lehigh Valley Shirt Manufacturing SC: [Y]our step-father, what did he do? 
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 ; MP: He was part of the business.
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 ; GE: What did he do?
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 ; MP: He was in the apparel business.
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 ; SC: So that was in Brooklyn?
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 ; MP: They started in New York. It was he and two partners.
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 ; GE: And what were they doing there? Were they tailors?
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 ; MP: They had a factory. And then the union came along and they were chased out over here. 
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 ; SC: That’s a typical story.
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 ; MP: After years here, the union came here. Local businesses went out and most went down south.
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 ; SC: What part of the garment industry did they produce for?
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 ; MP: The name of the firm was Lehigh Valley Shirt Manufacturing Company. 0 837 Religious Practices as a Youth GE: When your mother and stepfather married in 1936, from what you remember, was he working here and coming home on the weekends?
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 ; MP: Yes. As a matter of fact I remember going to the subway station and helping him carry his bags. He made me do the Haftorah every Saturday morning. I could do any Haftarah.
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 ; GE: He made you do the Haftarah.
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 ; MP: He was very religious and we followed suit.
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 ; SC: Were you as religious before that?
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 ; MP: Not really. I was Bar Mitzvahed after he married my mother. As a matter of fact, I laid Tifillin until I went into the army. 0 897 The War Years—Education, Work Experiences, & ; Army Service SC: What year did you go into the army?
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 ; MP: 1945.
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 ; GE: You went into the army in 1945?
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 ; SC: So you would have been 20.
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 ; MP: During the second half of the war and then afterwards, in peacetime.
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 ; SC: Where were you deployed after you went into the army? Were you in Germany?
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 ; MP: No, stateside.
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 ; SC: Stateside the whole time. I know some people did go over and went to Japan or after the war went to Germany during the times of refugees.
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 ; MP: I had majored in chemistry when I went to City College and I kept getting deferred from being drafted until I graduated. Once I graduated, then they inducted me into the army. After basic training they sent me to Randolph Field in Texas to work in a laboratory. So I never saw real action. 0 1118 Murray Platt's Parents GE: Do you have any memory of your father?
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 ; MP No, I was five when he died.
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 ; GE: What did he die from?
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 ; MP: He was a house painter. No one really remembers if it was his heart or was it lead poisoning. In those days they used lead. I remember an uncle was also a house painter, it was one of his brothers, telling him, “Abie, wash your hands!” My father’s name was Abraham. He never washed his hands, most of them didn’t. He didn’t die here…..he went to Poland – to Warsaw – to see his parents, and he died there. 0 1281 Childhood in Brooklyn GE: During this time when it was you and your mom, I know the Depression was going on, what was life like? Were you very poor?
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 ; MP: If we were poor, we didn’t know it - we had nothing to compare it to.
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 ; GE: Did you rent? Did you live in an apartment?
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 ; MP: Oh yes, $45.00 a month rent and the first two months were free!
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 ; SC: Do you have any memories of what you did in New York playing games? What the children did?
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 ; MP: I remember playing handball against the wall with some other kids. There was a store right around the corner and the wall was brick – we played handball there. The guy would come out and yell at us. Years later, we bought a home in Brooklyn, this was before we came here, an end of the row. Then the other kids came and played handball against our wall. 0 1410 Stepfather's Family and Businesses GE: Murray, you were an only child weren’t you?
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 ; MP: My stepfather had a daughter, Phyllis Steinberg. Does the name ring a bell?
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 ; GE: Well, Judge Steinberg?
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 ; MP: That’s her son.
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 ; GE: So his mother was your step-sister.
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 ; MP: Well, I didn’t refer to her as a step-sister, we were very close.
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 ; GE: Isn’t that nice. When your mother married Platt, you were 11, how old was she?
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 ; MP: She was ten years older than me.
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 ; GE: Was she already married?
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 ; MP: She got married the same year. She got married in July, my mother got married to my step-father in November.
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 ; GE: So you always had a close relationship with her. 0 1626 Murray Platt's Role in the Family Business SC: Going back then to when you were part of the business, what did you do when you first became part of your step-father’s business? 
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 ; MP: Our partners, while my father was the general factory man, one of the other partners was a mechanic and the third partner took care of the cutting and went to New York to collect money for payroll. In those days you had to wait for it to come by mail. [unintelligible] It was a pretty big payroll, don’t forget there was pretty many people working. When we came into the business, I took over my father’s job of being on the floor, as they say, in production. The mechanic’s son took over the mechanics and the other son took over the cutting – he was in charge of the cutting room. 0 1737 Jewish Involvement in the Textile and Needle-Trade Industries GE: Was it hard, as a Jewish person, to get a job as a chemist?
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 ; MP: Yes. As a chemist, in a bank . . . a lot of places. The going salary was $35.00 per week. 
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 ; GE: There were a few things - One, it was hard to get a good job as a Jewish person and secondly, it was not that lucrative. It was perhaps more lucrative to go into business.
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 ; SC: We’ve asked people, “ Why do you think in this region, there was so many Jewish textile or garment industry people.” Do you think there is an answer to that?
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 ; MP: No, except that the Jews gravitated towards this business. It was easy to get into. It didn’t require much capital so you didn’t have to go borrow money. You set up your own factory and in those days there was a big demand. 0 1804 Murray Platt's Business Partners and Contacts GE: Who actually was the salesperson or the liaison person with the manufacturers? 
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 ; MP: Samuel Simon. He was the one who would go to New York every week to collect money for payroll.
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 ; GE: That’s also the guy you said was the cutting.
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 ; MP: Right. 
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 ; GE: Was he, let’s say for instance, was he also the one when a contract would run out – he was the one who would negotiate the contract?
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 ; MP: We didn’t have any formal contracts – nothing was in writing. You just did the work for them and you hoped they would send you more fabric and it was an on-going deal. 0 2071 The Decline of Lehigh Valley Shirts Manufacturing Company MP: I retired in 1987. I turned the business over to a young man who had been working for me.
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 ; SC: So you gave him an opportunity?
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 ; MP: He was the son of the foreman when the factory came to Allentown.
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 ; SC: What was his name – the foreman?
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 ; MP: Sam Lutz. He wasn’t Jewish.
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 ; SC: He was Pennsylvania Dutch probably.
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 ; GE: Did the business survive for a while longer?
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 ; MP: For a while, but this guy didn’t pay much attention to the business. People, customers, would call, they’d want you, they didn’t want an office person and he wasn’t there. So he lasted a few years, every week it was less and then he just left. 0 2166 More on the Family Business SC: Did the ethnicity of the workers change between the late ‘40’s until 1987? Did they come from different family backgrounds?
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 ; MP: Towards the end we had more Latino people - as they came along - moving into town.
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 ; SC: Because this was a good entry work job.
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 ; MP: At the beginning, it was always Pennsylvania Dutch, Czechoslovokian people, Irish people, but the last few years things were changed.
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 ; SC: As far as where the factory was…did it stay on Franklin Street the whole time?
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 ; MP: Yes.
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 ; SC: Franklin is between 14th and 15th?
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 ; GE: No, 13th and 14th.
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 ; MP: No, it was between 14th and 15th. 0 2403 Involvement in the Jewish and Allentown Communities GE: Tell us what was the community like? What did you and Dot think when you came here? The Jewish community . . . and when did you start having children?
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 ; MP: We went to the JCC as soon as we got here. In those days it was still at 6th Street.
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 ; GE: 6th and Chew I think it was.
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 ; MP: This building wasn’t built until 1958 or 59.
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 ; SC: How about the community in general? What did you think about the community? Was it friendly?
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 ; MP: Hess’s was great. That was a focal point. 
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 ; SC: I haven’t interviewed anyone that hasn't talked about it.
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 ; MP: You mention Allentown and Hess’s and people say, “oh yes, I know Hess’s”
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 ; GE: And the whole downtown was great.
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 ; MP: There was no Sunday shopping, and it was only open Monday and Thursday evenings. My wife, when she was pregnant, a month or so afterwards she went there and they said, “what did you have, a boy or a girl?” They was a very homey atmosphere. 0 2527 Murray Platt's Children GE: When did you start having children?
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 ; MP: Our oldest daughter was born in New York and Dennis, the middle son was born here – right after we moved here.
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 ; GE: So your oldest child was born in what year?
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 ; MP: 1949.
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 ; GE: So your oldest is about 62-63 years old.
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 ; MP: Right.
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 ; GE: And then your second child?
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 ; MP: Dennis – he was born here.
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 ; GE: That was nineteen . . .?
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 ; MP: 54.
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 ; GE: 1954. The first two, those were boys?
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 ; MP: No, the first one was a girl.
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 ; GE: What was her name?
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 ; MP: Arlene, and she never married. 0 2715 Relationship with Buyers SC: [A]s far as the business is concerned, are there any memories you have – really vivid memories you have of some times in the business – either highs or lows when you were in the business?
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 ; MP: Except that we took the various customer’s agents out to lunch.
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 ; GE: Oh, so the customer’s agents – did they often come to your . . .?
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 ; MP: Yeah, they come once or twice a week.
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 ; GE: Was that more just to pick up and drop off?
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 ; MP: Just to see how things were going - how their products were being manufactured. To make sure everything is right and to go to lunch.
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 ; GE: The manufacturer’s agent – were they employees of the manufacturer?
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 ; MP: Yes.
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 ; GE: Oh, they were actually employees. I wasn’t sure if they were employees or if they kind of had their own business. 0 2776 Unions SC: Were you unionized?
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 ; MP: Yes.
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 ; SC: Which union?
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 ; MP: Amalgamated Textile Workers. There were two apparel unions - one was the International Ladies Garment Workers and the other was Amalgamated. Since we had made men’s wear to start with, it was Amalgamated. Then in later years, we didn’t make any more shirts, but the other union didn’t bother us.
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 ; SC: Were you a member of the manufacturer’s associations?
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 ; MP: Probably.
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 ; GE: Like Arnold Delin? Does that sound familiar?
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 ; MP: Delin was the other union.
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 ; SC: Right he was the IGLU – I hope I said it right. There were two manufacturer’s associations in the region. 0 2847 Business Procedures and Products GE: Did you ever become very automated?
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 ; MP: No.
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 ; GE: So yours always stayed pretty basic.
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 ; MP: Right. Tama did and that’s why they lasted longer than everyone else. They just closed two or three years ago. Now I understand all the off-shore plants are automated. [unintelligible] with computers.
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 ; GE: Right - I guess that’s really primarily in terms of the business. You said that your product changed - let’s say you did shirts and blouses, is that what you did the whole time?
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 ; MP: Yes.
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 ; SC: Is there a reason why you stopped doing shirts?
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 ; MP: Well, because it became too competitive. Shirts were the first ones to go down south. Blouses, it was more specialty, dresses also the same thing. 0 3099 Dottie Platt's Family History DP: When you are an immigrant, you come here with empty pockets and your children – they don’t have anything. You have to realize this, now come in, and I’ll show you my blouses. Then I married Murray because he graduated college at 19, and I thought he was older than that, and he thought I was younger than I am because my mother was looking for the fountain of youth. She lost her hair at as a young girl. There’s a name for this illness.
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 ; MP: Alopecia. 
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 ; GE: Oh.
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 ; DP: Some people in our area, now, the doctor’s wife, I want to say, don't have hair. Do you know Dr. Silverman?
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 ; MP: Diane.
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 ; GE: Oh yes. 
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 ; DP: So, my mother had that illness.
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 ; MP: To make a long story short, my wife worked in the factory – in the office for several years. 0 MovingImage Murray Platt talks about how his father’s family began in New York making women’s shirts, failed due to the unions, and then came in the late 1930s to the Lehigh Valley. Murray’s father, with two partners, established Lehigh Valley Shirt Manufacturing Company. They were contractors for manufacturers in New York and in Philadelphia. They cut, sewed and finished the products. The business continued by the sons of these three original partners. An Interview with Murray Platt, July 26, 2012 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Mr. Platt, would you tell your full name, birthday and where you were born? MURRAY PLATT: Murray Platt, born in Brooklyn, New York, 1925. SC: What was the address in Brooklyn? Do you remember? MP: I know we moved pretty often. In those days, rents were very cheap, but most people had no money. They'd give you like three months free rent. What happens is that you lived in a place for a couple months, the first months were free. Then in a couple months you had to pay the rent and until they came to kick you out, you found another place. SC: Can you talk a little big now about your family background? As far back as you know - your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and what their names were and where they lived? MP: Only my maternal grandfather, his name was Isadore Platt. He came here as a young man. I never knew anything about great grandparents. GAIL EISENBERG: Wait, your maternal grandfather? MP: My mother's father. GE: His name wouldn't have been Platt. MP: It's always confusing because my mother remarried. My biological father died when I was real young. My mother remarried an Isadore Platt, not my grandfather, but cousin with the same name and I assumed his name. My birth name was not Platt. SC: What was it? MP: Tuller. T-u-l-l-e-r. SC: So, when your maternal grandfather came to the United States, where about did he come from? Do you know about when he came? MP: Poland or Russia. In those days there was a very fluid line between them. One day I was Polish the next day I was Russian. GE: What was the name of the town or big city it was near? MP: Somewhere near Warsaw. SC: Did your father come by himself? And did he leave family behind? MP: My grandfather, he came by himself. He left his wife there, after a while she died. He remarried here. Then he had his children, which my mother was one of them. By then he had a coal yard. GE: I'm sorry he had what? MP: He had a coal yard. GE: In Poland? MP: No here. GE: What is a coal yard? MP: In the old days, most of heat was done by coal. As a matter of fact, I remember the coal delivery in New York, he had to park perpendicular to the sidewalk of the house and run a big chute down to the basement, dumped the coal out. We kids had a great time underneath the chute! GE: When your grandfather came from Poland, how old was he? MP: Pretty young. GE: But, he was already married. MP: Maybe in his 20's. GE: So, the hope was, he came from Poland, how many children did he have at the time? MP: Three. GE: He had three children in Poland. MP: My mother and 2 brothers. GE: The idea was that he came and then he was going to bring his wife and children. MP: I don't know about his wife, she died somewhere in between. GE: Right. MP: We never even saw a picture of her. In those days there was no hanky-panky. A wife was a wife. GE: Right. SC: So he came to the United States. This is your birth grandfather. When he came here how did he meet his second wife? Do you know anything about that? MP: Not really, I guess he went to a bar or something! SC: So he owned a coal yard and that was a fun place to be. MP: It was a small community, everybody lived downtown. GE: When you say downtown, do you mean downtown Brooklyn? MP: Mostly Manhattan -- the Lower East Side. SC: So with the coal yard were there ever any stories of people coming to the coal yard and taking coal to heat their places, at night or anything? MP: Not that I know of. GE: Did he work at the coal yard or did he own the coal yard? MP: I think he owned it. GE: Or at least eventually. So he left behind his wife and three children, the wife died, did he bring all his three children over? MP: They all came together. I guess it was right after the First World War. SC: So he came before the First World War. That would make sense. And then you were born in 1925. GE: Do you know how old your mother was when she came over? MP: She was around 18-19 or somewhere around there. GE: So she was already that grown up. What was she? Was she the oldest? The middle? Youngest? MP: She was in the middle. There was one older brother and one younger brother. Matter of fact, there is a picture of my mother you might like to take a look at. GE: Yes, I did, I already saw it. She's gorgeous. SC: I'll take a look at it later. GE: So there were two sons. SC: So is Dottie, so is Dottie. Your father's family, do you know anything about your father's family, the Platts, uh Tullers-- your birth father? MP: I know there was a brother, my late father's brother. Matter of fact, he died in his 90's. He lived in Washington DC. Then there was another brother, somehow we lost track of him. We were never close to any of that side of the family. SC: So your -sort of- adopted father, your step-father, what did he do? MP: He was part of the business. GE: What did he do? MP: He was in the apparel business. SC: So that was in Brooklyn? MP: They started in New York. It was he and two partners. GE: And what were they doing there? Were they tailors? MP: They had a factory. And then the union came along and they were chased out over here. SC: That's a typical story. MP: After years here, the union came here. Local businesses went out and most went down south. SC: What part of the garment industry did they produce for? MP: The name of the firm was Lehigh Valley Shirt Manufacturing Company. GE: How about in New York? MP: I'm not sure. GE: But it was shirts? MP: Probably. GE: But you're not sure. SC: So they came in the 1930's to the Lehigh Valley. Do you know about what year it was? MP: Not sure. Before or during the war, because they all made garments for the troops. GE: They were definitely here sometime in the 30's . . . MP: late 30's, early 40's. GE: And who came here? Was it your step-father came here? MP: Yes GE: So he actually who established the business? MP: Yes, and two partners. SC: Do you know the partners' names? MP: Yes, Samuel Barkan and Samuel Simon. Do you know Marian Barkan? GE: I don't recognize the name. SC: Is she still in the area? Well, that's another contact. So, they made shirts -- how big an industry was it in the early years? MP: I thought our plant was one of the middle size. We had about 80 or 90 employees. SC: And, where was it located in Allentown? MP: Right on Union Street. SC: Did it stay there when you were involved with it? MP: Yes, and then the city bought that plot and now its low income housing development. The 400 block of Union Street. SC: They bought it after the business closed? MP: No, then they moved to North Franklin Street. GE: And North Franklin is where? MP: Between 13th and 14th Streets. SC: When it was at Union, did they buy that property? MP: They bought the building before we came. Every partner had a son and it was worked out that the three sons would belong to the business. SC: When the city bought that property. Was that during the Little Lehigh Urban Renewal? MP: Probably. GE: Or when did that occur? MP: The early 70's. SC: A lot of my projects intersect. When you moved to Franklin Street, did all three of you (sons) come into the business? MP: We went into the business when it was still on Union St. SC: So you bought a new place-- MP: We didn't buy it, we rented it. SC: And you continued to make shirts? MP: Shirts, blouses, dresses-- SC: Were you a contractor for a New York company? MP: Mostly, although we had some Philadelphia stuff. Did you ever hear of Gordon in Philadelphia. J.G. Hook? GE: J.G. Hook, right. SC: Was J.G. Hook women's blouses? MP: Womens of all kinds. We just made the blouses. SC: Gordon, was that blouses or shirts? MP: Again, we made only the blouses. SC: Only the blouses for both of them. Can you talk a little bit about how the business was organized in your step-father's time and in your time? What is very highly capitalized? Did you have a lot of machinery? What type of people did you hire? MP: The sewing industry was the easiest one to get into. You didn't require a lot of capital and I don't know anything about the place in New York. When we came here, the building had three floors. There was sewing on one floor, cutting on another floor and the bottom floor was pressing, shipping and so on. GE: So the finishing. It was sewing, cutting and finishing. SC: What groups of employees did you have over the years? Were they wives of maybe people working in other industries? Were they working class? Was there a certain ethnicity? MP: All manufacturers were women. We always had a mechanic there in the cutting room. As a matter of fact, Irwin Salitsky worked with us - because his business went out too. [unintelligible] GE: Yes. So you were a young child when they came here? MP: No, we were all in our twenties when we went into the business. GE: In other words, if you were born in 1925 when your father came here, he established himself here, about how old do you think you were? MP: Well, I didn't know him until he married my mother. GE: When did he marry your mother? MP: In 1936. GE: Therefore, you were about 11 years ago when he married your mother? MP: Right. GE: At that time was he already here? Or was he still in New York when they got married? MP: I think they just come here. GE: So did you move at that time to Allentown? MP: No, No. My wife and I got married during the war, in 1945, and we lived in New York for a while. I didn't go right into the business. I did different jobs in New York. GE: When your mother and stepfather married in 1936, from what you remember, was he working here and coming home on the weekends? MP: Yes. As a matter of fact I remember going to the subway station and helping him carry his bags. He made me do the Haftorah every Saturday morning. I could do any Haftarah. GE: He made you do the Haftarah. MP: He was very religious and we followed suit. SC: Were you as religious before that? MP: Not really. I was Bar Mitzvahed after he married my mother. As a matter of fact, I laid Tifillin until I went into the army. GE: And that's where you do Morning prayer and Evening prayer. SC: What year did you go into the army? MP: 1945. GE: You went into the army in 1945? SC: So you would have been 20. MP: During the second half of the war and then afterwards, in peacetime. SC: Where were you deployed after you went into the army? Were you in Germany? MP: No, stateside. SC: Stateside the whole time. I know some people did go over and went to Japan or after the war went to Germany during the times of refugees. MP: I had majored in chemistry when I went to City College and I kept getting deferred from being drafted until I graduated. Once I graduated, then they inducted me into the army. After basic training they sent me to Randolph Field in Texas to work in a laboratory. So I never saw real action. SC: And so what made you decide to go into chemistry at City College and did you use it at all once you went into the business? MP: Very little. Some TV shows where you had to say what the signs were for certain chemicals and what certain elements were. Now the element for gold is Au. Did you know that? GE: I did, from chemistry. MP: Then, Sodium was Na. It's weird. GE: Some things stick with you. Did you ever work as a chemist? MP: No. SC: Because you would only have been 20 when you were drafted. MP: I graduated from City College when I was nineteen and a half. Then I worked for a company in New York for a few months, called American Cystoscope Makers. Do you know what a cystoscope is? GE: Is it medical? MP: It's a device where they look into . . . GE: For the bladder. MP: And they were setting up a laboratory, so they hired a main chemist and then he hired me. It was only a couple of months and then I was drafted. SC: Do you remember his name? MP: No. SC: So you were drafted? How long were you in the Armed Services? MP: A little over a year. SC: So it was 1946. MP: As a matter of fact, I was supposed to go overseas. In the Army you get orders, it tells you what to do. I had orders to go to Greensboro, NC, which was a replacement depot for overseas. I was there for a couple of weeks. Then all of a sudden I got orders to go to Massachusetts, there's a big field out there for discharge. I was wondering, how was I so lucky? But, that's the way it went down. I think they made a mistake on me. SC: That's a good mistake! GE: Murray, when you were a child, your mother remarried, you were eleven years old. Do you have any memory of your father? MP No, I was five when he died. GE: What did he die from? MP: He was a house painter. No one really remembers if it was his heart or was it lead poisoning. In those days they used lead. I remember an uncle was also a house painter, it was one of his brothers, telling him, "Abie, wash your hands!" My father's name was Abraham. He never washed his hands, most of them didn't. He didn't die here--..he went to Poland -- to Warsaw -- to see his parents, and he died there. GE: From the time that you were five until eleven, until your mother married this man, where did you and your mom live? MP: We lived with my grandparents for a while, the one who had a coal yard -- they didn't have it then anymore. We lived with them for a while. Then my mother met another woman, a friend, and they took an apartment together. GE: Did your mom work during that time? MP: Yes, in the apparel industry, in New York. Let me tell you a very funny incident. She didn't have any experience [unintelligible] and she applied to a job after my father died. She didn't know anything about sewing, so the man told her to sit down and sew. He sees that she can't sew and he can't use her. She says, well look, (she was very young and beautiful at the time) can you show me how the machine works? He said, sure. Then she went down, went around the corner to another factory to get a job there -- she told the lady that she had experience. My mother didn't have book learning, but she was smart. GE: Did she work as a sewer? MP: Right. GE: Is that the time you moved a lot? MP: We moved a lot after my mom and stepfather were married. We lived in New York for a couple of years, around Brooklyn. GE: During this time when it was you and your mom, I know the Depression was going on, what was life like? Were you very poor? MP: If we were poor, we didn't know it - we had nothing to compare it to. GE: Did you rent? Did you live in an apartment? MP: Oh yes, $45.00 a month rent and the first two months were free! SC: Do you have any memories of what you did in New York playing games? What the children did? MP: I remember playing handball against the wall with some other kids. There was a store right around the corner and the wall was brick -- we played handball there. The guy would come out and yell at us. Years later, we bought a home in Brooklyn, this was before we came here, an end of the row. Then the other kids came and played handball against our wall. GE: Do you remember what school was like? Do you remember playing much? Were you very studious? Did you play a lot? MP: I must have been [studious] because I advanced. In those days they had what they called"RA" - rapid advancement. I guess I had all those courses because I graduated high school at 16, college at 19. I guess I must have been studious. SC: Do you remember playing "kick the can?" MP: I remember playing stick ball -- in the middle of the street. If the ball hit a car, it was out! There weren't many cars then. We played stick ball with a broom handle. SC: Any other memories from your childhood? You have a wonderful memory! Anything else that sticks out to you? Experiences or stories? GE: Murray, you were an only child weren't you? MP: My stepfather had a daughter, Phyllis Steinberg. Does the name ring a bell? GE: Well, Judge Steinberg? MP: That's her son. GE: So his mother was your step-sister. MP: Well, I didn't refer to her as a step-sister, we were very close. GE: Isn't that nice. When your mother married Platt, you were 11, how old was she? MP: She was ten years older than me. GE: Was she already married? MP: She got married the same year. She got married in July, my mother got married to my step-father in November. GE: So you always had a close relationship with her. SC: That's very nice, and she wasn't living in your house at that time? MP: No. Her husband, Henry, had been a lawyer in New York and, I don't know, things, I guess, weren't that great. Anyhow, he had an uncle who had moved a plant to North Carolina and so Henry came down there to work for him. GE: So Henry was an attorney but he also went into textiles. MP: Yes, as a matter of fact, he had a plant in Emmaus. After he worked in North Carolina for a couple of years, then he came up here and this man who came here when he was ten years old -- Samuel Fuchs with six dollars in his pocket - when he died, he was a multi-millionaire. GE: And who is Samuel Fuchs? MP: That is my step-sister's mother's brother. GE: So your step-sister's uncle. SC: How do you spell Fuchs? MP: F-U-C-H-S. I know it's not a nice name----. SC: I always ask because there are so many different spellings -- for the future. MP: He came here as a boy. He started to work in a sewing factory, a couple of years later he bought the factory. Then he started expanding. GE: Was that one of the very first factories? MP: It was in Allentown for a while then he moved to North Carolina --a town called Kinston. He had a big factory, then he went to building and as I said when he died he was a multi-millionaire. SC: Any other memories about your childhood and youth? MP: Not really. GE: About Brooklyn and what it was like? MP: I know we went to Dodgers games. GE: Okay, tell us about it. MP: The Brooklyn Dodgers - twenty-five cents to sit in the bleachers. There was a pitcher, Carl Hubbell -- I don't know if you ever heard of him? He had in one year, won 26 and lost 6 -- and that record still stands. He is the originator of the screwball. Did you hear of that in relation to pitching? That was his thing. SC: Going back then to when you were part of the business, what did you do when you first became part of your step-father's business? MP: Our partners, while my father was the general factory man, one of the other partners was a mechanic and the third partner took care of the cutting and went to New York to collect money for payroll. In those days you had to wait for it to come by mail. [unintelligible] It was a pretty big payroll, don't forget there was pretty many people working. When we came into the business, I took over my father's job of being on the floor, as they say, in production. The mechanic's son took over the mechanics and the other son took over the cutting -- he was in charge of the cutting room. SC: When you say mechanic -- what exactly did that job entail? MP: Well, the machines had to be fixed. Some were bought new, some were bought used, and so on. SC: So did his father then teach him that trade or did he go to school anywhere for it? MP: No, we were all college graduates. GE: You were college graduates but you learned the business by being in the business. Why didn't you go into something, for instance, you were a chemist? Why did you go into the business rather than pursuing . . . .? MP: I always wanted to go into business. GE: Do you think that's true for all three of you? That you just wanted to be in business. MP: Yes. We never had a real profession, although we were all college grads, we hadn't really worked at it. GE: Was it hard, as a Jewish person, to get a job as a chemist? MP: Yes. As a chemist, in a bank . . . a lot of places. The going salary was $35.00 per week. GE: There were a few things - One, it was hard to get a good job as a Jewish person and secondly, it was not that lucrative. It was perhaps more lucrative to go into business. SC: We've asked people, " Why do you think in this region, there was so many Jewish textile or garment industry people." Do you think there is an answer to that? MP: No, except that the Jews gravitated towards this business. It was easy to get into. It didn't require much capital so you didn't have to go borrow money. You set up your own factory and in those days there was a big demand. GE: Who actually was the salesperson or the liaison person with the manufacturers? MP: Samuel Simon. He was the one who would go to New York every week to collect money for payroll. GE: That's also the guy you said was the cutting. MP: Right. GE: Was he, let's say for instance, was he also the one when a contract would run out -- he was the one who would negotiate the contract? MP: We didn't have any formal contracts -- nothing was in writing. You just did the work for them and you hoped they would send you more fabric and it was an on-going deal. GE: Let's say that things were slowing a little, who found a new manufacturer to work for? MP: By then Simon was his garment [unintelligible] and things weren't slow until, I don't know, the 70's or thereabout. GE: So prior to that it was just constant -- all you had to do was fulfill it in a sense. You didn't have to look for it. SC: How were the New York manufacturers different than the Philadelphia manufacturers? Was there a different system going? MP: No. SC: Were the manufacturers bigger in New York and smaller in Philadelphia? MP: Gordon in Philadelphia was a big, big outfit. J. G. Hook -- they are still around, but not as popular. SC: The reason I ask this was New England and New York seem to be larger initially, and many of the Philly textile people were more special order in the late 19th century and very early 20th century. So it had changed by that time . . . MP: We knew only the manufacturers. We did not know other contractors in those areas. SC: As far as you being on the floor, did that mean that you learned every element of sewing and did you actually know how to sew? MP: Oh I know, I still know how to sew. I showed different girls how to sew. SC: So you knew all of the operations so you really could be a hands-on employer. One of the partners was cutting in the cutting room and the other one was the mechanic. Did all of you stay together for a long time? MP: For a while and then gradually they died. GE: Were they older than you? MP: They must have been. One of the partners died in 1976 and the other partner died in 1980. GE: But you stayed together as partners until they were deceased. MP: Not that we didn't have any fights! SC: That's wonderful and unusual too. As far as the business was concerned, did it grow and did you add more machinery and more employees? Maybe different people cutting? MP: Slightly in the beginning, but then it became more and more difficult, it didn't really go downhill, but it was tough to get customers. We had stable customers - Gordon in Philadelphia, J.G. Hook . One company called [unintelligible]. And another one was . . . I forget the name of it. GE: So it was a stable business, not really a growing business. MP: Right, then, I retired in 1987. I turned the business over to a young man who had been working for me. SC: So you gave him an opportunity? MP: He was the son of the foreman when the factory came to Allentown. SC: What was his name -- the foreman? MP: Sam Lutz. He wasn't Jewish. SC: He was Pennsylvania Dutch probably. GE: Did the business survive for a while longer? MP: For a while, but this guy didn't pay much attention to the business. People, customers, would call, they'd want you, they didn't want an office person and he wasn't there. So he lasted a few years, every week it was less and then he just left. SC: Do you know what happened to him, where he went after that? MP: He went to Tama. He was going to cut. GE: He went where? MP: He went to the cutting room at Tama. GE: Tama -- that's Fogelman? MP: After that I don't know what happened. He ended up owing me some money. We had a contract that he would give me so much a week up until a certain amount. [unintelligible] SC: Did the ethnicity of the workers change between the late '40's until 1987? Did they come from different family backgrounds? MP: Towards the end we had more Latino people - as they came along - moving into town. SC: Because this was a good entry work job. MP: At the beginning, it was always Pennsylvania Dutch, Czechoslovokian people, Irish people, but the last few years things were changed. SC: As far as where the factory was--did it stay on Franklin Street the whole time? MP: Yes. SC: Franklin is between 14th and 15th? GE: No, 13th and 14th. MP: No, it was between 14th and 15th. SC: How far up north or was it pretty far down south? MP: It was in the 400 block. SC: It was fairly close to the older factory? MP: Yes, 4th and Union to Franklin. SC: That was pretty many blocks. So, it was in south Allentown. Where did you live when you moved to Allentown? Where did your family live? MP: Valley View Apartments. Do you know where they are? SC: No. GE: This is when you first came. Where is that? MP: South -- right off 15th street - 15th and Elm. The rent there was $92.00 a month. SC: So the three of you lived in an apartment? MP: The others somewhere else. GE: It was just you and Dot? MP: Right. SC: So where did they live? MP: One lived in Tremont Apartments, and I don't know where the other one lived. SC: As far as the older generation -- were they still around? Living in Allentown? MP: No, they had died by then. GE: Your fathers had all passed away. When did your step-father pass away? MP: 1976. GE: Okay, but when you went into the business. . . You went into the business when? Nineteen . . . MP: 54-55. GE: Around 1955 you came here. You went into the business, rather . . . before that you were living in New York -- you and Dottie. When you came here, your father and the two partners were still in the business. MP: Right. GE: You were just coming in with them, and then you stayed in the business with them until -- when did they retire? When did your father retire? MP He never came into the business the last few years, but he still drew a small salary. The other two likely died, I forget the years they died. GE: You went into business around 1955 and those men, as long as they were alive, they were drawing a salary, so you just gradually moved into the business. In 1955, you were doing the production part, were the other two sons of the other two partners, were they now in the business, as well? MP: Yes. They all came in. GE: At that time, this was a very active -- the textile industry was very active. MP: And doing well. GE: Yes, and doing well. Tell us what was the community like? What did you and Dot think when you came here? The Jewish community . . . and when did you start having children? MP: We went to the JCC as soon as we got here. In those days it was still at 6th Street. GE: 6th and Chew I think it was. MP: This building wasn't built until 1958 or 59. SC: How about the community in general? What did you think about the community? Was it friendly? MP: Hess's was great. That was a focal point. SC: I haven't interviewed anyone that hasn't talked about it. MP: You mention Allentown and Hess's and people say, "oh yes, I know Hess's" GE: And the whole downtown was great. MP: There was no Sunday shopping, and it was only open Monday and Thursday evenings. My wife, when she was pregnant, a month or so afterwards she went there and they said, "what did you have, a boy or a girl?" They was a very homey atmosphere. GE: And that was even at the department store. SC: Did you go to the Patio at all? MP: No, I think it was too expensive for me. GE: The Patio was just the restaurant? MP: Yes. They had these great big ice cream things. SC: And strawberry pie. GE: You joined the JCC -- did you find that you easily met people from that? MP: Oh yeah, we had a big circle of friends. Most of them aren't around now. Some moved to Florida, some died. GE: When did you start having children? MP: Our oldest daughter was born in New York and Dennis, the middle son was born here -- right after we moved here. GE: So your oldest child was born in what year? MP: 1949. GE: So your oldest is about 62-63 years old. MP: Right. GE: And then your second child? MP: Dennis -- he was born here. GE: That was nineteen . . .? MP: 54. GE: 1954. The first two, those were boys? MP: No, the first one was a girl. GE: What was her name? MP: Arlene, and she never married. GE: Your second is Dennis. And then your youngest? MP: Ken. GE: What year was he born? MP: Now you're making me think. GE: How old is he? MP: 61. GE: So he was born in '61 -- so he's about 51. MP: He just got his AARP card -- now you get it at 50. SC: Did any of them want to come into the business? MP: Oh no. SC: What did they end up doing? MP: Well, Dennis is a lawyer in Philly. Ken is a pediatrician in Connecticut. and Arlene works for the state in the Welfare Department. She's a supervisor. GE: In the Welfare Department? MP: Yes. SC: Does she work in the Allentown area or in Harrisburg? MP: In Philly. SC: So two of them are together in Philly? MP: No. GE: They both work in the Philly area. MP: They are close. GE: Did they never want to go into the business or did you not want them to go into the business? MP: Combination of both. Although when they were kids, they came and helped work out in the summer. We never urged them. GE: Why? MP: I don't know, we wanted them to be professionals. GE: I'm just curious, were you already seeing the business didn't have that long of a future? MP: Not at that time, we didn't know what the future would be. But, we knew that we wanted the kids to be professionals. SC: It's the American Dream. MP: We were lucky that we could help them out -- we could afford it. SC: Where did they go to school, college? MP: Dennis went to Syracuse undergrad and to Villanova Law School. Ken went to U of P and Duke Medical School, and Arlene went to Penn State, which in those days the tuition, I think, was $1100.00. GE: Things were a little different. SC: Also, as far as the business is concerned, are there any memories you have -- really vivid memories you have of some times in the business -- either highs or lows when you were in the business? MP: Except that we took the various customer's agents out to lunch. GE: Oh, so the customer's agents -- did they often come to your . . .? MP: Yeah, they come once or twice a week. GE: Was that more just to pick up and drop off? MP: Just to see how things were going - how their products were being manufactured. To make sure everything is right and to go to lunch. GE: The manufacturer's agent -- were they employees of the manufacturer? MP: Yes. GE: Oh, they were actually employees. I wasn't sure if they were employees or if they kind of had their own business. SC: Were you unionized? MP: Yes. SC: Which union? MP: Amalgamated Textile Workers. There were two apparel unions - one was the International Ladies Garment Workers and the other was Amalgamated. Since we had made men's wear to start with, it was Amalgamated. Then in later years, we didn't make any more shirts, but the other union didn't bother us. SC: Were you a member of the manufacturer's associations? MP: Probably. GE: Like Arnold Delin? Does that sound familiar? MP: Delin was the other union. SC: Right he was the IGLU -- I hope I said it right. There were two manufacturer's associations in the region. GE: I think one was the Lehigh Valley? SC: Were you a member there? MP: I don't remember. SC: Do you have any other business questions? We could talk about the community then. GE: Did you ever become very automated? MP: No. GE: So yours always stayed pretty basic. MP: Right. Tama did and that's why they lasted longer than everyone else. They just closed two or three years ago. Now I understand all the off-shore plants are automated. [unintelligible] with computers. GE: Right - I guess that's really primarily in terms of the business. You said that your product changed - let's say you did shirts and blouses, is that what you did the whole time? MP: Yes. SC: Is there a reason why you stopped doing shirts? MP: Well, because it became too competitive. Shirts were the first ones to go down south. Blouses, it was more specialty, dresses also the same thing. GE: So you stayed in blouses and dresses. MP: There were smaller, smaller lots -- a group was called a "lot". The shirts could be under the dozens -- all the same - but blouses - a lesser amount. GE: In a sense, the business - niche that you built for yourself was doing specialty -- like smaller lots? MP: More or less, and that's why we existed as long as we did. GE: And it was primarily dresses and blouses? MP: Yes. SC: As far as the 1960's and '70's -- did the business change at all because people became more casual? Did that have an effect on you? MP: No, because we still made classic garments. We made blouses that my wife still has today. They look as good as they did then. There are always certain classics. GE: The dresses you were making, were they typically for young girls, for older women? MP: Older Women. GE: Because dresses -- young women stopped wearing dresses. MP: These were classic types of things. SC: Does your wife still have any blouses that you manufactured? MP: Tons of them. SC: It would be nice to see some of them so we could photograph them. GE: We'll get them later. SC: That's pretty good with the business. GE: You said with the women, it was very boring work. MP: Honey [talking to his wife], these girls would like to see one of your blouses. DOTTIE PLATT: Okay. MP: When's your appointment? Soon? DP: Yes, and I wanted to eat something. You girls, living in this area, what's your second name? GE: Eisenberg. DP: I've heard of that. GE: You've seen me over the years at the Synagogue and things. And she is Susan Clemens. DP: And you grew up in this area? SC: Susan Clement-Bruder. I grew up in Ewing Township, outside of Trenton, New Jersey. GE: And I grew up in Philadelphia - in a very modest home. DP: But it must be very nice. When you are an immigrant, you come here with empty pockets and your children -- they don't have anything. You have to realize this, now come in, and I'll show you my blouses. Then I married Murray because he graduated college at 19, and I thought he was older than that, and he thought I was younger than I am because my mother was looking for the fountain of youth. She lost her hair at as a young girl. There's a name for this illness. MP: Alopecia. GE: Oh. DP: Some people in our area, now, the doctor's wife, I want to say, don't have hair. Do you know Dr. Silverman? MP: Diane. GE: Oh yes. DP: So, my mother had that illness. MP: To make a long story short, my wife worked in the factory -- in the office for several years. As a lot came along, she took a blouse from each one. The one blouse each added up to many blouses over the years. DP: The girl there smoked. Smokers are so addicted that even though they know it hurts them, they sometimes continue. MP: I hope you girls don't smoke. GE: No. DP: There was an article written about a smoker in the Reader's Digest who was a doctor, and he thought it would never happen to him, and he died. I have the article. MP: We had two office girls and one of them developed emphysema. DP: So I came in -- I didn't take anyone's job. I came in to help and I just stayed there. I took one from every lot! It's there for the taking, girls, and I grew up with one blouse. GE: Were you born here? DP: I was born here. GE: You were born here, just your parents came over. DP: Yes. GE: Frankly, my mother was also born here. My father, he didn't come over until 1949. His family was still in Europe and everyone got killed except for him. DP: That really is pretty late to come over. GE: When your family went through the war, that's when you came over. DP: When did Sarah and Sasha come over? MP: Somewhere in the late 40's. GE: If they were after the war they came over, because afterwards, they went to DP camps. MP: Some went to Israel, some came here. DP: So come on, I'll show you my blouses. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:55:10
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Murray Platt, July 26, 2012
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Murray Platt talks about how his father’s family began in New York making women’s shirts, failed due to the unions, and then came in the late 1930s to the Lehigh Valley. Murray’s father, with two partners, established Lehigh Valley Shirt Manufacturing Company. They were contractors for manufacturers in New York and in Philadelphia. They cut, sewed and finished the products. The business continued by the sons of these three original partners.
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LVTNT-17
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2012-07-26
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
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Nathan Braunstein
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5.4 December 12, 2015 Nathan and Marilyn Braunstein, December 12, 2015 LVTNT-30 1:20:23 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Nathan Braunstein Marilyn Braunstein Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 BraunsteinNathan_Marilyn_20151212 1.0:|19(3)|30(4)|41(9)|52(16)|67(2)|80(12)|95(13)|110(2)|123(16)|144(2)|169(6)|190(16)|207(3)|232(2)|253(12)|274(7)|291(3)|310(7)|327(13)|350(10)|367(8)|394(2)|419(14)|440(4)|461(12)|484(12)|505(11)|524(7)|545(7)|562(3)|581(12)|596(11)|617(8)|630(12)|643(3)|650(15)|661(14)|676(7)|693(3)|704(3)|723(4)|738(2)|757(8)|772(9)|789(7)|804(14)|819(9)|834(10)|849(3)|864(8)|879(9)|894(7)|911(2)|922(12)|937(6)|952(5)|967(9)|984(2)|997(12)|1016(6)|1029(2)|1040(13)|1059(8)|1074(8)|1087(12)|1100(10)|1115(3)|1128(6)|1141(4)|1162(4)|1179(8)|1198(6)|1213(17)|1230(12)|1245(12)|1256(14)|1271(8)|1282(9)|1303(5)|1320(19)|1321(14) 0 https://youtu.be/FqQAn_lR6uc YouTube video 0 Introduction—Nathan Braunstein SC: Okay, would you- Ready? Would you start by telling your full name, where you were born, and when you were born?
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 ; NB: My name is Nathan Braunstein. I was born in Linden, New Jersey, on August 21st, 1927. 0 24 Nathan's Family History SC: And can you tell me about your family, as far back as you know — where they were from, who they were, what they did?
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 ; NB: My mother came to the United States from Warsaw, Poland. And my father came from a small shtetl called Bludova [?] in Poland also. And they met in the United States. The beginning of my mother's story is a little different than my father's story. My mother was married at the age about I would say could have been 15 or 16 to a man that lived in her shtetl. And when the- after they were married, she had a son by the name of Harry. And this man, I'll call Mr. Retarsky, [?] decided to go to the United States and then call for my mother and his son later. 0 399 Nathan's Education SC: So could you talk a little bit about your schooling, you know, when you grew up, go through your life?
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 ; NB: My schooling was...a maze of schools. The reason for that is when you were- when you managed apparel factories in those years, the owners would want to have someone get their factories running straight and good, and then they would no longer want the expense of having a manager. So we moved around a lot in my life. I must have gone to four or five different elementary schools in my life, and junior high schools 0 494 Moving to Allentown, PA SC: So do you remember when you came to Allentown, when your family came to Allentown?
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 ; NB: Certainly. I was 17 when I came to Allentown. My father had died a couple of months before, and my brother from my mother's side was working here for his father, who owned the factory. And my brother was kind enough to have us live with him and his mother — you know, my mother and his family. 0 540 Early Experiences in the Apparel Industry SC: Did you work any place before you got into the business and then I'll pass it over.
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 ; NB: Well, I did some work for my brother's father — I worked in the office, which was...
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 ; SC: Yeah, that was it. You weren't a paper boy or anything like that? You didn’t work before [the business] — any casual jobs or anything?
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 ; NB: I did some odd jobs. I worked at the school a little bit.
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 ; SC: At your high school or at Lafayette?
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 ; NB: When I went to Lafayette. 0 678 1951: First Business Fails GE: You're saying you did not want to stay there as an employee, you wanted to go out on your own and start your own type of business?
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 ; NB: Well, I knew that I was going to be in business. I always knew that.
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 ; GE: And I'm just curious, what made you decide that? What reasons? What do you think contributed to that?
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 ; NB: Well I gave up education. I felt I was good enough to make my mark in the manufacturing field.
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 ; GE: And did you know you were going to be — given you were working already in the apparels — did you know you were going to be in the apparel business?
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 ; NB: Well there was a need. Most of the people that made dresses and sportswear would have to send extra material to New York to have belts made for the garments. So I felt there was a need for someone to do that [locally] in Pennsylvania and the Northeast. 0 847 Nathan's Brother—Creating a Family Business NB: In the meantime, my brother on my father's side also went out on his own and he closed that factory. So we got together, and we started another belt company. And from that — he worked on the inside and I worked on the outside — and we started to build a business. 
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 ; GE: So do you feel that between what happened, where your business went under, and then spending the year working at the belt company, then you started to really-
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 ; NB: Which gave me more pointers about belts and things. 
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 ; GE: Right, about what would succeed, about what you would need.
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 ; NB: And that was enough.
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 ; GE: How about your brother? Did he have- I mean, he had general, you know, inside experience from the factory.
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 ; NB: My brother was a garment cutter. That was his trade. He cut the fabric to make garments, I got that he got the fabric to make garments, but then he had a little sewing factory, which also didn't do well.
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 ; GE: And with the belts, what he would need to do on the inside, he had all that-
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 ; NB: He liked my idea about the belts, and we started up. Very small. 0 956 Building the Business—'Kickbacking' GE: And so, want to tell us a little bit about that progression?
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 ; NB: Well he and I did everything in the factory except sew, so we got a few girls that stuck with us throughout my career, actually. Got a few girls, and they came and sewed for us, and we put the belts together and gradually grew. What's the strange thing is: all the people that I thought that we would get business from locally was very difficult to get the business from them because the manufacturers in New York controlled [them], and they wanted the belts to come to New York rather than have someone making them in Pennsylvania, even though they could save money. And I had to break through that. I did that with a lot of badgering, nagging, and making a pest of myself. I was likeable. 0 1115 Fashion in the '50-80s: Women's Shirtwaists, Men's Slacks GE: And you want to tell us, share with us a little bit why at this time in this — you know, especially in the 50s — just tell us a little bit about the kinds of clothes that the women were wearing and the shirtwaists, dresses, and the belts, because many of us don't necessarily remember that.
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 ; NB: I don’t know how to explain that. The shirtwaists was a bonanza, started by the Villager Company — you remember the Villager?
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 ; GE: I do. 
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 ; NB: And everybody made shirtwaists, and shirtwaists was a bonanza for belt manufacturers. And that's what started to grow my business. Really grew it. And then what made it even bigger is men’s slacks — [men] would put belts on their slacks. Men’s slacks manufacturers would be putting their own belts on slacks. So I learned to cover the men's market, too. 0 1307 Product, Label, & ; Clients GE: So just so I understand, when you were doing it more, where you were selling it to the manufacturer, in a sense it was just part of the garment, right? 
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 ; NB: Right.
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 ; GE: Where the second time, when it's the retail, that's where you were selling it where it's an accessory that somebody bought separately.
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 ; NB: Well I never used our name.It was the store name or… 
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 ; GE: Or the brand name. Well especially the first time. 
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 ; NB: Whoever we made it for. 
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 ; GE: When you did retail, that was probably the store name, correct?
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 ; NB: Yeah. We made a lot of belts for the Limited. For the Limited Express, for... 0 1361 Decline of the Business GE: And when did you see things begin to get more challenging because of, you know, the competitors going overseas? 
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 ; NB: The 90s, the late 90s.
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 ; GE: Oh that was already that late?
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 ; NB: ‘91, ‘92.
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 ; GE: So it really thrived, then, through the 80s. And it was really not until the ‘90s that you were really being challenged. Okay, and then a little bit [of] what happened? What happened and how fast did things start going down? 
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 ; NB: Pretty fast. Pretty fast. In fact, when I got the idea that I should sell — it took me two years to really make up my mind. I should have sold when I got the idea.
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 ; GE: When did you finally sell? 
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 ; NB: ‘93. 0 1434 Nathan's Clients (cont'd) GE: Nate, want to share with us some of the different manufacturers, different brands that you produced- that you manufactured for? You just said a few, but we didn’t get it on tape.
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 ; NB: David Crystal. I don’t even remember the names anymore.
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 ; GE: Evan Picone.
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 ; SC: John Meyer of Norwich. 0 1505 Employees GE: How many people did you have working at the factory at its peak?
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 ; NB: At the height, 200. 
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 ; GE: Wow. And was it mostly the operators or like- what did the work workforce consist of?
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 ; NB: Well, at the beginning it was a lot of operators ; but then I didn’t need as many operators.
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 ; GE: Because the machinery…?
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 ; NB: In order to fight what was going on in the Middle East- [I mean] in Asia, I must have spent close to a million dollars just in automatic machinery — to make billions, but to no avail. 0 1657 Niche Success of the Belt Business GE: At its peak, when you were making- when you were getting orders of the 200,000 things — how many other belt producers were there in the area? Were you still the only one? 
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 ; NB: Only one. Because it's a specialty thing. That's why I wanted to do something different. I didn't want to make a dress like everybody else was making it. Right. Right, right.
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 ; GE: You really carved out your own niche, your own specialization. 0 1760 Producing for the Manufacturers Versus Retailers GE: Nate, you had started out working with manufacturing ; then, when you had to, also introduced [your belts] into the retailers. What were some of the new challenges for you?
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 ; NB: New challenges were when you dealt with retailers, you didn't deal with owners — what you dealt [with] was buyers. And if you learn about kickbacks, that's kickbacks! Well I learned how to deal with buyers, that’s all. It’s just simple. And every time a new buyer came in, we’d have to start from scratch all over again.
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 ; GE: And I assume buyer's turnover. In other words, the owner stays, but the buyers — it's constantly a new market. 0 1934 Nathan's Involvement in the Jewish Community—Hadassah & ; the UJA GE: So do you want to share with us a little bit about your community involvement? ‘Cause that was another big part of your life. 
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 ; NB: Well, we'll go back to Hadassah. 
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 ; GE: That’d be great.
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 ; NB: Hadassah was my building stone, for getting above. What I feel that I could do for the Jews, myself. 0 2557 Introduction—Marilyn Braunstein SC: Today is December 12, 2015, the interview with Marilyn Braunstein. And I'm going to start with your background. Can you tell me as much about- first of all, your full name and your date of birth and where you were born?
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 ; MB: Okay. My name is Marilyn Kobrovsky Braunstein. I am a native Allentownian. I was born here at Sacred Heart Hospital in 1930, which makes me 85 — 85 happy years. I'm very happy to be part of this interview that you're doing. 0 2619 Marilyn's Family History SC: Can you go back just a little bit and talk about your parents, your brothers and sisters — your parents and grandparents, what their names were and where they were born?
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 ; MB: My paternal grandparents name is Lazar and Lena Kobrovsky. They were born in Russia, Poland- I don't remember. I don't remember the town, but my Grandfather Lazer came to the United States by himself and left my grandmother and my father and his sister in Poland. And he came by himself. He came to Allentown because he had a landsman [Yiddish-- someone from the same town back in Poland/Russia] here. I guess that's how everybody kind of arrived here. And his landmans was Edward Schneider, who was in the . . . I guess in the junk business or peddling or something. And he lived in his house until 1902 or 3, I’m not sure. Until he brought my grandmother and my father over to this country and then they were out on their own. 0 3163 The '40s: Anti-Semitism at Muhlenberg Elementary School SC: Can you talk a little bit about where you were born and, you know, your- well you talked about your birthday, but your early life — what you remember, where you went to school, and how eventually how you met Nate.
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 ; MB: For some reason, all the Jews in Allentown lived on South 16th Street. That was where everybody moved. My father, being different, moved us to 22nd in Allen — there were no Jews. None. Okay, so I went to this elementary school — Muhlenberg, which is still in existence — and there were maybe five Jewish kids in the school. They were not so wonderful to me. They didn't include me in things. And I never thought of it, anything of it. Just like when they picked guards for crossing the street, everybody got the job except me. It was kind of- that was my first experience with anti-Semitism. 0 3350 Meeting Nathan Braunstein at Allentown High School MB: Then we went to Allen High, which was a fantastic school in those days. Everybody who was living outside the city limits wanted to go to Allentown High. Through the years, the school deteriorated to not such a great place, but in those years it was wonderful. Morty Sher was one of our teachers. He was very involved with the Jewish community and the Center. He was a- was he an English teacher? I don’t quite remember. I met Nate when I was a senior in high school. He had just- or was I a junior? I don’t remember. He was from New Bedford, Massachusetts. He came to Allentown when he was a senior, and he came here because when living in New Bedford, his father suddenly passed away. So he and his mother came to Allentown because Nate had a brother living here who had a business. 0 3524 1950s: Married Life at Tremont Apartments MB: Nate and I got married on August 6th, 1950. He was working for his brother and we moved to Tremont Apartments. Everybody, all the young couples, everybody moved [there] when they got married. It was really a nice place. I don't know if there were any Jewish people living there today, but it was filled with young Jewish couples — and then, maybe two years later, with the baby carriages. 0 3611 Marilyn Braunstein's Service to Hadassah MB: I think the first organization that I got involved with was the Auxiliary of the Jewish Community Center, because I always loved the Center. And then some of my friends — we had joined Hadassah too, which I belonged to — and then I became very active in Hadassah. Hadassah taught me to be a Jew. They taught me how to be as philanthropic as I could, because they always had quotas that we had to make, to send money to National. That was very important. And we always had National women come in and speak to us, and they really got us very enthused. 0 4245 The Women of Hadassah MB: I have a picture of all the presidents up to one that came after me. Mrs. Leonard was the founder, and her house is now the President's House of Muhlenberg. Beautiful house. I was never in it- yes I was, I was. She used to cook Hungarian meals for us. She was an elegant lady. 
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 ; SC: So it was on Leh Street, it was the Leh Street house? 
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 ; MB: This is Mrs. Leonard.
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 ; GE: This is Marilyn, next to the top. 
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 ; SC: So if you want to talk about some of the other women, that’s fine. 
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 ; GE: I remember you talking about it a little bit, about your experiences with Joyce Kitey. 0 4597 Marilyn's Values and Inspirations SC: So what do you value most in life? What have you valued in life? 
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 ; MB: Learning how to give. Which it wasn’t really [Hadassah] — that was my husband. He taught me how to give. I always thought I taught him. But as it worked out... Anyway, after Hadassah, all my friends got involved with other things. I became active with UJA. And then I was Campaign Chairman and President of Hadassah. We would go out to different chapters in the area and speak. We were very famous. Allentown, everybody, I think, was envious of us.
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 ; NB: They were like the posse, going out, spreading Judaism. 0 4694 Nathan Braunstein's Opinion on Changes in Hadassah NB: Can I interject something?
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 ; SC: Sure.
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 ; NB: Hadassah became weak because the younger women started to have careers, to not- were not the stay-at-home moms that Hadassah grew with. That's what kept Hadassah strong in communities. But with the growing need, the need of two incomes in families, with women that had careers of their own, Hadassah itself became weak. It's still the biggest organization, women's organization, but it became weak because of that. 0 MovingImage Nate Braunstein talks about first failing then succeeding in operating a belt factory with his brother. The business (Atlantic Apparel) began in the 1950s when women’s fashion commonly included shirt-waist dresses with a matching belt (same fabric) and some men’s pants had that, too. Nate’s factory made the belts. They were a component of the dress. As fashion changed, and there was little demand for fabric belts, Atlantic Apparel had to pivot to thinking about belts as an accessory item and selling to retailers rather than as a component of the dress or pants and selling to the manufacturers.
 ; 
 ; 
 ; Marilyn Braunstein talks about her idyllic life growing up in Allentown and visiting both sets of grandparents and playing with her many cousins. One of Marilyn’s proudest affiliations is with Hadassah. Marilyn was a member, officer, and eventually president of Lehigh Valley Hadassah Organization. At the time of Marilyn’s presidency, Hadassah had a strong presence in the Lehigh Valley.
 ; Interview with Nathen Braunstein, December 12th, 2015 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Okay, would you- Ready? Would you start by telling your full name, where you were born, and when you were born? NATHAN BRAUNSTEIN: My name is Nathan Braunstein. I was born in Linden, New Jersey, on August 21st, 1927. SC: And can you tell me about your family, as far back as you know -- where they were from, who they were, what they did? NB: My mother came to the United States from Warsaw, Poland. And my father came from a small shtetl called Bludova [?] in Poland also. And they met in the United States. The beginning of my mother's story is a little different than my father's story. My mother was married at the age about I would say could have been 15 or 16 to a man that lived in her shtetl. And when the- after they were married, she had a son by the name of Harry. And this man, I'll call Mr. Retarsky, [?] decided to go to the United States and then call for my mother and his son later. When he got to the United States, the First World War broke out, which deterred him from bringing my mother to join him. So in the ensuing years, what happened [is] he made a life for himself. He called for my mother sometime, I guess, around 1920, to bring her to the United States. Once she arrived here, shortly after he asked her for a divorce. Now, let's get to my father. My father must have been a rebel. His parents wanted him to be a rabbi. He ran away from home. He stowed away on a ship to the United States, and then they shipped him back when they found him. Whatever happened in Poland then is very sketchy to me -- the only thing I can remember now is that he came to the United States, he had his own life, he had a marriage, and when he met my- and I'm skipping around-- and he got involved in the apparel industry in Manhattan. And my mother, in the meantime, when she got here, was destitute and she knew how to sew. So she got a job in factories where she would sew garments and supported her son that way. And through the years -- and we're talking about a certain amount of years because I wasn't born until 1927 -- she must have been working at different factories, and my father was working at different factories, and my mother ended up working in the factory where my father was the manager. And he had lost his wife and he had four children, and I think my mother was prime to be -- wanted to be -- married, too. So they got together. SC: What was your father's name? NB: My father's name was Isadore, and my mother's name was Bertha. SC: So it was Isadore Braunstein. And your mother's maiden name? NB: Dornblott. Bertha Dornblott. But she had the name Bertha Retarsky, too. SC: Do you know your father's parents names and your mother's parents names at all? NB: No. I did have a grandfather. My father's father was living in the United States for a while ; but my father made him go back because he didn't want his mother to be alone. And so when I was a baby, I must have known them, but it's just a dream. SC: So could you talk a little bit about your schooling, you know, when you grew up, go through your life? NB: My schooling was...a maze of schools. The reason for that is when you were- when you managed apparel factories in those years, the owners would want to have someone get their factories running straight and good, and then they would no longer want the expense of having a manager. So we moved around a lot in my life. I must have gone to four or five different elementary schools in my life, and junior high schools. But I got the basic education. And as far as higher education, I went to Lafayette for two years in Easton. And I thought I could do better without the education. And I was in love, so I left that education. SC: So do you remember when you came to Allentown, when your family came to Allentown? NB: Certainly. I was 17 when I came to Allentown. My father had died a couple of months before, and my brother from my mother's side was working here for his father, who owned the factory. And my brother was kind enough to have us live with him and his mother -- you know, my mother and his family. SC: So could you talk a little bit about after that? Did you work any place before you got into the business and then I'll pass it over. NB: Well, I did some work for my brother's father -- I worked in the office, which was... SC: Yeah, that was it. You weren't a paper boy or anything like that? You didn't work before [the business] -- any casual jobs or anything? NB: I did some odd jobs. I worked at the school a little bit. SC: At your high school or at Lafayette? NB: When I went to Lafayette. SC: It's just sort of interesting to see how people maneuver through work to get to become a business owner, that's why I ask that. NB: Well from that I learned about the problems of the apparel business, when I was astute enough to pick up what was needed in the Valley, what I thought was needed, that I could do as a business. I had wanted to become a lawyer, but I gave that up. GAIL EISENBERG: And so, if you want to share with us a little bit: So you were working in the office. I'm just curious, what kinds of jobs or duties were you doing in the office? NB: Payroll. GE: Oh, you were doing the payroll. NB: Payroll was a big thing because everyone was on piece rate, and it was a difficult way-- GE: Yes, it was complicated. Yes. Okay. NB: And no computers. GE: Right. And so... you're saying you did not want to stay there as an employee, you wanted to go out on your own and start your own type of business? NB: Well, I knew that I was going to be in business. I always knew that. GE: And I'm just curious, what made you decide that? What reasons? What do you think contributed to that? NB: Well I gave up education. I felt I was good enough to make my mark in the manufacturing field. GE: And did you know you were going to be -- given you were working already in the apparels -- did you know you were going to be in the apparel business? NB: Well there was a need. Most of the people that made dresses and sportswear would have to send extra material to New York to have belts made for the garments. So I felt there was a need for someone to do that [locally] in Pennsylvania and the Northeast. There was only one other company that was in Wilkes-Barre. GE: So you recognized the need and and therefore you felt that was something that you would be able to fulfill and to satisfy and do well. NB: So I started- how did that work again? GE: About what year is that? Let's say when you started, about what year? NB: Pardon me? GE: About what year? What was the timeframe? NB: About 1951. GE: Okay, so quite early. You were just married. NB: That's right. GE: Right. Okay, and tell us a little bit about how you got started. NB: I got started this way: My father-in-law, we had a little conversation, and he offered to give me five-thousand dollars to go into business -- which in those days was a lot of money. But I didn't do well in that business. I lost it. GE: And that was trying to still do the belts? NB: Still belts. I lost it, so I had to get a job. I went to- I got myself to Wilkes-Barre, and I told them that I could bring in customers to their belt company. And I started to work for them, I worked for them for a year. In the meantime, my brother on my father's side also went out on his own and he closed that factory. So we got together, and we started another belt company. And from that -- he worked on the inside and I worked on the outside -- and we started to build a business. GE: So do you feel that between what happened, where your business went under, and then spending the year working at the belt company, then you started to really- NB: Which gave me more pointers about belts and things. GE: Right, about what would succeed, about what you would need. NB: And that was enough. GE: How about your brother? Did he have- I mean, he had general, you know, inside experience from the factory. NB: My brother was a garment cutter. That was his trade. He cut the fabric to make garments, I got that he got the fabric to make garments, but then he had a little sewing factory, which also didn't do well. GE: And with the belts, what he would need to do on the inside, he had all that- NB: He liked my idea about the belts, and we started up. Very small. GE: How many customers did you have the first couple of years? NB: Well, we had two or three customers. Kept building on it. GE: And so, want to tell us a little bit about that progression? NB: Well he and I did everything in the factory except sew, so we got a few girls that stuck with us throughout my career, actually. Got a few girls, and they came and sewed for us, and we put the belts together and gradually grew. What's the strange thing is: all the people that I thought that we would get business from locally was very difficult to get the business from them because the manufacturers in New York controlled [them], and they wanted the belts to come to New York rather than have someone making them in Pennsylvania, even though they could save money. And I had to break through that. I did that with a lot of badgering, nagging, and making a pest of myself. I was likeable. GE: Yeah, I believe that. NB: So, you know, there were times when I would talk to New York manufacturers where we say, "We give you the business, but you have to pay off." I says, "What's pay off?" He says, "I don't give my trimming manager a big salary, so if you want to make belts for me, you have to give him five percent." Hey, that's business. SC: Is that called a shakedown? NB: No, that's a kickback. I learned that very well. GE: And is that what needed to happen? NB: You don't know how many houses I built -- through kickbacks! I mean, well, where the trimming man would say to me, you know, "I need storm windows in my house" -- we would do it. If the account was big enough, we would do it. It's happening in Allentown now. That's called kickback. GE: And you want to tell us, share with us a little bit why at this time in this -- you know, especially in the 50s -- just tell us a little bit about the kinds of clothes that the women were wearing and the shirtwaists, dresses, and the belts, because many of us don't necessarily remember that. NB: I don't know how to explain that. The shirtwaists was a bonanza, started by the Villager Company -- you remember the Villager? GE: I do. NB: And everybody made shirtwaists, and shirtwaists was a bonanza for belt manufacturers. And that's what started to grow my business. Really grew it. And then what made it even bigger is men's slacks -- [men] would put belts on their slacks. Men's slacks manufacturers would be putting their own belts on slacks. So I learned to cover the men's market, too. GE: And at least in the beginning, the product- you want to just describe the product? I think you said it was the belt with the material, right? Was the material over the belt? NB: The material over the belt or you would have a webbing with leather tabs. GE: Okay, I'm trying to remember what that was like. And the shirtwaist dresses, they lasted in fashion until about what time period? I think, what, through the mid-60s? NB: Well it was-- through the 80s. GE: Really? That was the shirtwaist dress? NB: Well, the late 70s. MARILYN BRAUNSTEIN: With the sweater to match. NB: Oh yeah, that sweater dress. GE: Sweater dress. Okay. And then the men's pants, they also had similar [design]. And then I remember you telling us- tell us about some of the other types of belts that you then started [producing]. NB: Well that one, when I saturated that, there was only one other way to go: that was a retail market. Which had- which encompassed new machinery, because we were making finer belts and growing that. So it was a great adventure, actually, because-- it was exciting. GE: And quite a challenge. NB: Always a challenge. GE: Right. So just so I understand, when you were doing it more, where you were selling it to the manufacturer, in a sense it was just part of the garment, right? NB: Right. GE: Where the second time, when it's the retail, that's where you were selling it where it's an accessory that somebody bought separately. NB: Well I never used our name.It was the store name or-- GE: Or the brand name. Well especially the first time. NB: Whoever we made it for. GE: When you did retail, that was probably the store name, correct? NB: Yeah. We made a lot of belts for the Limited. For the Limited Express, for... GE: Okay. So let's see: you were in business. Tell us about -- you and your brother started, this was around 1951. And when did you see things begin to get more challenging because of, you know, the competitors going overseas? NB: The 90s, the late 90s. GE: Oh that was already that late? NB: '91, '92. GE: So it really thrived, then, through the 80s. And it was really not until the '90s that you were really being challenged. Okay, and then a little bit [of] what happened? What happened and how fast did things start going down? NB: Pretty fast. Pretty fast. In fact, when I got the idea that I should sell -- it took me two years to really make up my mind. I should have sold when I got the idea. GE: When did you finally sell? NB: '93. GE: Okay. So once it began in the '90s, it really got hurt. Nate, want to share with us some of the different manufacturers, different brands that you produced- that you manufactured for? You just said a few, but we didn't get it on tape. NB: David Crystal. I don't even remember the names anymore. GE: Evan Picone. SC: John Meyer of Norwich. NB: Well you're just repeating what I said. GE: But we didn't have it on the tape. NB: Oh, I see. GE: Once the company -- once a manufacturer -- let you break in, let you start making their belts, then did they stay with you? NB: They stayed with me. College Town -- did you ever hear of College Town? Slacks, sportswear, Panther. I used to get orders like two hundred thousand at a time. GE: How many people did you have working at the factory at its peak? NB: At the height, 200. GE: Wow. And was it mostly the operators or like- what did the work workforce consist of? NB: Well, at the beginning it was a lot of operators ; but then I didn't need as many operators. GE: Because the machinery--? NB: In order to fight what was going on in the Middle East- [I mean] in Asia, I must have spent close to a million dollars just in automatic machinery -- to make billions, but to no avail. I took a trip to Taiwan, and saw how they worked, and I knew I really had to get out because those girls were working- my girls, with their fringes, at that time were making twelve dollars an hour, and these girls were making not even twelve dollars a week. GE: So even as you were having fewer and fewer employees, it's still you could not- the labor cost was so [expensive]. NB: And you couldn't match it for another reason too: since the manufacturer was doing everything there, the Chinese were doing everything there for them -- with belts, too! GE: So even the shipping, you would have shipping and transportation costs. NB: It was a lost cause. They needed us -- our manufacturers needed us because they wanted to have somebody to make samples for them. But we were just being used for a while, 'til we realized, you know, they would throw business our way, but not the 200,000 quantity orders anymore. So, it was sad. I love that business. It was so... to me, it was like watching something grow that I built and then have it torn down. GE: At its peak, when you were making- when you were getting orders of the 200,000 things -- how many other belt producers were there in the area? Were you still the only one? NB: Only one. Because it's a specialty thing. That's why I wanted to do something different. I didn't want to make a dress like everybody else was making it. Right. Right, right. GE: You really carved out your own niche, your own specialization. NB: And I even grew bigger than the guy in Wilkes-Barre -- and they were mafia connected. GE: Did they ever give you any trouble, that when you left them and you started...? NB: [No.] GE: Okay, that's good. I remember you telling us last time about some of the challenges, the unique challenges it was, going from being where you're making for manufacturers versus now. What were the new things you had to learn and had to excel at and had to begin to do when you started going to retail? You know, how is that a new challenge? [phone interrupts interview] GE: Nate, you had started out working with manufacturing ; then, when you had to, also introduced [your belts] into the retailers. What were some of the new challenges for you? NB: New challenges were when you dealt with retailers, you didn't deal with owners -- what you dealt [with] was buyers. And if you learn about kickbacks, that's kickbacks! Well I learned how to deal with buyers, that's all. It's just simple. And every time a new buyer came in, we'd have to start from scratch all over again. GE: And I assume buyer's turnover. In other words, the owner stays, but the buyers -- it's constantly a new market. NB: My trick was, when I dealt with manufacturers, I had to deal with trimming and purchases. Well I would get into their heads, I would become friendly, they would become my family. When I came to town, and I'd listen to all their troubles, and they were my friends. So I kept a customer that I liked, but I also kept up my quality and everything. GE: So it was very much quality, right price, and relationship. And it sounds like the relationship was also very important. NB: It is. In today's world, relationships are not that great because people do business with email. Now how do you get to know somebody with an email? You don't. It's tough for people. GE: And they're also just- the businesses seem to be very, very different today when we don't have the same manufacturing that we used to have. You mentioned something that you didn't mention before -- that you were in real estate. Was that after the [business]? Did you say something about building homes or not? SC: No, that was the kickbacks. That was just a metaphor. GE: Okay. I think in terms of the business, that was a pretty good- you know, you gave us a pretty good [description]. I think we got most of the information. So do you want to share with us a little bit about your community involvement? 'Cause that was another big part of your life. NB: Well, we'll go back to Hadassah. GE: That'd be great. NB: Hadassah was my building stone, for getting above. What I feel that I could do for the Jews, myself. On Marilyn's second trip to Israel -- it was a three week trip, three weeks on a bus with Jewish women! And I became the mechanic to fix all the cameras and help them. And became friendly . . . it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. But I also found out what we as Jews owe to other Jews, especially with the loss of six million. And I became very serious about that whole thing. And I felt that if there were 10 million Jews in the United States -- or in the world, in the world at that time -- we owed for six million lost souls, and we have a responsibility. And people used to cross the street when they saw me because I was-- And anyway, I started out in working for the UJA office here as a volunteer after that trip. But I was always a little bit involved before we went with Hadassah. Whatever I did was very minimal, but what really helped also was the fact that my business was doing better, and I could be more philanthropic. Not that people that have good businesses are philanthropic, but it was just me that felt that way because of Marilyn's tutelage. And I worked on the campaign, I solicited people. And that became like a challenge for me too, like the belt business. It was- I've got to be the best, I've got to be the best at it. So in a short period of time, I became a regional chairman for UJA. And then I was asked to go on the national board, and that was such a fantastic feeling because there were probably... it must have been 14 or 15 of us that all thought the same way about the Jewish cause. And I stayed on it until the '80s. When my business was going, I couldn't maintain the gifts I was making. It's still a part of my life that was just a magnificent feeling, magnificent. There is -- and I'm not being melodramatic saying [this] -- that giving is such a high. Helping someone else is such a high. It's one of the highest things. It's better than getting. GE: In many ways, I think much better than getting. I remember last time, if you want to share with us a little bit: the influence of your father-in-law and uncle in regards to all this. NB: What story should I end it on? Your Uncle Bernie? Uncle Bernie was my father-in-law's brother. MB: Who was seven years younger. NB: He was really the philanthropic leader of the UJA. And when I started to get involved, he came and gave me a lecture and he said, "Now look, Nate, I don't want you to embarrass me." MB: What about the [inaudible]? NB: You want me to tell the story? We bought a second home. And Bernie and naturally my father-in-law, Victor, they all came to see the house, and pass judgment on it, and all that stuff. And I was the first one in the family that had a second home. So it caused a lot of rift. "How did Nate do this?" Blah blah blah and all that stuff. And one day, during the fall, I get a call from Uncle Bernie to come down to their office. I come down, and he sits me down, he says, "You know, the first thing you have to do is take care of Jews. And what you did, you went out and bought a second home before you're doing anything for the Jewish people." And he starts lecturing me, and I said, "You're out of line. You have no right to talk to me this way. Absolutely not. First of all, my father-in-law was sitting over there. If he wants to say something about what I do with my money, he can. But you can't. I'm not going to listen to what you're saying." And I said, "I will do for Jews my way and you won't be embarrassed." GE: And you always maintained a very nice relationship. NB: What? GE: He was satisfied. You and Bernie and of course your father-in-law, you always maintained a very good relationship. NB: Of course. In fact, he was very proud -- and also worried. He'd given away everything. But he's very proud. When he was old and sick, he came to live with us. First of all, Marilyn was his shining star. I can still hear him calling Marilyn, right now in my mind -- when he needed help. MB: Did you say anything about my brother? NB: No. MB: My brother died when he was 70, so. GE: When he was 70, when he was- when your brother was 70? MB: Yeah. GE: He died the day after my father-in-law. MB: Yeah. We had two caskets in the sanctuary. And a lot of people didn't know about my brother. They were coming to see my father. SC: I think Nate answered both of those questions, so that's fine. Thank you. Interview with Marilyn Braunstein, December 12th, 2015 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is December 12, 2015, the interview with Marilyn Braunstein. And I'm going to start with your background. Can you tell me as much about- first of all, your full name and your date of birth and where you were born? MARILYN BRAUNSTEIN: Okay. My name is Marilyn Kobrovsky Braunstein. I am a native Allentownian. I was born here at Sacred Heart Hospital in 1930, which makes me 85 -- 85 happy years. I'm very happy to be part of this interview that you're doing. I'm supposed to talk about my life? SC: Yes. Can you go back just a little bit and talk about your parents, your brothers and sisters -- your parents and grandparents, what their names were and where they were born? MB: My paternal grandparents name is Lazar and Lena Kobrovsky. They were born in Russia, Poland- I don't remember. I don't remember the town, but my Grandfather Lazer came to the United States by himself and left my grandmother and my father and his sister in Poland. And he came by himself. He came to Allentown because he had a landsman [Yiddish-- someone from the same town back in Poland/Russia] here. I guess that's how everybody kind of arrived here. And his landmans was Edward Schneider, who was in the . . . I guess in the junk business or peddling or something. And he lived in his house until 1902 or 3, I'm not sure. Until he brought my grandmother and my father over to this country and then they were out on their own. They had their own little house on Grant Street, which is in the sixth ward of the community. My father was just five or six, so he started school and he never really- he never spoke with an accent because he went to school as a young child. But when he was old enough to go to work, he and my grandfather went out on their horse and buggy to pick up scrap wherever -- you know, they went into the country, into Lehighton and Palmerton and all those little towns around here. And that's how he made a living until he bought a building and became much more involved in the business. The business grew, and he had all the Syrian neighbors -- they were all Christian Syrians -- and they also were what we called junkmen. And they used to bring all their stuff to my grandfather. And there were three brothers in the family. My father was Victor, and Bernie, and Sam. And then there were seven girls, so there were nine siblings all together. So what fun it was to go to my grandmother's house every Sunday and be with this family. My grandmother made her tuna fish -- tuna fish! I don't know how this Russian-Polish lady learned to make tuna fish salad but that's what she made. And my aunts, you want all my aunts names? I don't wanna do it. But there were seven, seven and three -- no, six and three. Nine, nine children. Okay, that was my paternal [family]. My maternal grandparents were Chaim and Sarah Greenberg. My grandmother's maiden name was Epstein. And they were born in Poland, too. I don't know how they got to London- I mean England, or why they went to England. They met in England. They got married and they had five children in England, my mother being the youngest at that time. She was a few months old. They came to this country, then, in 1902. My grandfather was a schneider [Yiddish for tailor], he was a tailor. So he- they came to Allentown because my grandmother's sister -- sister's husband was the rabbi in Allentown. So that's why they came to Allentown. There are ten siblings in my mother's family. My mother is Anna, my grandmother was Sarah -- I told you that -- and my grandfather was Chaim. And he had a tailor shop in the front of the house where they lived on Second Street between Turner and Linden. In there. And the front of the house, the living room, was his shop. And that's what he did. He was a tailor. And they lived, I don't know for how many years they lived there, but I know my mother worked -- went to work, I think she was a teenager. I don't remember exactly how it all occurred, but she worked at the Grammes Company. I don't know if it's still in business in Allentown. She worked an addressograph. Anyway, my father and mother were married in 1924, by Rabbi Krevsky, who was the rabbi in Allentown. It used to be called the Sixth Street Shul, [Yiddish for synagogue] because that's where the synagogue was for the congregation, the Sons of Israel, which is now on Twenty-seventh and Tilghman. My grandfather, my father's father, was very involved with Agudas Achim, which was Orthodox synagogue, and he would live within walking distance of the shul. So he was there every day and that was where he belonged to. My other grandfather belonged to a shul five doors away, called-- It will come to me. But anyway, they used to call it the Bolsheviki-y shul. My grandfather must have been a Bolsheviki, I don't know. Everyone looked down on that shul. So we used to go from one shul to the other, and everybody used to hang out in front of the shul. And there was always arguments for who was going to-- What is it at the end, where they- where you buy the right to--? I forget. So there was always a fight: Who was going to buy the right to say, I don't remember which it was. Anyway, sometimes cops had to come to break it up, it got so violent. They don't do those things anymore. They were a real bunch. And on that street was also two Kosher butchers and a Kosher store to buy fish and things. So it was a little community service there, for the Jewish community. It was a very nice, pleasant place to be. Yeah. And anyway, that's it. SC: Can you talk a little bit about where you were born and, you know, your- well you talked about your birthday, but your early life -- what you remember, where you went to school, and how eventually how you met Nate. MB: For some reason, all the Jews in Allentown lived on South 16th Street. That was where everybody moved. My father, being different, moved us to 22nd in Allen -- there were no Jews. None. Okay, so I went to this elementary school -- Muhlenberg, which is still in existence -- and there were maybe five Jewish kids in the school. They were not so wonderful to me. They didn't include me in things. And I never thought of it, anything of it. Just like when they picked guards for crossing the street, everybody got the job except me. It was kind of- that was my first experience with anti-Semitism. Anyway, I didn't have really any Jewish friends until junior high school. I did go to the Jewish Community Center -- Daycare Center. I loved it, loved it, because my people were there and I felt included. That was- that's a nice camp and it still exists. It was wonderful. And I spent a lot of time at the JCC every Sunday where everybody used to come in and take a trolley downtown. And we had a jukebox there and we all danced. We danced the jitterbug, I guess that's what that was in the 1940s. So that was- it was a lot of fun. And we formed the Young Judaea Club for the girls. So we used to come down one night a week and meet Young Judea and we picked a certain night because the Boy Scouts met that night, so we had everything figured out. Anyway, those were my junior high school years. Then we went to Allen High, which was a fantastic school in those days. Everybody who was living outside the city limits wanted to go to Allentown High. Through the years, the school deteriorated to not such a great place, but in those years it was wonderful. Morty Sher was one of our teachers. He was very involved with the Jewish community and the Center. He was a- was he an English teacher? I don't quite remember. I met Nate when I was a senior in high school. He had just- or was I a junior? I don't remember. He was from New Bedford, Massachusetts. He came to Allentown when he was a senior, and he came here because when living in New Bedford, his father suddenly passed away. So he and his mother came to Allentown because Nate had a brother living here who had a business. He made dresses like many people did here. So anyway, I met Nate at the Superior Restaurant, and it was right before my sweet sixteen party. So of course I invited him to my sweet sixteen party, and I never went out with anybody else after that. My father was not happy about that, but he thought I was too young. Nate was nineteen, I was sixteen. He said, "He's too old for you!" So nobody listened to my father. He thought we did. And when Nate graduated, he went to Lafayette College for two years. I decided that -- and my father was in full agreement, which he shouldn't have been -- and since I was so in love with this guy, why should I go to college? So I didn't. I went to a business school in Bethlehem, and I went there for two years, so that's what I did. I went to be a secretary. So anyway, Nate and I got married on August 6th, 1950. He was working for his brother and we moved to Tremont Apartments. Everybody, all the young couples, everybody moved [there] when they got married. It was really a nice place. I don't know if there were any Jewish people living there today, but it was filled with young Jewish couples -- and then, maybe two years later, with the baby carriages. Anyway, after- we had Cherie, after when I had Laurie, we moved into a house on 23rd and Washington up the street from the Center. It was in the- Was the Center built then? I don't think... No, the center was not built then. The center was built in 1957. But anyway, it was a wonderful place to live because all you had to do was like roll down the hill and you were there. So our lives were wrapped around the Center. Then I tell you -- through the years, I was active. I think the first organization that I got involved with was the Auxiliary of the Jewish Community Center, because I always loved the Center. And then some of my friends -- we had joined Hadassah too, which I belonged to -- and then I became very active in Hadassah. Hadassah taught me to be a Jew. They taught me how to be as philanthropic as I could, because they always had quotas that we had to make, to send money to National. That was very important. And we always had National women come in and speak to us, and they really got us very enthused. And Mrs. Leonard, who was the founder of Hadassah -- Allentown Hadassah-- Do you want me to stop? [interview is interrupted] SC: Well, maybe we should just move to- Well your work at Hadassah and then I'll ask you, what made you feel the most creative and what you valued most in life. Most creative and Hadassah is what you said last time, so maybe just move through what you did in Hadassah and I'll ask you the other one. MB: Anyway, where was I? I was very involved with Hadassah. I did a lot of things -- I collected blue boxes, I went door to door day to get puskas [Yiddish--charity box used to collect doinations] and everyone was very pleasant, and that was one of the jobs, one of the important jobs . . . try to find somebody to do that today. So I stayed with Hadassah, I got on the board, and did many, many jobs. It was like stepping up and training me to be- I never expected to be asked to be president. And my best friend said, when they had the nomination committee meeting, that I wouldn't take it if they asked me, they were sure I would say no. So... I said yes. And that was 1970, it's a two year term, to 1972. That was my year, the year that I made my first trip to Israel. They were dedicating or rededicating the building on Mount Scopus. That was in no man's land during the war. The Arabs were here, the Israelis were here. This was- this territory in between belonged to no one.But they tried to use the hospital and they had patients there and doctors used to come in, convoys up Mount Scopus to take care of the patients. But, I don't know what year it was, but they were- when Israel declared themselves a state, the Arabs murdered everyone in that convoy, all these doctors and patients, as they were going up to Mount Scopus. And the English did nothing, they just stood by and watched. Anyway, they knew they had to build another hospital within the boundaries of Jewish Palestine. In the meantime, their work was done in another hospital and I don't remember. But anyway, the new hospital was built in Ein Kerem, which is in Western Jerusalem. There was no contest about building a hospital there. I don't remember when it was finished, but I know I went a couple of years later, and I remember Muriel and Phil Berman putting the mezuzah on the door. They were extremely active and they- one of the nursing hospitals was one that they gave the money for. They were wonderful. And Muriel used to come back from all these trips and we had Board meetings and tell us what happened. Was really so thrilling to hear it from the first person like that. And I said to her, then, "Muriel, I want to be able to do that someday." That didn't happen, but we were very happy to be big contributors to Hadassah. Nate loved it. I took him, I dragged him along on my second trip with George and Mina Finkelstein. And George's suitcase never came. George must have been [unclear], and he was wearing [Nate's] clothes until his luggage came. Kind of funny. Anyway, they were wonderful to be with because they had lived in Jerusalem for many years. In fact, Arnon says that he's a Palestinian. He was born there. Anyway, we- Nate became so involved with the philanthropics of Hadassah, that he got caught up in it and he became involved with -- what was it called? It was called UJA, it was not called Federation -- United Jewish Appeal. So he started as a solicitor, I think, and worked his way up into the Presidency and Chairman of the Campaign. And we used to go to the big meetings in New York where everybody came to announce their pledges. So we used to go there and they would stand up and announce his pledge. And a lot of times I -- I'm falling through the table! Anyway, that was his love and there was nothing I could do to tell him that you're doing too much. He never felt he gave enough. So he loved it, and he felt he made a lot of Jews that weren't Jews before. And one of his jobs being on the National Board was to travel with-- NATHAN BRAUNSTEIN: You're telling my story. MB: Are you supposed to tell your story? GAIL EISENBERG: Yes, we'll let him tell his story. SC: You know, the last time we asked what made you feel the most creative and what you valued so much, you talked about what Hadassah meant to you. Can you talk a little bit about that? MB: Hadassah meant everything to me. My best friends were also involved with Hadassah and we worked together on projects. We used to sit and cut out invitations, we cooked in the kitchen. It was very close to my heart, and I loved being able to contribute to Hadassah. GE: You know what, may I bring the picture- you have a picture of the women presidents. I'm going to bring it, okay? Because that was also- you just shared with us a little bit, who these different presidents were. MB: I have a picture of all the presidents up to one that came after me. Mrs. Leonard was the founder, and her house is now the President's House of Muhlenberg. Beautiful house. I was never in it- yes I was, I was. She used to cook Hungarian meals for us. She was an elegant lady. SC: So it was on Leh Street, it was the Leh Street house? MB: This is Mrs. Leonard. GE: This is Marilyn, next to the top. SC: So if you want to talk about some of the other women, that's fine. GE: I remember you talking about it a little bit, about your experiences with Joyce Kitey MB: Mina was dynamic. Mina, and of course, Muriel Berman. She was great. And Nettie Klass lived across the street from the Center. It's a good thing she did because one night she saw flames coming out of the building. Yeah, somebody set fire to it. I don't know. The office was destroyed and the lobby. I don't know how long it took to fix it. I don't know if they ever caught the people who did it. But thank God, Nettie lived across the street! And we used to spend a lot of time with Netty, because she knew everything about Hadassah -- who was coming, who was going, who was moving. So we used to laugh, and we used to say, "Somebody's sitting under this table and listening to all of this." We used to gossip . . . terrible. But we had fun with Nettie, Netty was wonderful. And Edie was- she brought youth to Hadassah. NB: The Board. To the Board. MB: Oh, she's the one who brought me to the board, is that what you said? I don't know. But it was Edie and then it was Rhoda and Joyce, who moved here. Joyce was from Philadelphia. NB: Joyce was a younger woman. She was the first of the younger women, Edie. MB: And Joyce was from Philadelphia. She went to school with Wilt the Stilt. He was in her class. She's very, very bright. Anyway, her husband was a lawyer. After he graduated law school, they moved to Orlando, Florida, but didn't stay too long. And luckily they came to Allentown. She was a delight, really energetic. She brought all kinds of ideas to us, we were doing all kinds of stuff, everything was so original. Every dance, every dance we had was very special. She just made us work. We worked a lot. And her poor husband, Harry, if we had a board meeting at her house and it was snow on the pavement, she called him up at his office and said, "Harry, you come home, you gotta shovel the snow." Harry was so good. Anyway, they moved to New York, and by that time, Harry had had cancer, prostate cancer. And we lost him, so Joyce lived alone in New York and was very involved with Hadassah. She would have been, I'm sure, national president if she didn't have to work. She moved -- she sold the condo on 57th Street near Bloomingdale's and moved to Florida. That's where Joyce is today. And Joyce is so beautiful and so smart. We thought in five years she's going to be married. She's still single -- she's in her late 70s already. So I guess she's not going to get [married]. But anyway, she still loves Hadassah. SC: So what do you value most in life? What have you valued in life? MB: Learning how to give. Which it wasn't really [Hadassah] -- that was my husband. He taught me how to give. I always thought I taught him. But as it worked out... Anyway, after Hadassah, all my friends got involved with other things. I became active with UJA. And then I was Campaign Chairman and President of Hadassah. We would go out to different chapters in the area and speak. We were very famous. Allentown, everybody, I think, was envious of us. NB: They were like the posse, going out, spreading Judaism. MB: It was nice being involved with Hadassah because it was something I could share with Nate. NB: Can I interject something? SC: Sure. NB: Hadassah became weak because the younger women started to have careers, to not- were not the stay-at-home moms that Hadassah grew with. That's what kept Hadassah strong in communities. But with the growing need, the need of two incomes in families, with women that had careers of their own, Hadassah itself became weak. It's still the biggest organization, women's organization, but it became weak because of that. SC: It's the story of the United States, too. Things have changed, where women . . . NB: There's a dichotomy to this: Hadassah and Allentown is very, very weak. But the Women's Jewish Federation division is stronger than the men's division. And that's where the impetus of giving and where it's smart to belong has grown, and I can live in it. SC: And is the Federation men and women? NB: The men are set up to take -- a backwards step. I mean, I was very involved here in Allentown. Anyway finish with Marilyn, I shouldn't be doing this now. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:20:22
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Nathan and Marilyn Braunstein, December 12, 2015
Description
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Nate Braunstein talks about first failing then succeeding in operating a belt factory with his brother. The business (Atlantic Apparel) began in the 1950s when women’s fashion commonly included shirt-waist dresses with a matching belt (same fabric) and some men’s pants had that, too. Nate’s factory made the belts. They were a component of the dress. As fashion changed, and there was little demand for fabric belts, Atlantic Apparel had to pivot to thinking about belts as an accessory item and selling to retailers rather than as a component of the dress or pants and selling to the manufacturers.
Marilyn Braunstein talks about her idyllic life growing up in Allentown and visiting both sets of grandparents and playing with her many cousins. One of Marilyn’s proudest affiliations is with Hadassah. Marilyn was a member, officer, and eventually president of Lehigh Valley Hadassah Organization. At the time of Marilyn’s presidency, Hadassah had a strong presence in the Lehigh Valley.
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LVTNT-30
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2015-12-12
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
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Robert Levine
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5.4 June 1, 2017 Robert Levine, June 1, 2017 LVTNT-28 52:00 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Robert Levine Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 LevineRobert_20170601 1.0:|23(4)|42(14)|67(7)|86(9)|109(11)|136(8)|161(13)|192(2)|219(6)|238(15)|263(4)|286(15)|313(11)|340(4)|365(8)|390(5)|409(4)|436(3)|455(15)|474(16)|495(16)|516(2)|539(9)|560(10)|587(7)|616(11)|643(5)|662(5)|679(12)|700(16)|725(15)|750(12)|771(11)|796(9)|821(6)|846(12)|873(12)|898(13)|929(14)|958(7)|991(13)|1020(7)|1043(14)|1068(12)|1087(13)|1112(10)|1137(2)|1158(8)|1185(9)|1220(9)|1241(13)|1270(6) 0 https://youtu.be/H-BXrwfr-xg YouTube video 0 Introduction—Robert Levine's Education SC: Today is June 1, 2017, interview with Robert Levine, and am I pronouncing that correctly? So I'd like to go first to have you put yourself into place, and say your full name, where you were born, when you were born, and also some things about where you’ve lived in your life, you know, if you’ve lived at different places.
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 ; RL: Full name is Robert Kerry Levine. Born and raised in Allentown. Attended the Jewish day school in Allentown. I believe one of the first graduating classes from there. From there, I guess I went to Raub Junior High School, went to Allen High School for a year. Then my parents sent me off to Perkiomen Prep which I did three years there. And then down to Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, to get my degree-- four year degree. 0 69 Levine's Father & ; the Textile Waste Business SC: And also, can you talk a little bit more about any memories you have as a child growing up and what got you into the business? 
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 ; RL: Memories were that my father always worked, and I think from the time I could walk, I probably went to the - as we called it the shop or the warehouse - to help, to get in somebody's way when we were younger. And eventually, every summer, every vacation I did work for my father.
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 ; SC: And was he in exactly the same businesses as what you then were in?
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 ; RL: Well, they actually had an unusual business, or unique business, that their father who was born in and married in Russia came over here and had six children. The oldest being Verna, then four brothers, and then the youngest being Rose, who was actually still alive today ; she's 97. Their father went around town with a cart - I guess in that time that’s what they had - to collect used metal. 0 389 Family History SC: [C]an you talk a little bit more about your parents’ background, a little bit more context of your mother's family and father’s family.
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 ; RL: And I think a unique part about my father’s and mother's family is my father, like I said, had three other sibling boys who were all in the business. Each one of them had a different part of the business: one was in the office, two were in the textile waste, one was in the fabric part of it. Two of the brothers, the oldest two married a set of sisters. My father and his brother, who was just as old, a little older than him, married a different set of sisters. So again, it’s sort of unique that growing up we were very very close. My father's background, and I think the brother’s background, they just worked hard and learned from doing whatever they did because they had no college education. High school education was the most they had.
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 ; SC: That was good though.
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 ; RL: I think that you know from work, hard work, working hard. Just being there and doing it. 0 755 Schmattas—Yiddish for "Rag Business" SC: And it’s interesting that your family went from metal, metal scraps to fabric scraps. Would that all be considered schmatta?
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 ; RL: Schmattas? 
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 ; SC: Yeah. I have a terrible Trenton accent, I’m sorry.
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 ; RL: I don’t know if the metals would be called schmattas, but the rags are schmattas.
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 ; SC: Yes, okay, I didn’t know. So it would've been scraps but it's still some of the same skills, maybe? Or…
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 ; RL: It’s picking up stuff that nobody can use or wants.
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 ; SC: You can see value. 0 800 Competition Within the Textile Waste Businesses SC: So do you, do you think that the Jewish community was cohesive when you were young and when your parents were young?
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 ; RL: I think they were, yes. I mean in the textile waste part there were three families involved in the business. Each one of them worked very hard to get their accounts, and it was almost like cut-throat. That if one would pay a nickel a pound, the other one would come in and say seven cents a pound. And really the only one that was benefiting from it was the customer that they were buying it from. And that really went on for as long as I can remember. Once the children got involved, my generation, I know of a family is probably little younger than I am, he would call me and say ‘listen why don’t one week you guys pick the scrap up, the next week we pick the scraps, and let’s buy it cheap.’ Our fathers didn’t, both sides of the fathers didn’t want to have anything to do with it. 0 883 Relationship to Non-Jewish Communities SC: And how about the relationship between the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community. A lot of people we actually interviewed a couple generations, and you would hear, you’re young and…
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 ; RL: It doesn't matter who you are, or what you believe in. I wouldn’t say that about my father or my father-in-law, you know, that’s something different. I think my father-in-law has changed, that he realizes that this is what it is. 0 931 Personal Connections to the Jewish Community GE: [D]o you want to share with us any memories you have of the local Jewish community growing up? Or, what were the prominent institutions? Was your family active in any thing?
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 ; RL: Well, like I said, I went to a Jewish Day School, and I was in one of the first graduating classes. My parents belonged to Congregation Sons of Israel which is the Orthodox synagogue in the town. I was bar mitzvahed at 6th Street which was the old Congregation Sons of Israel. By the time I got married we still belonged to Congregation Sons of Israel. The sad part is they told me my dues were based on who my father was. I said ‘my father doesn't pay my dues.’ And, again, I don’t know if this should be talked about, but. And I said ‘no, I pay my own dues. It's my value.’ And growing up with, and then having some young kids, we weren't sending them to a Jewish day school. So we needed somewhere for them to go to Hebrew school. And at that point, we joined Temple Beth El. 0 1041 History of the Family Businesses GE: [T]ell us a little bit about the businesses. How your . . . .sounds like your grandfather, but especially your father and his brothers really, what was, how did it start? How did it grow? It sounds like it eventually became these four businesses they operated. Which parts of the business, what happened for the next generation?
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 ; RL: My grandfather had the pushcart and for some reason, he got some fabrics. And at that point, I don't know how much fabric it was but I guess my father and his brothers thought that this would be a good thing, rather than the fruit stand and the fresh fish. So they all worked together on Second Street. Mostly with the textile waste part, and then they grew into full rolls of fabric. Either they were extra from the manufacturers that they weren’t using to make their garments, or from the contractors there was often extra. I think at one point, the manufacturers who had contractors making their fabric would send in thousands of yards, maybe they only needed 500 yards. And it would get lost in the shuffle. And at that point, my father’s business, they bought the fabric. So they started with the textile waste part and the full rolls of fabric, excess fabric, over cuts, or whatever you want to call it. 0 1253 1986: Consolidating the Businesses RL: And then at one point, and it may have been 1986, we put all the businesses in one building. My father and his brother Ben ran the textile waste part of it. His brother Irving ran the fabric part of it. All the fabric whether it was for the retail stores or for the manufacturers. And his oldest brother, Morris, was more the financial guy, but also in the ‘craft and notions’ part of the business. Each one of the brothers had one son. Morris’ son, who was an excellent carpenter, came into the business, and none of us worked under our fathers. We all worked under uncles. That’s what, that’s what they wanted.
 ; 
 ; Arthur was involved in the wiper part of the business in the textile waste part. My cousin Jeffrey, who was Irving’s son, I have to rephrase, he was the only one who worked under his father. He didn't really want to work, he didn’t really like the work. He did not last long. He moved out to California or Arizona somewhere. Ira worked under Irving, which is the second oldest brother in the textile part of it, and I worked under Morris, who was in the financial part and the ‘crafts and notions’ part. And everything was great, and then you bring everybody... and everybody did their own little thing. 0 1452 1996: Closing the Family Business GE: [H]ow were the four businesses doing? Were they all still…
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 ; RL: Successful.
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 ; GE: Okay.
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 ; RL: And then we also had all of the retail stores, which my mother's brother ran all the retail stores. At one point his office was in one store, and then he moved into the warehouse with us. So that's how the business was running. And then at one point, we decided that we didn’t want it, it wasn’t right for us, the times weren’t right, and we literally closed everything down. We sold out of the retail stores, and just closed them. And we closed the wholesale operation. 
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 ; GE: And that was about when?
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 ; RL: I want to say 1996.
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 ; GE: Oh, so by 1996, the retail was closed and the wholesale was closed?
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 ; RL: Everything was closed. 0 1631 Life After the Business—Husband & ; Wife Businesses GE: [W]ant to share with us a little bit what you have done since?
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 ; RL: Since then, we have the building, which we rent out. It’s about a 130,000 square-foot warehouse. I happen to own 60% of it because I had 20%, I got my father's 20%, and I got my one cousin’s, who lives in Florida.I bought his 20%. Ira in a sense had 20%, and his parents may have still been living, they had 20%. They both passed. They gave 10% of their share to their daughter, who had passed to her kids, and they gave 10% to Ira. So in a sense, Ira’s sister’s children, the three of them own 10%, Ira owns 30% of the building, and I own 60%.
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 ; And, I guess I got married in ‘75, so we started making clothing, my wife and I. We had our own contracting facility that we actually made our own. First we had other people making it, then we started making it ourselves, and then we made garments for other people. Most of it was garment dyed. We had someone making sweaters for us, and everything would get dyed together. And we were selling to J Jill, Black-and-White, and a lot of boutique-type stores. 0 2016 Memories of the Business GE: Do you have any fond memories about the business that you want to share with us, any kind of anecdotes working, either working with your dad and uncles, or the time it was the cousins. Any particular stories that you want to share?
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 ; RL: Well, it was unique that my father and his brothers could scream . . . if they had a huge argument, two seconds later, it was forgotten. When you get cousins involved and uncles involved, it doesn't happen like that. So I think that was, you know, you sort of get used to that. Memories I had was that every time I had a vacation, if it was from high school, if it was from college, I’d come and work in the business. And I tried to learn every part of the business, and I expected if I wanted, I would sweep floors. If I wanted my employees to sweep floors, they can’t say well you never did it. 0 2110 Profits and Products GE: [I]t may be interesting to hear of total sales and perhaps separately total profits. What percent was the retail, was the waste, was the fabric? Any, any…
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 ; RL: That’s a business question, I could tell.
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 ; GE: Yeah, but any feel for that? Which one was particularly small, large? In terms of sales and in terms of profits.
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 ; RL: I don’t know what percentages, but I would think the fabric to the manufacturers was probably the largest percentage. Under that was the sales to retail stores, and then our stores, our retail stores, and the textile waste. And probably the reason for that is because when you're selling a tractor trailer load of fabric, the dollar amount was a lot more than when we are selling a tractor trailer load of scrap. 0 2309 Impact of the Textile and Needle-Trade Industries on the Lehigh Valley GE: Right, what impact do you think it's had on the Lehigh Valley on the general community and what impact do you think it had on the Jewish community? If anything.
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 ; RL: I don’t know, well I think...I don’t know if it’s really had an impact except maybe for prosperity or you know that's what I was doing. Now even when we closed our business, I was devastated so what am I going to give my kids, I have nothing to give my kids. And again that’s probably a Jewish thing. Maybe not, but what do I give my kids, I have nothing to give them. So I was very upset about that part. And I remember talking to the cantor and he said, no-- it was actually the rabbi, and he said, ‘don’t worry about it ; they’ll find their own.’ 0 2359 Rosey's Creations RL: I was a contractor making flags also for a company that now had moved to Florida, excuse me to South Carolina. And they would give me the rolls of fabric, which were flags, I would take them to a contractor, and they would cut the flag out and sew it. We also did tablecloths for department stores if it was for a certain cosmetic company. We did NASCAR flags, we did the US flag, all kinds of different things. 
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 ; GE: At that point was that part of the Levine business or was that was part of yours and your wife’s..
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 ; RL: No, that was a part of my own.
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 ; GE: Right, okay, your own business. What was that business called? 
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 ; RL: Well I kept it under Rosey’s Creations, which was my, our fabric part of the business. 0 2410 My Boy's Baking RL: Just, you didn’t ask about My Boy’s Baking. My wife and I have three children, grown, and actually three grandchildren, which is better than having the children, but don’t record that. Your thoughts also?
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 ; GE: No, I don’t have them yet.
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 ; RL: Oh, it’s the best,
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 ; GE: I look forward to it.
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 ; RL: But, when my daughter was young, she used to say, ‘where are my boys?’ So we really didn’t want to call it biscotti, we didn’t want to give it . . . because what do we do if we start making cookies? So that's how we got the name My Boy’s Baking from. Actually, my daughter . . . because people would go to her and say aren’t you upset that it’s called “My Boy’s..” and she would say no because that’s what I called them. 0 2464 Reflecting on Jewish and Italian Involvement in the Textile and Needle-Trade Industries GE: Why do you think the Jewish community was dominant in that industry?
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 ; RL: Probably because once someone was doing it and another Jewish person said, ‘oh, maybe I should do it.’ No, I really don’t know because there are a lot of Italians in it too. 
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 ; GE: Right.
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 ; RL: But Italians and the Jewish people are sort of similar.
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 ; GE: Right, right.
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 ; RL: And they all got, we all got along.
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 ; GE: Right, right, any thoughts as to why those two groups?
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 ; RL: Get along?
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 ; GE: Or were in that industry? What about that industry made it attractive?
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 ; RL: I really don’t know. I mean just maybe for the enjoyment of it. It could be enjoyment. 0 2588 Levine's Children and Grandchildren RL: My oldest son, Joshua, is married and has two sons. He works for Stephen Starr Restaurants. They have about 47 restaurants, each one of them . . . mainly out of Philadelphia. Each one pretty much has a different theme. They've opened in Florida, they’ve opened in Washington DC, and they’ve opened in New York. Actually Stephen Starr just won the James Beard Award, which is like a nationwide or worldwide top honor. One of his restaurants in New York, Le Coucou, a French restaurant, just also won the James Beard for the best restaurant. Le Coucou was voted the best restaurant in New York. My son Joshua runs all forty-seven restaurants ; from opening them, helping to open, to buying the supplies for the restaurants. And actually he started out, our family was very ice hockey oriented, so he went to school in Colorado, University of Colorado, and he was a ref for the semi-pros out on the West Coast. 0 2884 South Clemson Versus Philadelphia Textile SC: Is there a reason why you went down South to Clemson, only because there were…
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 ; RL: Philadelphia Textile was the number one school. I did not get in on my own. I was probably not a very good student, and my father said, ‘we must know somebody.’ And I said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to do that.’ Clemson was the second best for textiles, so that’s why I went down to Clemson, it was farther away from Allentown.
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 ; SC: And were there any, when you were there, was that still an emerging textile area?
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 ; RL: Clemson?
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 ; SC: Out in the…
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 ; RL: Clemson area? Yes.
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 ; SC: That’s what I was wondering, method to madness.
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 ; RL: I mean talk about 1972, yeah it was still big. 0 2994 Levine's Values SC: So what do you value most in life?
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 ; RL: My family. And you know, kids, my wife. Well let’s do my grandchildren, my kids, and my wife...don’t quote me. Family is very important to us. Even today, my daughter must call my wife 10, 15, 20 times a day. And it’s just to talk. My wife lost her sister from cancer probably 20 years ago, so it's, and this is good for her to have my daughter very close. Every morning, I text her and say good morning. So family is very important and that’s why both my boys moved back from Florida and California because you know it’s family, it's all about family. 0 3082 Levine's Inspiration SC: And what has made you feel the most creative in your life? 
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 ; RL: My wife. I mean you know it’s, how creative am I? I don't really know, you know, it's my wife who is really doing the creative part. And I’ve just followed that in the financial part and worked it. Is that a good answer?
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 ; SC: Yeah, it's a good meeting… 
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 ; RL: Really?
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 ; SC: It’s a good match. 0 MovingImage Robert Levine (three generations in Allentown) talks about how S. Levine & ; Sons business was started by his grandfather, a peddler in scrap metal originally and later in textile scrap. Robert’s father and his father’s three brothers entered the business in the mid 1940s and grew it substantially. During its heyday, the Levine business included textile waste, fabric wholesaling, fabric retailing, and purveyor of crafts and notions to fabric and retail stores. By the 1980s, the older generation had either passed away or retired and the Levine business was now run by the next generation, Robert and his cousin Ira. By 1996, between industry decline due to globalization and free-trade and conflicting ideas of how to run the business, the cousins sold off part of the business and closed the other parts of the business. Interview with Robert Levine, June 1, 2017 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is June 1, 2017, interview with Robert Levine, and am I pronouncing that correctly? So I'd like to go first to have you put yourself into place, and say your full name, where you were born, when you were born, and also some things about where you've lived in your life, you know, if you've lived at different places. ROBERT LEVINE: Full name is Robert Kerry Levine. Born and raised in Allentown. Attended the Jewish day school in Allentown. I believe one of the first graduating classes from there. From there, I guess I went to Raub Junior High School, went to Allen High School for a year. Then my parents sent me off to Perkiomen Prep which I did three years there. And then down to Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, to get my degree-- four year degree. SC: And also, can you talk a little bit more about any memories you have as a child growing up and what got you into the business? RL: Memories were that my father always worked, and I think from the time I could walk, I probably went to the - as we called it the shop or the warehouse - to help, to get in somebody's way when we were younger. And eventually, every summer, every vacation I did work for my father. SC: And was he in exactly the same businesses as what you then were in? RL: Well, they actually had an unusual business, or unique business, that their father who was born in and married in Russia came over here and had six children. The oldest being Verna, then four brothers, and then the youngest being Rose, who was actually still alive today ; she's 97. Their father went around town with a cart - I guess in that time that's what they had - to collect used metal. The brothers, I believe, were in the fruit business, and they also grew into [selling] fresh fish. Something like they went to the Army, came back, and I think they still. . . I don't know if it was before the Army or after the Army, they still had that business. And then their father somehow started collecting pieces of fabric. So from there they got into the fabric business. They had a warehouse, the first one was actually on Second Street, near Second and Tilghman. And the story I've been told is that they put their father in the corner, let him play with some fabrics and sort them and from that they got involved in the textile waste part of the business. From the textile waste part of the business, they had from some of the manufacturers . . . . Textile waste, for those that don't know, it's when you make out a pattern, the part you scrap that's what they collected. From there they got rolls of fabric that were extra or the manufacturer's contractor sold it. They grew that into selling rolls of fabric to different retail stores, I believe, and to manufacturers who needed the fabric. From there they grew into the textile waste part and the full rolls of fabric. From there they grew into retail stores. With the retail stores, at one point we probably had over 20 retail stores. Some being, one being in the Hess department store downtown. Some being in Fox Food Basket, which was a grocery chain at that time, and freestanding ones. And then you had warehouses throughout the metro, throughout the Allentown area. That one was for the textile waste, one was for the fabrics, from which they sold to the manufacturers at that point. They also got involved with converting your own fabric, meaning when velour was big, they would go to a firm called Fair-Tex, which is a local firm. They would make the fabric for them, and then my father and his brothers, me and my cousins would sell it. In another warehouse, they had fabrics that were sold to retail stores, and also crafts and notions that were sold to retail stores. So in essence it was really four different parts of the business. One being the textile waste, one selling the full rolls of fabric to manufacturers-- for some of them the fabric was newly made, some was overrun, some was excess fabric. Another part [of the business] was the crafts and notions in fabric and retail stores, then the retail stores and the fabric. SC: May I just ask where the different fabric stores were. I remember Levine's in between Ewing and Princeton when I was a kid. Was that your family? RL: Ewing, Princeton, New Jersey? We actually had one in Woodbury, New Jersey and one in Williamstown, New Jersey, so I don't know if that's where you're talking about? SC: No, but I know that I've been to Levine's. RL: Their first one was actually on Ridge Avenue. Actually, no, the first one was on Tilghman Street, in a little, now I think it's a house or something, they converted it to. Then they went to Ridge Avenue. From there they went to Seventh Street. We had them in Colmar, Pennsylvania and probably could remember some of the others. SC: Landsdale, maybe? RL: Well Landsdale and Colmar are the same thing. SC: Yes, yes. So as far as your background, can you talk a little bit more about your parents' background, a little bit more context of your mother's family and father's family. RL: And I think a unique part about my father's and mother's family is my father, like I said, had three other sibling boys who were all in the business. Each one of them had a different part of the business: one was in the office, two were in the textile waste, one was in the fabric part of it. Two of the brothers, the oldest two married a set of sisters. My father and his brother, who was just as old, a little older than him, married a different set of sisters. So again, it's sort of unique that growing up we were very very close. My father's background, and I think the brother's background, they just worked hard and learned from doing whatever they did because they had no college education. High school education was the most they had. SC: That was good though. RL: I think that you know from work, hard work, working hard. Just being there and doing it. SC: Where . . . was everyone from this area, did they all finally settle in this area? Once they . . . before they were married? RL: The four brothers were, yes. SC: And the women? RL: I know about my mother and her sister. They're from here. I'm pretty sure the other two sisters were also from Fountain Hill, Bethlehem, somewhere in this area. Because my father's oldest brother, Morris, I believe he worked at a factory in Northampton. I don't remember the name of it. I don't know if you guys interviewed-- SC: ...different people, we did. RL: Not Kivert, who's-- GAIL EISENBERG: That's who we did. RL: I think that's where he may have ended up. That's...I think so, I'm not 100% sure, though. SC: So do you know anything about the rest of your family, where they came from, did they all come originally from Russia? Or-- RL: My...and my grandfather Sam, whom the company is named after: S. Levine and Sons, with the Sons being his sons. He was from Russia ; his wife was from Russia or my grandma was from Russia. They were married there and then they came here to the states. My mother's side of the family, I really don't know. And the only reason that I know my father's side is because after I spoke to Gail, I figured, I better find out where my father's family is from. So I made a phone call to my father's only living sibling, Rose, who is 97. And we FaceTimed, and she looks exactly like I saw her and remember her. SC: Do you know anything more about, like the maiden names of your family going back-- of the women? RL: Baringoldz is my mother's maiden name. And actually, B-A-R-I-N-G-O-L-D-Z. Actually, she, her brother, there were three sisters and a boy in that family. One of them was actually a Fock, who married a Fock. And then my aunt and my mother married my father and his brother. And Leon Baringoldz, he actually, had a fabric store of his own on Seventh Street. Then he closed that and came to run all of our fabric stores. He was from Allentown. I don't know my grandma's maiden name. SC: Cause sometimes people coming are looking for family members, or distant family members, so it's nice if they can connect with the other people. RL: Yeah, that's what I know. SC: And, so also was the entire family Jewish? RL: Yes. SC: And then other ones, we haven't done this for a little while-- RL: That's ok. GE: Quick question, when were you born? RL: 1950. GE: And then, what brought your grandfather to Allentown? How did he come to Allentown? RL: I have no idea. You know, I could ask my, if I could call you back, I could ask my aunt who's-- GE: Right, right, I'm just curious, it's not public. RL: I know, I don't know, were there a bunch of families that came, fabric families that came to Allentown? SC: Yeah, going through often, through Brooklyn. GE: Someone either brought them or they started out in Brooklyn. RL: So just a note of, personally, my father was in what they called new rags. It was never used, it was new fabrics or new scraps. Whereas my father-in-law was in used clothing in Scranton. My wife and I met at the textile, a rag convention, a wiper convention in Paradise Island. So that's how, that's what brought us together. SC: And the connections, too. RL: Well they sort of knew each other but they really didn't, and they may have said hello or whatever. But then after my wife and I got engaged, all the other families wanted to bring their kids in too, and said 'hey, maybe I can get my kid involved in the textile business.' SC: And it's interesting that your family went from metal, metal scraps to fabric scraps. Would that all be considered schmatta? RL: Schmattas? SC: Yeah. I have a terrible Trenton accent, I'm sorry. RL: I don't know if the metals would be called schmattas, but the rags are schmattas. SC: Yes, okay, I didn't know. So it would've been scraps but it's still some of the same skills, maybe? Or-- RL: It's picking up stuff that nobody can use or wants. SC: You can see value. RL: Well, everything had a value. Someone's scrap was someone else's value. SC: So do you, do you think that the Jewish community was cohesive when you were young and when your parents were young? RL: I think they were, yes. I mean in the textile waste part there were three families involved in the business. Each one of them worked very hard to get their accounts, and it was almost like cut-throat. That if one would pay a nickel a pound, the other one would come in and say seven cents a pound. And really the only one that was benefiting from it was the customer that they were buying it from. And that really went on for as long as I can remember. Once the children got involved, my generation, I know of a family is probably little younger than I am, he would call me and say 'listen why don't one week you guys pick the scrap up, the next week we pick the scraps, and let's buy it cheap.' Our fathers didn't, both sides of the fathers didn't want to have anything to do with it. And I guess it was, you know, their ego. You know, they started from nothing, and it was their account, and it was the way that that generation worked because they worked hard at it, and sweated it, and worked seven days a week to get their accounts. SC: And how about the relationship between the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community. A lot of people we actually interviewed a couple generations, and you would hear, you're young and-- RL: It doesn't matter who you are, or what you believe in. I wouldn't say that about my father or my father-in-law, you know, that's something different. I think my father-in-law has changed, that he realizes that this is what it is. SC: So I think that's it unless you have any more questions about getting into the business? GE: Right, right, well I'll ask you something, but in regards to this, do you want to share with us any memories you have of the local Jewish community growing up? Or, what were the prominent institutions? Was your family active in any thing? RL: Well, like I said, I went to a Jewish Day School, and I was in one of the first graduating classes. My parents belonged to Congregation Sons of Israel which is the Orthodox synagogue in the town. I was bar mitzvahed at 6th Street which was the old Congregation Sons of Israel. By the time I got married we still belonged to Congregation Sons of Israel. The sad part is they told me my dues were based on who my father was. I said 'my father doesn't pay my dues.' And, again, I don't know if this should be talked about, but. And I said 'no, I pay my own dues. It's my value.' And growing up with, and then having some young kids, we weren't sending them to a Jewish day school. So we needed somewhere for them to go to Hebrew school. And at that point, we joined Temple Beth El. GE: And were you or was your family particularly active members? RL: I don't think that they were very active, no, in neither the Sons of Israel or anything else. GE: So I'm going to take this, and I'm going to ask you, you already did. . . you already went into it, but I think I'm going to ask you again, maybe take a step back-- RL: Did I speak too early? Did I say too much? GE: No, not at all, this is your story. But, for you to maybe take a step back and and just maybe a little more slowly, right, tell us a little bit about the businesses. How your . . . .sounds like your grandfather, but especially your father and his brothers really, what was, how did it start? How did it grow? It sounds like it eventually became these four businesses they operated. Which parts of the business, what happened for the next generation? RL: My grandfather had the pushcart and for some reason, he got some fabrics. And at that point, I don't know how much fabric it was but I guess my father and his brothers thought that this would be a good thing, rather than the fruit stand and the fresh fish. So they all worked together on Second Street. Mostly with the textile waste part, and then they grew into full rolls of fabric. Either they were extra from the manufacturers that they weren't using to make their garments, or from the contractors there was often extra. I think at one point, the manufacturers who had contractors making their fabric would send in thousands of yards, maybe they only needed 500 yards. And it would get lost in the shuffle. And at that point, my father's business, they bought the fabric. So they started with the textile waste part and the full rolls of fabric, excess fabric, over cuts, or whatever you want to call it. Then from Second Street, they moved to a couple other warehouses, one being in Catasauqua, which was just wipers. What wipers are, it's a bigger piece of fabric, bigger than your hand that someone can use for cleaning, the government used it, and for whatever else they could use it. The textile waste part was in Catasauqua, and there they sorted the different types of fabric out. They would try to teach the contractors and manufacturers when they were cutting something, their patterns, if they were cutting cotton, only put cotton in the burlap bag that our business would pick up. If there were cutting polyester, only polyester [in a bag]. If they were cutting only burgundy polyester, keep that in one bag. And it was more valuable at that point, whites were more valuable. The polyester scraps, a lot of that got sent to, I guess converters or someone who would break apart the fabric, and now they would already have a yarn dyed thread. So it was one less step that they would have to do. Some of it was made into the roofs of cars. A lot of it was made into paper and sometimes, I don't know if they still do it, sometimes you see recycled paper, or recycled fabrics, which was from the type of fabrics. Then from, that was in Allentown, they had a warehouse that would be just for the full rolls of fabric, and an upstairs was the 'craft and notions' and the downstairs for the full rolls of fabric but also the, what they called double fold fabric, which would go into the retail stores. And then at one point, and it may have been 1986, we put all the businesses in one building. My father and his brother Ben ran the textile waste part of it. His brother Irving ran the fabric part of it. All the fabric whether it was for the retail stores or for the manufacturers. And his oldest brother, Morris, was more the financial guy, but also in the 'craft and notions' part of the business. Each one of the brothers had one son. Morris' son, who was an excellent carpenter, came into the business, and none of us worked under our fathers. We all worked under uncles. That's what, that's what they wanted. Arthur was involved in the wiper part of the business in the textile waste part. My cousin Jeffrey, who was Irving's son, I have to rephrase, he was the only one who worked under his father. He didn't really want to work, he didn't really like the work. He did not last long. He moved out to California or Arizona somewhere. Ira worked under Irving, which is the second oldest brother in the textile part of it, and I worked under Morris, who was in the financial part and the 'crafts and notions' part. And everything was great, and then you bring everybody... and everybody did their own little thing. It was all dollars came into one pot. Then we moved out to, we built a building out towards Iron Run where everything was together: the textile waste part was one part, the fabrics to the manufacturers were in part of the building, the retail fabrics, crafts and notions were in the other part of the building, and we all had our offices there. GE: I'm sorry, that was 1990, or something? RL: I think around 1986. At that point, my uncle Morris, who was the oldest brother, had passed. He actually passed on Front Street where he was involved in the financial part, at the switchboard. And that's probably where he wanted to pass. His next brother, Irving, passed, so it was really only my father and his brother, who was a bit older than him, left in the business when we moved out to the Iron Run industrial park outside of that. By then, Arthur had already moved to Florida and so it was just Ira, who was Ben's son, and myself that were working in business, so it was really only four of us. Then at one point, my father took, went to Florida, and stayed there. Ben also, if I remember correctly, went to Florida -- much later than my father. And then it was Ira and I running the whole company. GE: And this was what time period? RL: I would say almost the late 1980s. GE: Okay, and how are the different, how were the four businesses doing? Were they all still-- RL: Successful. GE: Okay. RL: And then we also had all of the retail stores, which my mother's brother ran all the retail stores. At one point his office was in one store, and then he moved into the warehouse with us. So that's how the business was running. And then at one point, we decided that we didn't want it, it wasn't right for us, the times weren't right, and we literally closed everything down. We sold out of the retail stores, and just closed them. And we closed the wholesale operation. GE: And that was about when? RL: I want to say 1996. GE: Oh, so by 1996, the retail was closed and the wholesale was closed? RL: Everything was closed. GE: Okay, okay. RL: We still own the building so we rented that out. GE: Right, okay. RL: And at that point when we closed, it was only Ira and myself left. GE: Okay, um, so those last five years, I'm assuming part of it was that the businesses were slowing down? RL: Slowing down and-- GE: Different points of view about-- RL: The sons got married, and it was just problems, Jewish problems. GE: Right. RL: And you know, that and everybody wasn't getting along as we used to. Because growing up, my father and his brother Ben and my mother, who was called Tootie,and her sister Dorothy, we lived in a twin house. And we had a hole cut through it so we could walk back and forth. My parents had their baby, my sister first, so we got to move into, actually my aunt's house, and they moved into our house, and we just lived like that. And then at one point, they had to close up the wall because too many things were being thrown back and forth. GE: So the business ended in '96 but at that point it was still a thriving business. RL: It was slowing down. GE: Because I wanted to ask you, what do you see as being some of the factors that led to it slowing down? RL: I think the family members not getting along. I think the industry in itself. Because even with the retail stores, you could buy clothing cheaper than you can make it at that point. The textile waste part just lost what was made overseas so there was no textile waste. You know, how many manufacturers and contractors were left here. So I think it was just time that ; we just wanted to close it. GE: And so now do you want to share with us a little bit what you have done since? RL: Since then, we have the building, which we rent out. It's about a 130,000 square-foot warehouse. I happen to own 60% of it because I had 20%, I got my father's 20%, and I got my one cousin's, who lives in Florida.I bought his 20%. Ira in a sense had 20%, and his parents may have still been living, they had 20%. They both passed. They gave 10% of their share to their daughter, who had passed to her kids, and they gave 10% to Ira. So in a sense, Ira's sister's children, the three of them own 10%, Ira owns 30% of the building, and I own 60%. And, I guess I got married in '75, so we started making clothing, my wife and I. We had our own contracting facility that we actually made our own. First we had other people making it, then we started making it ourselves, and then we made garments for other people. Most of it was garment dyed. We had someone making sweaters for us, and everything would get dyed together. And we were selling to J Jill, Black-and-White, and a lot of boutique-type stores. And that business also was again, the retail stores of clothing was becoming less and less. So we closed that. And at the end of that business actually we were making pilates clothing, which was exercise clothing. And through the whole time, we had franchises of Benetton, and we had three stores, and we also had an ice cream franchise called Hillary's. And we closed all of those franchises, and I couldn't sit at home and just do nothing and that's why we started making the ladies clothing. Then once, at the end, like I said, we were making pilates clothing, and we advertised in a magazine, and we did a show out in California. My wife is a great baker besides designing clothes, and knitting and whatever. We were making biscotti, she was making some for our children because her mother used to send my kids biscotti and she said 'mom, I can make it taste better.' So we took some of our samples that my wife made of biscotti out to California to give it to the magazine and at that point they said, 'oh, could you do our corporate gifts?' And here we are, we didn't have a commercial kitchen, we didn't have a commercial oven, we had nothing commercial. And I said, 'sure, we'll do that for you.' It started out to be 100 tins, a hundred pounds, a pound in each tin. We bought a commercial mixer, put it in our house, and we had two commercial ovens that were electric put into our house. And in year one we started doing corporate gifts for this magazine. It turned out to be 1500 tins and 1500 pounds later. And someone who got that [biscotti] as a gift, that company, the next year, they wanted us to send it out to their customers. So we worked out of our house for two years doing corporate gifts. We worked Thanksgiving . . . from November to January. And we said, 'you know what, maybe we have something, let's open a retail store.' So we opened up a retail store. We got involved in the fancy food show in New York. So we have been doing that. It's been about 11 years now. We are selling at this point to some major grocery chains. We're in the second-largest coffee chain in the United States, mostly private label. And we were just on QVC for the third time. And a lot of small coffee shops, and again a lot of what we do is private label. As a matter of fact, someone who was in one of the coffee shops was a friend of someone who worked for us and they said, 'you know what I was in this coffee shop, looked like your biscotti, it tasted like your biscotti, but your name wasn't on it.' And, yes it was ours. So that's where we are right now, we have this bakery, one location and we're shipping all over for it. So it has been fun. It's retail and it's also wholesale. It's off of 512 in Bethlehem. GE: And so-- RL: Excuse me, we only do biscotti and cookies. We did rugelach, it just got too time-consuming. We do granola which we do some, we again, we do private label for some people. And we do brownies. My Boy's Baking. GE: So at this point you have this business, and you still have the warehouse. Is the warehouse pretty much rented out? RL: Once we moved out, it was rented to a return center for K-Mart. And the return center, what the return center is anything from a store that someone returns-- as you know you can go to any store and return whatever-- and it goes back to a return center. So you figure it was 130,000 square feet of merchandise that people . . . and they have six of these throughout the United States. K-Mart, when they closed, we were . . . it was empty for about six months, and we got another company in there who took the whole space, and it's a plastic company. They've been in there for ten years, and they signed another contract for five. GE: Good, good. Do you have any fond memories about the business that you want to share with us, any kind of anecdotes working, either working with your dad and uncles, or the time it was the cousins. Any particular stories that you want to share? RL: Well, it was unique that my father and his brothers could scream . . . if they had a huge argument, two seconds later, it was forgotten. When you get cousins involved and uncles involved, it doesn't happen like that. So I think that was, you know, you sort of get used to that. Memories I had was that every time I had a vacation, if it was from high school, if it was from college, I'd come and work in the business. And I tried to learn every part of the business, and I expected if I wanted, I would sweep floors. If I wanted my employees to sweep floors, they can't say well you never did it. I taught myself to drive a tractor-trailer. I love driving it, it's a good truck. So I was in, and I was in a retail store. So I was really in all aspects of the business. Not saying I knew everything about it, but G-d-forbid I could at least fudge my way through it. But I just loved to work there. It was just so much fun, and we had great employees which is very important. GE: About how many employees did you have? RL: At one point, 300 employees, throughout the retail stores and the warehouse. GE: Okay, wow, and about total sales, it may be interesting to hear of total sales and perhaps separately total profits. What percent was the retail, was the waste, was the fabric? Any, any-- RL: That's a business question, I could tell. GE: Yeah, but any feel for that? Which one was particularly small, large? In terms of sales and in terms of profits. RL: I don't know what percentages, but I would think the fabric to the manufacturers was probably the largest percentage. Under that was the sales to retail stores, and then our stores, our retail stores, and the textile waste. And probably the reason for that is because when you're selling a tractor trailer load of fabric, the dollar amount was a lot more than when we are selling a tractor trailer load of scrap. GE: Right, now just out of curiosity, so there you gave us a sense of the order in terms of sales, terms of the topline. What might it be in terms of profit, in terms of at least margin? RL: I would think it'd be almost the same thing. GE: Oh so, okay, okay, as to which ones would have had a higher margin compared to lower margin. RL: Because if you're picking up fabric from, and this is a business part of it, if you're buying someone's fabric that they have no more use for, you can buy it cheaper than if you have to go and make it yourself or buy from someone who's making it for you. So the profit was there. The retail stores sales were sort of like a set profit, and part of what brought down the wholesale to the crafts/notions and fabrics is the manufacturer's of a Coats and Clark, which was a thread company. They would start selling to customers directly and cutting out the wholesaler and at that point we could not compete. So that part of the business, a lot of the fabric people, if it were a Concord fabric or any other name fabrics that we were distributing, they would be out there selling in a sense our customers not because they knew they were our customers but because they themselves can get a higher dollar for that piece of fabric than they would if they sell it to us. Even though we may buy one- hundred pieces and someone is only buying ten pieces. GE: Right, right. They didn't protect their wholesalers. RL: Right. GE: So I think that's mostly...any other...what have you seen, so I don't know if you have anything to reflect on, you know, you've been here, it sounds like a minimum 40-50 years-- RL: 67 years. GE: Right, right, but I mean that you can even reflect on, right? And so very much change right in terms of what the textile industry had been locally compared to its little existence today. RL: The textile waste part because everybody was making stuff overseas so there was no more textile waste. GE: Right. RL: So yeah, it's diminished tremendously. GE: Right, what impact do you think it's had on the Lehigh Valley on the general community and what impact do you think it had on the Jewish community? If anything. RL: I don't know, well I think...I don't know if it's really had an impact except maybe for prosperity or you know that's what I was doing. Now even when we closed our business, I was devastated so what am I going to give my kids, I have nothing to give my kids. And again that's probably a Jewish thing. Maybe not, but what do I give my kids, I have nothing to give them. So I was very upset about that part. And I remember talking to the cantor and he said, no-- it was actually the rabbi, and he said, 'don't worry about it ; they'll find their own.' So I did forget, I was a contractor making flags also for a company that now had moved to Florida, excuse me to South Carolina. And they would give me the rolls of fabric, which were flags, I would take them to a contractor, and they would cut the flag out and sew it. We also did tablecloths for department stores if it was for a certain cosmetic company. We did NASCAR flags, we did the US flag, all kinds of different things. GE: At that point was that part of the Levine business or was that was part of yours and your wife's.. RL: No, that was a part of my own. GE: Right, okay, your own business. What was that business called? RL: Well I kept it under Rosey's Creations, which was my, our fabric part of the business. GE: Okay-- RL: Rosey's being R-O-S-E-Y Creations. Just, you didn't ask about My Boy's Baking. My wife and I have three children, grown, and actually three grandchildren, which is better than having the children, but don't record that. Your thoughts also? GE: No, I don't have them yet. RL: Oh, it's the best, GE: I look forward to it. RL: But, when my daughter was young, she used to say, 'where are my boys?' So we really didn't want to call it biscotti, we didn't want to give it . . . because what do we do if we start making cookies? So that's how we got the name My Boy's Baking from. Actually, my daughter . . . because people would go to her and say aren't you upset that it's called "My Boy's.." and she would say no because that's what I called them. GE: So while Sue is thinking about that, I also have a question. In the textile industry, it is dominated, or at least it was dominated by a lot of Jewish families, why do you think that's the case? Why do you think the Jewish community was dominant in that industry? RL: Probably because once someone was doing it and another Jewish person said, 'oh, maybe I should do it.' No, I really don't know because there are a lot of Italians in it too. GE: Right. RL: But Italians and the Jewish people are sort of similar. GE: Right, right. RL: And they all got, we all got along. GE: Right, right, any thoughts as to why those two groups? RL: Get along? GE: Or were in that industry? What about that industry made it attractive? RL: I really don't know. I mean just maybe for the enjoyment of it. It could be enjoyment. SC: Okay, I think I...my question is-- RL: In our retail stores or our host operation, we would sell remnants of fabrics, maybe a yard or two yards. I know in the retail stores, people would come in and say 'I want a quarter yard of this, I want a quarter yard of that,' which is very not cost-effective for us. But it was mainly to make the quilts and stuff. And we had all the supplies for it, you know, the thread, the fabric, and the stuffing or the foam that went in it. SC: So it was five or more and they were more profitable RL: Yeah because when you're cutting, it costs you just as much to cut 10 yards of fabric as it cost you to cut a quarter yard of fabric. And it's not just one quarter yard, they want 5 quarter yards. SC: Do you still feel comfortable talking about your daughters and where they worked-- RL: My children? SC: Yeah. RL: No, I'm very proud of them. SC: Good, go for it! I should have asked you that before. RL: My oldest son, Joshua, is married and has two sons. He works for Stephen Starr Restaurants. They have about 47 restaurants, each one of them . . . mainly out of Philadelphia. Each one pretty much has a different theme. They've opened in Florida, they've opened in Washington DC, and they've opened in New York. Actually Stephen Starr just won the James Beard Award, which is like a nationwide or worldwide top honor. One of his restaurants in New York, Le Coucou, a French restaurant, just also won the James Beard for the best restaurant. Le Coucou was voted the best restaurant in New York. My son Joshua runs all forty-seven restaurants ; from opening them, helping to open, to buying the supplies for the restaurants. And actually he started out, our family was very ice hockey oriented, so he went to school in Colorado, University of Colorado, and he was a ref for the semi-pros out on the West Coast. All my children went to Camp Canadensis, which is up in the Poconos. It's an overnight camp for two months or seven weeks. He, at one point, when he decided he didn't really like the life of an ice hockey ref, he went to work for the camp that they went to-- Camp Canadensis to help run the camp. He did that for a couple of years and the lady was supposed to possibly sell us the camp, and she reneged on it. So he interviewed at Stephen Starr Restaurants. And they said you don't have any restaurant experience, we really don't need you. Six months later, he saw the same ad in the paper, and went back to them and said, 'listen, obviously you haven't hired anybody.' And at that point, they hired him on the spot. He started out as assistant manager. He wanted to be a chef, but realized that you start out as assistant manager, manager, district manager, and now he runs all forty-seven restaurants. My son Andrew, who is two years younger than Josh, went to University of Colorado and when his brother left, he went to George Washington. George Washington in DC. And he became a teacher. He taught, first he taught at Radnor School District, actually he taught at a charter school in Philadelphia, fifth grade. Then he went to Radnor School, fifth grade teacher, then he got a job in a private school, Episcopal Academy, as a fifth grade teacher. He's married. They have a little girl who's 14 months old. My daughter-in-law, his wife, Debbie, got a promotion to her job and moved to Florida and after a year they realized that they wanted to be around family. And actually, Josh, for nine months moved out to California with his two children and wife and decided that when they all got sick one day and said, 'you know what, we have nobody here.' They came back to Philadelphia. Josh lives in Philadelphia, Andrew lives in Malvern. My daughter, Rachel, is an accountant. She is single and living in Philadelphia also. As a matter of fact, my son's Joshua's wife, Jill, works for an entertainment group who goes around and does bar mitzvahs and weddings and the dancers and the disc jockeys. And her brother, who happened to be Josh's counselor at camp, said, 'you know what, the Levines are having a bat mitzvah and your company's doing it, why don't you see if you can work it?' So she came to work my daughter's bat mitzvah, not being with my son or not, and a couple years later on the JDate said are you the Jill Rosen that... so we have videos of her, which she will not let us play of her performing at my daughter's bat mitzvah. And then we have the two grandchildren, Brody and Cooper. Brody just turned eight, and Cooper is six. He plays ice hockey and is travelling. As you can tell we have an ice hockey family. And then we have a granddaughter, Winnie Rose. GE: Wonderful. RL: Oh, Rachel did go to Pitt. SC: Oh, I remember the question. Is there a reason why you went down South to Clemson, only because there were-- RL: Philadelphia Textile was the number one school. I did not get in on my own. I was probably not a very good student, and my father said, 'we must know somebody.' And I said, 'Dad, I don't want to do that.' Clemson was the second best for textiles, so that's why I went down to Clemson, it was farther away from Allentown. SC: And were there any, when you were there, was that still an emerging textile area? RL: Clemson? SC: Out in the-- RL: Clemson area? Yes. SC: That's what I was wondering, method to madness. RL: I mean talk about 1972, yeah it was still big. SC: And then of course more and more textiles--[inaudible] RL: Down South around the country. SC: Wow, that's wonderful. I'm so glad that you talked about your children and grandchildren. GE: So now we just have a few final questions. SC: A few touchy feely questions. RL: Is that going to make me cry? GE: Depends on how you answer it. RL: You know why, because when I saw my Aunt Rose, it was the first time I saw her-- GE: Is she in Florida? RL: No, she's in New York, living with her son. I've seen her son on Facebook, and we've talked a little bit. And then when I figured I'd have to ask questions. So he called and I called him back, and he said, wait a minute, do you have an iPhone? We could FaceTime. And I'm telling you, she looks exactly the same. SC: That's so wonderful. RL: So it was, that was very emotional for me. SC: This is just a who you are type of question. So what do you value most in life? RL: My family. And you know, kids, my wife. Well let's do my grandchildren, my kids, and my wife...don't quote me. Family is very important to us. Even today, my daughter must call my wife 10, 15, 20 times a day. And it's just to talk. My wife lost her sister from cancer probably 20 years ago, so it's, and this is good for her to have my daughter very close. Every morning, I text her and say good morning. So family is very important and that's why both my boys moved back from Florida and California because you know it's family, it's all about family. And whereas we thought my daughter-in-law's, they weren't as, they weren't, I don't want to say weren't as close, one daughter-in-law was not. But we thought they'd resent it because we were so close to our kids. And, you know what, both my daughters-in-law call my wife now for questions or stuff. So it's, family is very very important. I remember when my oldest grandson Brody was sick in Philadelphia. If we had to go down there, I would close the bakery early to go down there and my wife would babysit one day a week, and I would leave to take her down, I would come back to work, and go back down. So family is very very important to us. SC: And what has made you feel the most creative in your life? RL: My wife. I mean you know it's, how creative am I? I don't really know, you know, it's my wife who is really doing the creative part. And I've just followed that in the financial part and worked it. Is that a good answer? SC: Yeah, it's a good meeting-- RL: Really? SC: It's a good match. RL: She's said she saved me, so. SC: Thank you so much. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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00:51:59
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Robert Levine, June 1, 2017
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Robert Levine (three generations in Allentown) talks about how S. Levine & Sons business was started by his grandfather, a peddler in scrap metal originally and later in textile scrap. Robert’s father and his father’s three brothers entered the business in the mid 1940s and grew it substantially. During its heyday, the Levine business included textile waste, fabric wholesaling, fabric retailing, and purveyor of crafts and notions to fabric and retail stores. By the 1980s, the older generation had either passed away or retired and the Levine business was now run by the next generation, Robert and his cousin Ira. By 1996, between industry decline due to globalization and free-trade and conflicting ideas of how to run the business, the cousins sold off part of the business and closed the other parts of the business.
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LVTNT-28
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2017-06-01
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
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Ronnie Sheftel
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5.4 May 11, 2016 Ronnie Sheftel, May 11, 2016 LVTNT-33 38:12 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Ronnie Sheftel Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 SheftelRonnie_20160511.mp4 1.0:|21(9)|38(5)|57(14)|76(17)|93(11)|112(2)|133(4)|156(10)|181(8)|200(15)|221(3)|238(10)|261(2)|278(15)|293(13)|310(9)|331(14)|352(11)|379(7)|396(14)|415(3)|436(5)|455(5)|472(14)|493(9)|512(6)|531(4)|548(17)|569(15)|586(6)|607(8)|628(2)|645(2)|660(9)|679(9)|696(16)|715(8)|732(15)|737(4) 0 https://youtu.be/WF2LCKSnJ5o YouTube video 0 Introduction—Ronnie Sheftel SC: Today is-
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 ; RS: May 11th
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 ; SC: May 11th, thank you, Ronnie. May 11th, 2016, interview with Ronnie Sheftel. Could you state your full name one more time, and where you were born, and where you live right now?
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 ; RS: Ronnie Sheftel. It’s May 11th, 2016. I have lived in Allentown from 1950, and I came from Brooklyn, New York. I was born in- on November 12th, a long time ago. 0 44 Early Volunteer Work for Temple Beth El SC: And really the question today is, could you talk about your role as wife and mother and volunteer and any- any work that you did?
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 ; RS: It's a long time to go back. But when I first came to Allentown as a young bride, I was included in, I think, three or four boards, something I had never done before. And my first experience was being- to collect raffle- to sell raffle tickets to a dinner dance at Temple Beth El. And as time came closer, of course, I had to go away with my husband. When he said let's go, I went. And coming back, I had given it to a friend of mine to collect and I came back to find out how the dinner dance went and how we did with the collection. And I found out that half the people that were there had gotten ptomaine poisoning because whoever had cooked the dinner had left it out too long. And it was very sensitive and nobody was talking about the dinner, so I had never knew if the tickets were ever sold. That was my first experience with being on a board. 0 150 Ronnie's Husband & ; Children RS: I had three children, a boy, Bruce, and two girls, Hildy, and then six years later, Abby. And they are now far distant from here. Hildy lives in Seattle. Abbey lives in South Carolina and has for a long, long time. And I have no grandchildren, but Bruce lives here in Allentown, is taking care of my house. He normally lives in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. And right now I have moved to Haverford, Pennsylvania. My husband, Milton, is in the dementia unit. He has dementia and he's fine. He smiles. He is happy and has had two girlfriends there, unlike me, although I do have two admirers. One is- will be one hundred in October- in August. Delightful old man, but very cute. The other one scares me. He's a friend of mine's husband. Never happened before, but it's fun. 0 235 Volunteering at the Jewish Day School RS: No. I then, when my children became school age, I was on board at the Jewish Day School and was the gift shop’s chairman for many, many years, and would- the kids would have dinner- have lunch and they would have gift shop on Thursday. So I was there and I learned how to say the prayers after lunch.
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 ; GE: Birkat Hamazon. 
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 ; RS: Birkat Hamazon. I learned it by hearing it, I didn't ever learn the words 0 278 Chairman for the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley/President of Hadassah RS: As far as the big deals in my life, I was one year, I was chairman for the Federation — Jewish Federation of Allentown, of the Lehigh Valley. And we raised a lot of money for the Women's Division. It was a lot of money at that time. And then shortly after that, I became president, very proudly, of Hadassah, which at the time I became president in 1980, it was seven hundred members. And it was a wonderful organization, and at that time, I think we raised over fifty thousand dollars, which was enormous. And I sat down and realized I'm now the one head of a fifty thousand dollar business, which I guess in the 1980s was pretty good. And we did very well. And subsequently I was on the board of Jewish Federation and as I said- oh before, before Abby was born, I was a great lady at the Allentown Hospital, which was really very satisfying. 0 372 Milton Sheftel's Business & ; Volunteer Work RS: Milton was always busy. He was either head of the — what was it? B'nai B’rith boy?
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 ; GE: Yes, B'nai B’rith. 
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 ; RS: And that was before we were married. After we were married, he's the head of- he became the chairman of the- of his organization. It had many names at various times, but it was the textile and secondary material, the waste, because his business was collecting the cuttings of all the textile dealers in the Lehigh Valley, South and North. And the- it was a very good business at that time. Of course, it's not an existing, non-existent almost, in these days. Everything has gone overseas. And- but last night I heard on the radio they were talking- this morning, actually, that they were doing recycling and that recycling only collects 16 percent of what’s delivered... 0 513 Impact of Hadassah on Jewish Lives GE: So all those different, you know, organizations of a different leadership that you mentioned, which of those was the most that you felt that you were the most impactful? And if you want to just tell us a little bit about that.
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 ; RS: Hadassah I thought was. 
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 ; GE: So tell us what Hadassah was about then and what it meant to you to be a part of that? And…
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 ; RS: Hadassah is the largest women's Zionist organization. It was started in 1900-something, by Henrietta Szold, with two nurses that she sent to- was able to send to Israel, to Palestine at the time, and I was always very proud of it, being- it's an international organization. At the time that I was very active, they had three hundred thousand women all around the world. And it's, it’s still growing, but it's shifted. There's very little of it in the Lehigh Valley. It's still there. It never has gone away and hopefully never will. But in the Philadelphia area, it's quite active. And in Florida it's very active. But I get the bulletin with the- magazines every year, and boy, they are there all over the world. And it raises money and it has saved children from World War II. And it's- to me it was, you know, something really big. I had wanted to go on the regional board. 0 801 Ronnie's Daughters—Abby & ; Hildy Sheftel RS: And the three kids, I thought they grew up very nicely. And they went to- Abby and Bruce went to the Jewish Day School. And when Abby graduated in sixth grade, she went to what's- what's the school on Walnut Street? Raub — Raub Junior High. And it was very strange for a child her age to say to me, “Mom, I think I learned much more at the Day School.” ‘Cause they were a little bit ahead, considering that they had like twelve, ten kids in class. And when she went to Raub, she was dealing with a whole different group of people, but to her advantage, a whole group of Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Black people had taken a liking to her. And at one point she was thrown into the bramble bushes alongside Raub, and — it was a little anti-Semitic — and all her friends took over and they yeah, she really did, you know, she was really very good with that. I guess she was preparing herself for living in the South, which she did eventually when she was- when she was- graduated from Allen High, she actually moved to Atlanta and was selling apartments, you know, apartment residents. And then she moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where Milton had a- a plant. 0 1074 Diminishing Community Involvement in Hadassah SC: Yeah, I have a question about Hadassah.
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 ; RS: Sure.
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 ; SC: Do you think that Hadassah began to sort of…?
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 ; RS: Diminish?
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 ; RS: Diminish. Yeah, I- I- yeah, I was going to say “go downhill”, diminish is much better. And because the children have moved away and because many people have moved to Florida. So is it that-
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 ; GE: And also the women work.
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 ; SC: What?
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 ; GE: My generation, the women work.
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 ; SC: Yeah, the women work, that’s true. 
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 ; RS: Well actually in 1980, when I became president, I noticed that half of the women were going back to school, another half were starting to go to work, getting teach- people who had been teachers, and getting teachers certificates, were working as teachers. 0 1200 Attending a Berkshire Hathaway Stockholders' Meeting with Bruce Sheftel RS: Now can I talk about Omaha, Nebraska? 
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 ; SC: Sure.
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 ; RS: That was an experience. My son, Bruce has taken over my entertainment, I think, because he has introduced me to things I really had never done before. And he asked me- he's also taken over some of the money problems, and has been dealing in investments and he's doing beautifully. And he- his father never thought it was important, but he did go to a school at Harvard that was called “SOB: Sons of Bosses”. It was a program that they were- they, they're still running it. And they went three weeks from, I guess, 9:00 in the morning till 9:00 at night for three- but three weeks, they went for three years. And at the end of it, they actually got a Master's Degree, which was- they were told, he says to me that they were told that it's beyond a Masters, beyond an MBA, that the things that they were teaching them were way past that. So he’s took- put it to very good use at this point. And a few weeks ago, he said to me, would you like to go to Omaha? And I knew exactly what he was talking about. And we went to Omaha on a Friday afternoon and went to a Berkshire Hathaway stockholders meeting, because I found out we had stock, we are the stockholders, and it was an experience that forty four thousand others shared with me. 0 1739 Ronnie Sheftel's Values SC: What do you value most in life? 
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 ; RS: My kids. I think that was the best thing, and I have you know, it's fun learning to live with your adult children. Right now, my son is taking care of me and his father. And Milton was an interesting character to live with. And even today, he's- even though he's really not in great mental shape, he's the same Milton. Walks over to everybody, says — if it's a woman — “You are the prettiest woman in the room” ; and the men, “You're great.” And they love him, I mean, they think he's wonderful. 0 1832 Creativity—Ronnie Sheftel's Autobiographical Writing SC: So what made you feel the most creative? This is my last question, I promise. 
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 ; RS: Creative?
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 ; SC: Yes. 
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 ; RS: Well right now I'm writing stories for a writer’s group. Most of the people in the group, of course, are residents of the quadrangle. They are all, I mean I feel like I'm uneducated because I only have a B.A. Degree, but they have Master's and two or three PhDs, and they're writing their autobiographies. Just last year, unfortunately, he died shortly after he finished his second book on his life work. And he was 94. He was a psychiatrist. And I'm telling you it's wonderful because I'm thinking, I'm remembering every time somebody tells a story, it sparks something in your head, and you say, “Oh, I remember that!” That's fun. I really find it fun. Physically, I can't do that great because I'm very off-balance. But that I like, I enjoy that. 
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 ; GE: Tell us about the stories you’re writing. 0 MovingImage Ronnie Sheftel talks about how when she came from Brooklyn to Allentown as Milt Sheftel’s wife, she was quickly given opportunities to get involved in the small, tight-knit Jewish community. This was foreign to her life growing up in Brooklyn. Later Ronnie proudly describes her stint as president of the local Women’s Hadassah chapter, which was quite dominant at that time in the Lehigh Valley. Interview with Ronnie Sheftel, May 11th, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is- RONNIE SHEFTEL: May 11th SC: May 11th, thank you, Ronnie. May 11th, 2016, interview with Ronnie Sheftel. Could you state your full name one more time, and where you were born, and where you live right now? RS: Ronnie Sheftel. It's May 11th, 2016. I have lived in Allentown from 1950, and I came from Brooklyn, New York. I was born in- on November 12th, a long time ago. SC: Okay, thank you. And really the question today is, could you talk about your role as wife and mother and volunteer and any- any work that you did? RS: It's a long time to go back. But when I first came to Allentown as a young bride, I was included in, I think, three or four boards, something I had never done before. And my first experience was being- to collect raffle- to sell raffle tickets to a dinner dance at Temple Beth El. And as time came closer, of course, I had to go away with my husband. When he said let's go, I went. And coming back, I had given it to a friend of mine to collect and I came back to find out how the dinner dance went and how we did with the collection. And I found out that half the people that were there had gotten ptomaine poisoning because whoever had cooked the dinner had left it out too long. And it was very sensitive and nobody was talking about the dinner, so I had never knew if the tickets were ever sold. That was my first experience with being on a board. The rest of them... SC: So if you would talk a little bit more about after that, after you were at that first board meeting. RS: No, things got much better. I had three children, a boy, Bruce, and two girls, Hildy, and then six years later, Abby. And they are now far distant from here. Hildy lives in Seattle. Abbey lives in South Carolina and has for a long, long time. And I have no grandchildren, but Bruce lives here in Allentown, is taking care of my house. He normally lives in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. And right now I have moved to Haverford, Pennsylvania. My husband, Milton, is in the dementia unit. He has dementia and he's fine. He smiles. He is happy and has had two girlfriends there, unlike me, although I do have two admirers. One is- will be one hundred in October- in August. Delightful old man, but very cute. The other one scares me. He's a friend of mine's husband. Never happened before, but it's fun. SC: So could you talk about- Oh, go ahead. RS: No. I then, when my children became school age, I was on board at the Jewish Day School and was the gift shop's chairman for many, many years, and would- the kids would have dinner- have lunch and they would have gift shop on Thursday. So I was there and I learned how to say the prayers after lunch. GAIL EISENBERG: Birkat Hamazon. RS: Birkat Hamazon. I learned it by hearing it, I didn't ever learn the words. But that's okay. As far as the big deals in my life, I was one year, I was chairman for the Federation -- Jewish Federation of Allentown, of the Lehigh Valley. And we raised a lot of money for the Women's Division. It was a lot of money at that time. And then shortly after that, I became president, very proudly, of Hadassah, which at the time I became president in 1980, it was seven hundred members. And it was a wonderful organization, and at that time, I think we raised over fifty thousand dollars, which was enormous. And I sat down and realized I'm now the one head of a fifty thousand dollar business, which I guess in the 1980s was pretty good. And we did very well. And subsequently I was on the board of Jewish Federation and as I said- oh before, before Abby was born, I was a great lady at the Allentown Hospital, which was really very satisfying. But when I became pregnant with her, I decided it's not a good time to be in a hospital. So those are really the main things that I did. Milton was always busy. He was either head of the -- what was it? B'nai B'rith boy? GE: Yes, B'nai B'rith. RS: And that was before we were married. After we were married, he's the head of- he became the chairman of the- of his organization. It had many names at various times, but it was the textile and secondary material, the waste, because his business was collecting the cuttings of all the textile dealers in the Lehigh Valley, South and North. And the- it was a very good business at that time. Of course, it's not an existing, non-existent almost, in these days. Everything has gone overseas. And- but last night I heard on the radio they were talking- this morning, actually, that they were doing recycling and that recycling only collects 16 percent of what's delivered and things that you give to various charities rarely get on, you know, to the- the floors when you give it to the -- what do you call them? Can you cut this out? GE: Yes. RS: Is this- The consignment stores and the various charities that, you know, drop in the box. SB: The Salvation Army. RS: The Salvation Army, the whatever, you know, those barrels. And Milton always used to say that he never recycled anything. And I kept saying you're in the recycling business. How come you don't recycle? We have two bins right in our kitchen, you know, garbage and recycling. And he says it's crazy, don't do it. But I do it. GE: But the interesting part is, in a sense he was the recycler. A reuser. RS: I said that you are a recycler. Absolutely! Yes, he really was. And he never recycled anything but- I think it's becoming, they're becoming aware that it is important. GE: So all those different, you know, organizations of a different leadership that you mentioned, which of those was the most that you felt that you were the most impactful? And if you want to just tell us a little bit about that. RS: Hadassah I thought was. GE: So tell us what Hadassah was about then and what it meant to you to be a part of that? And-- RS: Hadassah is the largest women's Zionist organization. It was started in 1900-something, by Henrietta Szold, with two nurses that she sent to- was able to send to Israel, to Palestine at the time, and I was always very proud of it, being- it's an international organization. At the time that I was very active, they had three hundred thousand women all around the world. And it's, it's still growing, but it's shifted. There's very little of it in the Lehigh Valley. It's still there. It never has gone away and hopefully never will. But in the Philadelphia area, it's quite active. And in Florida it's very active. But I get the bulletin with the- magazines every year, and boy, they are there all over the world. And it raises money and it has saved children from World War II. And it's- to me it was, you know, something really big. I had wanted to go on the regional board. I had many friends on the national board. And as I see their names, it's- I'm very proud of it. But- GE: What were some of the programs that you were, some of the programs that you were involved with here, that you brought here, that you were- RS: Oh what started it was the- we had study groups, and the study groups were wonderful because it taught you a lot about things, like one of the things that I -- I think I was vice-president at the time, but I made a-What happened was you're given a topic and one person will be the leader of it. Once I had I think it was mothers and sons, or why, you know, eating was very important. And I found out a little clue: Eating was very important to the immigrants in the- in the United States in the early years of the 19th, 20th century, because when you got very thin, they thought you had tuberculosis. So people would say, "Eat!" It wasn't the Jewish mother's attitude. It was a necessary thing because tuberculosis was very prevalent in those days and living conditions were quite horrible. But it's- it was really- I was very busy. I was also on the board of the Day School, as I said, and I'm trying to think of what else. God, I was always busy, till I picked up tennis and then I played tennis three times a week until I was past eighty. GE: Wonderful. Well what did, what did these things mean to you? How did you feel in terms of both what you were able to contribute or how they helped you as a person, as-? RS: They did help me very much. I mean, when I started making speeches, I would shake -- and then I realized, you know what? These are my friends. They don't want me to fail. And I hoped I didn't. And it was very important, and as I said, when Milton became very active in his industry organization, I was there, and we would have things to do. You know, they have- which, whatever city we had the convention. And usually there was a guest, not a guest, but a resident host and hostess. And they would set up programs for the ladies because most of the men- there were very few women in the textile waste. There were a few, but very few. I don't know what it would be like now, but, but it's been a long time. But it was- it was an active life. And the three kids, I thought they grew up very nicely. And they went to- Abby and Bruce went to the Jewish Day School. And when Abby graduated in sixth grade, she went to what's- what's the school on Walnut Street? Raub -- Raub Junior High. And it was very strange for a child her age to say to me, "Mom, I think I learned much more at the Day School." 'Cause they were a little bit ahead, considering that they had like twelve, ten kids in class. And when she went to Raub, she was dealing with a whole different group of people, but to her advantage, a whole group of Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Black people had taken a liking to her. And at one point she was thrown into the bramble bushes alongside Raub, and -- it was a little anti-Semitic -- and all her friends took over and they yeah, she really did, you know, she was really very good with that. I guess she was preparing herself for living in the South, which she did eventually when she was- when she was- graduated from Allen High, she actually moved to Atlanta and was selling apartments, you know, apartment residents. And then she moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where Milton had a- a plant. And she had set up- they set up for her a linen, you know, bedding plant- store. She had at one time, she had three stores, and she was doing very nicely until the companies themselves, she would get, you know, seconds and handouts. And when we first moved, when she first moved into the business, the former owner had big baskets and the sheets, you know, were all mixed up together. They came from all the plants, Laura Ashley, Ralph Lauren, and she managed to rearrange it where she got the print, the twins together, and the kings and the queens, and then the- she would package them together. And she did a good job until, as I said, the industry- the manufacturers themselves realized that they were, you know, getting rid of things by the pound when they could get they could get rid- they could make a good profit on selling them in seconds if they just packaged them. So that business went away, too. So she then decided to go into real estate and she's been there for- God, almost 20 years. SC: In Atlanta? RS: No, she's in Greenville. Yeah. She, well she got married and she- six months after she got married, she lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. But in this day and day, I want to tell you that she is number one in the paint horse show ring. So, with a one leg, she has done very well. And my other daughter is in Seattle. She works in a vegan restaurant. My two daughters are vegan, gluten-free vegans, and it's very difficult to listen to them because all they talk about is food. I think it's a loss on their part because I still eat meat and all the bad things that they say I shouldn't eat. And I survived, believe me better than some of the people at the quadrangle because every night they have ice cream. SC: Yeah, I have a question about Hadassah. RS: Sure. SC: Do you think that Hadassah began to sort of--? RS: Diminish? RS: Diminish. Yeah, I- I- yeah, I was going to say "go downhill", diminish is much better. And because the children have moved away and because many people have moved to Florida. So is it that- GE: And also the women work. SC: What? GE: My generation, the women work. SC: Yeah, the women work, that's true. RS: Well actually in 1980, when I became president, I noticed that half of the women were going back to school, another half were starting to go to work, getting teach- people who had been teachers, and getting teachers certificates, were working as teachers. And yes, I had a lot of trouble -- as a matter of fact, my board, which was I think forty strong, had its three top off positions I couldn't even get anybody to do. I finally asked the executive board to help me, and we managed to get everything done pretty well. But, yes, of course, I think all women's organizations are, you know, much less -- I mean, everybody calls it your grandma's business, so we're now into the great-grandmas and past. But listen, I have great, great nieces, I have two great, great nieces, but even the great-nieces and nephews are old! SC: But you don't look it, so it's fine. RS: Thank you. But other than that, no, it was fun. It really was. But it's a different life now. I'm pretty much on my own. Now can I talk about Omaha, Nebraska? SC: Sure. RS: That was an experience. My son, Bruce has taken over my entertainment, I think, because he has introduced me to things I really had never done before. And he asked me- he's also taken over some of the money problems, and has been dealing in investments and he's doing beautifully. And he- his father never thought it was important, but he did go to a school at Harvard that was called "SOB: Sons of Bosses". It was a program that they were- they, they're still running it. And they went three weeks from, I guess, 9:00 in the morning till 9:00 at night for three- but three weeks, they went for three years. And at the end of it, they actually got a Master's Degree, which was- they were told, he says to me that they were told that it's beyond a Masters, beyond an MBA, that the things that they were teaching them were way past that. So he's took- put it to very good use at this point. And a few weeks ago, he said to me, would you like to go to Omaha? And I knew exactly what he was talking about. And we went to Omaha on a Friday afternoon and went to a Berkshire Hathaway stockholders meeting, because I found out we had stock, we are the stockholders, and it was an experience that forty four thousand others shared with me. GE: That's how many people were there? RS: Yes, we don't know exactly, but they- they said that forty four thousand were registered to go, and Bruce said he had dealings with them. He wanted to take his camera and get, you know, a slip for press. And he said they called him, and he said if you- anything he wanted, if you called them, they called you back. And it's like Warren Buffett himself. We got up at five o'clock in the morning to get into the auditorium by 7:00 a.m. Because it was raining, they opened up the auditorium before 7:00 a.m. So there were lines everywhere, but Bruce got us a seat and he was taking pictures of Warren Buffett from 8:30 in the morning until 4 o'clock that afternoon. Warren Buffett is eighty-five years old. He talked and answered questions from- there were six people asking questions, one of which was Andrew Sorkin from The Times. He was there, among others. And there were- oh, Bill Gates was also there with his wife. We have big pictures of him and of Warren Buffett and his- his- I don't know if Charlie Munger is his partner or what, but they were sitting at the table together, munching on their See's Candy, peanut brittle, which is very good. He was talking about he- he was questioned, and then he would answer, and then he would talk a little bit more, and then in the afternoon, there was a break at noon and he came back, we came back at 1 o'clock and there were questions that the audience had submitted, and he would answer, he'd say, "Platform four," and a spotlight would go on and someone would be standing in the spotlight and asking a question, and he would answer the question. I mean, he never- never fumbled, never did anything that was- he just calmly answered every single question. I mean, he was amazing. It really was amazing. And he'd always say, after he spoke for a while, very nicely, he would say, "And Charlie, what do you think about that?" Charlie would say four words. He's 92, but very sharp. I mean, he- some of the answers he gave were very sharp. And it was really a delightful show. It- amazing. He was down on, after the- they had an hour, I think, over half an hour to buy the goods. Friday, I understand, was all buying. You didn't have any meetings or anything, but they did have a dinner and a brunch, and- but they were- he was down, not on the arena floor, but on the selling floor. And I see this big crowd and I saw a guy six foot four or so and I said, "You're tall enough. Who is there? Is it Warren?" And he looks and he says, "Yeah, it's him." And he's surrounded by people who- very, very nice man. And then we had an Uber driver take us around on Sunday. Oh Sunday morning was a brunch at a jewelry store that is the largest in the United States. And I don't think anybody has ever heard the name. It's Borsheims. Gorgeous, sixty-five thousand square foot jewelry store, beautiful and gorgeous stuff. I mean not only jewelry, but dishes and flatware and a Swarovski -- I mean, you name it, it was there. Paintings and tiles, beautiful things, really. Actually, I sent my great nieces, my great, greats, little dishes of you know, like from three to five, nine years old dish sets, cup, plates, fork, and spoon. And on my cell phone, I have one of them saying thank you in taking it apart, and saying, "Oh, a cup for drinking!" And they said it was perfect because she was growing out of her little infant bowls. And she's adorable anyway. But it was, it was really quite an experience. And I said we got an Uber driver to take us around and she took us all around and she says, "Oh, you have to see Warren's house, don't you?" So we said, okay, you want to take us? "Oh," she says, "Everybody goes there!" And if you didn't see the yellow cord around the house because people didn't want them to come in, it's a very nice house in a very wonderful neighborhood. Nothing extravagant. I live on Main Street in Allentown, and I lived, and the houses are very similar and nothing extravagant or elaborate. He is a very simple man, and Bruce was able to take a picture of him getting into his car, going to dinner with the stockholders, and a very simple place, an old fashioned steak house in Omaha. And that was- And then the next day we went to Lauritzen Gardens, I think it was called, the most gorgeous greenhouses you ever want to see, almost bigger than the New York's Botanical Gardens. It was- it was really an eye opener to see this. It was really nice. We missed the tornadoes. There was one last night and one just before we got there. So that's a minus, but we weren't there for. But it was an experience that really- And then we stopped, that week ended by seeing John Williams conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center with Star Wars music. It was an amazing week. Weekend, really. So, and that's my life now. SC: Yes. May I ask a question? RS: But it was very interesting. Go ahead. SC: What do you- I have two more questions. What do you value most in life? RS: My kids. I think that was the best thing, and I have you know, it's fun learning to live with your adult children. Right now, my son is taking care of me and his father. And Milton was an interesting character to live with. And even today, he's- even though he's really not in great mental shape, he's the same Milton. Walks over to everybody, says -- if it's a woman -- "You are the prettiest woman in the room" ; and the men, "You're great." And they love him, I mean, they think he's wonderful. And it was funny, I went to a Cinco de Mayo festival that they had in this unit, and the director of it is about twenty-four years old, very beautiful, and was wearing a very short skirt, and she was dancing around, and every time she would come by us, we were sitting there, he would say, "She's a very pretty lady." But that was fun, it was. Everybody was dancing and laughing and singing. And it was, it was cute. Very good. SC: So what made you feel the most creative? This is my last question, I promise. RS: Creative? SC: Yes. RS: Well right now I'm writing stories for a writer's group. Most of the people in the group, of course, are residents of the quadrangle. They are all, I mean I feel like I'm uneducated because I only have a B.A. Degree, but they have Master's and two or three PhDs, and they're writing their autobiographies. Just last year, unfortunately, he died shortly after he finished his second book on his life work. And he was 94. He was a psychiatrist. And I'm telling you it's wonderful because I'm thinking, I'm remembering every time somebody tells a story, it sparks something in your head, and you say, "Oh, I remember that!" That's fun. I really find it fun. Physically, I can't do that great because I'm very off-balance. But that I like, I enjoy that. GE: Tell us about the stories you're writing. RS: Well, I've written a story about when my father and mother and sister went down to- up- we were going to a convention in my father's- my father's convention in Atlanta. In 1945? No, it couldn't have been, it was '48. My mother was still alive. And we went- we drove down to the- down south and we were meeting a couple who were leaving Greenville, who- he had- he was a shirt manufacturer in Greenville and was moving to Manhattan. And we were going to meet his family, and we went to a place called Tybee Beach in South Carolina. And nobody I know has ever heard of it except my daughter, when I- who lives in South Carolina said, "Oh yeah, it's a nice beach." So we went there and Eugene Talmadge was at the hotel. He was just leaving the hotel. And at that time, he was a famous or infamous politician in South Carolina. And my- How old was I? I don't remember. Maybe 12, 11? Eleven, I guess. It was, I said, "He looked like just a little corn pone." There was nothing very important about him, he didn't look like a hayseed -- that's the word. And I was not impressed, but I was impressed with the going down and seeing the chain gangs on the road. That was impressive- not impressive, but scary. And how we- when we left, when we actually left the hotel to go to Atlanta, we got into an accident and our car was smashed, so we had to take a bus to Atlanta and left the car there to be repaired. And the children- my mother got hysterical because she was wearing pants. It was a beautiful pair of the patio pants, but in 1948 you did not drive a- in a- you know, you didn't get on a bus with a pair of slacks, more or less. And I said today we would think it's formalwear. And then the night drive through rural South Carolina was something because in the middle of nowhere with no lights, no nothing, they would stop and somebody would get off. So it was quite, that was an adventure. And then the next one was when? In 1954 or '52, something like that. We were in a blizzard and we had gone out to dinner at the Gourmet Inn, and we had some visitors from Italy in. And when it was snowing, I kept saying, I'll take a brisket out and I'll put- and have dinner here. We had invited two more couples for dinner and Milton said, "No, we'll go out to the Gourmet Inn." I said, "Can't we stay in town?" "Nah!" And this Italian is saying, "This is no snow!" He comes from the Alps. They had six feet the week before. And we went there on Saturday night. And we left the- at about 10:00 that night, we left the Gourmet Inn and got about half a mile down the road when we had to stop because the car wouldn't move. The wind was blowing and the snow was blowing and it was five degrees, and we stayed four days. We were very lucky when we saw light out in a bleak, dark night. And Milt and his brother got out of the car and the snow was up to their waist, and they opened the hood and snow was packed all the way into the- to the engine. So we had Vera Shiff with us, too. And Morty was in Cincinnati and he kept saying, "What do you mean you're stuck near the Gourmet Inn? Can't you go home? Kids are home," and everybody's kids were home with the babysitters. And we stayed there because we couldn't get out. And we realized Amelio Falco, who is this outside- The Italian kept saying, "We had six feet of snow!" And after I wrote the story, I looked up in the- on the dates at how much snow we had -- we had 15.4 inches. And last winter, we had- you had 32 inches here in Allentown. So I apologize for saying it was a blizzard, but that was- it was an amazing- Listen, we got through that. But I have another one. We were caught in- We went to Acapulco, and we went out fishing and the boat burned underneath us. So that's another one I'm writing but I don't want them to know that I was in catastrophic situations all my life. I had some very happy, calm ones. So that's an interesting- that's what I'm doing now. And meeting a hundred new people. And getting along very nicely. SC: Thank you so much. RS: My pleasure. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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Ronnie Sheftel, May 11, 2016
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Ronnie Sheftel talks about how when she came from Brooklyn to Allentown as Milt Sheftel’s wife, she was quickly given opportunities to get involved in the small, tight-knit Jewish community. This was foreign to her life growing up in Brooklyn. Later Ronnie proudly describes her stint as president of the local Women’s Hadassah chapter, which was quite dominant at that time in the Lehigh Valley.
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
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Seth Katzman
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5.4 May 25, 2016 Seth Katzman, May 25, 2016 LVTNT-29 1:07:35 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Seth Katzman Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 KatzmanSeth_20160525 1.0:|19(2)|38(13)|61(6)|82(2)|105(3)|130(7)|155(7)|178(19)|203(3)|228(4)|251(4)|274(9)|297(5)|324(4)|347(14)|374(8)|399(12)|424(6)|445(12)|472(6)|499(2)|526(2)|551(8)|574(8)|599(13)|624(15)|649(11)|672(10)|695(14)|722(7)|737(3)|754(14)|777(11)|806(3)|833(13)|870(3)|901(6)|924(18)|947(7)|972(6)|995(15)|1022(3)|1051(4)|1076(9)|1105(11)|1136(13)|1163(15)|1194(11)|1221(10)|1248(14)|1277(3)|1304(4)|1329(2)|1360(8)|1387(8)|1412(3)|1433(14)|1460(5)|1487(4)|1512(10)|1539(13)|1566(3)|1587(12)|1614(8)|1643(15)|1672(9)|1699(14)|1702(9) 0 https://youtu.be/UqqG8LRCHbA YouTube video 0 Katzman's Life Before the Business Today is May 25 and we’re going to start with and this is 2016, and we’re going to start with your life story because it interweaves for what we’re doing and for instance, we are looking at women this year and so we want to have all of this even though it’s long. So if you would give your full name, where you were born, and when you were born and talk about your early life and from the time you were born and any memories that you think have been important. 0 303 Education at FIT [A]nd at that point before I went to the business, my father said well you should go to FIT, and FIT is the Fashion Institute of Technology. So what happened, my brother, since I was going to the business, my brother had graduated before I had, he was five years older than I was. He was in the Peace Corps and doing different things, hadn't really settled on anything he wanted to do, and he said ‘well since you're going into the business, maybe I'll try with you.’ So we both went to FIT...
 ; 0 412 History of the Business Just to give you a little background about our business, my father was actually in the business a long time, in the apparel business. He wasn't in this particular business that long that he had. My father and my uncle had started a business, really manufacturing t-shirts to start out with. They had a couple different plants and that’s one of the reasons he moved to Allentown. 0 492 Managing the Pine Grove Contracting Business So when I came along, my brother and I both started in the business. He had a manager at the time, he didn’t plan to replace his manager, he figured we would learn the business with him and then see what would happen. As it turned out, after about two months my manager decided he was going to go into his own business, in the flower business or something. So he quit after two months, so I ended up taking over the production there. 0 595 Change and Competition in the Garment Industry That changed relatively quickly in a year or two because what happened is the garment industry itself started to change a lot. You had a lot of competition from the South, and then within a couple years you had competition from Chinatown and overseas. In the beginning, Chinatown was actually cheaper than overseas because they never paid minimum wage in Chinatown, and it was always a problem there. We were a union plant so I always had to deal with the union and the employees. 0 848 Adaptation and Growth: From Associations to Private Labor So really what happened is in my father's business, I said he had one customer, and I used to go into New York every, pretty much every other week, what was needed. Because they helped me learn the business actually about the pricing, and they gave me different things to price, and I worked for manufacturing people there because they gave us a lot of different stuff. We did a tremendous amount of styles. Women's clothing had a tremendous amount of style, and it was dresses. What took place in a few years was they moved away from Pennsylvania doing manufacturing, so I had to find other work so I would go to New York City and knock on the different doors to make sure that I had enough work for the plant I started doing different things. 0 1075 The End of the Pine Grove Business—Offshoring to Mexico But then essentially when it got to be the later 90s, everything went offshore, and I couldn’t stay in Pine Grove. And even though I had good relationships with the union and the help, and we were in Pine Grove a long time, I felt bad in a way. You know, but I tried to do what I could and we transitioned out, and I ended up closing the factory over there. I still moved to Allentown, I moved my operations to Allentown, but I had to go to Mexico.
 ; 0 1301 '80s-90s: Struggling Production in Reading and Pine Grove SC: I’d like to take you back to your family history, as far back as you know, but I have one question, which union?
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 ; SK: ILGWU
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 ; SC: Okay, that’s what I thought, but yes, and also, there was another question I had with how far was Pineville from Reading?
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 ; SK: Pine Grove from Reading is…
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 ; SC: Pine Grove, I’m sorry.
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 ; SK: Pine Grove from Reading is approximately 45 miles
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 ; SC: Because they had all the outlets by that time, all the stores and the business, weren’t they? Reading was still producing when you were...?
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 ; SK: Actually my uncle was still in business at that time. He was in manufacturing, but they had problems also with that, even the manufacturing. 0 1455 Family History SC: Could you talk about the names you know in your dad’s family and your mother’s family? Where they came from as far back as you know.
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 ; SK: As far back as I know. Quick thing I never knew my grandparents really. I knew one grandparent ; my great-grandparents I never knew. They were long gone. My great grandparents-- actually from one side was from Poland I think. My parents . . . 0 1900 Legacies: Garment Businesses in the Lehigh Valley Today SK: You know, there’s another guy that is really Jewish, but not Jewish in a way, that might still be working in the Valley.
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 ; GE: Although it has happened to be mostly Jewish, it doesn’t have to be.
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 ; SK: There’s a guy here that’s still working actually, that does apparel stuff, he does embroidery, which is Lilly daVid. Now I don’t know if David, cause I haven’t talked to them in years, but I believe that they are still there because they do embroidery, they used to do embroidery for me all the time. 0 2025 From Rick Knit to Summit Station Manufacturing GE: Thank you. So a couple of follow-up questions, one,you’ll share those stories about the Miss America and about the other. Couple of follow up questions. One, what was the name of your businesses? Initially you were manufacturers right?
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 ; SK: Initially we were always contractors. We started out as a contractor.
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 ; GE: You did, your father did?
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 ; SK: My father did. And the name of the business was Summit Station Manufacturing.
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 ; GE: That was your father with the T-shirts? Correct?
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 ; SK: Well, no, my father and the T-shirts started out as Rick Knit. 0 2283 Expanding the Business: Goods and Clientele GE: Well do you want to share with us - so then it was really a matter, if I understand correctly, it was the matter of keeping your cost down, and that’s how you tried the Mexico...
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 ; SK: The beginning problem was actually getting work that you could actually make at a price. And I would go to different places and like I said, I ended up doing a lot of different things. I expanded out of dresses. I started doing blouses, sportswear. I went into running suits. I went into anything that we thought we could make. We actually made outerwear, too. For LandsEnd, we actually made outerwear, that’s how I got started with LandsEnd. 0 2568 Working with LandsEnd GE: So during this time, if I understand correctly, these were where you were doing a lot of small runs?
 ; 
 ; SK: Yeah, my business was [doing] a lot of small runs. That’s how I really survived. Later on by 1995 when I hired an outside sales person and he said I have contacts I think we can do business. And the reason he knew me was because when we started he found out I did some smaller runs through some of these guys. And we connected, I went to New York, I used to go to New York a lot. And in New York, we started talking and his name was Jim Stabile and he was working for somebody else at the time and said you know, I bet we could get together and do something. And, you know, you kind of listen, and they never do it and then one day, he called me and said I think we could do something, you want to come in? And we got to talking, and I said okay if you think you can do this, I’ll do this and that's what happened. We started getting sales and then I went out to LandsEnd. I would go out with him, and we would restructure some deals, and we actually got some contracts and that’s how I got started. 0 2981 Life After the Business GE: So at that point, you’re about 50 I assume. And so I’m just kind of wondering if you wanted to share with us what you’ve done since, um you know, in terms of how did you personally have to adapt, right?
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 ; SK: Well, when I left I actually liquidated the plant. I actually walked away. It cost me a lot of money, really a lot of money. Okay but, I almost thought that I would have to declare bankruptcy. Because of how I handled most of my customers, and I had good relationships with everybody, I was able to pay, repay everybody and that type of thing. When I say everybody, there’s only one person I didn’t really repay at the end, but they actually should have paid me. 0 3296 The Jewish Community in the Apparel Industry GE: So a couple of last questions before Sue gets back to you. What do you think about the community here? How has the community been affected, in terms of when it was 1950, when you were very young, there were many families that were in this business.
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 ; SK: You’re right, the community has definitely changed a lot. When I was growing up as a kid there were a lot of small businesses. In fact when I went to the synagogue, even in the Jewish community there were a lot of small businesses. In fact that was the majority of people, you had doctors and lawyers but the majority of givers, the people involved in the community, were all small business people. On that, in fact a lot of the givers to the [Jewish] Federation were from the garment business. 0 3750 Katzman's Artistry and Family Values SC: Okay, so I really only have two more questions, so one is what has made you feel most creative in life?
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 ; SK: What has made me most creative in life?
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 ; SC: Given you a sense of satisfaction or creativity or whatever other word you want to add?
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 ; SK: It's a mix, it's a mix of things for me because essentially I would say my family has been one of my key satisfactions in my life, no matter what because they have always been there, and I always have enjoyed them, proud of them. But one of the things, the garment business was a big change for me because I was a shy little guy. I'm still quiet, but it made me do things I would never do. 0 MovingImage Seth Katzman shares fond memories growing up in Allentown during the 1950s and 1960s. While attending Brandeis University Seth decided that rather than pursue his original plan to attend medical school, he would instead take over his father’s apparel contracting business. His father wanted to retire anyway. Seth’s older brother joined him initially in the business. Not many years later, the traditional sewing contracting business in Pennsylvania was diminishing and Seth had to adapt to the changing environment. Seth stayed in the apparel business until 1999, much later than many other contracting businesses in Pennsylvania. Interview with Seth Katzman, May 25, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is May 25 and we're going to start with and this is 2016, and we're going to start with your life story because it interweaves for what we're doing and for instance, we are looking at women this year and so we want to have all of this even though it's long. So if you would give your full name, where you were born, and when you were born and talk about your early life and from the time you were born and any memories that you think have been important. SETH KATZMAN: My name is Seth Katzman. I was born on March 28, 1950 in Brooklyn, New York in Methodist Hospital there. My family moved to Allentown when I was one-year-old so basically I consider myself an Allentownian, believe it or not. The rest of my family did live in New York at the time, probably around Queens. Most of my family, I should say my immediate family, was from New York at the time there, so when we moved out to Allentown, I should say my parents moved out to Allentown, it was a big move because everybody was in New York. It was unheard of that somebody would move to the Lehigh Valley away from the city. So essentially I grew up in Allentown, I went to the public schools in Allentown, we were members of Temple Beth El in Allentown. I went to Hebrew school at Temple Beth El, I got bar-mitzvahed at Temple Beth El, I got married at Beth El. Unfortunately I buried my parents as well at Temple Beth El over there. I have a long history just being in the Lehigh Valley overthere. So as a kid my mother, my parents were always involved with the Temple and at the Center. Actually my mother was very active on that. My father was also on the board of different things, so as a family we always went to services on a somewhat regular basis. I went to Hebrew school and everything. So I had a pretty normal, safe and good childhood in Allentown. Actually, my parents moved to 29th and Liberty St. At that time that was almost the end of town. There weren't any houses past 30th Street. I used to play in the fields out back as a kid. As I was growing up they kept building more and more homes. A lot of my friends and I became friendly with a lot of kids. Basically what I said, I went to public school and really formed a lot of different friendships over the time and as time moved along, graduated from William Allen High School and went to Brandeis University. I graduated from Brandeis. At Brandeis, I made a fateful decision, which was not to go to medical school. So instead my father had a business at the time, and I knew he wanted to retire. I think what happened was one of the reasons I didn't go to med school was I was getting tired of school. But also at the time I was seeing Kathy and I decided that I don't know if I really want another 8 to 10 years in school before I get out. I knew my father wanted to retire and I kind of just said 'okay I'll try the business on that,' and that's how I got into the garment business over there. Because really the only work experience I had besides the garment business was that I was a waiter at camp one summer. That was my total work experience before the garment industry. But I started out really driving my father to work because he had health problems. And I think by senior year of high school, during the summer, I drove him all summer to work and I would work in the factory for no pay. Just helping out with whatever they had doing there. And I did that for - I think it was two summers I did that. One summer I went to art school because one of the things I got interested in at Brandeis was art. I was doing painting and different things. So that's how I really got exposed to start with the business. So when I graduated, like I said, I really didn't decide to go into the business until close to graduation, and at that point before I went to the business, my father said well you should go to FIT, and FIT is the Fashion Institute of Technology. So what happened, my brother, since I was going to the business, my brother had graduated before I had, he was five years older than I was. He was in the Peace Corps and doing different things, hadn't really settled on anything he wanted to do, and he said 'well since you're going into the business, maybe I'll try with you.' So we both went to FIT, and the problem with FIT was it was kind of interesting, the professors were nice but I had just done four years of school. My brother's really an intellectual type, he had done a lot of reading in school, he graduated from Boston University, and we both looked at these courses and said 'jeez this is kind of a little slow for us.' And then it was good with the technical courses because we didn't have the technical background for the apparel. But the other courses they wanted us to take-- marketing and some different things-- were really I think really elementary to us. And we said could we speed this up, and what really happened was they didn't let us really speed it up. But what we did was we took the technical courses, kind of skipped the other courses, and by the end of the semester we were only going like one day a week. We were trying to just do technical things then we would just go home and work at that time. So by the time June came, we were done with FIT after about a year of doing that. We did make some interesting contacts and got to meet different professors and different things. So the summer 1973 I would say is when I started really working full time. When I started out, my father had a manager of his business. Just to give you a little background about our business, my father was actually in the business a long time, in the apparel business. He wasn't in this particular business that long that he had. My father and my uncle had started a business, really manufacturing t-shirts to start out with. They had a couple different plants and that's one of the reasons he moved to Allentown. I think they had a place in Hazleton, a place in Allentown, and a place in Reading. My uncle I think ran the place in Reading, and my father kind of took care of the ones in Hazelton and in Allentown. Rather than travel all the time from New York, he decided to move to the Valley. So as time went along they built their business, and I think beside t-shirts they started making golf shirts and after a certain period of time I think my father and my uncle had a falling out. My uncle bought my father out, but I think my father . . . I'm trying to think, 1965, he kind of got out of business but decided he couldn't retire. He didn't want to stay retired, so he ended up buying a contracting business in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, which was a dress business contracting business, and that was the business I started in. So when I came along, my brother and I both started in the business. He had a manager at the time, he didn't plan to replace his manager, he figured we would learn the business with him and then see what would happen. As it turned out, after about two months my manager decided he was going to go into his own business, in the flower business or something. So he quit after two months, so I ended up taking over the production there. It was an experience because what did I know about production, I really had to learn everything from there. So at that point, I started to really do what I had to do to run the business. I had to learn all the things about pricing, production, and sewing. I learned how to sew ; I learned everything in the business. My father actually didn't know how to do those things. He knew the outside of the business-- he knew how to price, he knew about the sales part-- but he really didn't know the inside sewing part. So I had to run that, so that's really what I got to do. So it didn't take me too long, I mean I kind of started doing it. I went to New York on a frequent basis to learn about the buying from our manufacturer. At the time we were strictly a contractor. My father really only had one customer, and it was a question of how much you can get out the door. So it was a question of how good you were, were you doing your planning and production, and doing that. And that's really kind of how we made money was getting your production done, and if you had it priced right, and you did the quality right. That changed relatively quickly in a year or two because what happened is the garment industry itself started to change a lot. You had a lot of competition from the South, and then within a couple years you had competition from Chinatown and overseas. In the beginning, Chinatown was actually cheaper than overseas because they never paid minimum wage in Chinatown, and it was always a problem there. We were a union plant so I always had to deal with the union and the employees. We had about 50-75 employees. I think when I started it was 75 employees, and it kind of whittled down a little bit for various reasons which took place, but we had a fairly sizable operation for what we were doing. It was, as it was, antiquated-- it was an old building. We kept it in fairly good shape ; my father put air-conditioning in. It was fairly comfortable in the building and for the employees over there except when you were in the pressing room ; it didn't matter whether you had air conditioning or not. It was very hot, so as I learned that, after a year my brother decided he didn't like the business and left over there. Kathy and I had moved to Schuylkill Haven to start out with because I'd be at the plant, we would start at 7 o'clock in the morning, I was at the plant 6 to 6:30. I opened the plant and basically started running the plant. It was very long days. It was most likely from 6:30 getting there or getting there at 7 to 5:30- 6:00 o'clock at night. Because even though the plant really ran from, they worked seven hours a day. They might have been done but there was over time and then there was planning I had to do, and calls I had to take, and stuff like that so I really was there pretty much the full day of work. By the second year, we decided we didn't like Schuylkill Haven, and we moved to the booming metropolis of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. After living in Lebanon for about two years, we decided since it took 40 minutes from Lebanon to Pine Grove each day, and half for the extra 15 minutes, I might as well go to Allentown, and that's what we did in 1976/75. We moved to Allentown and then I would commute to Allentown to Pinegrove. So I would get up at 5:30 in the morning basically and go to-- in some cases I would get up earlier and I would go to the gym--to do that but that's pretty much what I did for 25 year. SC: And as far as the workers at Schuylkill Haven, were they mostly Eastern European by that time? SK: No, all the workers, we were in Schuylkill County. It was all Pennsylvania Dutch, all-white. There were no minorities. You just didn't have it. It was very close knit, in fact, I was the outsider. My father and I were the outsiders really. There weren't really too many Jewish people in Pine Grove. Actually, the optometrist was Jewish. There were a couple of other contractors or manufacturer ; actually I would say contractors in Pine Grove. There was another manufacturer called Canoe Mfcg. They were Jewish as well, they live in Reading. They had a sizable operation over there. There was another outerwear plant called Fox-Knapp that had been there a long long time. They were probably the first ones there. They probably had about 100 employees. Canoe probably had about maybe, they had a lot of employees, they might have had 200, I'm not exactly sure. And there was another small contractor, there might have been another small contractor there at the time. But really what happened in a few years was just the three of us left, and actually by the time I left Pine Grove, I was the only one left as an apparel manufacturer in Pinegrove. So really what happened is in my father's business, I said he had one customer, and I used to go into New York every, pretty much every other week, what was needed. Because they helped me learn the business actually about the pricing, and they gave me different things to price, and I worked for manufacturing people there because they gave us a lot of different stuff. We did a tremendous amount of styles. Women's clothing had a tremendous amount of style, and it was dresses. What took place in a few years was they moved away from Pennsylvania doing manufacturing, so I had to find other work so I would go to New York City and knock on the different doors to make sure that I had enough work for the plant. I started doing different things so I started doing blouses, I started doing dresses, I kept doing dresses, I would do slacks, I did sportswear of all different types on that. I also took work that wasn't union at the time when I started to think. After 2 to 3 years there I became involved in the dress contracting unit there you know which was a manufacturer's association for dresses. It was out of Wilkes Barre, but it had all the contractors around Eastern PA. That might've been 200 of us. GAIL EISENBERG: Was that the Delins? SK: No, that wasn't Deins, that was Atlantic Apparel. This was the counterpart to Atlantic Apparel, it was the dress division. It was a similar group to Atlantic Apparel, but it did dresses. What I learned quickly was after a couple of years, actually I was the youngest guy on the Board. When I walked in, it was actually kind of funny. I was in my twenties and they put me on the Board, I was the youngest person where everybody else was probably in their 40s or 50s. There was a 20 year gap on that. I was the youngest guy there. So I started going to the meetings and after years of being there I said to them, 'you guys are not going to be around unless you change,' and they all looked at me and laughed because you know they were older and said 'we can't change, we can't do this.' I said, 'I don't think you can continue to operate the way you operate.' And really within another five years or so, I would say by 1988 or so, I left the Association and formed my own contract with the union. Because what happened is I didn't have union sources anymore for work, and I really was working totally non-union sources. What I really ended up doing was instead of being just a straight contractor, I started doing package deals and different things, I would take on different work. It took me a number of years to learn a lot of this because I took contracting work from other contractors, there were a lot of mistakes I made in different things, but what I realized was the contracting business was going to end, and I went into the private labor business. Then I ended up getting a salesman, I guess in the 90s, and basically we started doing business with LandsEnd and Eastern Mountain Sportswear. Ellesse and I really started to build a business. The problem was there was a lot of risk for me since I had to finance everything myself. So I was really a small player for these guys but what I was able to do is that I was able to do fairly good quality for them, which took a long time to do. I mean it was really painstaking to learn how to do it because I had a plant that was really a popular price plant that made very typical goods, and I had to make high-quality goods. And it was kind of painful to learn that, and get the operators to do it, and we did do it successfully for a while. But then essentially when it got to be the later 90s, everything went offshore, and I couldn't stay in Pine Grove. And even though I had good relationships with the union and the help, and we were in Pine Grove a long time, I felt bad in a way. You know, but I tried to do what I could and we transitioned out, and I ended up closing the factory over there. I still moved to Allentown, I moved my operations to Allentown, but I had to go to Mexico. And I did contracting with the union plants in Allentown for about a year or two. That's how long it lasted. I was in Mexico trying that. Even Mexico was a hard thing because maquiladora kind of went down there, started up from scratch, had to send our equipment down there, hire people, and do different things. It was a pretty risky proposition actually. And it was risky because the laborers in Mexico couldn't make the quality goods that I needed right away. It was a big learning curve for them. And it took me months to really train them and it cost a lot of money to do that. But I managed to make that happen there and we got some good contracts from LandsEnd and Eastern Mountain Sports. The problem I had, the Mexicans were great people, and they were good to work with except their time management was a little bit slower than what we're used to here, so they were always late in getting things done. And what would happen is it created a problem for me as far as you know. I got certain penalties from the manufacturers and the cost was contracts over there but I still managed to make it work. And we were going good for a year, and management would go good, and then what happens they went to China, and we ended up losing the contract. And when I saw that happen I kind of closed. I decided I was just going to get out and we had closed. I decided to close and liquidate it out and get out of it and that was another painful process, too. But it was a lot of pressure on me because essentially I had the bank loans, and they were sizable bank loans. I had a lot of pressure from LandsEnd and the others. In fact, we needed to approach Walmart, and Walmart said to me "you have to be able to take a million-dollar order, that's the minimum order we'll do with you." But I was taking million dollar orders because that is what I had to take even with LandsEnd to do business, and even the other people, you couldn't stay in business taking small orders. I knew I had to go to 5 to 10 million dollars minimum. We were probably at 5 or 6 million dollars but what happened is because of the credit lines, they really put a big demand on me and stress and one of the suppliers, I found out later actually, wasn't happy because they said even though I paid the bank and everybody on time, they just felt like I was too small, and I ended up losing a contract from LandsEnd, which I found out later. But when they cut me out of the program-- because I had done this program for five years-- that's when I decided to close. I said this isn't right. So what happened, I liquidated out about a year later, and they ended up coming back to me and said "do you want to do this" because what happened is that they got screwed because they couldn't get the quality from the other supplier but at that point I said "I'm done" and I had decided to close and extricate myself out of that. And that was the end of the apparel business for me really by 2000, by 1999 actually, it was over for me. SC: I'd like to take you back to your family history, as far back as you know, but I have one question, which union? SK: ILGWU SC: Okay, that's what I thought, but yes, and also, there was another question I had with how far was Pineville from Reading? SK: Pine Grove from Reading is-- SC: Pine Grove, I'm sorry. SK: Pine Grove from Reading is approximately 45 miles SC: Because they had all the outlets by that time, all the stores and the business, weren't they? Reading was still producing when you were...? SK: Actually my uncle was still in business at that time. He was in manufacturing, but they had problems also with that, even the manufacturing. Really what happened is most like in Pine Grove, Fox-Knapp had been there for 100 years. They made outerwear, there weren't a lot of guys making outerwear. And outerwear went strictly to China, overseas, Korea. They just couldn't compete, and they ended up closing the plant over there. And the same happened, now you could do manufacturing the children's wear, and I guess the same thing happened to them. They had problems and they just closed. I was actually, like I said, I was able to stay because what I did is I did certain work in Mexico, and I did certain work in Pine Grove, and also I had a good connection with my sales guys at LandsEnd. We were able to produce for them on a very quick turn. We had a special system that you can turn things in a couple days, and we were able to really get the goods for them but the problem is I was paying $17 an hour. They could land the goods, the whole product complete, for 10 bucks. There was no way you can compete. It didn't matter how good and how fast, the only thing I could do was on reorders. We were good, and they really depended on us, and that's how we lasted in Pine Grove as long as we did for that. Because the plant, the plant people were generally pretty good, you know, they tried to get the quality right and get it done, and we were pretty responsive to getting things done. And it's not that we didn't have problems, we did have problems. Generally you know we were pretty consistent for them on that. SC: Could you talk about the names you know in your dad's family and your mother's family? Where they came from as far back as you know. SK: As far back as I know. Quick thing I never knew my grandparents really. I knew one grandparent ; my great-grandparents I never knew. They were long gone. My great grandparents-- actually from one side was from Poland I think. My parents . . . my father's was from Poland then. My mother's was from Kiev, Ukraine, over there. So they came to New York City, the typical Eastside. My mother's side had a store in the Lower East Side, on Orchard Street where else on that. And their whole family worked that store for a long time. Actually they worked that store until the 80s ; I think on that type of thing until the neighborhood really changed over there. My father lived with my mother's family when they got married, so they lived in New York City. And it was hard on my father because my father did not work in the, he tried working in the business with them, and decided this isn't for him. So he started looking for other businesses. He worked in the bank for a while, he had a decent position in the bank, but he decided that he wanted his own business. So then he started looking for a different business. He probably failed in a couple businesses before he ended up connecting with my uncle working in the business room. But they still lived in New York with the mother's family till 1950 when they moved, 1951 when they moved to Allentown. So that was there. Now my father actually was from Detroit, and I don't know about his family too much on that type of thing. What I do know is my grandmother at the time lived in New York City as well. I never knew my grandfather, I think he passed away when I was one year old and I wouldn't know. They lived in the city. My grandmother-- I don't know exactly which business she was in-- whatever it was she was, pretty tough, tough woman. She lived in the city and she would come visit us every two weeks or something. She died right before my bar mitzvah on that but I remember her being there. She would cook and stuff, she liked seeing the kids and stuff. Really I didn't know her that well. We used to see her at the holidays. Whenever we had Passover and stuff, we would always go into the city with our families. We would have big seders, families would be there on that. And my mother and her sister were very close. My aunt lived in Belle Harbor and she didn't live two blocks from the beach. So every summer we'd all go visit her, extended stay because when I was a baby she would bring me along, and she had a nanny for me, and we would stay right in my aunt's [home] and go to the beach all summer. We would stay just about most of the summer over there, so my sister and my aunt were very close. We got very close with that side of the family. Still close today, really I just know my cousins. SC: Do you know their names? SK: Well my mother's name was Veiner over there, her sister was also a Veiner, but became a Weiss, and Weiss was our cousins on the other side over there. Now her husband was an optometrist. They lived in Belle Harbor for 30/40 years, whatever, they were there a long time. And their kids grew up there ; we became very friendly with their kids. They had two boys, Alan and Fred. Fred became a doctor, moved to California. Alan stayed in the New York area, he became an accountant. Fred has passed away since then but I know the other families in California still keep in touch with them in California. Alan, we still keep in touch with him. He's still in the city but his kids, one's in Washington, the other's in Hawaii over there. So really that's pretty much, or we're pretty close there. I have other family members in New York, which we still occasionally see, a lot of cousins over there. One of the cousins was also in the garment business. He was like a rep selling different things for a long time. I think that was it, everyone else was not. The other part of the family stayed in the store actually. My father's side he had four other brothers, most of them stayed in the city as well. One of them was a banker actually at Sterling National Bank, and he became the president or vice president, he's high up that for a long time. His other brother had another dry goods store where he sold for a long time in New York, as well as another store, which he sold. And his other brother died younger. I don't know what he was in, he was doing something else but he died when I was much younger from that type of thing. SC: Do you know when your grandparents or their parents came to the United States? About what year? SK: I think it was in the 1900s era, it's got to be the late 1800s when they first came because my parents were both born in the United States. So they had to have come back then and I don't exactly know the details. I only saw, you know my parents never really talked about it too much. It was interesting. Actually, there were a lot of things I saw just from looking through the stuff that they left when they passed away. But they never talked too much about their families and that type of thing. SC: They embraced the United States. I think that's it, do you want to trade positions? GE: You know what, what we're going to do is we're just going to take a minute just so that we can make sure that we're doing okay technology wise. SK: So we actually started making goods for the Miss America contest. And we also made stuff for the US Open. We had [Ivan] Lendl made in our unit, we made it as one of the manufacturers, to see them play. Also, Chrisy Evert had some stuff that we had, we made stuff for her as well. GE: I'm going to let you tell me in a minute. So just pause, we are going to take a break. SK: You know, there's another guy that is really Jewish, but not Jewish in a way, that might still be working in the Valley. GE: Although it has happened to be mostly Jewish, it doesn't have to be. SK: There's a guy here that's still working actually, that does apparel stuff, he does embroidery, which is Lilly daVid. Now I don't know if David, cause I haven't talked to them in years, but I believe that they are still there because they do embroidery, they used to do embroidery for me all the time. GE: The other one that I was going to reach out to, the other one I know, that I just heard recently is Harris Malkovsky. And I don't know if he does any, from what I understand he is a middle man. Does he just buy stuff..? SK: I don't know what Harris does, but he was in the garment business GE: Right, and here's something, so I thought I would reach out to him SK: Yeah, no he would be good too. But Stu Ullman, the reason I say that, his father started Canoe Manufacturing, which was in Pine Grove way before we were. So he was there for a long time. But he really is definitely a person to speak to. I think he still is in the garment business-- David Lilly. He's down off Lehigh Street there, I'm trying to think. SC: Are they still there? SK: Yeah, they are still there, I forget the name of the street that they are on. No, when you take a left, right before the diner's right there. There's a diner there, I can't remember the name of the street. SC: So it is not in Emmaus? SK: No, it's right in Allentown. SC: So it's right in Allentown. SK: It's 18103, if you look it up on the Internet, it will be there cause he's, I'm positive he's still there. GE: Thank you. So a couple of follow-up questions, one,you'll share those stories about the Miss America and about the other. Couple of follow up questions. One, what was the name of your businesses? Initially you were manufacturers right? SK: Initially we were always contractors. We started out as a contractor. GE: You did, your father did? SK: My father did. And the name of the business was Summit Station Manufacturing. GE: That was your father with the T-shirts? Correct? SK: Well, no, my father and the T-shirts started out as Rick Knit. GE: R-I-C-K-K-N-I-T? And that was the t-shirts, correct? SK: That was the t-shirts and the golf shirts. That's what evolved into the golf shirts business GE: And then just tell me the evolution? SK: The evolution was my father and uncle were partners in that business and then they were in it since the 50s. I think in 1965 they split, they had a parting and then essentially my father left that business. My uncle still continues to run the business with his son, then his son ran it for a long time. I don't think they are around anymore.They ran it for a while. Then what happened was my father looked for another business. He was thinking about different businesses, but he ended up buying a contract plant in Pine Grove and called it Summit Station Manufacturing. GE: So he called it Summit Station Manufacturing but you were always a contractor? SK: He was only a contractor and that's how I started, it was strictly contracting. He strictly worked for union jobbers at the time in New York City. It was all union work. GE: Right. And you said there was one customer, who was that customer? SK: That customer was called Dorby Fox. GE: Ok, Dorby, D-O-R-- SK: D-O-R-B-Y Fox over there. And they were on Seventh Avenue ; there were right in the garment industry GE: Right, and you said it was dresses? SK: Yes, all dresses. GE: And what type--was it very casual dresses? SK: No, they made all types of dresses. They made fancier dresses. They didn't make wedding dresses or anything like that. But they really made more popular priced dresses, stuff at JCPenney, Sears ; those were the type of dresses they were selling. That was the type of market they were selling. GE: And was it typically old women as opposed to teens? SK: Women, mostly women, yes, mostly women. GE: And how long did your brother stay in the business? SK: One year. GE: Oh, so he was only in it-- and you were in it with your father? Or once your father left, he was done? SK: What happened was when my brother and I both started, my father was still there. Like I said, my manager left after two months. I took care of the. . . it's just, I'm more detailed than my brother. My brother is way more marketing/sales person. I just picked up on the details, so I really became the plant manager, running it because you had to know a lot of details. It was a heck of a lot of details to know. So, I lasted about a year. We both shared, you know, the production duties. I basically helped tell my brother. My brother and I both helped in planning and ran the sewing. After a year, my brother said that he couldn't take it anymore and had enough and left. At the time we were living in Lebanon, and he just left and went to try to do something else. GE: And then it sounds like you stayed with this until the end. SK: Yeah, I did. What really happened is I ended up running the plant, not happened, I did run the plant. I was responsible for all of the production and everything. I was the one that scheduled everything and the quality and stuff like that. My father helped a little bit, but my father really had some health issues, so after a year or two, he left and went in the winter to Florida. So really in six months I was basically all on my own. Now he would call, and if I had a problem, but I was really on my own. And really within a couple of years he ended up retiring. I would say within five years he was not coming to the plant. GE: Well do you want to share with us - so then it was really a matter, if I understand correctly, it was the matter of keeping your cost down, and that's how you tried the Mexico... SK: The beginning problem was actually getting work that you could actually make at a price. And I would go to different places and like I said, I ended up doing a lot of different things. I expanded out of dresses. I started doing blouses, sportswear. I went into running suits. I went into anything that we thought we could make. We actually made outerwear, too. For LandsEnd, we actually made outerwear, that's how I got started with LandsEnd. I made their 'squall' jacket. Then, most of the squall jackets were made in California, but I made it because I could make it quicker and delivered the small runs quicker so basically that's how I got started with them. It was painful, it was really painful because making outerwear from a dress plant, it was really an experience to do, but these are things I undertook. I would take on a lot of different things that a lot of people would never do because I just felt like if I could find my niche, and that's what I was looking for. And in that process I ended up working on making warm-up suits and different things. I started with Ellesse and that was like a semi package thing, and I had to do different things for them. We made different warm up suits and they actually made stuff for the US Open, so that's how I got to make stuff for the US Open. They would make it for a lot of these tennis pros, and would wear their label. And we made a lot of their suits and stuff like that, like I said, [Ivan] Lendl. Actually, I think Lendl was not Ellesse, they worked for Mizuno also, that was another contact that I made. And Mizuno was a Japanese firm, and the craziest thing about them is they wanted to see the plant so they came from Japan to see my plant. So I will be there, and then he said, well can you stay a little bit later at 8 o'clock at night and he said, can you stay a little bit later, 11 o'clock at night. They came to my plant. They roll up in this big limousine, literally, I'm so serious. It was really funny. So 11 o'clock at night they come and look at my plant, literally. I was there until 12 o'clock/12:30 at night with them. And the reason I remember Lilly daVid is Lilly daVid would do the embroidery. Some we would first self-cut, then I would take it down myself to Lilly daVid a lot of the time or ship it. And Lilly daVid and Ellesse, they were really friendly, they would be there and what they did with Mizuno even, I think Lilly daVid had a party one time and all the people who were doing the contracting or designing for them got together and they served sushi. We all got together one day and had this big raw tuna that they had for lunch, and we all got you know for the customer we were there. It was actually my first time that we had sushi, and that's how I got to like sushi. It was pretty good sushi. But it was this huge raw tuna sitting there, and we had it and it was an interesting experience. But we made different things for different people at that time and that's how I started getting into manufacturing because I wasn't total manufacturing, but I had to buy certain things or do certain things for them, and I got to learn about how to put the garments together on different things. And I got a lot of different experiences during those things and also during that time there was another time when we made dresses for the Miss America pageant and that was on TV. And that was kind of a thrill because you made these dresses, and we shipped them out, and you actually got to see them wear them on TV. And I think we got mentioned on TV. But that was some of the other things that we did. GE: And when you did that, that was for whom? SK: I don't even remember anymore, to tell you the truth. It was another one of those deals that was, I don't know, it might have been through Ellesse through somebody again that we. It wasn't Ellesse actually, the dresses were not Ellesse. It was somebody else, and I don't remember anymore who it was for, another contractor. It was kind of a contract, wasn't totally a contract. It was a guy who sent me a couple of packages. A lot of things we had to do for them and package it and put it together. GE: So during this time, if I understand correctly, these were where you were doing a lot of small runs? SK: Yeah, my business was [doing] a lot of small runs. That's how I really survived. Later on by 1995 when I hired an outside sales person and he said I have contacts I think we can do business. And the reason he knew me was because when we started he found out I did some smaller runs through some of these guys. And we connected, I went to New York, I used to go to New York a lot. And in New York, we started talking and his name was Jim Stabile and he was working for somebody else at the time and said you know, I bet we could get together and do something. And, you know, you kind of listen, and they never do it and then one day, he called me and said I think we could do something, you want to come in? And we got to talking, and I said okay if you think you can do this, I'll do this and that's what happened. We started getting sales and then I went out to LandsEnd. I would go out with him, and we would restructure some deals, and we actually got some contracts and that's how I got started. GE: And even with LandsEnd was it, were these concerns small runs? SK: For LandsEnd we started on a small basis but I was totally responsible for everything. In other words, they would tell me where to order the fabric but I had to buy the fabric. I had to buy the trims. I had to do everything. And really at the beginning I had a hard time making it. I can't figure out how they put these deals together because I was always behind the 8-ball. It was very very tight for me, and they gave me a little bit more money because it was smaller runs, but I always couldn't get a bigger run because my pricing was wrong. Then one year he got a big contract and they said to me if you get this contract they will introduce me to the fabric person. They said you're going to get special pricing if you get this contract. And they gave me the pricing for the fabric. And I saw the pricing for that fabric, and I saw the pricing that I had to pay for the fabric, and it was a huge difference. And they said 'well if you buy the zippers this is the source you should use.' Actually they didn't tell me the source, they said, 'we want you to buy 25,000,' we're talking about big buying. And I said, 'if I do 25,000,' and I went to the zipper guy, I said, 'what price would you give me?' And all of a sudden, the prices were different. I mean substantially different, like way different. And that's how I got into the contracting. I realized, wait a second, there is a different world here. And then I started calling suppliers, and if the supplier couldn't do the business, they said, well try this supplier. And you know when I talked to . . . with a lot of people when I told them 25,000 or I'm not going to spend $10,000 with you, or $20,000 or you know. The fabric guys were not hundreds of thousands of dollars, the zipper guys were thousands of dollars, could be $20,000/30,000. It was now big orders for them. And when they said LandsEnd, they knew who I was doing it with. They said that they'll work with me and do the business and that's how I got into the contracting business. But there was a big difference in the beginning. I was struggling, you know, how could these guys do these? How they did it was through the buy-in because they get special deals. Everything was a special deal and unless you knew and had the contacts to it, and Mizuno couldn't do this again. I started with the bank in Pine Grove and I got started with a small line of credit and all of a sudden I got big lines of credit. Today you couldn't do that, by the way. They would never grant me the credit. I had million dollar lines of credit. Nobody today would grant you that thing, not in this world today. They do not do that then. I could finance nothing but I lived check to check. In other words. I'd have people who would look at me and say, I had these enormous checks come in, and I'd have to go to the bank, cash it. Even with LandsEnd, I would spend, I had a special deal with them that said, I have to get paid right away. And they worked with me, I got to give them credit, they did work with me, but they were tough. You had a problem with your quality, they would hold, no matter what, whatever you had with them, they would not pay you. If your quality wasn't good, they didn't just not pay, they rejected the lot, and you had to fix it or do whatever it was and they'd say, 'we're sending back 'x' amount and wouldn't give you the money.' And that's why I said at the beginning with LandsEnd, you really had to know, cause if you'd ship for me it was really critical because I was doing so much quantity. I had to make sure the quality was right and get paid. I've got to tell you another thing, so there is a lot of risk, or else a lot of people would have done what I did. Like I'm surprised I did what I did. I did it, and then I realized that I reached a certain point with Mexico. I got a lot of disappointment a lot of times, and I said I can't keep doing this, it was just too much risk for me. And that's what got me out of it, really. Just one day I realized, I said, I had everything on the line and nobody else had everything on the line, and I just said, I'm not going to do this anymore. GE: And what year was that? SK: It was 1999 that I finally pulled the plug. I just said, and it was tough because really I had been doing this, people were depending on it. I really gave it a shot because I knew when I went into the private labor because I knew that contracting was not going to make it. And I knew I had to go between 5 and 10 million dollars to survive, and I was close to doing it but the problem was with LandsEnd. The old way was you go in, you make a handshake with the guy, and they would live up to what they did. At LandsEnd, that's not what happened. I had contracts by the way, of a big size, but they didn't even live up to their contracts. That's what, when that happened to me, I said wait a second. Actually, at the end I had to sue Eastern Sportswear to get my money, and I had to settle with them because the smaller you are, you know you're not going to court at the end, even though they owed me the money, I settled with them, and gave them a discount to get out of it. And after that happened, that's when I said, I'm done. Cause I just didn't have the financial wherewithal you would need to have substantial money to do what you're doing. And not only that I couldn't rely on them, the garments had really changed. Even LandsEnd started to change within their organization. It wasn't the same. That was a real close-knit organization there, you almost became a part of their family in a way. If they counted on you ; they would tell you certain things. Not that they wouldn't demand and hammer you on the price but if they gave you the order, they would cut you certain breaks. They would help you with the money if you said you needed the money on some things, and if you delivered for them, they would help you. But after that happened, I said I can't count on this anymore and stopped. But they were a good organization to work with, it did help me, but it changed, the whole world changed. Everything went overseas. GE: So at that point, you're about 50 I assume. And so I'm just kind of wondering if you wanted to share with us what you've done since, um you know, in terms of how did you personally have to adapt, right? SK: Well, when I left I actually liquidated the plant. I actually walked away. It cost me a lot of money, really a lot of money. Okay but, I almost thought that I would have to declare bankruptcy. Because of how I handled most of my customers, and I had good relationships with everybody, I was able to pay, repay everybody and that type of thing. When I say everybody, there's only one person I didn't really repay at the end, but they actually should have paid me. I left them my equipment so it ended up being fine, and that was down in Mexico--maquiladora. And I wasn't too happy with them, but they actually ended up ahead in the deal because they never would have gotten the business that I gave them. And they were very late, and they actually caused me a lot of money, and frankly, they should have cut me better breaks, but they didn't. But I don't harbor any resentment, it's what it is, it's the way we had the business of doing it. So when I left I took a year off because I was really kind of stressed, to say the least. And I ended up paying the bank completely back with the credit lines which I had to sign for personally. In fact all the credit lines, I paid all my suppliers, I paid all of the contractors and everybody got paid. And I was almost surprised because I didn't think that was going to happen, but I was able to do it. And I liquidated out on that. I had a manager, I said I would help him if he wanted to stay as a contractor. I didn't want to be in the garment business anymore. I said, I've had enough and I really had so I lent him a little bit of money. He was the biggest disappointment because he was with me a long time and at the end he kind of just reneged on me because I lent him a fair amount of money. I mean not like the garment business, but I did lend money to get started in that. I guess it didn't work out. I knew it would be tough but it's not the money that bothered me, it's just how it ended. He didn't come to me and say, 'hey Seth,' you know, he kind of just walked out, and you know just kind of left it that way. So that kind of left me negative a little bit. But like everything else I've moved on, and I, you know, it's just, I took a year off to kind of relax, did some different things, went on some vacations, just did different things. Then I started to get really antsy and wanted to look for another ; I always intended to look for another business. But it wasn't going to be in the garment business, I was kind of done with that. So I started looking around after that. My brother was in Valpak since 1991. So this was 2000 at this point, and I was looking. I put out flyers for different businesses and was looking around. I didn't want to go, like I said, in the garment business, I probably could have gotten business as a consultant going overseas and stuff, but I didn't want to do that. I didn't really want to travel like that. So I started thinking about other businesses. My brother said, 'hey I need some help here, why don't you just, you know what you needed, I need a manager.' Well I looked at his business and said, his business is strictly marketing and sales. I said, I'm not really big on sales, it's not me. You know, it's more him. And I said, I'll look at your salespeople inside, you know, to see if you have the sales person. So I looked at the salespeople, and I said to him, you don't have any. You're lucky if they are salespeople, let alone, you could have them as a manager. Then I sort of said, I wasn't going to do that. I said I'd help him for a while, if he wanted me to. But then he made me a proposal, and I guess I was kind of antsy. too. I looked at his figures and said, now I guess we could make this work. But I said, I could really do that inside for you, because his wife was doing the inside at the time, and didn't want to do it. And I said, I can help in the sales, but I'm not really going to be a prime salesperson. I said I can help really do the inside for you and do all the financial stuff and help. I can do everything, but I said don't count on me as the prime salesperson. I'll do what I have to do for you, you know I'll help in the sales. So that's how that got started on doing that because what we decided to. We would split the business in the sense that I let him own that business. I did not want to own the business, I said we can work as partners. I'll treat you like I own the business, but I'm not going to own anything so that's how we got started. And frankly that's how it is today, basically I run the business for him on that. I do a lot of the sales, in fact I do more sales than I want. But I do the sales, I help out with the sales people, I do all the financials, I do all the inside, all the technical stuff I do on that type of thing. So that's really what's happened, he still likes marketing and the sales, so he still does that. My brother never pushed himself that hard on that business. He kind of goes along, you know, we do it on that type of thing and we're still doing it on that. GE: So a couple of last questions before Sue gets back to you. What do you think about the community here? How has the community been affected, in terms of when it was 1950, when you were very young, there were many families that were in this business. SK: You're right, the community has definitely changed a lot. When I was growing up as a kid there were a lot of small businesses. In fact when I went to the synagogue, even in the Jewish community there were a lot of small businesses. In fact that was the majority of people, you had doctors and lawyers but the majority of givers, the people involved in the community, were all small business people. On that, in fact a lot of the givers to the [Jewish] Federation were from the garment business. I used to know, my father used to take me down to his plant, show me things. You had, um, I'm trying to think, some of the others there, not Bernstein, it was belts, you know, Braunstein. Braunstein, I knew Nate, I was at his plant and so, they were all involved in the garment business, you know. And there were a lot of big givers, a lot of big plants actually. We were a small plant in comparison to what they were. That started to change, some people retired, some people had to retire. You know if you get out, some people sold, so the businesses did not stick around. So really say by the 90s there, you started to see the change. By 2000 there weren't too many people left over there. In fact, the Atlantic Apparel when you talk about it in sportswear, I think they had like 500, close to 500 plants in the Lehigh Valley and surrounding area. I don't know who was left, there were very few left on that type of thing, and even the garment in the dress apparel, we had like 200 and some. There was nobody left. In fact, I think I was the last one left, but I wasn't a part of, I made my own contracts at that point. I wasn't even a part of it anymore. I think I was the last one left on that type of thing. So there was nobody left on that type of thing, all those businesses shrank or disappeared over there. So what happened over time was you had professionals come into Allentown. There's still some small business people, but even the small business community started to have problems. By 2008 when you had the recession, it was a turning point, I think you lost businesses there. And being in Valpak, I see a lot of small businesses. People in the Jewish community, they had small businesses, but they're not too many of them, and that disappeared. Now you have a lot of professionals that have taken that place but it's really changed the character of the community. GE: How? GIve us an example? In what ways do you think? SK: Well it's a combination of businesses changing, but I also think it has socially changed. When I grew up, the synagogue was a social side of religious thing. Religion was always a secondary thing, I mean it was always secondary. It played a part in our community, but it was really secondary. The temples were social ; people went to the temple to meet people and to get their friends. And my mother and everyone, she had a clique. My mother really knew a lot of people because she was involved in not only the temple but also in the auxiliary of the Jewish Community Center. She was involved in all these things. But the women didn't work at that time so you had them involved in all these community type things--Jewish affairs, Hadassah-- you name it, my mother was part of it. She was involved in doing that, and I grew up with that, and my father tagged along cause you know he had to because of my mother and that was part of it. But that started to wane because women had to go to the workforce and became more involved, and not that they weren't involved in the community, but less so. It became less and less. And then also what happened is as the older generation died off and moved away, the younger generation, not as many stayed here, because the opportunities weren't here. They didn't go into the family business because there wasn't a family business to go into. Now some didn't want it, and did different things. It, you know, changed, and the dynamic people moved away, and people came here, but I don't think now as many people move here as they used to 10 or 15 years ago. GE: Okay, good. My last question before I turn it over to Sue is why do you think that the Jews were really overrepresented in the apparel industry? From what we've seen and from what we've read, it's very many Jews and Italians. But why do you think that the Jews were overrepresented in that industry? SK: I would say that there are a couple factors. One is discrimination factor that you couldn't have, you couldn't get into other businesses fields that easy or that readily, you weren't accepted, so they started in that. A lot of these Jewish merchants started as peddlers and they built up. Now, maybe some of the owners, their parents might have been peddlers to start out with, and they got started because you could start a garment business relatively inexpensively. Not that you didn't need money, you could start it up relatively easily, you could never do that today, could never do it. That's what's hard about small businesses, in general it's hard to start a small business. Any small business requires a fair amount of capital. But in those days you could go to a guy who'd lend you a machine, they would lend you, you could buy things on credit, and they would let you get started. And you could make a living and that's how they started a lot of them. That type of thing, I think that's what happened a lot. That doesn't happen today out there, and for a Jewish guy, like I said, it was an opportunity. There weren't a lot of opportunities, and you could make decent money if you were good. Now a lot of guys didn't make it obviously, but there were a number of guys who did make it and became good. Now, not all, some of the Jewish guys or Jewish merchants that were here in the Valley, their fathers had started a business. So that's how the guys who were bigger generally got bigger, their parents had started before them. Like Mr. Mort Levy, his father started the business and then he built it and obviously expanded it. His father started it before he started and he grew up in it. I got to mention Mr. Levy because Mr. Levy helped me. He mentored me a little bit when my father passed away when I was 36. I was really on my own pretty much, on the younger part of business. My father really had no connection at all with what I did on that, but I used to talk to Mr. Levy, and he would help me in a lot of cases. There were a lot of Jewish people that had these factories and that's how they built up. GE: Okay, great, thank you. Okay, I'm just going to push this. SC: Okay, so I really only have two more questions, so one is what has made you feel most creative in life? SK: What has made me most creative in life? SC: Given you a sense of satisfaction or creativity or whatever other word you want to add? SK: It's a mix, it's a mix of things for me because essentially I would say my family has been one of my key satisfactions in my life, no matter what because they have always been there, and I always have enjoyed them, proud of them. But one of the things, the garment business was a big change for me because I was a shy little guy. I'm still quiet, but it made me do things I would never do. And that's what I found interesting about it. After all the years, you know, it changed whether I went to med school. In retrospect, I could have been a doctor probably, probably wouldn't have been a problem for me. But the garment business just changed my life by doing it over there, so being creative is really up to you as a person. Brandeis changed my life in a certain way. It stopped me from being a doctor, believe it or not, because I learned about art, and I never knew I had an interest in art. What happened was that at Brandeis, I had taken all the science courses. I had taken organic chemistry, I was ready to go to med school and had taken this art course. I think during my sophomore year, and I said I liked it. And I was talking with the professor, and at Brandeis, you could speak to professors pretty easily, and I was doing this artwork and this guy says, 'you should really take more art courses.' He said, 'I think you have the ability.' And I started taking some more in my junior year, and I really enjoyed them, and I said, you know what, I don't really want to go to medical school. I stopped taking science courses. I was one course away from my science degree at Brandeis, but then I stopped, and I said that I'm just going to take art courses. And the rest of my courses were all art courses. They were all drawing, art history, to me they were so simple after science, it was like a breeze for me, and I enjoyed them so much. And I learned a lot of different things at Brandeis cause essentially I got to meet the professors, and the courses were really different. Actually, one of the professors there, I'm trying to think of his name, I don't know, he contributed to the art museum in Allentown over there, it was one of my professors over there, and he used to invite us out for wine. It was just a completely different environment from the sciences. But even the science professors that I got to talk to over there. So that's what changed my mind about expanding, looking at things differently over there and the garment industry. You had to be more creative, maybe that's why I stuck with it longer because I realized I could do things with it, I was willing to try different things over that thing. SC: So it changed the way you looked at things, and more artistically. SK: I used certain things artistically. I still do a little bit of drawing and painting. I said to Kathy that really to be an artist you have to do it full-time. It's hard to do it part-time. I still do crazy things but I always liked the abstract art and I would do different things, I would do canvases and different things. I said I can never make a living doing that. If I had my choice going back, I probably would have been an artist. But I don't think I could have made a living doing it although when I go to the museums and look at some of the stuff of some of the artists who "made it." I have to laugh because I was doing some of that stuff that they were doing, and I was looking at it. That's chance, really it is chance. SC: And what do you value most in life? SK: I still value my family the most in life and really you know people say that the money and different things. Your money is not just life because it's not all about money, it's, there's a balance that you strike between. Yeah it's good to have means. Then you could support yourself and your family and send the kids to college, and you know, help them when they need help. But it's really about relationships with your people, the community you live in that you feel comfortable with, friends that you have over time. Yeah, even friends as you get older, they move away too and you know it's good having them but it's, you still rely on your family to some degree-- my wife, my kids, your grandkids, and that becomes really one of the most important factors. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=
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01:07;34
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Seth Katzman, May 25, 2016
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Seth Katzman shares fond memories growing up in Allentown during the 1950s and 1960s. While attending Brandeis University Seth decided that rather than pursue his original plan to attend medical school, he would instead take over his father’s apparel contracting business. His father wanted to retire anyway. Seth’s older brother joined him initially in the business. Not many years later, the traditional sewing contracting business in Pennsylvania was diminishing and Seth had to adapt to the changing environment. Seth stayed in the apparel business until 1999, much later than many other contracting businesses in Pennsylvania.
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LVTNT-29
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2016-05-25
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video
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives
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