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https://textile.digitalarchives.muhlenberg.edu/files/original/061a52fdf8b62910fd6d1a12a8df0715.png
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Title
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
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Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Shirley Berman
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Viewer)
https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-32.xml
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5.4 June 24, 2013 Shirley Berman, June 24, 2013 LVTNT-32 56:19 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Shirley Berman Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 BermanShirley_20130624.mp4 1.0:|25(11)|48(4)|71(9)|86(7)|105(4)|124(3)|141(16)|158(6)|177(13)|196(14)|223(10)|250(6)|271(8)|296(5)|323(7)|342(19)|357(17)|378(17)|405(8)|420(3)|439(14)|456(3)|475(7)|494(8)|517(8)|544(5)|565(5)|586(13)|611(4)|622(13)|643(12)|666(10)|687(3)|708(11)|725(15)|740(15)|763(5)|786(17)|823(6)|848(15)|897(4)|944(6)|969(6)|986(6)|1005(13)|1032(8)|1051(15)|1088(4)|1111(5)|1144(9)|1169(12)|1188(9)|1227(11)|1262(5)|1311(9)|1340(13)|1349(8) 0 https://youtu.be/M1O5Ts9DK8E YouTube video 0 Family History SC: Shirley, may I ask what your full name is including your maiden name and when you were born.
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 ; SB: Shirley Isabelle Malenovsky Berman, and I was born August 14, 1922 and I would like to say welcome to you two lovely ladies.
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 ; SC: Well thank you.
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 ; SB: It’s nice to have you here in my home. 0 833 Shirley Berman's Husband's Family SC: Can we talk a little bit about your husband’s family?
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 ; SB: Sure, My husband was in the army and when he got out of the army, he had worked before for a company in New Jersey somewhere. He and his brother worked for a company.
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 ; GE: What was his brother’s name?
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 ; SB: Rubin.
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 ; GE: So it’s Harry and Rubin. 0 1200 Shirley's Involvement in the Business SC: So after you and Harry were married, did you become involved in the business at all?
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 ; SB: I was involved in the sense that we socialized with his customers and a lot of them didn’t want Harry to come without me. We always traveled together, we went to Europe – all over together. We went to Europe a couple of times a year. A lot of his business was in Europe. 0 1351 The Business SC: Can you explain what you know of the business process?
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 ; SB: He had the first computerized textile machine in the country. The machines were computerized and he could design on the machine itself. He had one of the largest textile businesses in the country, until knitting started to decline. Then fortunately he got out in time and we enjoyed the rest of our lives together as much as we could. 0 1692 Later Family History GE: How about Harry’s education?
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 ; SB: He graduated from high school and then he went two years to night school – night college.
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 ; GE: Was that after the war on the G.I. Bill or was that before the war?
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 ; SB: Well, he graduated high school before the war.
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 ; GE: Right, but how about college?
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 ; SB: It could have been after. He went to a school for design – I forget what you call it.
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 ; GE: Like – I know in Philadelphia – there is the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. 0 2047 Shirley's Father's Business During the Great Depression GE: And your father’s business managed to stay okay during the Depression?
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 ; SB: They managed – they managed to be fine – they wound up good. We never realized how good they were – we were never told as children their situation. We were just happy for them. I had good parents. It wasn’t like today, we didn’t have the problems that we have today – none of the problems with any of our children. It was a good life, a simple life, my parents never spoiled us, and I never realized the position they were in until after my father passed away. We enjoyed what we had. 0 2166 Connections to Jewish Community SC: When you were a child did you play mostly with kids in the neighborhood, or did you have more connections to the Jewish community?
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 ; SB: I used to walk, when we lived on 5th Street - I used to go to Hebrew School. I used to walk myself coming home at night – I don’t know if you know Allentown – from Fifth Street, the north end – we lived below Washington on Fifth. I walked from there all the way to Sixth and Chew – this would be where the Jewish Community Center was – myself to go to Hebrew School at night. In the winter, it was dark – I never had any qualms about walking. 0 2522 Shirley's Education GE: Right. Tell us about your education. Where did you go to school?
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 ; SC: That’s what I was going to ask.
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 ; SB: My education- first I went to the school at 5th and Washington St.. It was called Garfield. At that time they told me I had the highest IQ of anyone in the school they had had. 
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 ; GE: Wow.
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 ; SB: So that was nice to hear as a youngster. Then we moved, and I went up to Raub Jr. High School. And then from there I went to Allentown High School. 0 2753 More Involvement in the Jewish Community SC: So can you talk a little bit about, were you involved in the community, the larger community, or the Jewish community?
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 ; SB: I was active, yes I was active as a young woman, I was active in Hadassah. I was on the board. I was active at Temple Beth El. I was the secretary for a number of years. Well, I wasn’t active at the- I was a life member at the Jewish Community Center. But I wasn’t active per se. And I was active with my own things, you know, my own friends and family.
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 ; SC: Right, you own life. How about Harry? Was he very active in either these organizations or professional organizations?
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 ; SB: Yes, he was.
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 ; GE: What was he involved in?
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 ; SB: He was part of the Jewish Federation, he was part of the different organizations- I can’t think of a name. 0 2887 Memories of Business Employees GE: [A]ny good memories that you have about his employees, at all? Any of the employees, local employees? First of all, how many? Do you know what was the size, how many workers there were?
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 ; SB: He had a big factory. See this is why I said, I didn’t think I could give you too much information.
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 ; GE: That’s okay.
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 ; SB: No, let me think. I would safely say that between the three different businesses that he owned, I would say that he hired maybe a couple thousand.
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 ; SC: Wow, that's big.
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 ; SB: Yeah, maybe more, but I don’t want to say more.
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 ; GE: Now when you say the three businesses, it’s the fabric-
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 ; SB: Yeah and then the two other factories.
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 ; GE: And then the two factories.
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 ; SB: Yeah so safely I would say maybe a couple thousand.
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 ; GE: That’s big. 0 2964 How Has Allentown Changed Since You Were Young? SC: Well, in your whole life, let's start with that. How has Allentown changed since you were young?
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 ; SB: How about what?
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 ; SC: Allentown has changed since you were young.
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 ; SB: Oh yes, of course. There’s so much more going on in Allentown now. So much more building. So many more businesses and organizations and growth in the city of Allentown. Even in the population, people have come here from New Jersey and New York. They come here to live, because it's better living for them. They come from New York and New Jersey, there is great growth here in Allentown.
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 ; SC: Is it a different climate than when you were a child?
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 ; SB: Yes it is. It’s a different climate like it is all over the world, unfortunately. And, more things happening here that shouldn’t be happening, but, there is good growth and there is also evil growth, which is throughout the world now unfortunately. 0 3063 What Do You Value Most in Life? SC: So I have two really sort of filmy questions, just feeling questions, first of all what do you value in life most?
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 ; SB: What do I what?
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 ; SC: Value in life most.
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 ; SB: I value my family. That’s number one in my life. My friends, and I am blessed to have a wonderful family. Both my own personal family and my nieces, nephews, their families, and my own families, and also my wonderful friends, as well as terrific doctors who have kept me living, and to whom I really owe my life. And nurses, and I’m blessed to have them as my personal friends. I am. 0 3125 What Has Made You Feel the Most Creative? SC: And what have you- has made you feel the most creative?
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 ; SB: Pardon?
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 ; SC: The most creative in your life.
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 ; SB: The most creative in my life. Well, my children are creative, in their own way, each one. I appreciate that in them, in each one. My oldest is in a videotaping business. 0 MovingImage Shirley Berman talks about growing up in Allentown. Her father’s ancestors (Malenovsky family) were among the first Jewish settlers in Allentown. Elias Malenovsky was a founder of the first synagogue in Allentown down on 2nd St. Later, Shirley married Harry Berman. Harry owned Fair-Tex Mills, one of the largest knitting mills in the U.S. and the first to use computerized textile machines. Shirley proudly shared that she accompanied her husband regularly on business trips throughout Europe and always enjoyed entertaining customers and vendors.
 ; An Interview with Shirley Berman, June 24, 2013 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Shirley, may I ask what your full name is including your maiden name and when you were born. SHIRLEY BERMAN: Shirley Isabelle Malenovsky Berman, and I was born August 14, 1922 and I would like to say welcome to you two lovely ladies. SC: Well thank you. SB: It's nice to have you here in my home. SC: And a beautiful home, absolutely beautiful and beautiful tea that we just had. Where were you born? SB: I was born in the Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown many, many years ago. I'm not going to tell you -- you can figure it out yourself. SC: Where did you live as a small child? SB: As a child, we lived on North 5th St. until we moved up to -- we went West. You know what they say, "go west young man" - well the young lady went West to 16th Street. GAIL EISENBERG: What year was that? Or how old were you? SB: I was about 12 or 13 so that would have been in '35-'34 in that area. SC: So when you were living on 5th Street in South Allentown, was there a Synagogue there? SB: Yes, there was the Congregation Sons of Israel at that time on North 6th Street, a couple of blocks from where we lived -- we lived on North 5th Street. SC: Is that building still there? SB: Yes it is, I think it became a Greek church at one time, I don't know if it still is, but possibly. It was a lovely building -- stone building. GE: And that building was at 6th and what? SB: 6th and Tilghman. SC: My husband and I drove to -- actually to one of our friend's fathers who passed away, and we drove in that area and he was trying to tell me what he remembered because he was born in Allentown--so we'll go back again and look for it. SB: We used to walk to the Temple from where we lived - it was just a couple of blocks. SC: When you moved to 16th Street, did the Synagogue relocate at that time? SB: No, the Synagogue at that time was a small, little building at about 12th or 13th -- I think it was Thirteenth & ; Walnut Street. As a matter of fact, my brother's bar mitzvah was the last bar mitzvah in that little synagogue. Then we moved up here to 17th and Hamilton Street, where they built Temple Beth El. SC: How about your parents, can you tell me as much as you can about them -- where they were born, where their families were from and where they lived. SB: My mother was from Burlington, Vermont. My father lived in Allentown and through a cousin of my father's, I believe it was -- in upstate New York State -- they met. That cousin arranged for my mother to come visit her so she could meet my father. Then through correspondence and telephone for a while, they corresponded and spoke to each other and eventually they got together and got married. My mother moved to Allentown and lived for a while until they established themselves and bought a home on North Fifth Street. They lived with my grandparents -- my father's parents, who were from Russia. They were a dear couple, very sweet. My grandfather, as a matter of fact, Elias Malenovsky, was one of the first Jewish settlers in Allentown. He established a little synagogue down on 2nd Street - he and a man by the name of Mr. Senderowitz -- the two first Jewish settlers in Allentown. SC: So that's the Malenovsky family that is also related to Sheftel? SB: Sheftel was my aunt, who was my father's sister's husband. Eventually my father and Mr. Sheftel went into business together. Sheftel, I understand, had a truck. SC: We have a picture of it. GE: That was their first truck. SB: That was an inducement for my father to start a business along those lines. What happened was, with the business, was that my grandfather was known as a peddler. He had a horse and a wagon. In those days there were lots of peddlers going around the neighborhoods. He traveled from Allentown all the way up to Slatington picking up whatever he could buy at the time, whether it was clothes, fruit, watermelons, or junk or odds-n-ends, whatever he could put his hands on and then he would sell it for a couple more cents, in those days -- no big deal -- there was no General Motors at the time. Anyhow, my father went to school until he was in the 8th grade and then he went out peddling with his father. One day my grandmother (my father's mother) said to him, I just found this out, as a matter of fact, today, my brother was over here and gave me this information -- she said to him, "Why don't you go to factories and pick up the little scraps that they get rid of and you can sell it to other places -- like paper mills." There were a lot of places - I've written down here -- where they sold it to. They sold it to paper mills, to roofing companies (they used in the shingles), the paper companies used in the paper, the government used it in money -- my brother gave me this information to me today--I can't read my own writing--stationery companies and I have to get my glasses, can you read that at the bottom? SC: Wiping rags? SB: Oh yes, wiping rags -- that's how he started his business and it got to be a rather large business. When my father passed away, then Sheftel passed away -- within six weeks of each other. Sheftel's children took it over and now I think it's in the hands of the grandchildren. Right? GE: I think so. SC: Do you know any of the other names in your family -- your mother's family or your father's mother's family? Any of the other surnames? GE: In other words, we already know about Malenovsky-- SB: You mean like my father had a brother? SC: Your mother's mother's name? SB: My mother's name was Flax. That grandfather of mine was a Reverend. He was a mohel and he wrote and he was also a shochet. GE: Oh, he did with the slaughtering. SB: He did different things for the Temple. For example, for the graves at the cemeteries you had to take out certain papers and printing and everything - like for the -- oh what's it called? SC: Engraving? Or the stone work to put the names on. SB: Yes, he did that. Also on my father's side, my grandfather -- that other grandfather and my uncle, who was my father's brother, did that for the cemeteries and for the people who made the monuments. They wrote for the two families. GE: So the Flax family -- they were in Vermont. Do you know where they were prior to Vermont? SB: No, I don't know. GE: Around, let's say for instance, your grandparents lived in Vermont, how about their parents? Do you know if their parents did? SB: I never knew their parents and their parents weren't in Vermont. Their parents were from Russia. GE: Do you know if the family came from Russia? Poland? SB: I don't know exactly. I should have asked my brother. My brother could probably give you that information -- I'll give you his name and telephone number. GE: That would be good. SC: We could fill in then. GE: How about your father's family, let's say for instance the Malenovskys? SB: They also came from Russia. I think-- I'm almost certain--. GE: Both of them sound like they came fairly early -- more like the 1870's -- not 1900 or even earlier. SB: It might be a little early possibly. SC: Do you know where in Vermont they lived? SB: In Burlington. SC: They went right to Burlington? SB: No, I just thought of the place my cousin was -- that introduced my parents -- Glenn Falls, New York. They lived there for a while -- the Flax family. SC: Burlington is also an interesting city for people to go to. SB: The University of Vermont is there -- it's a good medical school, a fine medical school. SC: And, there was industry there, I believe, earlier. SB: Industry? I don't know--.maple syrup?!? GE: They started out at Glenn Falls, do you know why they went to Burlington? SB: Maybe he was offered a job there -- in the Shul. SC: Right, because he was a mohel? SB: He started the one shul there, too. GE: And how about the Malenovsky family -- where your grandfather was a peddler, do you know what brought them to Allentown? SB: I don't really know -- sorry I can't help you out there. My grandmother had a sister living here -- that motivated her -- by the name of Becker -- the Becker family -- that could have been part of it -- I don't know. They were in the meat business, the Becker boys. GE: Were they butchers or meat processors? SB: I don't know. My brother could help you more with that information. SC: And, also I could look some of this up on Ancestry.com -- you can look up names. SB: If you ask my brother, he could help you out with some of it. SC: So the Becker brothers would be at the turn of the century? SB: Probably. SC: We have to say what century, anymore! GE: Of the early 20th century. It sounds like the family was in Allentown by 1870's and so if that brought them there--. SC: Can we talk a little bit about your husband's family? SB: Sure, My husband was in the army and when he got out of the army, he had worked before for a company in New Jersey somewhere. He and his brother worked for a company. GE: What was his brother's name? SB: Rubin. GE: So it's Harry and Rubin. SB: I'll tell you, Harry was the whole business, Rubin liked to think he was, but don't put that down! SC: That's fine. GE: And I assume when you said they were in the army, it was that during WWII. SB: Right, we're not that old! GE: Just double checking! You're the same age as my parents. And, they grew up in New Jersey? SB: No, they grew up in New York. GE: New York City? SB: They were in New York City for a while. I don't know if they were in Brooklyn so put down New York City. GE: And then they moved to New Jersey? SB: Well, no he used to go by ferry to New Jersey. GE: Okay, he just worked in New Jersey. The two brothers together worked in New Jersey. SC: And they were Rubin and Harry Berman -- so we could look that up, too. SB: In between he went into the army for four years. They worked together for a while for a company in New Jersey. Then when he got out of the army, he moved to Catasauqua. He had a dying -- a knitting and dying - small place in Catasauqua. GE: Was that a place that he owned, was that a place that he worked at? SB: I don't know if he owned it. I don't know, I can't tell you that. SC: Again, we could look that up. SB: He probably owned it. Anyhow, after that, he was there for a couple years, he built this very large factory on 309 near Emmaus, outside of Emmaus - A knitting and dyeing factory -- both -- everything under one roof. SC: Do you know the address of that -- the factory -- what street it was on. SB: I don't know the name of it -- Emaus Avenue. GE: And the name is Fair-Tex? SB: The name was Fair-Tex Mills. Then they went on the stock exchange after a few years. What else do you want to know? SC: Do you know anything about Harry's family? Where they came from? What they did? SB: They came from Russia, too. GE: Were their parents from Russia? SB: Yes. GE: So they were first generation, Harry & ; Rubin - their parents were from Russia. SC: Do you know anything about the education of any of the people we talked about? SB: My mother was a teacher. She taught in a school where they taught first to sixth grade. She used to come by horse and buggy, then she took a trolley -- she went about ten different ways to get to school. SC: Do you know where the school was? SB: Outside of Burlington somewhere. SC: So before she was married she taught. GE: I don't have your parent's names. SB: My mother's name? GE: Yes. SB: Lillian Rachel Flax Malenovsky. GE: So she went to college? SB: She didn't go to college. In those days she didn't go to college. GE: But she graduated high school? SB: Yes and got her teaching - whatever it was. GE: Certificate probably. SC: For normal school perhaps. GE: And what was your father's name? SB: Jacob Harry Malenovsky. He went to eighth grade, period. SC: So many people did. SB: But he was very bright. GE: Absolutely! SC: So after you and Harry were married, did you become involved in the business at all? SB: I was involved in the sense that we socialized with his customers and a lot of them didn't want Harry to come without me. We always traveled together, we went to Europe -- all over together. We went to Europe a couple of times a year. A lot of his business was in Europe. GE: When you say his business was in Europe do you mean customers? SB: No, he bought machines over there, equipment, and we became close friends with the people we did business with. As a matter of fact, we were the only customers who were invited to their homes. We had wonderful times with these people. Unfortunately all of them are dead now -- every one of them, but they were wonderful people. SC: Did you entertain them also? SB: Yes, I did. Some of them came here to my house and they liked it. I had a lovely house. SC: 3363 Trexler Boulevard -- at the corner of 34th and Trexler. A beautiful house at one time. As a matter of fact, it was on television. GE: When did you and Harry marry? SB: 1962. GE: And he passed away--.. SB: We were married for 45 years. SC: Is that a wedding picture in the cabinet? SB: No, that's my son. SC: Oh, that's your son -- oh that's how young you look! SB: I have pictures of us, but not wedding pictures -- I will show you sometime. SC: Can you explain what you know of the business process? SB: He had the first computerized textile machine in the country. The machines were computerized and he could design on the machine itself. He had one of the largest textile businesses in the country, until knitting started to decline. Then fortunately he got out in time and we enjoyed the rest of our lives together as much as we could. SC: What year did he get out of it? SB: He was probably close to 65. He was born in 1918. GE: So that would be early '82-'83. SC: So he was in a good, long time. SB: Yes, most of his life. SC: As far as the business, when you said he had the first computerized designing, was he designing clothing at that time? SB: He had women that designed for him -- designers. SC: So he wasn't a contractor necessarily in the end to New York manufacturers, he was a producer, he was a manufacturer. SB: Of fabric - basically. And he had other factories where he manufactured garments. He bought a place in western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh where they made ladies shirts. He bought his friend's factory -- it used to be Mort Levy's factory -- called Strong Wear Pants -- in Easton. GE: Was the fabrics the large part of the business? SB: Yes. That was the business! GE: So the main thing was the fabrics--.. SB: Manufacturing knitted goods which he made for swimming suit factories, ladies and men's underwear factories, clothing factories -- where they used knit goods, not woven. GE: Tell me the difference? SB: See, this is a knit -- that's woven SC: And this is cotton knit. SB: That's a different kind of knit than he made, I forgot what you call it. SC: Double knit? SB: No double knits, he had double knits. There is a name for it -- it's not like this kind of knit. GE: His customers -- were often the local factories in town - who were making the clothes. SB: Not necessarily. GE: His customers were all over the world. He was one of the large knit fabric producers. SB: Exactly, he had factories all over. SC: But he did own factories that produced finished goods. SB: He had a couple smaller factories that produced. But that wasn't his main business - It was knitting and dying. He knitted the fabric and then dyed it to the color that he wanted. He had his own dying right there. SC: And did his designers then design fabric that had different patterns to it? SB: Right. SC: He was an entrepreneur. SB: Yes he was. There were things used for bathing suits that would have been different from underwear or dresses or for children's things. SC: Do you have any stories about the people you met all over the world who were his customers? SB: From whom he bought his machines -- and customers. We used to go out to California a couple times a year and meet with his people out there -- he had people out there -- he had salesmen out there, and also customers out there. We had good times. SC: Does anything stand out in your mind--any experience that you had when you were traveling? SB: We had wonderful conventions out in California, in Germany, in Italy -- machine shows -- in England. All over -- yes, these things all stand out -- we had wonderful times out there with the people from whom we bought the machines and with people who became our friends -- very close friends. GE: How about Harry's education? SB: He graduated from high school and then he went two years to night school -- night college. GE: Was that after the war on the G.I. Bill or was that before the war? SB: Well, he graduated high school before the war. GE: Right, but how about college? SB: It could have been after. He went to a school for design -- I forget what you call it. GE: Like -- I know in Philadelphia -- there is the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. SC: What was your husband's business philosophy? Did he have certain ideas that he talked about? SB: He was fair, very honest in his business. GE: When you say he was fair and honest, are you saying with his suppliers, customers, employees? SB: With everyone. One time he made a deal with someone -- I don't know what happened, but it would have meant that if he went through with it, he would have lost a lot of money. And he did -- because he gave his word. I can't give you the exact details about the deal, but he did go ahead and made good on what he said. He was very honest and fair with business. SC: Did you have any conversations about his business? SB: No, I didn't, I didn't mix into his business very much. I was there when he needed me, and I was helpful. We had some transactions in Paris, and my husband didn't speak French. I took French in school, and we weren't allowed to speak English. That was years ago when I was in college. I hadn't spoken French in years and years, but it came back to me little by little when we went to France. I did help him as much as I could along those lines because he didn't know a word of French. And it did work out fine, we did culminate the deal and that was it. GE: I don't think we had a chance to talk much about your experience growing up in Allentown. Tell us a little bit about you and your family - when you were a young girl, what the Jewish community was like, what the larger Allentown community was like. SB: Well, I'll tell you, I had a very good childhood. I had two wonderful parents. I had two wonderful sisters and an adorable brother. I had a very nice life as a child. In those days you didn't have to be afraid to go out at night. GE: Excuse me, you were the oldest? SB: I'm the oldest. And, it was a nice life, you didn't have to be afraid. It was a clean life. We always had a good time. As children, my parents would take us every summer to Burlington. We rented a cottage on Lake Champlain. My mother's family was there, so we had great times. Her family would always come to be with us at the bay, which is right outside of Burlington, Malletts Bay, right on the lake. GE: How long did you stay there? Was it for a week, a month? SB: No, that was for the summer. My father would take us up. In those days going to Burlington was like going to Europe today. It took us two to three days to get there. We'd stay in those little cabins -- he would take us and come back six weeks later and then another trip to take us home. So we had a wonderful time, it was right on the lake. We made friends. There were a lot of Canadian people coming down from Montreal. We made lots of friends and had a very wonderful childhood. SC: Can you spell the town that you stayed at outside of Burlington? SB: Malletts Bay SC: Can you spell that? SB: M-A-L-L-E-T-T-S B-A-Y. GE: No, I didn't spell that right. SB: It was about from here to New York to go to Montreal. So we'd go up there during the summer and spend a day in Montreal, usually, and took little trips around Burlington. We had fun, we had lots of fun. GE: And your father's business managed to stay okay during the Depression? SB: They managed -- they managed to be fine -- they wound up good. We never realized how good they were -- we were never told as children their situation. We were just happy for them. I had good parents. It wasn't like today, we didn't have the problems that we have today -- none of the problems with any of our children. It was a good life, a simple life, my parents never spoiled us, and I never realized the position they were in until after my father passed away. We enjoyed what we had. My father was in contact with all of the factories. As children, he'd bring us shoes, he'd bring us different things from different factories. It was a big deal. We'd get new shoes for Passover, new shoes for Rosh Hashanah and new shoes for other times, and we were thrilled. When I gave up my shoes, they looked new because we had an appreciation in those days. Today the children have everything and don't appreciate anything. To this day, I have lots of shoes -- maybe three hundred pairs. My husband used to call me an elf! But, every pair of shoes is like the day I got them almost, except the heels from driving. It was a different way of life, it really was. SC: When you were a child did you play mostly with kids in the neighborhood, or did you have more connections to the Jewish community? SB: I used to walk, when we lived on 5th Street - I used to go to Hebrew School. I used to walk myself coming home at night -- I don't know if you know Allentown -- from Fifth Street, the north end -- we lived below Washington on Fifth. I walked from there all the way to Sixth and Chew -- this would be where the Jewish Community Center was -- myself to go to Hebrew School at night. In the winter, it was dark -- I never had any qualms about walking. Sometimes, my mother, if she could, would meet me partway. If she couldn't, sometimes my Hebrew teacher, I can't remember her name, a lovely lady, she'd walk me partway. Anyway, I never gave it a thought -- who'd walk today? What little child would walk today? GE: I don't know if they can't or if we don't let them. But, whatever it is. SB: It's not safe. GE: You're absolutely right. You mentioned that your family at that time belonged to Sons of Israel and then when you moved you belonged to Temple Beth El. Why did you change? SB: I guess for convenience. GE: That's what I was wondering. And at that time tell me a little bit about the Jewish community -- the size of the community, the cohesiveness -- what it was like, where did everyone live? When you were a young girl, were there a lot of Jewish families? SB: Yes, there were. GE: And then when you moved to 16th Street? SB: I'll tell you, when we moved up to Beth El, we went to that little Temple on Walnut Street. Remember I told you. GE: Right, yes. SB: And of course there weren't that many people. And the whole Temple was, I don't think it was bigger than this room here. That was as a Temple really, so if all the people came, maybe they filled it. But that wasn't that many people. Then of course as we kept going to Beth El on 17th and Hamilton, it kept growing and growing. And that's why we thought- my nephew is the one by the way- is the one who was instrumental in building the new Temple. Beautiful isn't it? GE: Yes, yes. SB: Have you been in it? SC: I've seen pictures and we've been by it. SB: But you weren't in it? SC: No, I wasn't in it. GE: I'll take you over to see it. SB: You have to go over. SC: Yes, yes. SB: So, then it grew of course. GE: Right. SB: And we did, we went to Temple. In the beginning when we were younger of course we went with my parents. And then, of course I've been going all my life to Beth El. I stayed with Beth El. And now I don't go that much. I've lost some enthusiasm to go, but I go for the holidays, you know. GE: Right. SB: And I'll always go, I went to Temple. And we went to the Center as young people, I went more when the Jewish Community Center was on 6th and Chew. I went there more. I was younger then, and I was more active in different things. But I'm not that active in the center, I'm a life member of the Temple of Hadassah of Beth El. But now I don't go that much. SC: Was the building of Beth El at 6th and Chew, that isn't where Union Baptist Church is now? SB: Union Baptist Church? SC: Yeah, it would be the Community Center if you are standing at 6th and Chew at the Community Center. SB: 6th and Chew? Are you talking about the old Community Center? You mean the Church across the street? SC: Yeah. SB: Yeah it was there. SC: That was it. SB: Yeah it was there. GE: No, that was the old Center? In other words, the JCC is not the same building. It was already there. SC: Oh that church, that was already there. SB: Yeah I think so, I don't know. SC: We keep trying to figure out where the synagogue was at 6th and Chew. SB: Oh no the synagogue wasn't. SC: Just the JCC was there. SB: Yeah. SC: Oh. SB: The synagogue was at 6th and Tilghman. SC: Tilghman, okay. SB: Down, going north. SC: Okay, yes, going north. SB: Quite a few blocks. SC: Oh okay. SB: Yeah. GE: I'll drive down with you. I'm curious myself. SC: Yeah we have to figure that out. GE: Because when I came to town already it was at 17th and Hamilton and the JCC was at 22nd and Tilghman. SB: Right. Now they are trying to sell the Jewish Community Center. SC: Again, yeah. SB: That's a shame, I'm sad to see that go. SC: Yeah. SB: What's going to be there? Do you know? GE: Well if they are able to sell it, the idea is that they are going to move further west. SB: They are going to move, really? GE: Yeah, because it's already a 60 year old building so you know it really starts showing its age. SB: Yeah. The thing is they always do everything, when they are doing the Temple or they are doing something else. And people don't have the money for everything. You know what I mean? GE: Right, right. SB: It's not good timing. GE: Right. Tell us about your education. Where did you go to school? SC: That's what I was going to ask. SB: My education- first I went to the school at 5th and Washington St.. It was called Garfield. At that time they told me I had the highest IQ of anyone in the school they had had. GE: Wow. SB: So that was nice to hear as a youngster. Then we moved, and I went up to Raub Jr. High School. And then from there I went to Allentown High School. GE: And I'm assuming you were, were you a very good student? SB: National Honor, yeah. SC: Right. SB: From there I went to Cedar Crest College on a full scholarship, and I was given something that nobody ever heard of. I was given unlimited cuts. So every Monday I wasn't in school. I was engaged at the time, so after I don't know how long, they took it away from me. I left school, listen to this, in my senior year, to go with my husband at the time. He was going overseas so I went to work in Maryland at the- whats the name of the place- GE: But you went overseas? SB: No, I didn't go overseas. I went with him first to the improving ground. And I worked as a secretary to a colonel there. I left school in my senior year. I left college, Dean's honor list, and National Honor. I had one semester to finish. I broke my parents' heart, I realized, but I wanted to badly be with my husband. And I never went back to school, because first of all, when I could have after that, I became pregnant with children and this and that. Three children. And when I could have, they had discontinued my course, for one thing. And, already I didn't have the patience really. You lose it, you get out of the swing of it and it's difficult to get back. GE: Sure. What were you studying? SB: I majored in psychology. I wanted to be a doctor, actually. And I also took a business course. And then after my husband was overseas for four years, I was secretary to a colonel here at - what's the name of the place- Consolidated Vultee, where they made the airplanes. SC: Ah, yes. SB: I was secretary to a colonel, I was secretary to a group called Baker, Gindler, and Hagzeh-- three consultants. GE: Is this now back in Allentown? SB: Yes, Baker, Gindler, and Hagzeh, until they wanted to date me, and I was already engaged and married. I left them. Then I was secretary at the Bethlehem Jewish Community Center in charge of the office. And then at that time, I think my husband came home. SC: So can you talk a little bit about, were you involved in the community, the larger community, or the Jewish community? SB: I was active, yes I was active as a young woman, I was active in Hadassah. I was on the board. I was active at Temple Beth El. I was the secretary for a number of years. Well, I wasn't active at the- I was a life member at the Jewish Community Center. But I wasn't active per se. And I was active with my own things, you know, my own friends and family. SC: Right, you own life. How about Harry? Was he very active in either these organizations or professional organizations? SB: Yes, he was. GE: What was he involved in? SB: He was part of the Jewish Federation, he was part of the different organizations- I can't think of a name. GE: Like Rotary or any of those? SB: No, I don't think Rotary. GE: Like the Chamber of Commerce? SB: Yes, the Chamber of Commerce. I don't know, I'm trying to think of what else he was active in. SC: Was he active in politics? Any of the political elements of the Lehigh Valley? SB: No, not politics. GE: How about the association? Any kind of association, like fabric. You know, a manufacturers association? SB: Yeah, I think he was, but I couldn't tell you the names of organizations. That I can't. GE: Okay. And also it sounds like you had a very nice - SB: Social life. We had a very nice social life. GE: Yes. SB: That we did, with friends and family. GE: Right, right. SC: So do you have any other questions? GE: You know what, I'm just looking. Um, anything, any good memories that you have about his employees, at all? Any of the employees, local employees? First of all, how many? Do you know what was the size, how many workers there were? SB: He had a big factory. See this is why I said, I didn't think I could give you too much information. GE: That's okay. SB: No, let me think. I would safely say that between the three different businesses that he owned, I would say that he hired maybe a couple thousand. SC: Wow, that's big. SB: Yeah, maybe more, but I don't want to say more. GE: Now when you say the three businesses, it's the fabric- SB: Yeah and then the two other factories. GE: And then the two factories. SB: Yeah so safely I would say maybe a couple thousand. GE: That's big. SC: So how has Allentown changed in your life and since the end of manufacturing, do you think? SB: It's a big change in my life. Well, you mean the end of his business when he got out of business? SC: Well, in your whole life, let's start with that. How has Allentown changed since you were young? SB: How about what? SC: Allentown has changed since you were young. SB: Oh yes, of course. There's so much more going on in Allentown now. So much more building. So many more businesses and organizations and growth in the city of Allentown. Even in the population, people have come here from New Jersey and New York. They come here to live, because it's better living for them. They come from New York and New Jersey, there is great growth here in Allentown. SC: Is it a different climate than when you were a child? SB: Yes it is. It's a different climate like it is all over the world, unfortunately. And, more things happening here that shouldn't be happening, but, there is good growth and there is also evil growth, which is throughout the world now unfortunately. How about a piece of chocolate, in between? SC: *laughs* GE: *laughs* SC: And how about with the needle trades and textiles leaving Allentown, going down south first, and then going overseas? Do you think that has had an effect on people? SB: Definitely, yeah, sure, a lot of people lost their jobs, or had to move out of town because of it. Or, in general their life changed, certainly. SC: So I have two really sort of filmy questions, just feeling questions, first of all what do you value in life most? SB: What do I what? SC: Value in life most. SB: I value my family. That's number one in my life. My friends, and I am blessed to have a wonderful family. Both my own personal family and my nieces, nephews, their families, and my own families, and also my wonderful friends, as well as terrific doctors who have kept me living, and to whom I really owe my life. And nurses, and I'm blessed to have them as my personal friends. I am. GE: That's nice. SC: And what have you- has made you feel the most creative? SB: Pardon? SC: The most creative in your life. SB: The most creative in my life. Well, my children are creative, in their own way, each one. I appreciate that in them, in each one. My oldest is in a videotaping business. *the electricity goes out* SB: What's that? GE: I don't- maybe is that camera still going? SB: Huh? GE: You know what, it's raining and it sounds like we're getting a little bit of a storm. SB: That's probably what it is. GE: Yeah. SB: What was I saying? GE/SC: Your children being creative. SB: Yeah, my oldest son is in the videotaping, has a nice videotaping. He's been on the radio since he was ten years old. And he's followed through with a videotaping business. GE: Right. SB: He doesn't do it himself so much anymore, but he did. GE: Right, what kind of videos does he- SB: Well, for instance if you have a wedding, a bar mitzvah, a party, he'll do that. GE: Right, okay yes, yes. SC: So we could have had him here today doing the videotaping. SB: Yes. SC: He could have done the videotaping. SB: And my second son is a um- no that word always escapes me- he's a-uh he advises. GE: A consultant? SB: Consultant. GE: Right, okay. SB: That word, I don't know why, I have a mental block. He's a consultant for medical companies, the government, the state, he does that. My youngest son works for a jet propulsion lab. They are the ones affiliated with setting up the rockets. And they are also affiliated with the University of- I think it is Southern California or California- and he is a lawyer. He is in their legal department. GE: So wonderful. SB: So they're each creative in their own way. My husband was very creative. GE: Right. And in SB: And- GE: What ways have you been creative? What makes you feel most creative? SB: What makes me creative? Having children- *electricity goes out* SB: Oh my gosh, look at that. Having children. Oh my gosh. GE: So being a mom. SC: Okay, it just went off for a second. SB: And I like to write. SC: Write? SB: I do, I write. And uh, GE: Tell us what kind of writing do you do? SB: Well just, uh, personal. GE: Like a journal? SB: No. GE: Or letters? SB: Letters, and for occasions, and things like that. GE: Oh, isn't that lovely. SB: I just wrote a letter for Lisa. GE: Oh. SB: For her, you know she had a granddaughter. GE: Oh. SB: For the naming. GE: Isn't that beautiful. SB: Named after Perry, my sister. GE: You know what, I did hear that, that her oldest son had that, is that correct? SB: Yeah. GE: Isn't that nice. SB: Yeah they had a baby, but whatever. SC: And I say creative, but in a sense, what has made you feel most satisfied in your life other than your children? SB: Well, my marriage was good, up to a point. And, oh what can I tell you. I'm just satisfied with my life. I have a positive attitude and I'm just happy to be here. And I feel there's so much good you can get out of life if you look for it, even though there are adversities in everybody's life, for sure. And, I'm happy with what's going on. I have to overcome certain adversities, but I'm happy. GE: Beautiful. SC: Thank you so much. SB: Thank you for being with me. 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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00:56:18
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Shirley Berman, June 24, 2013
Description
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Shirley Berman talks about growing up in Allentown. Her father’s ancestors (Malenovsky family) were among the first Jewish settlers in Allentown. Elias Malenovsky was a founder of the first synagogue in Allentown down on 2nd St. Later, Shirley married Harry Berman. Harry owned Fair-Tex Mills, one of the largest knitting mills in the U.S. and the first to use computerized textile machines. Shirley proudly shared that she accompanied her husband regularly on business trips throughout Europe and always enjoyed entertaining customers and vendors.
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LVTNT-32
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2013-05-24
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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/b191ff514c6b744119eee6eb78ce95b8.png
92fb2c4e54cc134952e4fd5f1ed55d4e
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Title
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
Interviewee
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Stan Miller
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Viewer)
https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-07.xml
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5.4 May 22, 2014 Stan Miller, May 22, 2014 LVTNT-07 1:24:44 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Stan Miller Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 MillerStan_20140522.mp4 1.0:|37(8)|62(6)|87(8)|112(2)|131(15)|152(9)|177(15)|200(15)|225(7)|248(16)|271(15)|292(4)|311(4)|332(5)|359(6)|382(11)|403(12)|428(6)|455(2)|478(2)|495(6)|514(13)|533(8)|552(3)|571(15)|596(16)|615(5)|640(8)|663(8)|684(12)|707(18)|730(16)|757(7)|780(7)|799(7)|818(3)|843(2)|872(12)|893(5)|916(5)|933(15)|952(3)|977(2)|994(13)|1015(8)|1042(2)|1071(4)|1102(5)|1125(5)|1150(15)|1173(12)|1202(13)|1223(8)|1252(4)|1271(15)|1292(12)|1309(7)|1328(16)|1353(2)|1386(5)|1407(8)|1430(9)|1451(18)|1474(3)|1495(13)|1516(7)|1537(3)|1558(7)|1581(12)|1614(3)|1631(7)|1650(17)|1669(12)|1690(14)|1717(16)|1736(8)|1759(8)|1786(12)|1809(2)|1836(8)|1855(10)|1876(11)|1897(5)|1918(15)|1931(4) 0 https://youtu.be/fr_LeNNxwFs YouTube video 8 Introduction—Stan Miller SC: OK. Today is May 22nd. This is an interview with Stan Miller. And what I’d like to do first is just put you into place very briefly and then we'll go back to your family. So just if you could give me your full name when you were born, where you were born, where and where you grew up?
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 ; SM: Stanley Zane Miller, or May 24th, 1932. I was born in Brooklyn. What else do you want?
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 ; SC: And where did you grow up?
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 ; SM: I grew up in Brooklyn til I went through high school in Brooklyn.
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 ; SC: Do you remember that address . . . 
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 ; SM: Of the high school?
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 ; SC: Of where you were born and where you grew up.
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 ; SM: Yeah, 2047 East 37th Street. I don't know the zip. 
 ; 
 ; SC: Did they have one? Didn't have one when I was a kid.
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 ; SM: Oh, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't remember my phone number. Actually, I remember my father's phone number where he used to work. I was always calling my father. 0 95 Family History SC: And so let's talk a little bit about your family as far back as you remember, your parents, your grandparents, great grandparents.
 ; 
 ; SM: Never. I never knew my grandparents. I, I never had them. They were around, I suppose. My mother's parents, well, her mother died when she was a teenager. And I think her father ran off and left she and her two sisters. So I know nothing about her parents. 
 ; 
 ; GE: Can you tell us their names?
 ; 
 ; SM: My mother's maiden . . . my mother was Ruth Vernick was her maiden name. That is V-E-R-N-I-C-K. She had a sister Lena and another sister Ida.
 ; 
 ; SC: And and you mentioned her parents, what were their names?
 ; 
 ; SM: Don't know. OK. I don't know. 0 258 Louis Miller's Start in the Garment Industry SC: So can you talk a little bit about you mentioned the business and any of the businesses that they were involved with?
 ; 
 ; SM: Well, let's see. My father, when he came here, I think it was his first job. He started working for a gentleman named August Neilsen. Mr. Nielsen had an embroidery business and made some infant sleepwear. And, well, I'm sure you haven't used these, but remember when years ago when babies were born, they used belly bands?
 ; 
 ; SC: Yes, I read about that..
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 ; SM: And these belly bands really were just strips of cloth, strips of flannel so long and the edges weren't finished, the edges were pink. You know that this so that it doesn't ravel. I still have this pinking machine downstairs. And they made belly bands, so he started working for Mr. Nielsen.
 ; 
 ; GE: And and this is in Brooklyn?
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 ; SM: This was in New York City on Wooster Street, not far from where NYU is, OK. And he started working for Mr. Nielsen and became his right hand man. And then for sales, they hired another fellow named Irving Wollims. And as time went on, I think Mr. Nielsen . . .I think his wife became ill, and he made some arrangements with my father and Irving Wollims to take the business and they paid him, or either paid off his wife's bills, or took care of him . . . I don't remember what the deal was, but they paid him out. They kept the name. 
 ; 
 ; GE: The name was?
 ; 
 ; SM: August Nielsen Company. 0 642 1949: Miller Family Moves Business to Allentown, PA GE: Or do we want to start . . .with what came after high school. He only told us up to high school for yourself.
 ; 
 ; SC: Yeah. OK, so I should start there. Yes. Just go on with your life.
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 ; SM: I graduated high school and my parents, the business, is moving out here. I had to go to college, so I applied to Lehigh and Muhlenberg, and I went to Muhlenberg. The first year I lived in the dorm because they hadn't moved out here physically, the home. My father came out with my brother-in-law and set up the business out here in the summer of 1949 or maybe in the spring. And then we didn't move out here until the fall of 1949. So he was a weekend husband for that period of time. I don't . . and he did go into business with Mort Miller's father. Mort Miller's father, Harry, owned the building out here. 0 749 Stan Miller's Education at Muhlenberg College/Early Work Experiences SM: As for me, I know on your sheet you had something about what kind of work I did. I guess my first job must have been as every young boy, a waiter in the Catskills. I was a counselor at summer camp. I was a lifeguard when I was at Muhlenberg at the old Jewish Community Center, when it was on 6th Street. And then in my spare time or sometimes summers or what have you, I worked at the factory. And, of course, as a young guy who was young and strong, I did all the scutwork, you know, took out the garbage . . .And I think my most interesting job was I was working in the shipping room, and my first duty to the guy who ran the shipping was at two o'clock every day. I had to stop whatever I was doing, and listen to the radio, and get the results of the horse races that he was betting on, and then somehow getting the daily number. He was a gambler and that . . . I had to do that.
 ; 
 ; I was . . . I took out the garbage. I loaded the trucks. And I did find out that for years I was unloading trucks. And I discovered now that I've done it all wrong because now they offload trucks. And all these years I was screwing up. 0 922 Stan Miller Works in the United States Army Finance Department, 1952-1953 SM: Anyway, I was in the Army, they sent me to Korea. 
 ; 
 ; GE: That's about what year . . . 1952?
 ; 
 ; SM: 1953 — 22 months and 27 days later, I got out. I was in Korea and then I was in Hawaii.
 ; 
 ; SC: What was your position in the services?
 ; 
 ; SM: Finance, fortunately. I was told by a friend of a friend who was working in personnel at the time that if you want to get into Army finance, which is the cushiest job you can find, don't tell them that you were an accounting major. I said why not? He says, because then the army feels that they have to unteach you regular accounting and teach you the army way. There is the right way, the wrong way, and the army way. And they feel that if you had accounting knowledge before, it's really going to be a mess. 0 1015 Strong Partnership and New Technology in the Family Business SM: When I got out, I started working and started learning. I think one of the . . . as I mentioned before, how well we got along. It wasn't a problem where you might hear that if you want to put in a new machine, the older gentleman like the father, oh, no, no, we can't do that or not. Not with my father took just a little explaining. The first thing we put in, I think, was a conveyor belt because we had a machine that would put the garments in plastic bags that we used to put them in boxes and have to pick the boxes up. Conveyor belt . . so at first he said, no, no, we don't need a conveyor belt. We can use boxes. But once we put it in, I remember he used to stand there and smoke a cigar and watch the conveyor belt and the garments go up. It was wonderful. We got along extremely well, extremely.
 ; 
 ; SC: And this was you and your father . . . 
 ; 
 ; SM: and my brother-in-law, and we all got along extremely well. Ultimately, when my father died, it was my brother in law and I and my father's partner who was still alive, and his son. Ultimately, my father's partner died. So it was the one, the son in New York, and Walter and I in Pennsylvania. And and we we ran, we were, I think, in business for maybe seventy seven years. 0 1109 1957: Stan and Lois Meet SC: How did you meet your wife?
 ; 
 ; SM: Blind date — Cedar Crest. She was . . . strange. She had gone to some party in Philadelphia with some guy from Lehigh and one of my friends from Muhlenberg. Well, his sister was at this party. You probably know her-- Sheva Rapaport. Remember Sheva Rapoport? She was a periodontist. You know, the judge Arnold Rappoport, he is a federal judge. Well, anyway, anyway, Sheva was at this party, and she told her brother, my friend, there's this nice girl for you. He called her, didn't work out. Picked up the phone, he called me, and he says, there's this girl she's just right for you. So I went over to Cedar Crest, and I met her, and I asked her out. And she told me the first thing she said to her roommate after our little parlor date, she says, if I ever go out with him again, I'm going to have to change the way he dresses. So we met in October. We were married in June. 0 1255 Stan Miller's Children SC: Can you tell us about your children?
 ; 
 ; SM: My children. I have my oldest daughter, who was born in nineteen sixty, who is currently not married. She's living in Florida with a wonderful, wonderful guy and she's a travel agent. His occupation, which is sort of unusual. You've heard of concierge medicine. 
 ; 
 ; GE: Yes.
 ; 
 ; SM: But he's selling it, he's getting doctors to go into concierge medicine. He's establishing their practices as concierge doctors. It's really interesting.
 ; 
 ; My number two daughter was born in [19]62 and she is now director of marketing for the United States and Canada for a software company that specializes in software design for anybody fooling around with real estate. For example, Hanes underwear ; they've got facilities all over the place. That was one of them. Not Seventh Day Adventists. What's the other one? Ones with Kingdom Halls?
 ; 
 ; SC: Jehovah Witnesses.
 ; 
 ; SM: That’s it, they just signed Jehovah's Witnesses. They must have thousands of establishments, and you need this software so that you can know when to pay the taxes. If you own apartments, it's perfect. Your percentage of rentals of occupancy will. So it's all to do with with real estate as opposed to some who will have for medical or dental or something. 0 1494 Community Involvement SC: Were you and your wife active in the greater community and the Jewish community?
 ; 
 ; SM: My wife was active in ORT. 
 ; 
 ; GE: What's your wife's name?
 ; 
 ; 
 ; SM: Lois. She was active in ORT, especially when it first came to town. Is it still active? Is it still around?
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 ; GE: Not really.
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 ; SM: OK, well, it used to be. And she was president at one time. And this was all her contemporaries at that time, all the young women of the time. Other than that, she didn't get involved in the Jewish community at all. She ended up spending about six years with my youngest daughter when she was doing television. They were spending time in Hollywood, in Los Angeles --for seven, eight, nine months. I was home. Sometimes with no daughters, sometimes with one daughter who was going to Rider for a while. And so all I had was a cat and a dog. So she didn't do much with the Jewish community. Quite honestly. I guess I really, I think, wasn't active in the community center and I wasn't active at Temple Bethel. I did sing in their choir for about forty some odd years. So I guess that was my contribution. Other than that, that wasn't my thing. 0 1678 Home Addresses SC: Where did you live in Allentown after you came with your parents and all the way through?
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 ; SM: You know where Alton Park is? You go down 24th Street, you remember there was a covered bridge,
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 ; SC: Yes.
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 ; SM: All right, and go up further. And before you get to Lehigh Street, it's off to the right a little bit.The block we lived on was a block that was two blocks long. I had a real nice house. After you you come from New York where you live in a semi-detached house with grass about the size of that hassock and no property. We had this house with an adjacent lot and a big, big house, I mean, big compared to what we lived in. And it was planted trees, I planted all the shrubs, it was wonderful. I never had such a good time. I love mowing the lawn. We had a power mower then. Power mowers were sort of new at that time. And and my father loved to love to put a cigar in his mouth.And he cut the property, and he loved it. And we could look out the front door, from before there were a lot of buildings, and you could see, well, they were not mountains, you know hills in Emaus. But you could you could see green green hills. For him after living in New York and for me, it was a treat. Then they continued to live there, and after Lois and I got married, we lived one block away at Tremont Apartments. And from there we moved, we built a house on South Glenwood Street, within spitting distance of the Swain school. And my kids went to Swain school while we were there. And then when we had our third child, we needed more room. So we built here and we've been here for forty six years. I was the first one on the block. So we've been here, raised our kids here. 0 1817 Factory Machinery SM: I also have -it's a toy- not a toy - this is my father's original cutting machine, you've seen factories with the cutting machines that are electric.
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 ; SC: Yes.
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 ; GE: Yes.
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 ; SM: Ibis is his cutting machine, it's still as sharp as can be, and the way it worked is, they had a table with a slot cut in it and the slot was shielded by metal so you couldn't cut the wood and you ran this up and down up and down in the slot and you moved the fabric around. To cut out an arm hole you'd just keep going and you'd move this around. And his handwriting says 1918, on here. 0 1946 Louis Miller's Pinless Diapers SM: Matter of fact, my oldest sister, when she was an infant, I don't know how it happened but she was stuck with a pin, and she ended up with this serious infection, which she ultimately got over. And my father was so angry about using pins that he created,- it didn't go anywhere- he created - back then they called it the pinless diaper. And he had the diaper and it had ties as I recall it, where you would be able to tie it onto the child as snugly as possible. I still have a diaper downstairs somewhere. And he patented it, but it went nowhere.
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 ; GE: Right. If only he'd tweaked it a little bit to become the disposable diaper or...
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 ; SC: Yeah, or tabs or snaps.
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 ; SM: Well, or Velcro.
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 ; SC: Or Velcro, yeah, oh my gosh. 0 2010 Manufacturers versus Contractors SM: So are we talking about the um?
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 ; GE: So my recollection is, we were talking about the business, and if you wanted to maybe start by saying a little bit how you see your manufacturers, compared to maybe, the other businesses or contractors. 
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 ; SM: We manufactured as opposed to most of the people in the needle trades here in town. As big as they were, they were contractors. There's nothing wrong with that, their product strictly was labor. They supplied the labor and the thread, and paid the rent, and all they did was take in the fabric. Sometimes they cut it, sometimes it came in already cut. They sewed it up, according to specifications, finished it, packaged it, whatever and sent it back to whoever was handling it. And that's all they had to do, so their job basically was pay the labor and they took care of um, - they had unions, paid the rent, and so on. And that's it. As opposed to our operation which I guess you could call to some extent, vertical. We didn't make the fabric but we had to design the garments, fit them into certain price ranges and then purchase the fabric with contracts and what not. 0 2777 Discussion on Vertical Integration SC: I was just thinking, with the vertical integration you always think of vertical integration as highly capitalized industries, but it was possible in the garment industry, not to be like the old Lowell [mills] factories that were totally vertically integrated- you could get in and out fairly quickly, even though you had to have more capital and contractors.
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 ; SM: Yeah, well we were I guess the true vertical integration is starting from...
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 ; SC: Raw material.
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 ; SM: Raw materials to sales. We skipped the raw materials. We did not make the fabric, we didn't knit it, we purchased the fabric. From then on,
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 ; GE: You were vertically integrated.
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 ; SM: It was a vertical operation because we did the styling, and the creating the samples, the pricing the whole business, the stocking, the billing, getting printed, the whole thing and
 ; as you said, you needed capital for that, so you needed good relations with the bank, or with whatever bank you're going to deal with. 0 3099 Manufacturing in the '70s: Expansion, Lawsuits, and Downsizing SM: I have to tell you one story.
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 ; GE: Sure.
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 ; SM: When we bought our new building,
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 ; GE: And this was about when?
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 ; SM: This was in the 70's, and at the time, the building was certainly worth the price. It was a great deal for a bank for a mortgage. For whatever reason, I don't remember, there was no mortgage money around. I guess banks have certain amounts in their portfolios that they could put into mortgages and whatnot there was none, and we were just dying. We were trying every bank in town, they would say, normally we would take a baseball bat and keep you here to make the deal, but they had no money. And we had a French poodle at the time, and the French poodle had an accident in the bedroom. And I got up at night, not knowing, go to the bathroom, and I stepped in it. Which is sort of, you know, well, funny experience, I told my mother, the next day I told my mother this, and she said, you're going to get your mortgage, and I said why, and she says, it's an old tale, that if you step in shit, something good is going to happen to you. Don't you think, the next day--
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 ; GE: Your mother was right!
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 ; SM: We got a call that they- I think it was union bank at the time -was going to take the mortgage. 0 3674 Max Charcov's Used Machines SM: Fellow named Max Charcov. Max Charcov's daughter married Roland Sigal. Sigal had a building by Sacred Heart Hospital where he had dress shops. I don't remember the names of the dress shops but he was very successful. And he was very philanthropic. And Max, Max was a real old slovenly Jewish fella, and he would pedal machines.
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 ; He would buy anybody's machine, sewing machine, for 50 bucks and would um,- he would fix them up, like a used car's fixed up. How would he fix them up, he'd take a rag, he dusted it off, had no idea whether the machine worked. But it's like new, he said. And he would then sell the machine for $100 or whatever. If you needed a used machine, Max had it. He never had a building, he had various garages around town where he would store the machines. He had a driver, because he couldn't drive anymore. He would run, he had the machines, and he had nothing on paper. He knew every machine that he had ; he had hundreds of machines. And they were all used and when it was time, you needed a machine, you call Charcov if you want to get a used machine. And sometimes he would buy our machines, and I remember he would come in and we would sell him 2 or 3 machines, and he would owe us three or four hundred dollars, and he would take his checkbook and he would give it to me. He says write out a check. He has no remittance- no um, check stubs, no check register, so I write out a check to August Nielsen for three hundred dollars. I give it to Max to sign, and I take the check and that's good. I don't know who kept his books. I don't know if he ever paid income tax but he was a guy that- he was a fixture in the business. 0 3822 Naming the Business SC: [H]ow did you choose the name of Nielsen?
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 ; SM: We didn't.
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 ; SC: Oh it was.
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 ; SM: That was the gentleman that my father went to work for in the early 1890s or early 1900s. His name was August F Nielsen. And they ultimately made the company incorporated, and I don't remember the terms. But I know that my father took over the business either because his wife was sick, and he was going to die, and they would support the wife until she died, or some kind of arrangement like that. They would pay him off or pay him in some way. I don't remember [details] but it was an interesting setup. But that name was there and no point in changing it ; it was unique. 0 3903 The End of the Business GE: Can you share with us a little bit, let's say the last ten years as it was beginning to a little ·bit unwind and slowdown for you
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 ; SM: Well during that time we knew the handwriting was on the wall because we were having trouble competing with folks, the other big manufacturers who then they ended up switching and manufacturing their stuff not in their plants down south, but in the Caribbean. There was this plan 807-- it was some kind of bill or something where goods can be made in the Caribbean, that made Guatemala and Haiti and Dominican Republic come into the United States with no duty as long as a certain percentage of the cost of the garment was done in the United States. I don't know what the percentage was, but it was pretty small. So, goods were sent uncut down to the Caribbean, it was cut, it was sewn, everything was done to it and it was sent back to the United States, and maybe we put a plastic bag over the garment and put a hang tag on which amounted to the proper percentage of labor. Something ridiculous and their costs were -- I may have said this before--their costs were five dollars a day. They were paying five dollars a day and this was in the 90's and the late 80's where we were paying five dollars an hour. And that was good, plus vacations and blue cross and blue shield, and holidays and all this other garbage and taxes and unemployment. They were paying just five dollars a day and there's no way you can compete with that. Plus these-- our competitors-- had the better licenses, so we were making an inferior garment for lack of a better term, or a less desirable garment. 0 4713 Stan Miller's Values SC: Okay, so my other question is what do you value most in life?
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 ; SM: What do I value most in life? I suppose good health and the health of my family. I can't think of much else that's important and ultimately you die with a good name. Because they never caught me.
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 ; GE: Right and as you say you checked it out on the internet.
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 ; SM: Yeah there was nothing bad, although the NSA has been checking my computers. I never...
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 ; GE: They're checking everybody's
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 ; SC: That's the new democracy, we all get checked.
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 ; SM: Well, you've got these crazies in the world.
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 ; SC: Yeah I know,
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 ; SM: You wonder, right now everybody says oh don't check me you're invading my privacy. As soon as we have another 9/11- why didn't you know about these people!? So there's no happy medium there. 0 4774 Stan Miller: Performer SC: And what makes you feel the most creative, artistic, I mean in the broadest sense of creative or maybe a sense of completion in your life?
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 ; SM: In my life, other than being very proud of your three kids, me, I like to sing. So I was in the Temple choir for about forty years. We ended up, my family ended up somehow getting involved in theater, so besides my daughter, my wife became a manager and I was a theater um. I did shows at Cedar Crest, Muhlenberg, at Civic, and Pennsylvania Playhouse ; I did them all over in the [area].
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 ; SC: You acted?
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 ; SM: Yeah, so I did that. I found we all agreed, this group that we-- this last group that we were with-- that one of the greatest joys in life, the biggest kick that we would get is to be in a room full of people and make them laugh. And that's what we were doing, we were doing murder mysteries. Believe me they were funny, and we were good, because we handled- it's a different procedure than being on a proscenium stage because on a proscenium stage there's an invisible wall between the actors and the audience. There's no ad-libbing to speak of, you do your thing, when you do dinner theater or murder mysteries. You are this close to them, and some of the people shoot off their mouths. 0 MovingImage Stan Miller talks about how his father, a young immigrant, got started in manufacturing children’s pajamas in New York City, and later moved the production to Allentown. The sales office of the company remained in New York and was run by Stan’s father’s partner. When Stan and his family moved to Allentown, Stan was 17 years old and would soon start college. Stan attended Muhlenberg College, majoring in Accounting and Economics. After college and the service, Stan and his brother-in-law entered the family business. As did the son of Stan’s father’s partner. Stan is very proud that the business operated harmoniously among the partners during its more than seventy-five years in business. The firm closed in 1994, due to stiff competition from globalization. Interview with Stan Miller, May 22, 2014 GAIL EISENBERG: Today is May 22nd. STAN MILLER: May 22nd? SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Yes SM: Then I put the wrong date down.. SC: OK. Today is May 22nd. This is an interview with Stan Miller. And what I'd like to do first is just put you into place very briefly and then we'll go back to your family. So just if you could give me your full name when you were born, where you were born, where and where you grew up? SM: Stanley Zane Miller, or May 24th, 1932. I was born in Brooklyn. What else do you want? SC: And where did you grow up? SM: I grew up in Brooklyn til I went through high school in Brooklyn. SC: Do you remember that address . . . SM: Of the high school? SC: Of where you were born and where you grew up. SM: Yeah, 2047 East 37th Street. I don't know the zip. SC: Did they have one? Didn't have one when I was a kid. SM: Oh, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't remember my phone number. Actually, I remember my father's phone number where he used to work. I was always calling my father. SC: Yeah. Oh, course. So you lived there until you were an adult and you went to high school there. SM: Until I was 17, then finished high school. And at that time my family moved to Allentown. SC: Where did you go to high school? SM: James Madison High School in Brooklyn. SC: And so let's talk a little bit about your family as far back as you remember, your parents, your grandparents, great grandparents. SM: Never. I never knew my grandparents. I, I never had them. They were around, I suppose. My mother's parents, well, her mother died when she was a teenager. And I think her father ran off and left she and her two sisters. So I know nothing about her parents. GE: Can you tell us their names? SM: My mother's maiden . . . my mother was Ruth Vernick was her maiden name. That is V-E-R-N-I-C-K. She had a sister Lena and another sister Ida. SC: And and you mentioned her parents, what were their names? SM: Don't know. OK. I don't know. GE: So the mother died young? SM: Well, I think when my my mother was a teenager -- 14, 15, or 16. SC: What did they live? In the United States? SM: I think in New Jersey. My mother was born in the United States. Where her parents are from, whether they were born here or not, I don't know. I think there's some Russian in my mother's family. As far as my father, again, his parents were left in Poland. He's one of seven children. GE: And what was your father's name? SM: Louis -- L-O-U-I-S Miller. Of the seven, one brother left and went to Sweden, and he settled there and had raised a big family. My father and three other brothers and a sister came to the United States, and one sister stayed there and the Germans got her. SC: Was this in the 1920s that they came? SM: My father came here something like 1910 or 1911. SC: OK, so it was older. SM: He was maybe 15, 16, 17 years old. SC: Yeah. And your mother's family, do you know when they came? SM: I have no idea just because I think they may even have been born here, I don't know. SC: And if we know their names, we could actually look them up on the ancestry. We find anything, we'll let you know. Oh, yeah, I have everything ancestry. So can you talk a little bit about you mentioned the business and any of the businesses that they were involved with? SM: Well, let's see. My father, when he came here, I think it was his first job. He started working for a gentleman named August Neilsen. Mr. Nielsen had an embroidery business and made some infant sleepwear. And, well, I'm sure you haven't used these, but remember when years ago when babies were born, they used belly bands? SC: Yes, I read about that.. SM: And these belly bands really were just strips of cloth, strips of flannel so long and the edges weren't finished, the edges were pink. You know that this so that it doesn't ravel. I still have this pinking machine downstairs. And they made belly bands, so he started working for Mr. Nielsen. GE: And and this is in Brooklyn? SM: This was in New York City on Wooster Street, not far from where NYU is, OK. And he started working for Mr. Nielsen and became his right hand man. And then for sales, they hired another fellow named Irving Wollims. And as time went on, I think Mr. Nielsen . . .I think his wife became ill, and he made some arrangements with my father and Irving Wollims to take the business and they paid him, or either paid off his wife's bills, or took care of him . . . I don't remember what the deal was, but they paid him out. They kept the name. GE: The name was? SM: August Nielsen Company. Okay. GE: And August Nielsen, was he Jewish? SM: No, he was German. SC: That was my question. I wondered if he was German or if he was Scandinavian because of a family member going to Sweden. SM: No, no, nothing to do with the other. Oh, that was my father's brother. SC: OK . . . Right. I realize that. But I wondered if there was any connection there. SM: They took over and they they ran the business. They started making more children's sleepwear, baby's gowns and kimonos and sleeping bags, things like that for them. GE: Just so that I know . . . Louis and what was the other man's name? SM: Irving Wollims. W o l l i m s -- was he Jewish? SM: Yeah. GE: OK, and so Irving Wollims was more sales and your dad is more the production or the operations. The two of them then bought out ultimately the . . .. SM: In some arrangement, I don't remember what it was, and they became partners, and they stayed partners until they died. It was a really a very interesting and pleasant relationship. And it went on because Irving Wollim's son went into the sales and took over the sales, and my father's son, which is me, and one son-in-law, ended up in the production. I would have to say that I think it's it's more the exception than the rule that family members get along, and we got along. I mean, I know of so many. . . GE: Can you tell me, I'm sorry, your brother in law's name? SM: Walter Ostrow -- O-S-T-R-O-W. GE: So you and Walter really did the production. SM: Yeah, yeah, down the line. SC: So, do you have any other stories about when your family entered business any of the connections with business? Was this pretty much a straight line? SM: And so it just happened that my father got this job. He . . . I don't think he knew anything about the garment business. Well, you know, as far as I know. I don't know what his father was. I don't know that. I do know that when he was younger, he was an itinerant cantor in Poland, and he used to go around and sing and do whatever services until, I think one time he told a story that he used to sleep in somebody's barn. One time at one place, and it was dark, and he lit a match, and he dropped it. The place burned. He ran like hell. It was another village and they never found him. GE: Right. When your father came to this country, how old was he about? SM: I'm guessing around 17ish. And oddly enough, as time went on, my father and his partner were running the business, and he ended up marrying my mother who was working for him. SC: Do you know what she did? SM: No, I don't know. I don't know. Thinking back, I can't remember her ever sewing much. I mean, she with a needle and thread, but we never had a machine at home. And I don't know what she did there, but he met her there and he married her. SC: So now we can get back to you a little bit more about you, unless you have any more questions. GE: No, no, that's good. SC: So how did you know . . .Can you talk a little bit more about where you went from that moment when you started the business, more of your personal life, what you did? Were you involved at all in the greater community or the Jewish community? GE: Or do we want to start . . .with what came after high school. He only told us up to high school for yourself. SC: Yeah. OK, so I should start there. Yes. Just go on with your life. SM: I graduated high school and my parents, the business, is moving out here. I had to go to college, so I applied to Lehigh and Muhlenberg, and I went to Muhlenberg. The first year I lived in the dorm because they hadn't moved out here physically, the home. My father came out with my brother-in-law and set up the business out here in the summer of 1949 or maybe in the spring. And then we didn't move out here until the fall of 1949. So he was a weekend husband for that period of time. I don't . . and he did go into business with Mort Miller's father. Mort Miller's father, Harry, owned the building out here. SC: Where was the building? SM: In Fountain Hill on Seneca Street. And I think it's now a home for elderly people, I think. Anyway, Harry had the building, and I think he had lots of machines, and he was making similar garments so they went into business. Ultimately, Harry had to get out because he had some kind of skin disease, and he ended up in El Paso 11 months out of the year. So so it ended up that the business was running in Fountain Hill. As for me, I know on your sheet you had something about what kind of work I did. I guess my first job must have been as every young boy, a waiter in the Catskills. I was a counselor at summer camp. I was a lifeguard when I was at Muhlenberg at the old Jewish Community Center, when it was on 6th Street. And then in my spare time or sometimes summers or what have you, I worked at the factory. And, of course, as a young guy who was young and strong, I did all the scutwork, you know, took out the garbage . . .And I think my most interesting job was I was working in the shipping room, and my first duty to the guy who ran the shipping was at two o'clock every day. I had to stop whatever I was doing, and listen to the radio, and get the results of the horse races that he was betting on, and then somehow getting the daily number. He was a gambler and that . . . I had to do that. I was . . . I took out the garbage. I loaded the trucks. And I did find out that for years I was unloading trucks. And I discovered now that I've done it all wrong because now they offload trucks. And all these years I was screwing up. Oh, am I suppposed to look . . . SC: That's why I moved over to try to get you to look over here. SM: OK. SC: Just because if we would use this, it's better to have . . . SM: You should have one of those red lights. SC: So that's fascinating. SM: So I went to Muhlenberg and worked in summers either as a counselor or at the factory. And then I was drafted. SC: What did you major in at Muhlenberg? SM: In economics . . . economics and accounting. And it really wasn't much of a course somehow or other. I found that it really didn't, in retrospect, it didn't do much good except for the accounting. The Money and Banking and Corporation Finance. And I think I did very poorly in one of them because I discovered the Municipal Opera Company here in town. Did you ever see any of their shows? I guess I was a junior at Muhlenberg, and I discovered the opera company. I tried out and I ended up in some of their shows, and I loved it so much I didn't do anything except for the rehearsal. It was it was really a treat. Anyway, I was in the Army, they sent me to Korea. GE: That's about what year . . . 1952? SM: 1953 -- 22 months and 27 days later, I got out. I was in Korea and then I was in Hawaii. SC: What was your position in the services? SM: Finance, fortunately. I was told by a friend of a friend who was working in personnel at the time that if you want to get into Army finance, which is the cushiest job you can find, don't tell them that you were an accounting major. I said why not? He says, because then the army feels that they have to unteach you regular accounting and teach you the army way. There is the right way, the wrong way, and the army way. And they feel that if you had accounting knowledge before, it's really going to be a mess. So he says, tell them you were an economics major, which I told them, and I got into finance, which was lucky. I stayed out of trouble. So I was in Korea for about nine months. And then they sent the entire division to Hawaii to go back to Schofield Barracks. And I was there for about nine months. And I got out. When I got out, I started working and started learning. I think one of the . . . as I mentioned before, how well we got along. It wasn't a problem where you might hear that if you want to put in a new machine, the older gentleman like the father, oh, no, no, we can't do that or not. Not with my father took just a little explaining. The first thing we put in, I think, was a conveyor belt because we had a machine that would put the garments in plastic bags that we used to put them in boxes and have to pick the boxes up. Conveyor belt . . so at first he said, no, no, we don't need a conveyor belt. We can use boxes. But once we put it in, I remember he used to stand there and smoke a cigar and watch the conveyor belt and the garments go up. It was wonderful. We got along extremely well, extremely. SC: And this was you and your father . . . SM: and my brother-in-law, and we all got along extremely well. Ultimately, when my father died, it was my brother in law and I and my father's partner who was still alive, and his son. Ultimately, my father's partner died. So it was the one, the son in New York, and Walter and I in Pennsylvania. And and we we ran, we were, I think, in business for maybe seventy seven years. GE: Yeah. Wow. SM: Long time. GE: Yeah. Wow. Seventy seven years. SM: I think it was seventy seven years. SC: How did you meet your wife? SM: Blind date -- Cedar Crest. She was . . . strange. She had gone to some party in Philadelphia with some guy from Lehigh and one of my friends from Muhlenberg. Well, his sister was at this party. You probably know her-- Sheva Rapaport. Remember Sheva Rapoport? She was a periodontist. You know, the judge Arnold Rappoport, he is a federal judge. Well, anyway, anyway, Sheva was at this party, and she told her brother, my friend, there's this nice girl for you. He called her, didn't work out. Picked up the phone, he called me, and he says, there's this girl she's just right for you. So I went over to Cedar Crest, and I met her, and I asked her out. And she told me the first thing she said to her roommate after our little parlor date, she says, if I ever go out with him again, I'm going to have to change the way he dresses. So we met in October. We were married in June. SC: What year was that? SM: Nineteen . . . met in fifty seven. And we were married in June, fifty eight. So this June will be fifty six years. At this point, she doesn't speak, she doesn't understand, she doesn't walk, she doesn't do anything but she still smiles. I can get her to smile. She still knows who I am. I go up there and feed her every day and get her to laugh. She doesn't laugh-- you know the voice doesn't work, but still . . .but she still smiles, laughs. And I think she still recognizes my children. The miracle of cell phones. This has the Facetime on it, and I hold it up for her and she sees any one of the kids and they sing to her or they talk to her and . . . it works out. It works out. I sing to her and that's. SC: Can you tell us about your children? SM: My children. I have my oldest daughter, who was born in nineteen sixty, who is currently not married. She's living in Florida with a wonderful, wonderful guy and she's a travel agent. His occupation, which is sort of unusual. You've heard of concierge medicine. GE: Yes. SM: But he's selling it, he's getting doctors to go into concierge medicine. He's establishing their practices as concierge doctors. It's really interesting. My number two daughter was born in [19]62 and she is now director of marketing for the United States and Canada for a software company that specializes in software design for anybody fooling around with real estate. For example, Hanes underwear ; they've got facilities all over the place. That was one of them. Not Seventh Day Adventists. What's the other one? Ones with Kingdom Halls? SC: Jehovah Witnesses. SM: That's it, they just signed Jehovah's Witnesses. They must have thousands of establishments, and you need this software so that you can know when to pay the taxes. If you own apartments, it's perfect. Your percentage of rentals of occupancy will. So it's all to do with with real estate as opposed to some who will have for medical or dental or something. And so my third daughter is she's a lawyer, but she isn't practicing. She's currently doing voices for Doc McStuffins and on television and Henry Hugglemonster and Clifford and what else. Wow! Wow! Wubbzy and she did all that. She was on on NBC for six years with Nell Carter back in the 80s. So she had, she had a nice a nice career, and then she went to law school, and she didn't like practicing law. Just just didn't like it. She went back back to California and having her her fun. SC: Did any of them have any interest in the business? SM: No, no. My oldest daughter, she went down to Florida with her boyfriend, which didn't last, and then she ended up staying there because she started working and going to school, and her grandparents lived there. So she, she had no interest. My second daughter and she had none . . . none of them had any interest. Of course, they all ended up working there during summers. And I must have employed half of the young people in Allentown beside my kids. We always need people in the summer. Alan Silverman, his son. Max Davison's boy . . . any of the friends of my daughters, you know, worked in the shipping room or in our testing lab. And so we employed a lot of the young boys around here. And we also clothed most of the babies in Allentown, our contemporaries. Somebody had a baby, they need a layette. SC: Were you and your wife active in the greater community and the Jewish community? SM: My wife was active in ORT. GE: What's your wife's name? SM: Lois. She was active in ORT, especially when it first came to town. Is it still active? Is it still around? GE: Not really. SM: OK, well, it used to be. And she was president at one time. And this was all her contemporaries at that time, all the young women of the time. Other than that, she didn't get involved in the Jewish community at all. She ended up spending about six years with my youngest daughter when she was doing television. They were spending time in Hollywood, in Los Angeles --for seven, eight, nine months. I was home. Sometimes with no daughters, sometimes with one daughter who was going to Rider for a while. And so all I had was a cat and a dog. So she didn't do much with the Jewish community. Quite honestly. I guess I really, I think, wasn't active in the community center and I wasn't active at Temple Bethel. I did sing in their choir for about forty some odd years. So I guess that was my contribution. Other than that, that wasn't my thing. SC: Were you active in the business community, in the garment industry's trades? SM: Well, we did belong to the . . there was an organization that was founded for needle trades with the Atlantic, something or other . . . I don't remember what it was. We used to go to the meetings and have the discussions and so on. But no, I wasn't that guy. I didn't do that. SC: Was that Arnold Delin's? SM: Yes, there you go, there you go. I found that I had certain problems. I think when I first came to town, when I was married, they started with a be in the Jewish Federation or something and here is some people to call for contributions. I could not, I could not do it. It wasn't me. And I kept putting it off. But gradually I'm not going to do this. And I just didn't get involved in the building fund for the synagogue or the community center. It just wasn't my cup of tea. SC: You have to be true to yourself. SM: So my recreation was singing in the choir, and I did a lot of theater in town. And that was my thing. SC: Where did you live in Allentown after you came with your parents and all the way through? SM: You know where Alton Park is? You go down 24th Street, you remember there was a covered bridge, SC: Yes. SM: All right, and go up further. And before you get to Lehigh Street, it's off to the right a little bit.The block we lived on was a block that was two blocks long. I had a real nice house. After you you come from New York where you live in a semi-detached house with grass about the size of that hassock and no property. We had this house with an adjacent lot and a big, big house, I mean, big compared to what we lived in. And it was planted trees, I planted all the shrubs, it was wonderful. I never had such a good time. I love mowing the lawn. We had a power mower then. Power mowers were sort of new at that time. And and my father loved to love to put a cigar in his mouth.And he cut the property, and he loved it. And we could look out the front door, from before there were a lot of buildings, and you could see, well, they were not mountains, you know hills in Emaus. But you could you could see green green hills. For him after living in New York and for me, it was a treat. Then they continued to live there, and after Lois and I got married, we lived one block away at Tremont Apartments. And from there we moved, we built a house on South Glenwood Street, within spitting distance of the Swain school. And my kids went to Swain school while we were there. And then when we had our third child, we needed more room. So we built here and we've been here for forty six years. I was the first one on the block. So we've been here, raised our kids here. SC: Okay, It's going to stop now. SM: I also have -it's a toy- not a toy - this is my father's original cutting machine, you've seen factories with the cutting machines that are electric. SC: Yes. GE: Yes. SM: Ibis is his cutting machine, it's still as sharp as can be, and the way it worked is, they had a table with a slot cut in it and the slot was shielded by metal so you couldn't cut the wood and you ran this up and down up and down in the slot and you moved the fabric around. To cut out an arm hole you'd just keep going and you'd move this around. And his handwriting says 1918, on here. SC: I think cutting with a really good pair of scissors was much easier for me when I used to sew. I would have killed myself on something like that. SM: I have one other piece of equipment downstairs, I'm not going to get it ; it's too heavy. It's a pinking machine. GE: And what is a Pinking machine? SM: You know what pinking is, when you edge the cloth with little jagged edges so it doesn't fray as easily. GE: Oh, okay. SM: Back then they used belly bands for newborns to hold in the umbilical cord, and my father manufactured belly bauds big strips of cloth and they ran it through the pinking machine so that it had an edge and would sell belly bands. You put it around the child with a safety pin, and stick the child and the child gets an infection- you know, that was part of the problem back then. SC: Although they are going back evidently- one of my friend's daughters just had a baby and they are going back to bands and contraptions to hold the belly in and push the uterus in so it goes back. GE: For the woman... SC: Right, not for the baby. GE: Interesting, I never heard of that. SM: Matter of fact, my oldest sister, when she was an infant, I don't know how it happened but she was stuck with a pin, and she ended up with this serious infection, which she ultimately got over. And my father was so angry about using pins that he created,- it didn't go anywhere- he created - back then they called it the pinless diaper. And he had the diaper and it had ties as I recall it, where you would be able to tie it onto the child as snugly as possible. I still have a diaper downstairs somewhere. And he patented it, but it went nowhere GE: Right. If only he'd tweaked it a little bit to become the disposable diaper or... SC: Yeah, or tabs or snaps. SM: Well, or Velcro. SC: Or Velcro, yeah, oh my gosh. SC: Today is June 17 2014. Interview with Stan Miller. SM: So are we talking about the um? GE: So my recollection is, we were talking about the business, and if you wanted to maybe start by saying a little bit how you see your manufacturers, compared to maybe, the other businesses or contractors. · SM: We manufactured as opposed to most of the people in the needle trades here in town. As big as they were, they were contractors. There's nothing wrong with that, their product strictly was labor. They supplied the labor and the thread, and paid the rent, and all they did was take in the fabric. Sometimes they cut it, sometimes it came in already cut. They sewed it up, according to specifications, finished it, packaged it, whatever and sent it back to whoever was handling it. And that's all they had to do, so their job basically was pay the labor and they took care of um, - they had unions, paid the rent, and so on. And that's it. As opposed to our operation which I guess you could call to some extent, vertical. We didn't make the fabric but we had to design the garments, fit them into certain price ranges and then purchase the fabric with contracts and what not. And have the fabric, cut it, sometimes you'd cut it to order. Sometimes you'd cut if for spec. or you'd cut five hundred dozen to order and you'd cut another two hundred dozen for spec. and we then had to pay for the fabric, pay for the labor and the overhead, pay for the buttons and the bows, and the zippers and whatever else goes on it, and then sell it. And that sometimes is harder or easier depending- you may sell it easier if you have the order and you cut it to order. Otherwise you have stock, and you have to carry the stock then once you sell it you wait for your money, not like a contractor who invariably gets their money within a very short time. Labor is the first thing you pay, so that meant we had to have working capital. A lot of working capital. More than the regular contractor, because he could turn his money over in a couple of weeks, whereas we- quite a few months. And then of course you would sell it to a K-mart or a Sears. Or a Hess, and now you have to wait for your money. GE: Right, and you typically were paid from then, after it was sold, or after the season. SM: Oh yeah, after they received it, after they received it, they paid whatever the terms were. At thirty, or discount, whatever terms were agreed upon. And prior to getting the money we had to have enough cash to pay for the fabric, pay for the labor, pay for the trimmings, pay for overhead, and wait. GE: Right. GE: What do you see as being the advantages of your operation? You already told us a little bit about the advantages of theirs, but especially of yours, - in other words, what do you see as being the strengths or advantages of your operation, being vertically integrated? SM: Well, I suppose there are more opportunities, maybe to make more money because you're marking up everything but on the other hand you've got interest, and... GE: More risks. SM: Risk, and worry, ah, that was the business that we had. GE: And, if I'm understanding correctly somewhat, that's just the way your father had started it, and therefore you continued. SM: Yeah. GE: Okay, as opposed to a strategic decision saying this would be the best way. SM: We could have, toward the end we stopped manufacturing, the last year or so, and we were contractors. Because we weren't selling our goods anymore. And then of course, to sell the goods, you had competition. You had competition from some of the bigger manufacturers down south who had bigger names, bigger plants, they were able to get desirable licenses, Superman licenses, as opposed to some cartoon character that wasn't very popular. We had major league baseball, we did very well with that. We had striped fabric and we would put on a screen- a decal- made that to order.- but others had more desirable -whatever was popular at the time- I think it was Mickey Mouse, and we couldn't compete with these people. And these people were making it in the Caribbean, where it was so much cheaper so that's why we went out of business, we just couldn't compete. Have desirable licenses, the garment that we would sell for fifty dollars a dozen, they'd be selling it for forty because it cost them less. GE: Right. SM: And it was nicer than ours because they had the nicer cartoon character on it. There was no competing with them. GE: After a while they just- right. SM: We lost out in the early nineties, because we just couldn't compete with the Caribbean. GE: And so you were in business until around-? SM: 1994. GE: Okay, so prior to that, through the eighties you were still- SM: We were perking along, we did very well, and were very happy. I raised three children, my brother in law raised two, my partners raised three. I mean -we did very well and were very comfortable. Compared to some of the other people in town we weren't as successful. Some of the people in town they made a lot of money whether they were contractors, or manufacturers, there were a few manufacturers and it was a good business back then, and we all did reasonably well. We worked hard, I was there six days a week, and we ran a night shift, and that was me. -Just, never got home- that was... I was young, so I could do it. GE: Right, great, can you tell me a little bit about, the sales and marketing end that was done, in other words, one thing I'm curious- is, was it your own sales force or did you have sales reps, and then also about the brand, did you - you told us about licensing, but was there anything where you- where you had- your brand became known to the public? SM: We had our own sales force. It was headed by my partner who was the son of my father's partner. And he had helped in the office- we had an office in New York. On 34th Street, we were right in the district. And we had some salesmen on the road. Some reps for us, they may have been carrying other things, I don't know, but, um we had a guy in Pittsburgh, another guy down South and so on. We had our brand, it was Style by Nielsen, it was the brand. I can't remember some of the other competing brands but that was our name, but what was required quite often was to put the big retailers tag in there. So garments that were made for JC Penney didn't have anything about Nielsen. We had JC Penny's label in there ; we put in labels from Montgomery Ward, um, who else did we put labels for? I don't recall. GE: Sears, probably SM: Well yeah, and we put the hang tags on, and um, what was I thinking of? Well, that thought just went by me - so we did for them, - and we also ended up pre pricing them, that was the beginning of the UPC whatever you call those. GE: Yes, UPC codes. SM: Well we had to get pinning machines. We used to pin it on the garment and pre-priced everything, or else pre price them with stickers. If the garment was in a plastic bag, sometimes put the sticker on the front of them. See, you did almost everything. GE: Right. SM: So our brand, it was just a brand, it was known, matter of fact, many years ago I ran into someone that I knew in the army, when I was in Hawaii and hadn't seen this person for many many years since then. And we're talking about our lives and she told me that when her kids were little she remembers going into the store and buying garments made by Nielsen. Little did she know that-- GE: So therefore it was even known by the public, in other words people at smaller stores - SM: Yeah, oh yeah, we sold to Hess and we sold to the big chains, Walmart, and over the years, it was some of the smaller department store chains, there was- I can't even remember the names any more, in fact, they probably don't exist! And to specialty shops, and we did, I don't remember the numbers anymore, did we do one or two million dollars a year back then in volume, I don't remember. But we did very well over the years and were very happy. GE: Right, besides obviously the main way that you sold and communicated was that you had this sales force, besides that, was there any kind of advertising that was involved? SM: No. We didn't really advertise, it was to sell the stuff was really the contact between our salesmen with the samples, the sample lines. GE: Okay and the buyers in the stores. SM: And their contacts, the buyers, or if they went on the road and stopped in different places or the buyers came into the showroom. Usually the big companies would come to New York, but some of the others, for example K-mart I think was in Royal Oak, Michigan, their headquarters, we used to send people out there. And Montgomery Ward they either came to New York, might have been in Chicago. SC: Might have been SM: So it was -you- went where- advertising was absolutely nothing - GE: Was absolutely- SM: We didn't do a thing with it, it wasn't necessary, the people that we were working with were buying the garment. They knew us, or they got to know us, and advertising just wasn't in the cards. It's a good thing, it would have been more aggravating. GE: Was there any other- can you think of any other questions in regards to the... SC: The business. GE: And then I will have you share with us, a little bit about the demise, a little bit about the last few years. SC: I was just thinking, with the vertical integration you always think of vertical integration as highly capitalized industries, but it was possible in the garment industry, not to be like the old Lowell [mills] factories that were totally vertically integrated- you could get in and out fairly quickly, even though you had to have more capital and contractors. SM: Yeah, well we were I guess the true vertical integration is starting from... SC: Raw material. SM: Raw materials to sales. We skipped the raw materials. We did not make the fabric, we didn't knit it, we purchased the fabric. From then on, GE: You were vertically integrated. SM: It was a vertical operation because we did the styling, and the creating the samples, the pricing the whole business, the stocking, the billing, getting printed, the whole thing and as you said, you needed capital for that, so you needed good relations with the bank, or with whatever bank you're going to deal with. SC: I've heard that Philadelphia was, had many places that were vertically integrated but out here, where there are a lot of, in the Allentown, Lehigh Valley area-- SM: I'll tell you, one that I know of was Sondra Manufacturing, the Kaplans. Do you know them? GE: Tell me- say their names. SM: Stanley Kaplan, Morris Kaplan was the father. GE: Are any of them still here? SM: Yeah. GE: Is that the name? SC: We should talk to them SM: Stanley well, the Kaplan's had- GE: That name is familiar, Stan Kaplan, but I don't think we've... SM: Stan and Elaine Kaplan, they were doing real estate after a while. GE: And they still live here? SM: Yeah, but I think they are going to be staying in Florida but I think they are in town this summer. They live down toward Emmaus somewhere. GE: And they were all- what was the name, Sondra? SM: Sondra, S-0-N-D-R-A. It was a family. They were very similar to ours really, their father had a partner in New York, they had two daughters and a son, both sons in law were in the business, the son was in the business, they I think were more vertical. I think they knitted the fabric. SC: Okay. SM: And then they manufactured it, I do believe. I'm not sure, I'm trying to think, was there anybody else in town. GE: The other manufacturers, am I correct that the main place where they deviated from you was that many of them outsourced the sewing? You know, that was what the contractors did. But otherwise the other pieces that you're talking about they did as well, is that correct? SM: I don't follow you GE: I guess in other words, I guess all I'm saying is most of the clothes manufacturers. SM: Here in town? GE: Or in New York, they in a sense, did just as you did, where from fabric to the sales, the only thing that many of them did is many of them outsourced the sewing. SM: Yeah, so the companies-there were companies that owned nothing, they.would sell - some enterprising people-they would manage to sell a big batch of stuff, and they would buy the fabric, and they'd ship it to a contractor and the contractor would sew it up, and would ship it out to the customer for them. GE: Ok, so in other words, all they did was take care of the sale in a sense? SM: The sales, and getting hold of the fabric. And they didn't actually make the fabric, they bought the fabric, but there were other places that bought or made the fabric and- GE: Right, so you're saying it varied a lot. SM: Oh yeah, and there were- in order to capitalize, if you couldn't get your credit from the bank, they had what they call factors, you know about them? GE: You know what? Why don't you tell us, I've heard the term, and I know a little bit about them. SM: We never used the factor but he would sell your goods, and send the bill to him. He would pay it, less a percentage, and he would handle the accounts receivable. And he'd collect it, it's his problem. Of course, he would have to approve of the people you sell it to. GE: Right. So he took care of that part. SM: Right there you have another partner but that could work, because he's the one who's getting you the capital. GE: Right. SM: To buy the fabric, and do everything else. GE: And take care of the headache with the accounts receivable. SM: Oh yeah, that's a big headache, I have to tell you one story. GE: Sure. SM: When we bought our new building, GE: And this was about when? SM: This was in the 70's, and at the time, the building was certainly worth the price. It was a great deal for a bank for a mortgage. For whatever reason, I don't remember, there was no mortgage money around. I guess banks have certain amounts in their portfolios that they could put into mortgages and whatnot there was none, and we were just dying. We were trying every bank in town, they would say, normally we would take a baseball bat and keep you here to make the deal, but they had no money. And we had a French poodle at the time, and the French poodle had an accident in the bedroom. And I got up at night, not knowing, go to the bathroom, and I stepped in it. Which is sort of, you know, well, funny experience, I told my mother, the next day I told my mother this, and she said, you're going to get your mortgage, and I said why, and she says, it's an old tale, that if you step in shit, something good is going to happen to you. Don't you think, the next day-- GE: Your mother was right! SM: We got a call that they- I think it was union bank at the time -was going to take the mortgage. SC: That's funny. SM: It was just amazing. GE: Was that the time that you told us that you bought the building, I think from Finkelstein? SM: Yes. GE: Okay. SM: Yeah, that was in the earlier seventies. And then shortly after that, in '76, '77 we had this Tris fiasco and you'll read it in there. One of the unique things about it, is the consumer products safety commission was comparatively new, and well, they had an axe to grind. Well they went ahead and issued this ban, but the ban was illegal. The ban was illegal because they were supposed to give the people involved their day in court. To say, hey wait a minute, you can't ban this because.... or the tests were wrong... they just-- it was a unilateral thing. Ultimately, it went to the Supreme Court, and the ban was declared illegal, but the damage was done. Once they declared the ban, all the stores -- sell all the stuff back! And if they had paid for the merchandise, we had to repay them. If they hadn't paid for the merchandise, the account receivable was no good. So- but the ban was illegal. GE: How was that fought? Is there an association, or lobby? SM: We had no lobby, what we did, we had a very very strong advocate, I don't think you'll know the name, Louis Nizer was a very prominent lawyer in New York, who happened to be a relation to my partner, and Louis Nizer sent one of these amicus something, friend to the court. GE: Amicus brief or something, SM: And there were some other prominent attorneys that were hired and that was. GE: Was that fought by your firm, or by a consortium? SM: Well sort of a consortium. GE: Of all the ones affected... SM: Mostly the bigger ones but, we were all involved, we went to Washington D.C. and, I was really pleasantly surprised how accessible, I don't mean by graft, but how accessible a lot of the representatives and congressmen were in dealing with this thing, because they knew it was a fiasco, and they all wanted to, and tried to do something. And ultimately a bill was passed in Congress so that those affected could get a loan to help get back on your feet. And-in that little article I gave you- once you made a claim of X number of dollars they had to come and audit your books, to make sure that the claim was kosher. And we had the FBI -the FBI came in! With their guns, they had to go through all the records to see whether we qualified. And then the tough part was- of course, we had no money, but if they would grant you a loan, you had to pay income tax on it. Hah, and we had no money to pay income tax for it, it was a horrible situation, we couldn't take the money, because we'd have to pay back too much money, which we didn't have. We'd have to borrow money to pay back-to pay the income tax. It was -there would be nothing left. It was really freaky, the loan that we did end up getting was from the SBA, where you really had to dance and sing and do everything else for them before you would get the loan they say this. SC: I'm sorry, what year was this about? SM: That was about, in the later seventies. GE: And about how many years did it take your company to recoup from all of this? SM: I would say about 3 or 4 or 5 years. But we never really got out of the mess because we were always, we never had enough working capital- it was always difficult, so that if we wanted to expand again, we couldn't we just had enough working capital to operate, we wanted to buy new machines, something fancy with computers and what not back then, oh that was a big thing, we couldn't do it. So we were at a certain level that we just couldn't get out of. SC: And may I- I just wanted to comment that in the early 70's when you first started, when it was hard to get money, of course that was moving into the time of stack inflation when prices were high and - GE: And growth was low. SC: Yeah, and then interest rates were high and then in the late 70's and you would be moving into the recession of the early 81' recession. SM: Yeah we ended up going through all the cycles. GE: Right. SC: It makes so much sense, history works. GE: Right, although the cycles I would think because it pajamas, you probably don't feel the cycles as much as, you just have to do a little bit cheaper maybe, items: SM: Yes, there were ways to make things fit into a price range. GE: Right, but I think in general. SM: You make the garment a little smaller. There were really no standards. SC: Yes, I always thought that. SM: You thought there were standards? SC: Those garments were getting a little smaller. At times and they were-- SM: You thought you were gaining weight, or you were getting tall right? SC: No, I never thought I was getting tall SM: There were really no standards, some of the buyers, some of the bigger companies would say that this is -make the garment according to this, that the inseam has to be this long, and the out seam has to be this long and you had to make it to their specs, well that's fine but otherwise you could make the bathrobe an inch shorter and when you start adding up all these inches, all of a sudden the piece doesn't cost ten dollars a dozen it only cost nine dollars a dozen. Or make it a little bit- the pants leg, not quite as full, make it a little bit narrower, make the pants a little bit shorter, the sleeves a little bit shorter. The chest measurement is a little bit less- and nobody knows the difference. They'll put it on and oh, this is a size 4 it doesn't fit my child, well oh, I've got a big child. They don't blame it on the garment, they don't. Whoa, my child is growing so big, so tall, that was done all the time. There was nothing that was really standard unless a customer insisted. But to a place like Hess's or any other department store chains they bought what you gave them, not so with Montgomery Ward, I remember they had very stringent standards. GE: Right, interesting. SC: Yeah. SM: Fellow named Max Charcov. Max Charcov's daughter married Roland Sigal. Sigal had a building by Sacred Heart Hospital where he had dress shops. I don't remember the names of the dress shops but he was very successful. And he was very philanthropic. And Max, Max was a real old slovenly Jewish fella, and he would pedal machines. He would buy anybody's machine, sewing machine, for 50 bucks and would um,- he would fix them up, like a used car's fixed up. How would he fix them up, he'd take a rag, he dusted it off, had no idea whether the machine worked. But it's like new, he said. And he would then sell the machine for $100 or whatever. If you needed a used machine, Max had it. He never had a building, he had various garages around town where he would store the machines. He had a driver, because he couldn't drive anymore. He would run, he had the machines, and he had nothing on paper. He knew every machine that he had ; he had hundreds of machines. And they were all used and when it was time, you needed a machine, you call Charcov if you want to get a used machine. And sometimes he would buy our machines, and I remember he would come in and we would sell him 2 or 3 machines, and he would owe us three or four hundred dollars, and he would take his checkbook and he would give it to me. He says write out a check. He has no remittance- no um, check stubs, no check register, so I write out a check to August Nielsen for three hundred dollars. I give it to Max to sign, and I take the check and that's good. I don't know who kept his books. I don't know if he ever paid income tax but he was a guy that- he was a fixture in the business. SC: Ha-ha oh, I have a-this is tape number 2- on June 17 2014 and we're interviewing Stan Miller, but I have a question- there was another question I had, how did you choose the name of Nielsen? SM: We didn't. SC: Oh it was. SM: That was the gentleman that my father went to work for in the early 1890s or early 1900s. His name was August F Nielsen. And they ultimately made the company incorporated, and I don't remember the terms. But I know that my father took over the business either because his wife was sick, and he was going to die, and they would support the wife until she died, or some kind of arrangement like that. They would pay him off or pay him in some way. I don't remember [details] but it was an interesting setup. But that name was there and no point in changing it ; it was unique. SC: And I remember Louie Nizer's name and I don't know why. SM: You do? SC: Yes I do. I don't know why, whether I read it in the history book. SM: My Life in Court--he wrote some books. SC: Yeah, he wrote some books, that's what It was. SM: He wrote some books. He was very big, really a big-shot in law in New York. GE: Can you share with us a little bit, let's say the last ten years as it was beginning to a little ·bit unwind and slowdown for you SM: Well during that time we knew the handwriting was on the wall because we were having trouble competing with folks, the other big manufacturers who then they ended up switching and manufacturing their stuff not in their plants down south, but in the Caribbean. There was this plan 807-- it was some kind of bill or something where goods can be made in the Caribbean, that made Guatemala and Haiti and Dominican Republic come into the United States with no duty as long as a certain percentage of the cost of the garment was done in the United States. I don't know what the percentage was, but it was pretty small. So, goods were sent uncut down to the Caribbean, it was cut, it was sewn, everything was done to it and it was sent back to the United States, and maybe we put a plastic bag over the garment and put a hang tag on which amounted to the proper percentage of labor. Something ridiculous and their costs were -- I may have said this before--their costs were five dollars a day. They were paying five dollars a day and this was in the 90's and the late 80's where we were paying five dollars an hour. And that was good, plus vacations and blue cross and blue shield, and holidays and all this other garbage and taxes and unemployment. They were paying just five dollars a day and there's no way you can compete with that. Plus these-- our competitors-- had the better licenses, so we were making an inferior garment for lack of a better term, or a less desirable garment. GE: Right, less desired. SM: At a higher price! Doesn't work. So gradually, our sales decreased, and we were shopping around trying to sell, and then we were still manufacturing a little bit, and we were trying to do some contracting work. We did some contracting work, um, and it gradually wound down to the point where as years went on, and we kept paying our people, I remember Walter and I, we kept taking our salary was maybe about 15,000 a year or something. And it was ridiculous, we just kept cutting our salaries. Well you had to pay your secretaries and we would give up my secretary because-um, it gradually wound down and we knew it was happening. We just held on as long as we could and tried to at the end pay off everybody, as many people as we could. We still had the building that we ultimately sold to well, it was some person who made candles, and we went through the building one time after that, and I saw a lot of my people there and they were making candles in the building. GE: Well, that's good at least SM: Yeah. GE: Where was your building? SM: South Allentown on South Albert Street. We had the, there was a fire company there, Fairview Fire Company I think, it's about a block or so away and it was a lovely building. It was great for us, it was about 40,000 square feet or 50,000 something like that. GE: At its peak, how many employees did you have there? SM: At its peak we had maybe about 120 there. We had another factory in Allentown with another 40 or 50. So we had two. GE: Two hundred. Okay, and how about the other employees, like in the New York area I realize that's small. SM: Well we had my partner and a sales manager so to speak, they had no need for office help and they took care of the sales and managed the salesmen on the road, we had no real employees. GE: Other than that. SM: Of note, in New York, except the sales. force. You know, one guy can sell enough to keep 200 people working in someplace else. GE: Right. SM: Sales it's just a different ballgame. They can make a sale and they can provide us with enough work for three months. GE: When, as you said, you saw the handwriting on the wall. Is there any consideration to either also trying to use labor in the Caribbean or to make that move, or- SM: Oh yeah, we were approached quite often, I remember one was in Guatemala. They would provide the land, they'd build the building, they'd help finance the machines, the labor was cheap, there would be no taxes for I don't know, and I just, as for me, I just couldn't see myself leaving my wife and three kids and going there or taking them there, or being there for three months out of the year. It wasn't for me. In retrospect, I suppose there could have been a way to do that and then you could compete, and we might still be in business for all I know but doing that wasn't for me. GE: Right. SM: It scared me, I just couldn't do it. And my brother-in-law felt the same way. So, whereas a lot of the people from down in the south it was a little closer for them, they went for it. We couldn't do that. So we ended up, for a while, we did some contracting and just, that was an unhappy situation, when we were manufacturing, we were our own bosses, when you're contacting, somebody else is telling you what to do. And we were very unhappy about that. But it happened, it evolved, as many things do ; businesses don't stay in business forever. And we had a good run. It was 70 some odd years that we were. GE: Continuous in two generations? SM: Yeah, yeah. GE: Right, and so you closed the doors in around 1994, like you said. SM: Yeah and we started renting the building and um, but we couldn't keep the building. We had to unload it so we had it up for sale. I don't remember when it was sold, maybe a year or two later. And as for me, I filed for social security. I think I was 62, and I started working for the bank. And I knew a lot of the people there, and I knew some of the people who were hiring, and I started working for them. And I became, I guess, the oldest male bearded Jewish bank teller east of the Mississippi River. They had none like that. They had no men. SC: Ha-ha. SM: Think back! Who were the bank tellers? The girls who then became pregnant. They were all women, they never had a man, never had anybody my age, with a beard, so - and I worked part time, and it was good because it kept me a little busy, GE: Sure. SM: It gave me some pocket money, I was having fun with the people. I wasn't a normal bank teller. I would kid with them and ask them about their children. You joke with them about giving them change in 17 and 23 dollar bills, and I enjoyed it. GE: Good. SM: I really had fun. GE: Right. That's great. And how long did you do that? SM: And I spent 7 years there. GE: Right. SM: I had time to play golf and play tennis and so it was wonderful for me. I was there from seven years 94' to 2001. GE: And then you retired? SM: Then I retired, and I became a professional tennis player and golf player, and I was an actor. I did that and I had a good life ; it was the best job I had. Retirement, it was wonderful. GE: Right, you speak very highly of it. SM: Oh yeah, it was really, really, really, good. GE: Good. SC: Well I have a couple of other questions, and, first of all there was a question I had about where was your other factory, SM: Originally it was on Hamilton Street, 930 Hamilton Street. Do you remember Miller Furniture? SC: Ah you know what, the name is familiar. SM: It was on the south side, not Hess's side. It was a half a block away from Hess's. And Krupers Appliances was there. It was between 9th and l0th Streets, and we had an upstairs there, and we were operating that plant for a while, and then we lost the lease and then we found a place. You would know this building, it's on 7th and Tilghman Street. It was a bank on the comer, there was a bank there and then one place up was another building. I don't know what was there, um, it was an automobile showroom or whatever. Anyway we took the second floor and had to put in a fireproof stairway, and they had a ramp that we used when we moved in. I rented a golf cart because we had so much stuff to bring up and there was no elevator to get to the second floor but there was a ramp because it used to be a car dealer. And they would have the cars up on the second floor, and go down the ramp. In fact that was the place where many years ago I went to see my very first Edsel. It was a dealer that had the Edsels and I went with my cousins to look at it. I remember seeing the Edsel there so we had that place for a while and then as time went on we had to condense our operation. We had to close that, I don't remember when we closed it, it was sometime in the nineties where it just wasn't feasible anymore. So we were running two, and running night shifts sometimes. When the situation demanded it. That was our- SC: By the time you closed, how many workers, how many employees did you have at the end? SM: Oh well it started going down. GE: Right. SM: We must have had about 40 or 50 or 60 when we used to have over 100 because certain operations we didn't need. After a while we didn't need the cutting room, we were just getting the stuff in cut, and we just had to sew it. We gradually knocked it down. Even to the point when we were contracting we really didn't need our girl in the office to do the payroll anymore. We found it cheaper that we would send it out to I don't know... GE: ADP? SM: Yeah, one of those places. And they'd send the check. It would cost us less than paying the girl her salary and her Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and holidays. I mean we gave the girls, they had a salary and her Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and holidays. I mean we gave the girls, they had up to 14 holidays we were giving them ; they even got Yom Kippur off. Then they got their Easter, and their Good Friday and um, they had plenty of holidays, um what else could I tell you, not much else. SC: Okay, so my other question is what do you value most in life? SM: What do I value most in life? I suppose good health and the health of my family. I can't think of much else that's important and ultimately you die with a good name. Because they never caught me. GE: Right and as you say you checked it out on the internet. SM: Yeah there was nothing bad, although the NSA has been checking my computers. I never... GE: They're checking everybody's SC: That's the new democracy, we all get checked. SM: Well, you've got these crazies in the world. SC: Yeah I know, SM: You wonder, right now everybody says oh don't check me you're invading my privacy. As soon as we have another 9/11- why didn't you know about these people!? So there's no happy medium there. SC: And what makes you feel the most creative, artistic, I mean in the broadest sense of creative or maybe a sense of completion in your life? SM: In my life, other than being very proud of your three kids, me, I like to sing. So I was in the Temple choir for about forty years. We ended up, my family ended up somehow getting involved in theater, so besides my daughter, my wife became a manager and I was a theater um. I did shows at Cedar Crest, Muhlenberg, at Civic, and Pennsylvania Playhouse ; I did them all over in the [area]. SC: You acted? SM: Yeah, so I did that. I found we all agreed, this group that we-- this last group that we were with-- that one of the greatest joys in life, the biggest kick that we would get is to be in a room full of people and make them laugh. And that's what we were doing, we were doing murder mysteries. Believe me they were funny, and we were good, because we handled- it's a different procedure than being on a proscenium stage because on a proscenium stage there's an invisible wall between the actors and the audience. There's no ad-libbing to speak of, you do your thing, when you do dinner theater or murder mysteries. You are this close to them, and some of the people shoot off their mouths. You know they interrupt, and you have to know what to do, you can end up forgetting your lines, and you answer them back, sometimes you have to shut up, shut them up. One time we had somebody who wouldn't shut up, and one of the people in the show yelled over to a waiter do you have any tape? And he says, yeah, and she says give me the tape. And she went over and put duct tape on the guy's mouth. Of course he took it off, but he got the hint. Another time, when we were starting act 3, I was out there with one guy, and we had a little dialogue and he was supposed to answer but before he could somebody in the audience shouted something out. It was funny. It was really funny, everybody laughed. Well, you can't let him get away with it, so you hit him with something, and then he comes back with something, and before you know it well, everything's stopped, and I said to the guy with me, where did we stop? But, you can do these things in the dinner theater. He says I don't know, well let's start all over again. Excuse me. And my wife was involved, my daughter was involved, my other two daughters were involved. We all played the piano, they sang, they played the violin, this is what we did. That was our life. As a matter of fact, when we had this Tris fiasco where we really had no income at all, we couldn't take any income, we dropped out of Locust Valley and stopped doing things, going out for dinners. We ended up doing theater, that was our entertainment--theater. When we started Percy Brown's dinner theater in the 70's, we would have a show Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday we'd be rehearsing for the next show. GE: Wow. SM: And this was the whole family doing it. One daughter was dancing, another one was doing this, another one was playing the drums. Lois was assistant director, and doing the props and the makeup, and I was in the show. I think the first show I did myself and three other guys who were the male chorus and the reviewer called us led-footed hoofers with terminal melancholy. And he was right by the way, we were really bad. But I got to like it, I did pretty good, and that was my fun. Plus I did photography ; I've taken a lot of photographs, and that was my thing, that made me happy. SC: Thank you. 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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01:24:44
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Stan Miller, May 22, 2014
Description
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Stan Miller talks about how his father, a young immigrant, got started in manufacturing children’s pajamas in New York City, and later moved the production to Allentown. The sales office of the company remained in New York and was run by Stan’s father’s partner. When Stan and his family moved to Allentown, Stan was 17 years old and would soon start college. Stan attended Muhlenberg College, majoring in Accounting and Economics. After college and the service, Stan and his brother-in-law entered the family business. As did the son of Stan’s father’s partner. Stan is very proud that the business operated harmoniously among the partners during its more than seventy-five years in business. The firm closed in 1994, due to stiff competition from globalization.
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LVTNT-07
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2014-05-22
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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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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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Tama Fogelman
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5.4 August 7, 2013 Tama Fogelman and Maxine Klein, August 7, 2013 LVTNT-24 1:20:54 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Tama Fogelman Maxine Klein Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 FogelmanTama_KleinMaxine_20130807 1.0:|29(7)|54(2)|69(7)|82(18)|99(6)|110(8)|127(4)|144(14)|165(3)|190(11)|209(11)|226(3)|239(16)|258(3)|273(13)|292(5)|311(8)|334(10)|359(13)|390(9)|417(8)|442(9)|469(14)|496(13)|515(15)|540(9)|575(8)|604(10)|625(14)|650(9)|673(15)|704(12)|719(13)|744(8)|763(14)|782(10)|803(12)|828(8)|853(10)|884(5)|909(4)|946(10)|975(15)|1004(5)|1025(15)|1038(12)|1063(11)|1090(11)|1113(11)|1136(7)|1161(10)|1182(4)|1201(6)|1220(6)|1237(13)|1264(14)|1285(3)|1312(8)|1333(5)|1358(9)|1375(18)|1388(14)|1407(4)|1428(15)|1451(17)|1478(8)|1505(11)|1520(13)|1545(6)|1574(15)|1597(10)|1616(15)|1629(14)|1648(9)|1667(7)|1686(8)|1705(3)|1726(7)|1743(3)|1766(18)|1781(17) 0 https://youtu.be/-IX8HtCpMH4 YouTube video 0 Introducing the Kivert Sisters SC: So I’m going to ask you, first of all, to state both of your full names, and then I’ll talk to one person and then to another person. What is your full name?
 ; 
 ; TF: Tama Arlene Kivert Fogelman.
 ; 
 ; SC: And when were you born?
 ; 
 ; TF: 10-01-43.
 ; 
 ; SC: And can you talk a little about where you have lived all your life? 0 250 Family History: The Chenetz Family SC: So Tama, can you talk a little bit about what you know about your parents, their names? Where they have lived? Also, your grandparents and your great-grandparents…as much as you know about your family – going back even before they lived in the United States - whatever you know.
 ; 
 ; TF: My parents were both born in this country. My father was born in Northampton, our mother was born in Freeland, PA. My grandparents – I don’t remember where they were from. Oh, Detroit?
 ; 
 ; MK: No. Our grandparents were from – on mother’s side, on the Chenetz side – my mother’s name was Mae Chenetz. She was the third of five children. Her father came from Ukraine –- near Kiev. 0 535 Family History: The Kivert Family MK: So, let’s see what happened then with Mother. Well, then she met our father, Saul. 
 ; 
 ; TF: She worked at the Five and Ten Cent Store, across the street. 
 ; 
 ; MK: Is that where she worked? No, she didn’t work there. 
 ; 
 ; TF: Well, where did she work?
 ; 
 ; MK: She worked as a bookkeeper for one of the furniture stores – Landau. 
 ; 
 ; TF: Mother never told me that. 
 ; 
 ; MK: Oh, yeah, she worked as a bookkeeper.
 ; 
 ; TF: Well, maybe that’s where she met daddy?
 ; 
 ; MK: That’s where she met daddy.
 ; 0 1188 Saul Kivert: Entrepreneur MK: So where were we here? Daddy started the tailor shop. 
 ; 
 ; SC: That is fascinating. So he was mechanical – in so many ways.
 ; 
 ; MK: I guess he was. And he was artistic also-- later in life. He painted and did needlepoint . We have hundreds of pieces of things that he did. He was very prolific. And then in the meantime, he also baked. He baked challah.
 ; 0 1702 Saul Kivert's Tailor Shop SC: Do you know, just as a question, before we get into the business, what year he took over the business from his father and when he added the dry cleaning and the suit club?
 ; 
 ; MK: I don’t know…that was all before I was born. Well, he and mother got married in 1931. Did he have the tailor shop then or was he still running his father’s? 
 ; 
 ; TF: I don’t have any memory of his father’s business. My memory is he had the tailor shop - 2155.
 ; 
 ; MK: He had it in Hazleton.
 ; 0 2085 Maxine Klein's Memories of the Factory SC: What was the address of the factory?
 ; 
 ; MK: It was between 20 and 21st on Main Street – 20 something Main Street. It would have been an odd number.
 ; 
 ; SC: Was that an existing building?
 ; 
 ; MK: It was a bank building. I have memories, when my father started the factory. It was right after the war. During the war, women, obviously, went back to work and had a lot of men’s jobs, and they started wearing pants. The only pants that were made at that time for women were tailored like men’s pants. After the war, my father thought this was going to be a big thing. He never had his own brand – he was a contractor. So he went into New York, and he met up with a man named, S.M. Elowsky, who owned four or five different manufacturing companies. He wanted to make women’s tailored pants, because he knew how to make tailored pants.
 ; 0 2464 The Sisters' Childhood in Northampton SC: What were your memories?
 ; 
 ; TF: Related to the factory you mean?
 ; 
 ; SC: And just your memories growing up in the area.
 ; 
 ; TF: It was very nice. It was easy. You could walk anywhere any time of day and at night time you weren’t frightened to walk the street or anything.
 ; 
 ; MK: No, no.
 ; 
 ; TF: Northampton was a booming little town. 0 2583 Marriages & ; Family Businesses SC: Were most of the store owners Jewish? Because that was true in South Bethlehem. 
 ; 
 ; MK: A lot were. As she said, Coleman’s, Lerner’s.
 ; 
 ; TF: How about the cotton shop?
 ; 
 ; MK: Oh, Kroupes [?] – that was our cousin. The furniture store, Glazier’s – Northampton Furnishing.
 ; 
 ; TF: Well, that was Glaziers, but that was also Roth.
 ; 
 ; MK: No, Roth was another one.
 ; 
 ; TF: Oh, that’s right.
 ; 
 ; SC: Were they related to the Glazier’s furniture store in Allentown.
 ; 
 ; MK: Yes, yes, yes.
 ; 
 ; TF: It’s all relatives. 0 2872 Childhood Memories (cont'd) SC: Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share?
 ; 
 ; TF: Well I don’t know how it would relate to what you are interested in. As I said, life there was very nice, it was very easy. My parents were known in the community – they were liked. So I didn’t ever have to deal with anti-semitism. 
 ; 
 ; MK: I didn’t either.
 ; 
 ; TF: That is something I didn’t feel. I’m sure it was there somewhere. I know my father was very friendly with the Priest at the Catholic Church. He would go there a lot. Maybe they drank – I don’t know what they did there. I’m just saying that mother played bridge with a lot of the neighbors –so, it was a very nice life. It was a very nice life. 0 3148 The War Years: Saul Kivert & ; the Billera Pants Factory MK: Our father (during the War Years – during the 40’s), he had the tailor shop during the day and Tama remembers, he also worked for the pants factory at night.
 ; 
 ; TF: In Northampton.
 ; 
 ; MK: The Billera Pants Factory had a government contract to make …
 ; 
 ; GE: This wasn’t his pants factory? This was another pants factory?
 ; 
 ; MK: No, they had a government contract to make army uniforms.
 ; 0 3442 The Kivert Sisters: Early Adulthood SC: Maybe we should switch over to the business now?
 ; 
 ; GE: Did you want to ask them anything – in regards to their own education?
 ; 
 ; SC: We didn’t really talk about that - your own education, both of you? Did you ever become involved in the business?
 ; 
 ; TF: Well, I became involved in the business when my husband died – so that was 16 years ago.
 ; 
 ; SC: What was your education?
 ; 
 ; TF: I only went to high school. That’s as far as I went. I got married right after high school.
 ; 
 ; SC: What year did you get married?
 ; 
 ; TF: 1952.
 ; 
 ; SC: And that makes sense – that’s the way it was supposed to work back then. 0 3762 Tama Manufacturing GE: We’ve already talked a lot about the business, but we are going to continue to have that conversation. Some of these things you’ve talked about, and we’ll just go through it real quickly. In terms of who started the business, a little bit the origins, maybe just to recap and to summarize.
 ; 
 ; TF: Well, our father started the business. Maxine, you were clear about where he started -- underneath the house?
 ; 
 ; MK: I don’t know . .. you thought he had an early or a few machines in a garage or somewhere under the house. 
 ; 
 ; TF: Maybe the garage thing was behind the bank, as you thought.
 ; 
 ; MK: I remember it was ’46 that he was in the bank building then.
 ; 0 4341 The '70s: Changes in Manufacturing MK: No, it was in New York. He was there, too. During the ‘70’s, the manufacturing began to go to China and Mexico.
 ; 
 ; GE: To China that early?
 ; 
 ; MK: In the ‘70’s the factory had trouble getting stuff made there, so they decided to diversify. They opened another factory called Penn Garment that opened in Allentown. They made very specific things that I don’t remember.
 ; 
 ; GE: Separate from Tama Manufacturers?
 ; 
 ; MK: Yes, but the three of them were owners.
 ; 0 MovingImage Maxine Kline and Tama Fogelman talk about how their father, Saul Kivert, became a tailor at sixteen years old to help support his family when Saul’s father, a tailor, had a nervous breakdown. During World War II, Saul worked at a pants factory and learned the business. After the war, Saul started Tama Manufacturing-- a tailored women’s pants company. Interview with Tama Fogelman and Maxine Tannenbaum Klein, August 7, 2013 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is August 7, 2013. So I'm going to ask you, first of all, to state both of your full names, and then I'll talk to one person and then to another person. What is your full name? TAMA FOGELMAN: Tama Arlene Kivert Fogelman. SC: And when were you born? TF: 10-01-43. SC: And can you talk a little about where you have lived all your life? About the different places where you have lived. And then we'll move on, and I'll come back and talk to you specifically. TF: What I recall is growing up in Northampton, PA. I got married and lived in Allentown the rest of my life. MAXINE KLEIN: Didn't you live in Hazleton first? TF: Yes, but I don't recall it -- what do you want? SC: So your family lived in Hazleton first? TF: Originally, that's where I was born, my family was born in Hazleton. But my family moved to Northampton when I was three. SC: Do you remember the address in Northampton? TF: 2155 Main Street. SC: And where have you lived since then? What addresses? TF: Well I lived----what's that apartment? MK: Before that - you lived--.when you first married--you lived in Harrisburg. TF: Right -- it's so long ago. For a brief time, I lived in Harrisburg, on Riverside Drive, when we were first married. It was a new high-rise building. Then we moved to Allentown -- to Valley View apartment. Then we moved to 1237 Rye Street -- a little ranch house. Then we moved to 2434 Livingston Street, Allentown, and then we built this house. SC: And that's a normal progression in life. SC: Can you state your full name and when you were born and where you have lived? MK: Maxine Kivert Tannenbaum Klein. I was born May 23, 1942. I lived at 2155 Main Street in Northampton. Then we lived at 1137 Lehigh Parkway East in Allentown. Then I got married, and we lived in the Jordan Park Apartments. Then I lived for two years in Fort Benning, GA, with my husband, during all the "race goings-on" in the early '60's. Then we lived on South 12th Street in an apartment, when we came back to Allentown. Then we bought a house on 21st St. in Allentown, 1118 North 21st St. Then we moved to Muhlenberg Street -- 840 N. Muhlenberg Street. Then my first husband died. Soon after, I bought another house on Hampton Road -- 1436 Hampton Road in Allentown. And then I lived in an apartment behind Wegman's for two years. And now, we live in Orefield. Lots of places! SC: Tama, let's start with you -- the two of you with the history -- if you remember background from your parents, grandparents, you can chime in at this point and then we'll be more specific. SC: So Tama, can you talk a little bit about what you know about your parents, their names? Where they have lived? Also, your grandparents and your great-grandparents--as much as you know about your family -- going back even before they lived in the United States - whatever you know. TF: My parents were both born in this country. My father was born in Northampton, our mother was born in Freeland, PA. My grandparents -- I don't remember where they were from. Oh, Detroit? MK: No. Our grandparents were from -- on mother's side, on the Chenetz side -- my mother's name was Mae Chenetz. She was the third of five children. Her father came from Ukraine --- near Kiev. Her biological mother was from there, too. Her name was Tilly or Tama -- they [the grandparents] came to America in the early 1900's after the turn of the century. They were not married when they came over, they posed as sister and brother. But I think they were engaged. Somewhat scandalous -- they shared the same room coming over. TF: I think that was common! MK: This is mother! This is what mother said. They came over and they did marry here. Then they lived in Freeland. When they first came here they lived in McAdoo, and my grandfather's name was Morris Chenetz, my mother's father. His father came over also, Moses Chenetz. They lived in Freeland and initially he had a backpack, and he was a peddler. Then he and his brother Barney opened a men's store in downtown Freeland. Then many years later they opened another store in Hazleton. That's where the family grew up, mostly in Freeland, supported by that store. SC: Was the store a clothing store? MK: Men's clothing - Chenetz Men Store. SC: Did they purchase their goods from New York? MK: Yes. They were not tailors. He purchased it from all the well known brand names of men's clothing at that time. His first wife, Tilly, died around 1919, after she delivered their fourth child, which was premature. Both the child and then she died from infection. As my mother had told us, antiseptic methods hadn't reached Freeland yet. She got an infection from an intervention by the doctor, whatever, and then she died. Then our grandfather married again, six months later. He went to Chicago and came back with his new wife, didn't tell the children, [just] came back. Her name was Lottie Holstein. She really raised our mother and the other two from that time on, and then she [Lottie] went on to have two more daughters. One of them is still living, the second youngest one, Evelyn Diamond, lives in Baltimore, no, Washington. So, let's see what happened then with Mother. Well, then she met our father, Saul. TF: She worked at the Five and Ten Cent Store, across the street. MK: Is that where she worked? No, she didn't work there. TF: Well, where did she work? MK: She worked as a bookkeeper for one of the furniture stores -- Landau. TF: Mother never told me that. MK: Oh, yeah, she worked as a bookkeeper. TF: Well, maybe that's where she met daddy? MK: That's where she met daddy. Daddy came up with a friend, who was a manager for J.J. Newberry -- the friend was. They had to come up to the Hazleton store. He came up with him from Northampton. My mother said she saw them across the street. Their place was right on Main Street. She was looking out the window and she saw these two guys and she and her friend went down to meet them and then my father said, then, he saw this woman who was built like a "you know what!" SC: Well built? MK: Anyway they met on the corner right outside J.J. Newberry. Then he would drive up from Northampton in his Model T Ford -- which had no top on it. He said he had to drive up the mountain backwards because it didn't have enough engine energy, so he had to come up backwards. He'd come up and he'd bring her home from school. He would wait outside the school for her. And she was annoyed because she was dating this guy, and she was dating that guy, and there he was, he was always there--he was just there. Anyway, they eloped. SC: What was his name? MK: Saul Kivert and he used the middle initial A. but he wasn't given one. He just thought he needed one. I should go back to his parents. Shouldn't I? SC: Yes, but what year were the two of them born? MK: My mother was born in 1912 and my father was born in 1909 -- the youngest of six children. SC: So this was in the 1920's -- the Model T? MK: Oh yes, he bought his first car for 10 dollars. His father was named Samuel Kivert. Samuel was from a shtetl in Russia called-- they lived in Verner [sounds like], although Samuel himself was from another shtetl called Peinyan [soundslike]. But he and his wife, Hilda [in Yiddish, Hindelaya] -- her maiden name was Shaefer -lived in Verner. When they decided to come to America, it might have been in 1902. He came over, leaving her and three -- well four -- one had died of measles, so there were three remaining children there - to make a living here. His wife had a sister living in Bethlehem -- she had come before. She had married Coleman, that was her married name. The only way you could come was if you had someone to sponsor you or if you knew where you could find employment. Now, my father's father, Samuel, was a tailor -- so what I understand is that the family was tailors for three hundred years back. They were just all tailors. There was a job available in the Lehigh Valley because it was a burgeoning industrial area, so he came under the sponsorship of his sister-in-law. Where he lived, I don't know where. He probably lived with them, but I don't know -- for two years, until he earned enough money to bring over Hilda and the three children. They must have come over around 1905, as far as I can guess. Then they had two more children, Ida and my father, who was the youngest. Anna, Joe and Arthur were born in Europe, and Ida and dad were born here. My grandfather was a tailor, but then I understand that he opened up a store in Bath. They lived in Bath then. He opened up a store that sold clothing for the farmers -- that sort of thing. TF: Overalls. MK: Overalls and that kind of thing. His father was a tailor also and they custom-made clothes. There was an article in the paper at one time. My father and his father had made this huge pair of overalls for an enormous farmer. Each of them stood on a separate leg and the newspaper took their picture. SC: Was that the Morning Call? MK : Yes. Anyway, his father, Samuel, became ill -- he had a nervous breakdown and could no longer work. Our father, Saul, knew that somebody had to do something. He went downstairs and took his father's sewing machine apart and put it back together again -- to try to figure out how it works. Then he took a garment apart (a pair of pants) and put it back together again to learn how to do this. He then became a tailor. He opened up a tailor shop. He was about 16 or 17. He had a lot of other jobs, but ultimately he opened up his own tailor shop. A couple of years later, when he was around 19 or 20, he met my mother -- they got married in 1931. TF: Excuse me one second. Where was that tailor shop? When he was young? MK: I don't know--it was in Northampton. I don't know--.He said his parents lived above the Five and Dime or Millers -- somewhere there. I don't know if his tailor shop was somewhere else. SC: So they lived in Bath, but the tailor shop was in Northampton? MK: I think they moved to Northampton. His parents moved to Northampton, as well. TF: But when Zadie [Yiddish for grandfather] had that nervous breakdown, daddy had to go to Allentown to bring him over every day to work in the tailor shop. MK: That's right. TF: So, I don't know in-between there. When Zadie and his wife and family moved to Allentown, maybe they lived with Aunt Annie. MK: They lived with their oldest daughter Annie on South West Street. With Anna and Dave Plotnick [?] -- his [Saul's] parents did. Then he got sick. It was around 1920 because it was right around the time that the Allentown State Hospital opened up. He was hospitalized in New Jersey for a while. He was originally hospitalized in New Jersey because he was enormously overweight, and he had lost 150 lbs. in about six months. and he kind of lost his mind also. TF: That is what they say-- MK: This is just how things are. We don't know what really happened. Personally, I don't know how any of them can stay sane - living in Europe with the pogroms and the whole thing and coming here--.it was just perilous. TF: The thing was they had family here for them to come to. It wasn't like going to the Lower East Side. That must have been a whole different experience. MK: Yeah but they still didn't speak any English -- there's a whole lot of them--not only them, that whole generation that came over. SC: So initially they did go to the Lower East Side? MK: No, they never went - neither parent -- my mother's nor my father's parents ever lived in New York. My mother's family went right to McAdoo-- to the coal regions in Pennsylvania, and our father came right to the Lehigh Valley. SC: And, there was a small Jewish community in the coal region? MK: Yes, absolutely. TF: And synagogues -- even in Northampton there was a synagogue. MK: Yes, our grandfather was one of the founders of that synagogue. In Northampton -- there used to be one. That synagogue is defunct now. TF: I remember going to it. MK: I do, too. TF: We took you -- that's good. MK: Charles Glazier and I used to run up and down the back steps. TF: That's all the kids did--.you went in the basement and played - you didn't really sit at the services. MK: Am I giving too much information? SC: No, not at all. MK: So where were we here? Daddy started the tailor shop. SC: That is fascinating. So he was mechanical -- in so many ways. MK: I guess he was. And he was artistic also-- later in life. He painted and did needlepoint . We have hundreds of pieces of things that he did. He was very prolific. And then in the meantime, he also baked. He baked challah. TF: Yes, he taught us all to bake challah. MK: I taught him now to make challah! TF: Oh, you did? Oh well. MK: He baked cookies--. TF: But he baked challahs for so many people's Bar Mitzvahs and things. SC: Did he like school? MK: No, because he stuttered. He had a speech impediment and he stuttered very markedly. He used to perform in minstrel shows in Northampton. There were minstrel shows that they would put on. And, of course, when he sang, he didn't stutter. He liked doing that. TF: He and Benny Glazier were "Endmen" on the minstrel show. They made up stuff -- they forgot -- they made up stories, whatever. MK: He was a comedian -- my father -- he really was. By the time I grew up, or I have a recollection of him, I remember him stuttering -- but not nearly as bad as he did when he was young. TF: Also in high school he worked for the baseball team. He was the water boy and he got paid. He was always involved with things. MK: He also learned to drive when he was nine years old! His father bought a car when my father was just nine -- he was the youngest and he would drive! People would see him driving down the street and they didn't think anybody was driving the car. He was very small as a child. When he graduated high school he was only 5'6". When he was twenty one he was 5'11". So he was really small. And then, not only did he work for the baseball team, but he also worked for Schisler Funeral Home. SC: Was that the Blue Mountain Baseball League? Do you remember? MK: I don't know? TF: It was high school. SC: So it wasn't one of the adult sort of semi-pro? TF: Not that I recall. MK: When he was in high school, Schlisler would call him if they needed someone to drive the hearse. So he would get out of school, and he would go and drive this hearse-- and he was little and he had this big black top hat on. He said that was probably all they could really see. Sometimes he would have to go with them to help move the body. Bring the bodies from the place that they died into the funeral home. They would put them inside a basket -- they would carry the bodies in a basket. One time he was picking this person up and his hands went through everything -- the person must have been dead a long time. Well, he got so sick, he never went back again. That was the end of his job at Schisler Funeral Home. TF: I don't think I ever heard that story. MK: Oh God, I've heard it many times. TF: You heard it? MK: Yes, many times. This is not really related? SC: No, it is -- it absolutely is. It's showing his expertise -- different types of expertise of many things that will make him a businessman. MK: He saved up a lot of money. He had a bank account and from the time he was very young, he believed in saving money. He always saved money all through his life, no matter what they did, they always saved money. And when he was young, his next in line, his sister Ida, was a little older -- none of his siblings were that particularly gorgeous-- but Ida was the prettiest one of all. We think our father was very handsome, also -- they kind of got better as they went -- she improved! But Ida was the apple of her mother's eye. My father had said that when he was in high school, he had saved up about four hundred dollars, which was a lot of money then. His mother went into his bank account, took the money out without asking him, to buy Ida a fur coat, which, obviously, he never forgot. TF: But he didn't say anything -- this was his family. Can you imagine? Oh My God. MK: So she could be attractive and get a nice man and all that. Anyway, that was part of his character. He never objected, he always loaned money to other family members. TF: He was family -- he was very attached to family, that's the thing. No matter what! When anyone in the family needed help, he did everything he could. SC: So he was born in 1909 and when he was sixteen he took apart the machine. MK: Approximately that. It was in the early 20's because his father was in the hospital then, the State Hospital. SC: He must have been artistic, he must have had a sense of (being very smart) taking things apart visually and putting them back together again, and he saved money. So he had a sense of how to be a businessman. MK: How to get out of where he was and into what he wanted to do. TF: And don't forget he also then had the dry cleaning in the tailor shop. MK: Oh, that's right. He started dry cleaning also. TF: I can see that "big unit" in the tailor shop. MK: See, I don't remember much of that because I wasn't born yet. TF: And, he had that club every week. The Men's Suit Club. He'd go into New York and buy fabric. Customer's would come in and pick out the fabric. He'd measure them, and he would make magnificent men's suits. MK: Yes, we have pictures of suits he made for us. Every Easter he would always make suits for us -- we all had matching suits with hats. TF: And he made all my clothing, skirts -- "skurts", I used to say-- that's how I spoke! MK: He also did most of Mother's shopping when he would go into New York. He'd buy her clothes. TF: Well, he'd bring us all things. We always loved whatever he bought. MK: Everything he bought was always "right" for each one. TF: He loved Macy's. He'd always go to Macy's - R.H. Macy's. MK: That was his "hot spot" TF: Of retail. SC: Did you ever go to New York with him? MK: Yes. SC: Did you ever go to Macy's with him? MK: I remember going to the Lower East Side. TF: We'd go shopping there, then he took us shopping to the stores. MK: I remember going to the Lower East Side and going to some of the fabric places he went to, then some of the delicatessens. Then in the early 50's he took me to my first Broadway show, which was Guys and Dolls, in 1950 with the original cast and then two years later, they took me again. SC: Which show? MK: South Pacific. We saw the original -- South Pacific. TF: I think maybe we all went. Did Randi? MK: No. TF: But she was born in 1953. MK: Yes, but she wouldn't go in 1953. TF: No, not in '53. But she was little when we took her. I remember we used to tell her -- she'd sit in the back seat with Mama and Pop. We'd tell her to hold her breath as she was going under the tunnel . MK: Oh, you're so mean! TF: Well, I guess she knew it was funny. MK: Yeah, he was very proactive in terms of family. SC: Do you know, just as a question, before we get into the business, what year he took over the business from his father and when he added the dry cleaning and the suit club? MK: I don't know--that was all before I was born. Well, he and mother got married in 1931. Did he have the tailor shop then or was he still running his father's? TF: I don't have any memory of his father's business. My memory is he had the tailor shop - 2155. MK: He had it in Hazleton. TF: That's right in Hazleton. MK: Right after they were married, a week later, they convinced my mother's oldest sister, Ethel, and her fiancé Sam Copland, to elope as well. Then the two families lived together in the same apartment in Hazleton. TF: Alter Street. I can see the sign, Copland and Kivert. MK: They opened a tailor and dry cleaning there. SC: And the name of the street was? MK: Alter Street in Hazleton. And the name of the outfit was Copland and Kivert. We have a picture of that somewhere -- Copland and Kivert. TF: So what was that dry cleaning or tailor? I think it was dry cleaning, too. MK: Yes it was. TF: We lived up above. I don't remember that so clearly, but we would go visit a lot after we left there and moved to Northampton. MK: Then they moved to Northampton after about two or three years. Tama was born there and Ethel and Sam had their first daughter, who they also named Tama. Tama Lee. TF: She lives in town. MK: I don't know if you know Tama Lee Barski? TF: She has a lot of energy and does a lot of good in the community. MK: So the two Tamas lived together, and the parents lived together, and then our parents and this Tama came back to Northampton after about two or three years, and he opened his own, 2155 -- they must have bought the house then -- there. TF: I don't know -- I know they first lived in the apartment, in the back somewhere. MK: I thought that was when they were first married. TF: Well, I remember. MK: So it must have been with you then. So they didn't have a house right away. TF: I don't know where the tailor shop was --maybe he rented? MK: Maybe the tailor shop was under the house. TF: I don't know if they bought it, maybe they just rented. MK: Well, they didn't own that house 2155. They rented it from the neighbors, Annie and Charlie Driscoll [?], who lived next door. SC: That was in Northampton--on Main Street? That was in the 1930's? MK: Correct. SC: So we can look that up - on Ancestry. MK: Go ahead. TF: I just didn't want to forget that our father had this vision, what excited him when he saw a pair of ladies slacks -- was how the pockets were and the zipper had to all line up. SC: So the brother-in-law stayed in Hazleton but moved over to the store. MK: Chenetz Men's Shop. SC: That was his father-in-law's. MK: Father-in-law, and then he owned it also. They ended up owning it together I believe. And it was on Broad Street in Hazleton for as long as I know. TF: Well, Tama Lee moved here after Moishe died and that's when the store closed, I guess. MK: So, their third generation - the other Tama -- her husband -- they moved up from Philadelphia and he went into the men's shop also--.and Uncle Charlie, my mother's brother, worked there for a long time also. That was sort of the family business. TF: Then he moved to Northampton and worked in the factory for a while. MK: Uncle Charlie did -- yes, he did. My Uncle was not doing well. He and his wife and children --- they had a lot of problems. So, my father in his usual way, decided to move them all to Northampton and Charlie, his brother-in-law, would work in the factory, and they'd get the children into the good school system in Northampton and straighten them all out. That lasted for a couple of years and then my Uncle Charlie decided he was working too hard and wanted more money, and my father said forget that, and that was the end of that. They moved back to Hazleton. SC: Do either one of you have memories of your childhood -- where you went to school and any type of specific memories and then when you got married and were you connected to the shops or the factory? TF: Oh yes, we were very connected. First of all the tailor shop was under where we lived, and the factory was just a block away. So every day after school, I'd stop in there. SC: What was the address of the factory? MK: It was between 20 and 21st on Main Street -- 20 something Main Street. It would have been an odd number. SC: Was that an existing building? MK: It was a bank building. I have memories, when my father started the factory. It was right after the war. During the war, women, obviously, went back to work and had a lot of men's jobs, and they started wearing pants. The only pants that were made at that time for women were tailored like men's pants. After the war, my father thought this was going to be a big thing. He never had his own brand -- he was a contractor. So he went into New York, and he met up with a man named, S.M. Elowsky, who owned four or five different manufacturing companies. He wanted to make women's tailored pants, because he knew how to make tailored pants. He opened the factory in around 1945 and opened around 1946 -- right when the war ended. He used to go to Atlanta -- it was very difficult to get machinery because this was after the war and this wasn't readily available. So he bought a lot of machinery in Atlanta, Georgia as well as in other areas. I have a doll that came from that trip. I have two very favorite dolls that came from trips that he made to Atlanta. He would go into Rich's Department Store in Atlanta. The first doll was Esmerelda, which I still have in my curio cabinet. The second doll I named Sally Waters. She was one of those dolls where the eyes - it was a mama doll. Anyway, on the one trip when he came back, he was opening the factory in this bank building, I remember standing on the front porch of this. It was just a block away from where the two streets of Northampton come together. I can still see him. He was bringing machinery home from Atlanta. Someone was driving--- it was some kind of van car that they had in the 30's, and it was loaded with machinery. He was bringing it up, he was going to go around the back of the building and was going to bring it in the back of the building. As he comes through this intersection -- he is hanging on the outside of the back -- hanging on to some machinery - his whole body is outside of the car. I'm sure he didn't come home from Atlanta that whole way. But, I saw him flying up the road, he's waving. That was such a clear memory. That was around 1945-1946 -- I had to be four years old. TF: He was strong as a bull. He was so strong. He helped carry our breakfront up the whole flight of steps at Valley View Apartments. MK: My mother would send me down the alley, and I could go to the factory whenever I wanted to. There was a little office where the secretary sat -- her name was Dorothy. TF: Dottie. MK: Was her name Dorothy Wahl? TF: No. MK: Anyway, her name was Dorothy. And, I would sit there and sharpen a lot of pencils and things like that. I felt so important -- I was four or five. Then other times, I would go to the spreading department -- where they would spread all the fabric before they cut it on the big, long tables that were located in the basement of the building. I remember sitting on the stairs that led down to the basement watching the men and they had these fluorescent lights -- it was very bright and lit -- even though it was a very dank kind of basement. I remember they had calendars up with war pin-up girls, Betty Grable and all of these--.and I learned the word "cheesecake" from them. TF Oh, she's a rotten kid! MK: Right -- they never took the calendars down, even though I was there. GAIL EISENBERG: I remember seeing those types of things. MK: I was at the factory a lot - just because I had nothing else to do, and I found it endlessly fascinating. TF: And, she was such a good girl -- it's not like she tore places apart. MK: No, I would just sit and watch. TF: I liked taking her with me with my friends. MK: She schlepped [Yiddish for dragged] me everywhere in Northampton. SC: And, of course all the cutters were men. MK: They were all men, oh yes, and all the sewers were women. Only the cutters and some of the foremen were men -- I'm trying to think what else--.no, that's it. All the rest were all women. GE: And they made women's pants. This was new at the time. MK: New, right. Then they also made - S.M. Elowsky had a company that made children's clothes -- Derby. All bottoms, always bottoms -- they never made tops. SC: In the 1950's did he make blue jeans? MK: No, never made jeans - always tailored pants. TF: And then maybe they made skorts? MK: They made skirts. TF: Like pants and skirts. MK: And just regular skirts they made, too. GE: We'll get into the business later. SC: What were your memories? TF: Related to the factory you mean? SC: And just your memories growing up in the area. TF: It was very nice. It was easy. You could walk anywhere any time of day and at night time you weren't frightened to walk the street or anything. MK: No, no. TF: Northampton was a booming little town. They had a few department stores, believe it or not. Maybe you heard it from other interviews. Lerner's , which was a Jewish family, Coleman's, which was a Jewish family - lovely department stores. They had everything -- bras, nightgowns, children's clothes. MK: Miller's? TF: But they weren't Jewish. MK: But we went there anyway. TF: Oh yeah. I'm just saying, the whole town was thriving and it was a great little town. There was one movie. I went to the movies a lot with mother. GE: Is that still the "Roxy"? MK: Yes, I went there all the time, too. TF: We lived just a block up from there. SC: Do you remember who owned Miller's? TF: Well I guess they were the Miller's! But they weren't Jewish. I can't recall right now. SC: But it wasn't Harvey? MK: Doesn't sound right. I think I would recognize it because my father would call him by his first name. We always like to go into Miller's -- they had a wonderful - in their basement they had a big hardware section. We got a lot of things there. He liked the hardware section at Miller's. GE: Where were these department stores? MK: On Main Street -- right across from where the factory was. TF: It was the "Main" street. GE: Because I've been to the Roxy. MK: It would be from the Roxy sort of north. TF: Well, up to 21st and down to 17th. MK: Right, between 17th and 21st was all the businesses. Above 21st was just residence. SC: Were most of the store owners Jewish? Because that was true in South Bethlehem. MK: A lot were. As she said, Coleman's, Lerner's. TF: How about the cotton shop? MK: Oh, Kroupes [?] -- that was our cousin. The furniture store, Glazier's -- Northampton Furnishing. TF: Well, that was Glaziers, but that was also Roth. MK: No, Roth was another one. TF: Oh, that's right. SC: Were they related to the Glazier's furniture store in Allentown. MK: Yes, yes, yes. TF: It's all relatives. MK: I can tell you a funny story about that - one that goes way back. This is an interesting story. When our grandfather, Sam Kivert, was at the dock in -- I think they said he left from Latvia -- what was the port there -- Riga, maybe? He was on the dock, ready to leave to come to America. He met another man, whose last name was Zowman -- who had a little boy -- his son with him, who also was going to America. The son's name was Cecil. TF: Oh, for Heaven's Sake. Well, maybe they have some of that. MK: They may, I don't know. SC: No, we don't. MK: Cecil was about six at the time. Cecil and his father were going to America. I don't know if the mother had died already -- I don't remember that. I got this story from Cecil, when he was close to 90. So they were standing on the dock, and they started talking, and they realized that they were going to the same place in America -- into the Lehigh Valley. I don't know why Mr. Zowman was going there -- I mean I don't know who his relatives were. So they made the passage together. Cecil said he just ran all over the ship all the time. They got to America, and they remained friendly. Zowman's name was changed to Salman here, and he worked for a number of years, he got lung cancer a few years after he came here, and he died when Cecil was an early teenager. Fast forward several generations, Cecil's daughter or Mr. Zowman's granddaughter married Sam Kivert's grandson. GE: Oh my goodness. MK: Buddy and Carol Kivert. So now we are related to the Salmans. And then the Salman's married into the Glazier's. So we are sort of -- by marriage -- related to all of them. TF: And then the Colemans. MK: We are related to some of the Colemans. TF: But I can't remember who. Somehow we were never friendly with many of the Bethlehem people. It's the strangest thing. MK: No, they came earlier and as was the habit in many of the immigrants, the earlier ones looked down on the ones that came later. They were more peasant-like. The earlier ones were more well-established. They didn't really want to be so associated with these lowly peasants that came over almost a generation after they did. I think that is a factor. TF: Oh the Coleman's. I don't know if that was a fact, but just that the one wife of one the Coleman's was a snob. Nobody was good enough for her. She really didn't even want to be Jewish. I think that is what it was. People like that! MK: We are also related to a lot of the Coleman's in the Lehigh Valley, as well. Any of these old families, I'm sure you'd find it in any small community, if you go back far enough and they all came over at the same time, how many people did they have to marry anyway? That was an interesting story from the boat. TF: That was the first time I heard that one. MK: Cecil told me that one. TF: Well, you didn't tell me. MK: Oh, I might have, sorry. TF: Maybe you did--you're right. SC: Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share? TF: Well I don't know how it would relate to what you are interested in. As I said, life there was very nice, it was very easy. My parents were known in the community -- they were liked. So I didn't ever have to deal with anti-semitism. MK: I didn't either. TF: That is something I didn't feel. I'm sure it was there somewhere. I know my father was very friendly with the Priest at the Catholic Church. He would go there a lot. Maybe they drank -- I don't know what they did there. I'm just saying that mother played bridge with a lot of the neighbors --so, it was a very nice life. It was a very nice life. I don't have any complaints. I had friends, boyfriends -- they didn't keep me from having boyfriends, or anything like that-- which a lot of people did. They didn't let their children mingle with non-Jewish. I guess my parents felt, why take that away? But, I did marry a Jewish man. MK: I guess the question is, "why did mother and dad move to Allentown?" TF: Oh, that's true. That's right. That's why they moved--.they wanted me to be exposed more. That's right. I forgot that part. And, I understood it wasn't anything they were angry with me about -- they just felt it was a better move for their children. Not just me -- for Maxine, too. MK: And, at the time, most of the Jewish families that lived in Northampton had already started to move to Allentown. TF: Oh, yes, that's right. I think the Roths had moved. MK: Roths had moved and the Levine -- from Levine and Sons - Morris and Helen moved. And, the Weins - Bernie. TF: Oh yes, a lot of their friends had moved. MK: And Bennie and Ann Glazier had built a house in the West End. All the Jewish friends had already moved. My parents didn't really feel the need to move because the factory was there [in Northampton]. He was still active in the factory. TF: He drove to the factory every day from Allentown. SC: So when did they move to Allentown? TF: In my senior year in high school. MK: 1950. SC: When they moved then, where did you live in Allentown? TF: 1137 Lehigh Parkway East. It's still there. It's at the tip of a little hill. It's right at the five points near the Parkway. We were invited to go visit there a few years ago. When we went, we laughed so hard -- what those people did to the house! Naturally, we'd say that! They closed off doors and windows. The little dressing room of mother and dad's room -- they made it into a little reading room. We thought that was so funny! MK: But the kitchen, it was forty years -- it was all the same appliances -- they never changed anything in the kitchen -- it was quite amazing. TF: It was a nice kitchen. MK: After we moved to Allentown - that was in 1950, Tama went to her senior year at Allen High -- which was hard - because all her friends were in Northampton. TF: I played hooky a lot and went back. I'm in the yearbook of Northampton. That's the school I go to for all the reunions -- because I knew everybody as young people. But, there were nice people at Allen -- I made friends with some of the people there--.that was not a problem. What else? MK: Soon after we moved here, our father (during the War Years -- during the 40's), he had the tailor shop during the day and Tama remembers, he also worked for the pants factory at night. TF: In Northampton. MK: The Billera Pants Factory had a government contract to make -- GE: This wasn't his pants factory? This was another pants factory? MK: No, they had a government contract to make army uniforms. If you worked in government, you didn't have to go into the service. He was a little bit old to be drafted at the time. He was in his late 20's when the war broke out. TF: They were drafting -- married men with children and older men. MK: So he went to work at the pants factory at night to avoid having to go into the army. Tama remembers sometimes he would fall asleep sitting on the toilet -- he would work all these jobs, all these hours. SC: But, he learned the pants business MK: And how to do a whole production, he was in charge of production. He was a supervisor. He learned that then. Then after the war, he felt comfortable enough to open his own factory. MK: He worked very hard. What he would do--.he was in the factory by 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. They would make the goods and very often at the end of the day he would drive to New York to deliver the goods. There were no superhighways then, it was the old 22 -- he would take a load in, deliver it. TF: But, he developed a very good reputation for quick delivery and anything else. Whatever he promised, he made good. I was just reading what mother said in this interview, that he was a "go-getter" -- that's what she called him! MK: He also smoked three packs of cigarettes a day at the time -- in addition to working all hours. Well, when he was 45, in 1954, he had a massive heart attack. Fortunately he survived it. He was in the hospital for six weeks -- that's what they did then. He had to stop smoking. TF: He stopped completely and never smoked again. MK: Yes he did. He did -- he started again -- smoking. TF: He told me he never smoked -- couldn't stand the smell of smoke. MK: That's after the second heart attack. TF: You are right. Go ahead. MK: So he had a heart attack. Randi, her oldest daughter, was about two at the time. So he completely had to change his lifestyle -- which he fortunately did. By this time, Tama's husband - Jules Fogelman -- he was doing something else for a while -- but he came into the factory to learn. TF: He learned, he made little aprons -- he learned how to sew. My husband did. I still have that apron he made when I was pregnant with Randi. MK: I have mine that Arnold made. TF: Oh do you -- that's too funny! MK: Later, I got married in 1960. My husband, Arnold Tanenbaum, was very entrepreneurial and knew that he wanted to go into the business. He was thinking about other things, but my father wanted him to come into the business and it was something that came very natural to him. So he went into the business, too. My father was -- pretty much - able to exit this intense time and effort in the business. SC: But, when he went to New York -- he got to know all the manufacturers? MK: Oh, sure. He knew everybody and they knew him. He had a very good reputation. GE: But he was a contractor -- he didn't have his own brand. TF: Correct. GE: He just made the pants for the label. TF: And cutting. Some factories only did the sewing. We did the cutting and sewing. MK: The whole garment. TF: Not the designing. That was what the brand did. SC: Maybe we should switch over to the business now? GE: Did you want to ask them anything -- in regards to their own education? SC: We didn't really talk about that - your own education, both of you? Did you ever become involved in the business? TF: Well, I became involved in the business when my husband died -- so that was 16 years ago. SC: What was your education? TF: I only went to high school. That's as far as I went. I got married right after high school. SC: What year did you get married? TF: 1952. SC: And that makes sense -- that's the way it was supposed to work back then. TF: Well it was fine for me -- I'm not saying it's for anybody else. I was involved in the business -- to a point. It was very stressful. That's all I can say -- I'm glad it's all over. Do I have to talk about any more? SC: Was your husband in the armed services at all? TF: He was before we got married. SC: So you were a post-war wife in a way -- in '52. TF: It was the Korean War. He didn't go overseas. SC: But you were a post-war wife. That was '45 into the late '50's. That was the culture at the time. TF: If you had a question, I could answer. But I can't think of where to begin. GE: And I'm going to ask you questions about the business. SC: That's fine. I just wanted to put you into the cultural context. It made sense that you went to high school and did you become a housewife then? TF: Oh, yes. SC: That's the culture at that time--.you were supposed to do that, to be a good wife. TF: I wasn't even aware of it -- it's something I liked to do. MK: You worked at Hess's for a year - as a personal shopper. TF: Oh, yes, I forgot about that. I liked that. MK: She was very good at it too. GE: And Maxine, what was your education? MK: When I graduated high school, all I really wanted to do was get married and have children. The person that I loved then, Arnold Tanenbaum, he was in college still, so I went to school - Fairleigh-Dickinson in New Jersey to become a dental hygienist. Which I left after a year -- I didn't like it -- it was too boring. Then he graduated college and so we decided to get married then. I was 19 and he was 22. So we got married, and he went into the service. I was a housewife, and I would type theme papers for people who were going to Muhlenberg and things like that -- in my spare time. Then we went to Georgia for two years where our oldest daughter was born. Came back and Arnold went into the business. I worked at the factory a couple of summers, and I also worked when he was in basic training -- I worked at the factory. Sometimes I did finishing, sometimes I worked in the office. Also, for a while later, when it was Arnold and Jules in the factory, they were having some problems with quality control. And I came in for a while and I walked around and did quality control -- for a couple of weeks in the factory. When I was 38 -- I went to Nursing School to become an RN. I went to the Community College, Arnold was still alive then. I graduated in 1983, and he died a month after I graduated. I became an oncology nurse for a while, and then I remarried. I married Don Klein, and I went back to school to become a nurse practitioner when I was 53, and then I worked for Planned Parenthood for 12 years until I retired. So I have a little association with the factory, but not much, the rest has been in medicine. SC: We are going to the business now. GE: We've already talked a lot about the business, but we are going to continue to have that conversation. Some of these things you've talked about, and we'll just go through it real quickly. In terms of who started the business, a little bit the origins, maybe just to recap and to summarize. TF: Well, our father started the business. Maxine, you were clear about where he started -- underneath the house? MK: I don't know . .. you thought he had an early or a few machines in a garage or somewhere under the house. TF: Maybe the garage thing was behind the bank, as you thought. MK: I remember it was '46 that he was in the bank building then. So part of the factory was in the bank building, but the pressing, the ultimate finishing -- where you put the belts in and all that kind of stuff, and the pressing - was done under our house -- a block up on Main Street. All the garments had to be taken out of the factory when they were finished and brought up to the finishing room. The factory was called Tama Manufacturing. When I was old enough to realize what had happened, I said to my father, "why didn't you name it after me?" He said, "I did, I named it after both of you. It's the first two letters of each of your names." GE: He was very smart! TF: Maybe that was it! MK: Oh, I don't know, it was so funny. I laughed at the time. I understood why he named it that. GE: Just so we understand, at this time did he already give up the tailor shop? MK: Yes. When he started the factory, he gave up the tailor shop because the pressers were then taken over by the factory -- it was part of the factory production. GE: Did he sell the tailor shop? MK: No, I think he just closed it. Because it was right there, he just closed it up and did this. GE: And just converted the machinery that he was using for pressing as a dry cleaner now became part of that area -- the finishing. MK: He probably had one or two other machines there. GE: Now, which manufacturer he was contracting for? And which brands? MK: Yes, right, a lot of different ones throughout the year. I know Derby was the children's line. TF: Then there was the Junior Rite. MK: What was the main one? TF: What was the one with the woman's name? A name that you knew-- MK: Liz Clairborne -- that was later. He made for Liz Clairborne - that was after Arnold and Jugge [nickname of Jules] were already there. The early years were mostly S. M. Elowski and his companies. GE: Tell us -- would you spell the name? The manufacturer that he principally worked with was - his partner was whom? MK: It wasn't a partner -- well actually he had a partner when he first opened his business. It was Jack Waitz. He decided that he needed a partner so when he first opened the factory in the bank, Jack Waitz (which is now -- Waitz -- I think they do -- advertising--) TF: Esther Halperin's brother -- Jack Waitz. Her maiden name was Waitz. GE: Oh My Goodness! Wow! MK: So, Jack Waitz was only a partner for a year or two. I don't even remember him. I don't even remember that he was a partner, I was very little, and I don't remember that name. TF: Evan Picone -- I can think of more, too. MK: That was another one -- he worked for Evan Picone. So, he separated with Jack -- he bought him out after a year. My father always had trouble with a partner because he put so much of himself into it. He thought it wasn't fair -- no one else would ever work as hard as he did. So he just wanted to stay on good terms and end the business. They didn't have a fight or anything. GE: So he was the sole proprietor and he did contract work for -- MK: S.M. Elowski -- something like that. GE: And, it was just for whatever brands S. M. Elowski owned. MK: He worked for him for many years -- maybe until Jugge came in. Then he started to move in other directions. GE: So your father's major customer was S. M. Elowski - until his son-in-law joined the business. Do you know if for S. M. Elowski, your father was his sole supplier? MK: No. He had others, he was large -- he was in New York. GE: Even after when your husband entered the business and later when your husband (Tama) entered the business, did his relationship with S.M. Elowski last for a very long time? TF: I think so. MK: As long as S. M. was involved -- S. M. was old -- older than my father. He was a real pioneer. TF: I think he was still when Jugge came in -- he was still involved. MK: I think so, too. Then they moved--.there were other brands. Those brands were sort of fading a little bit. Other brands were coming up. TF: They were getting more offers from other companies. So he diversified. Then my husband decided to put all his eggs in one basket. MK: That was after Arnold died, that was much later. TF: Right. MK: In the early days they worked for Evan Picone, Liz Clairborne, and then they got Alfred Dunner. GE: Bobbi Brooks? MK: Pandora. GE: Were all these manufacturers in New York? MK: Yes, and then they got Alfred Dunner. GE: Oh! MK: Alfred Dunner made a different kind of pants than what they normally would make. They always made pants with a set in waistband and a set zipper. But, Alfred Dunner made a pull on pants, which involved slightly different machinery. GE: And, this was about what time period? TF: Well, my mother-in-law was still alive. She's the one who introduced them. MK: Oh, really, I didn't know that. That's interesting. GE: And not surprisingly, because Alfred Dunner was for a little more mature woman. TF: It really made a hit -- it was a big money-maker. MK: Actually, it eliminated a lot of the operators that were zipper setters. At that time before Arnold died (my husband was already in the business, so that was in the early'60's). GE: At this time they were already producing for Alfred Dunner. MK: Right. But, they still needed to keep other firms that made the tailored pants so they wouldn't lose their very skilled operators for the other garments. My father believed it and Arnold and Jugge, at the time too, that you couldn't put your eggs in one basket. Because you never know when someone goes out of this business. So they always worked for a lot of different people. Who did Uncle Paul work for? He used to come in as an inspector. TF: That's right. You'll have to ask Aunt Evie. MK: My mother's brother-in-law used to be up in Hazleton. He had been a mattress maker. That went out of business, and he started to get into the garment industry. He started working for a company, and he was a supervisor to check quality. He ended up coming into our factory because we were making things for the company he was working for. TF: Was it someone up in the coal region? MK: No, it was in New York. He was there, too. During the '70's, the manufacturing began to go to China and Mexico. GE: To China that early? MK: In the '70's the factory had trouble getting stuff made there, so they decided to diversify. They opened another factory called Penn Garment that opened in Allentown. They made very specific things that I don't remember. GE: Separate from Tama Manufacturers? MK: Yes, but the three of them were owners. My father, Jugge and Arnold were owners of that. Also they got a new piece of machinery from Sweden, called Eton. They took another building behind the factory to install this machinery. It was a conveyor system that would bring the garment from one operator to another, so you wouldn't have to have somebody moving the garments all over. TF: It was supposed to be more efficient. MK: They did that. That was kind of a big deal. There was someone who pretty much just ran the Eton production. TF: How did we get involved with Ed Posner? MK: Eddie Posner had a factory, and he lost his factory. Her family was in the garment also - Beth. We were very friendly with Ed. Arnold was very friendly with Eddie. When we opened the Penn Garment factory, which I think was on Stefko Boulevard. I think that was where it was. Eddie agreed to run it. He ran that factory for them. GE: Do you know what this factor produced? MK: Ladies pants. When Arnold died, Eddie bought that factory and paid us out over the years, until it was paid off and then it went under, because there was too much competition. So right before Arnold died, of course he didn't know he was going to die, because he died very suddenly. He decided, he and Jugge . . . Jugge decided that he wanted out of the business. TF: To retire. MK: So they decided to--.what did they have a buy-out or something? TF: Oh yeah, that's how it was set up. MK: Arnold was going to buy Jugge's portion and just own it individually. He knew it had to be completely restructured. We had a lot of people working there for the last 30-40 years that were earning a lot of money, and they were not really doing very much and had to be let go. He knew he didn't have the heart to do it and neither did Jugge. TF: Oh No. MK: They hired somebody else to restructure - someone who was a little harder and that was Sid Gross. Sid Gross had a factory that had been "Bee Line" and his factory went under. Arnold had made arrangements to meet with Sid on August 8, 1983. Sid was supposed to come to the factory, and they were going to have a meeting -- or maybe it was the 9th. In the meantime, our oldest daughter, Jill, was going to school at Drexel, and she was doing an internship at Tama Manufacturing. She was learning "time study" and she had a real interest in the factory. GE: So was she doing industrial engineering? MK: She ultimately switched to that. SC: What's her name? MK: Jill, and now it's Goodman. She married Bob Goodman. SC: And that was 1983? MK: Yes. On August 8 -- the day before he was supposed to meet with Sid, he didn't feel well and Jill took him to the hospital, and he died in the emergency room from a massive heart attack. The next morning, I get a call from Sid Gross -- an angry call, around 11:00 in the morning. "Where is Arnold? I had a meeting with him, and he's not here--" Sid was just what we needed at the factory at the time. I had to tell him, I said, "I'm sorry, he can't make it, he died." Well, Sid was devastated. So, what happened at that time was that the papers were on the lawyer's desk for Jugge to sign, and for Arnold to sign so Jugge would be bought out. They were never signed. Jugge owned the factory. Arnold wasn't there. Jugge didn't want to own the factory. Fortunately, Sid came in, and he was perfect. And then your son, Mark, came back ; he was living in California at the time. He came East to work in the factory. TF: Just to work. He didn't want to take it over. MK: It wasn't anything that Mark was really excited about. TF: No, actually when he came back he didn't go right to the factory. He'd come up and visit sometimes and the people there said why doesn't Mark come in and start working there. MK: What Jugge decided to do then, which was very good for him and the right thing to do and it helped everything else -- was to just go with Alfred Dunner. Because Alfred Dunner was doing all of their production in America. They wanted a quick delivery and good control, it was an easy garment to make. So Jugge wisely decided, we're just going to do this -- I don't really want to do this -- we're just doing to do what's easy. Well, Alfred Dunner exploded! Jugge couldn't even handle all the production there, so he started to contract out to other factories. They kept 3-4-5 other factories going -- Bernie Filler's factory. GE: Were they all local ones? MK: Yes. GE: Who were the different ones? MK: Bernie Filler, he had Blue Mountain. GE: Palmerton with Di Paolo -- he did a lot of the work. He did Chaps. 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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Tama Fogelman and Maxine Klein, August 7, 2013
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Maxine Kline and Tama Fogelman talk about how their father, Saul Kivert, became a tailor at sixteen years old to help support his family when Saul’s father, a tailor, had a nervous breakdown. During World War II, Saul worked at a pants factory and learned the business. After the war, Saul started Tama Manufacturing-- a tailored women’s pants company.
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LVTNT-24
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2013-08-07
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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/2e1470f7834f44942c3a34e62afc0098.png
4727d58d3922354c965db623e074f685
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Title
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Lehigh Valley Textile and Needle Trades Oral History Project
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Susan Clemens-Bruder
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Tama Fogelman
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https://trexlerworks.muhlenberg.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LVTNT-04.xml
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5.4 February 5, 2016 Tama Fogelman, February 5, 2016 LVTNT-04 9:48 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Tama Fogelman Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 FogelmanTama_20160205.mp4 1.0:|29(8)|52(16)|75(9)|98(2)|125(4)|150(3)|177(7)|202(14)|243(4)|266(10) 0 https://youtu.be/m1ztFsMJSl0 YouTube video 0 Introduction—Tama Fogelman SC: Today is the 5th of November- of February, I was going to say November. 
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 ; TF: Thank you.
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 ; SC: Thank you. I hear you. Fifth of February, 2016. And what is your full name? 
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 ; TF: Tama Kivert Fogelman. 
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 ; SC: And could you- What is your address? 
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 ; TF: 3057 Fairfield Drive, Allentown, P.A. 0 30 Tama's Religious Observances SC: [W]e want to start with just stories about how you joined the synagogue and your religious life? 
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 ; TF: Okay, well, I think I can do that. My husband and I joined the reform Temple originally. We were married at Bethel, which is- Oh what is that?
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 ; GE: Conservative. 
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 ; TF: Conservative, right. And then we had our daughter and she was about eight or nine years old when you start religious training. And we thought we would join K.I. because it was more how we lived and how we believed. And so that's what we did, and at that time, you went to the rabbi's house- home on a Friday. It was very, very small. Maybe it was still at 13th Street, the reformed, I don't remember. But then we had other children, we had two more- we had two boys and we had another daughter ; and they all chose different synagogues, because that's who they were friendly with. And we felt very comfortable joining others also, we were part of the whole community. That's how we felt. We were friendly with different people of different beliefs in Judaism, and we were very comfortable with that. 0 111 Tama's Joy as Wife and Mother SC: Well, what are some of your favorite family memories, as a wife and mother? 
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 ; TF: Oh my gosh. So many, I don't know. We always loved getting together for everybody's birthdays. You know, my sister and my parents and—we always had two parties for our children, one with just their friends and one with the family. And it was always fun and wonderful and it was wonderful. I was very happy being a wife and mother, that's how I- There was nothing else I wanted to do at that time. But as I was telling Gail, you know, every day was a new day. Your life is evolving all the time, even though you're in the same job. But it- it changes all the time. So- And my husband, we were on the same page about many things. 0 322 Tama's Children, Grandchildren, and Great-Grandchildren SC: With each one of them, what is something that's really memorable for each one of them? Or where they are right now, what are they doing? 
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 ; TF: Oh my gosh. Well, and you know, it would take forever, but—well the one son is in town now. He- He was in our business. Of course, it closed. Now he's started a business in Philadelphia called Intelligent Office, and it's like a- What do you call those offices? What's the word?
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 ; GE: Sharing? 
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 ; TF: Well yeah, that, but it has another name to it. You know, they offer all kinds of help in office work—phone, services, rooms. I mean, it's a beautiful office. It's a- It's a- What do you call it that he bought?
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 ; GE: Oh, a franchise?
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 ; TF: Yeah, a franchise. And he seems very well-suited for this kind of thing—to bring in customers all the time, and... He likes meeting people. Well, you met him. He likes talking to people and hearing, you know, what they're doing. So he's been at that a few years now. So that's good. 
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 ; SC: This is Mark?
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 ; TF: That’s Mark, yeah. And Steve is in New York now, and he’s- he's a writer, an actor, and that kind of thing. And our oldest daughter is a visiting nurse. She's still doing it at sixty-two years old, she still is doing that. She likes it. And then our youngest daughter works for Riderwood. I don't know if you ever heard of that whole franchise of retirement villages, of big villages, very nice. So she- She became a real estate agent and then she went into this job. So she helps people, she helps recruit people and helps them with their move to the- to the facility. So she likes it. She's very good. So- And you know, I have a lot of grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—I have seven great-grandchildren now. 0 460 What Gave You the Most Meaning as Wife and Mother? SC: One other thing though—what meant the most, what gave you the most meaning of being a wife and mother?
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 ; TF: That's a very good question. I wish I had given it more thought. I think just to see them all become good people and they were- they were kind people, they were good people. They weren't mean spirited that I could see. I mean, maybe they had their moments, I'm not saying that. But in general, it felt good to see how they developed and- and- and wanted to do something in the- in the world. I-
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 ; SC: Seems like you and Jules were good parents.
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 ; TF: Well, I don’t know.
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 ; SC: That’s wonderful, wow.
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 ; TF: Well, that's good. But I mean, there were so many things I wanted to tell you. My sister said I should write it down. I said, “Oh, don't worry. I'll remember everything.”
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 ; SC: But it’s your view at this time.
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 ; TF: At that time, that’s right. 0 523 Fogelman Family's Synagogue Affiliations GE: With your four children, how they ended up being at different synagogues when they were growing up? 
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 ; TF: Oh, that's right, yes, that’s right. What didn't I already say that online?
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 ; GE: Well you said that you belonged to different synagogues, but here, you know- Each one ended.
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 ; TF: Okay, that’s right. Each one ended. Well the two girls ended at the Reform Synagogue. And the two- The one boy was bar mitzvahed at Bethel, where we had been married. And the other one at Sons of Israel, the Orthodox, because their friends were there. And so we never had to have a fuss about- to go to services. They- They- You know, they went with their friends. We went to the different ones, too. We felt very comfortable wherever we were. And we knew people in all the synagogues and it was very pleasant, very easy. 0 MovingImage Tama talks about the joy of growing up in Northampton and, later living in Allentown as wife and mother Interview with Tama Fogelman, February 5, 2016 SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is the 5th of November- of February, I was going to say November. TAMA FOGELMAN: Thank you. SC: Thank you. I hear you. Fifth of February, 2016. And what is your full name? TF: Tama Kivert Fogelman. SC: And could you- What is your address? TF: 3057 Fairfield Drive, Allentown, P.A. SC: And so, we want to start with just stories about how you joined the synagogue and your religious life? TF: Okay, well, I think I can do that. My husband and I joined the reform Temple originally. We were married at Bethel, which is- Oh what is that? GAIL EISENBERG: Conservative. TF: Conservative, right. And then we had our daughter and she was about eight or nine years old when you start religious training. And we thought we would join K.I. because it was more how we lived and how we believed. And so that's what we did, and at that time, you went to the rabbi's house- home on a Friday. It was very, very small. Maybe it was still at 13th Street, the reformed, I don't remember. But then we had other children, we had two more- we had two boys and we had another daughter ; and they all chose different synagogues, because that's who they were friendly with. And we felt very comfortable joining others also, we were part of the whole community. That's how we felt. We were friendly with different people of different beliefs in Judaism, and we were very comfortable with that. What else can I tell you? SC: Well, what are some of your favorite family memories, as a wife and mother? TF: Oh my gosh. So many, I don't know. We always loved getting together for everybody's birthdays. You know, my sister and my parents and--we always had two parties for our children, one with just their friends and one with the family. And it was always fun and wonderful and it was wonderful. I was very happy being a wife and mother, that's how I- There was nothing else I wanted to do at that time. But as I was telling Gail, you know, every day was a new day. Your life is evolving all the time, even though you're in the same job. But it- it changes all the time. So- And my husband, we were on the same page about many things. So that made it very nice. What? GE: Do you have a story you want to share of that- about you and Jules? Either as a young couple, before you had children, or-- TF: Well, it seemed like we always had children! I don't know, we- We just got along very well, I I mean, for the most part. There was not a lot of stress in our life. I'll tell you one funny story. We- I think we only had one child then, and we lived in a little house near my parents. And so we shared a car. We had one car. He took it to work. And then if- and then I went with- with my parents- my mother or something, if I had something to do. Or if he- If I needed the car, then he went with my father to work. So one time I remember that I borrowed the car, returned it, you know, and went to work the next day. And he called me, he said, "You know," he said, "you didn't fill up the tank, the gas tank. I ran out of gas." Oh, I felt so bad. "Oh, I'm so sorry, honey!" Then another time I borrowed the car and I did it again. But the thing that- and I- I felt bad. But from then on, I never did--the whole rest of my life, I never let it get below half, half full, half empty, whatever. But the point about him was he never yelled at me. Isn't that sweet? Because he knew, you know, I didn't do it on purpose and I felt bad. But I'm just telling you what type of person he was. And that's- that's what our relationship was. I think we had a lot of respect for each other and we had a lot of fun. He was- He was a lot of fun, and I guess I was, too. And- And that was our focus--to have fun with our children, also. So that's how we lived. SC: What are your- What are your favorite stories about your children, being a mother to your children? TF: Oh, yeah, oh my gosh. There's just so many, you know, each one--now I remember people saying, "Well, boys are this way, girls are another way." I never thought that way. To me, they were individuals and that's how I treated them. Really, as individuals. And I'm sure we made a lot of mistakes, I'm not saying that, but mostly they were good kids, they turned out very nice people, I think. Loving and good, you know, so we- we had a good life with them. We had a lot of trials and tribulations along the way with them, but- but it was a good family all- all the way around, yeah. SC: What- what- With each one of them, what is something that's really memorable for each one of them? Or where they are right now, what are they doing? TF: Oh my gosh. Well, and you know, it would take forever, but--well the one son is in town now. He- He was in our business. Of course, it closed. Now he's started a business in Philadelphia called Intelligent Office, and it's like a- What do you call those offices? What's the word? GE: Sharing? TF: Well yeah, that, but it has another name to it. You know, they offer all kinds of help in office work--phone, services, rooms. I mean, it's a beautiful office. It's a- It's a- What do you call it that he bought? GE: Oh, a franchise? TF: Yeah, a franchise. And he seems very well-suited for this kind of thing--to bring in customers all the time, and... He likes meeting people. Well, you met him. He likes talking to people and hearing, you know, what they're doing. So he's been at that a few years now. So that's good. SC: This is Mark? TF: That's Mark, yeah. And Steve is in New York now, and he's- he's a writer, an actor, and that kind of thing. And our oldest daughter is a visiting nurse. She's still doing it at sixty-two years old, she still is doing that. She likes it. And then our youngest daughter works for Riderwood. I don't know if you ever heard of that whole franchise of retirement villages, of big villages, very nice. So she- She became a real estate agent and then she went into this job. So she helps people, she helps recruit people and helps them with their move to the- to the facility. So she likes it. She's very good. So- And you know, I have a lot of grandchildren, and great-grandchildren--I have seven great-grandchildren now. So it's very exciting to hear what they're all doing, and I have to write down what they say they're doing, because I may not remember it all, it's so foreign to me, but I like learning about it, you know? So what else did you want to know? GE: I think that's fine. SC: Yeah, that's fine. One other thing though--what meant the most, what gave you the most meaning of being a wife and mother? TF: That's a very good question. I wish I had given it more thought. I think just to see them all become good people and they were- they were kind people, they were good people. They weren't mean spirited that I could see. I mean, maybe they had their moments, I'm not saying that. But in general, it felt good to see how they developed and- and- and wanted to do something in the- in the world. I- SC: Seems like you and Jules were good parents. TF: Well, I don't know. SC: That's wonderful, wow. TF: Well, that's good. But I mean, there were so many things I wanted to tell you. My sister said I should write it down. I said, "Oh, don't worry. I'll remember everything." SC: But it's your view at this time. TF: At that time, that's right. SC: And so that's fine. TF: Yeah, that's right. GE: One- One last story, since you had said it earlier and I just thought it was very cute. With your four children, how they ended up being at different synagogues when they were growing up? TF: Oh, that's right, yes, that's right. What didn't I already say that online? GE: Well you said that you belonged to different synagogues, but here, you know- Each one ended. TF: Okay, that's right. Each one ended. Well the two girls ended at the Reform Synagogue. And the two- The one boy was bar mitzvahed at Bethel, where we had been married. And the other one at Sons of Israel, the Orthodox, because their friends were there. And so we never had to have a fuss about- to go to services. They- They- You know, they went with their friends. We went to the different ones, too. We felt very comfortable wherever we were. And we knew people in all the synagogues and it was very pleasant, very easy. SC: That's good. Thank you. GE: Thank you, that's wonderful. And I'm going to walk you down, so he- TF: I don't think I want to see it, though. GE: No, no, no, no, no. It will be beautiful. TF: Because I'm not good at this at all. 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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Tama Fogelman, February 5, 2016
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Tama talks about the joy of growing up in Northampton and, later living in Allentown as wife and mother
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2016-02-05
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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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