The Columbus Jewish Historical Society

This interview was made on September 5, 2006. Interviewer is Naomi Schottenstein. The interview starts already in progress.

Interviewer:…mention the fact that this interview is a gift of Gerry and
Ed Ellman for your birthday, isn’t it? Is that what it was?

Meizlish: Yes, I think that’s what it was.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Which is a very nice idea and I just want to interject
that. They’re good friends of yours I know and they were happy to do this. I’m
going to ask you what your Jewish name is and if you have any nicknames and who
you were named after.

Meizlish: Okay. My Hebrew name is Avrohom Yehuda and I was
named after a friend of my father’s who was married to one of his cousins and
it was his father’s name. And then the father whom I was named after was Jake
Krakowitz.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And I’m not sure why.

Interviewer: Sounds like they might have been buddies from way back.

Meizlish: Yeah, well they were both in the scrap business and Jake’s wife
was a cousin to my father.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Was Meizlish the original family name?

Meizlish: Indeed it was. It goes back quite a way and we’ve documented 10
or 12 generations for sure and we think it goes back even to the 1700s.

Interviewer: Really?

Meizlish: There was a Rabbi Meizlish in Austria who was on the Parliament at
a time when Jews were accepted, very short period of time there when you talk
about Austria having a rabbi on their Parliament. It really, truly did happen.

Interviewer: Huh.

Meizlish: Then I’d have some documentation of that at home somewhere.

Interviewer: Well that’s valuable.

Meizlish: Yeah, so that truly is the name and that’s, I didn’t know that
that was our family name for sure till well after my father passed away and the
then shammus at the shul said, oh he remembered my father’s bris
in the old country.

Interviewer: Oh yeah?

Meizlish: And I asked him where the name Meizlish came from and he really
didn’t know so he made up a little story and he said, “Well you know
everybody was trying to escape the Czar’s army then so they would pick names
off of tombstones ’cause the people are already dead”. And I sort of half
believed that for a number of years and found out that wasn’t true at all.

Interviewer: Well there were a lot, many stories about where origins of names
came by and . . . .

Meizlish: That’s true. That’s true.

Interviewer: And some of them were colorful.

Meizlish: About ten generations ago a man named Meizlish has two sons and one
changed his name from Meizlish to Maizlish so, M-A-I instead of M-E-I.

Interviewer: But your name’s always been spelled . . . .

Meizlish: My name’s always been spelled M-E-I.

Interviewer: Z-L-I-S-H?

Meizlish: Correct.

Interviewer: Okay. That’s kind of interesting that you were able to trace
your family back that many generations. How did your family come to Columbus? I
mean, where did they originate?

Meizlish: They originated, my father’s family originated in the Ukraine and
he was born there, came here when he was 15 or 16 years of age. There’s two
stories surrounding that. I have a first cousin who gives one version of it and
I have always been told the version was my father came here on his own and
couldn’t leave Ellis Island because he didn’t have enough money to get off
the boat so he went back to England and worked for several months and then paid
his passage back to the United States.

Interviewer: Hmmmm.

Meizlish: And settled in the Italian neighborhood in Manhattan. Learned to
speak three dialects in Italian before he could speak English. So he spoke
Yiddish and Ukrainian and Italian.

Interviewer: Hmmmm.

Meizlish: And the reason he came to this part of the country, this fellow
Jake Krakowitz I mentioned earlier, the wife had written him letters or Jake
did. I’m not sure at this point. And Jake was in the scrap business and he
told him what great oppor- tunities there was to be had in this part of the
country. My father at that time was about 19 years of age and had accumulated
half a dozen grocery stores. As an entrepreneur he bought out his original boss.
His many little stories that he had, finally told me before he died about some
of the things that went on in the store that would make interesting listening
but we’d be here for about 16 hours if I went into all that.

Interviewer: You’ll have to take time to record those stories some day
yourself.

Meizlish: We will. That’s why I asked you if we could have a sequel some
time.

Interviewer: Oh well we might just do that.

Meizlish: So . . . .

Interviewer: Now wait a minute. Where was your father’s father, your
grandfather?

Meizlish: He accumulated enough money and he brought the whole family over.
He had four sisters and a brother. And the cousin I referred to was his, her
father was Harry Meizlish who was my father’s brother. And he was a six foot
something where my father was about five foot six. But their father, whom I only
met a few times because he died when I was very young and lived in New York and
in Baltimore, Maryland for a period of time. And his name was Jacob. And his
wife, my grandmother, I never knew so . . . .

Interviewer: But you knew your grandfather?

Meizlish: I knew him slightly.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Florence lived with him over a store that he owned, with her father
and mother and she was an only child and she’s still living. She’s in
California where they had the big earthquake some years ago, Norwood or, I can’t
remember the name of it.

Interviewer: They have a lot of them.

Meizlish: Yeah and she has one daughter who became blind at age 20 but did go
on to law school and graduate and currently works with a judge in the Los
Angeles area somewhere.

Interviewer: So this would be a cousin? Your first . . . .

Meizlish: First cousin.

Interviewer: First cousin?

Meizlish: Right. Her father, my Uncle Harry, passed away about a week before
his 44^th birthday, a week after Florence married her husband. She was
on her honey- moon and it was right, the last year or two of the war and her
husband had just gotten discharged and he was from St. Louis.

Interviewer: World War . . . .

Meizlish: Two.

Interviewer: Two?

Meizlish: World War II.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Her name was Paul, Florence Paul was her name. I’m pretty sure
that’s what it was.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I could be mistaken.

Interviewer: Well let’s just scratch that.

Meizlish: And my mother was born in Riga, Latvia. Incidentally that’s where
my wife Marcie’s mother was born, also in Riga, Latvia. And her father was
from near Poland. He used to joke about the fact that it was sometimes Poland
and it was sometimes Ukraine.

Interviewer: It really was I think that . . . .

Meizlish: Because the borders moved in and out. I read the book
“Poland” many years ago and it seemed to be like it was a like a
balloon that was inflated and deflated and parts of it would belong to other
countries and then they would get it back. And it was kind of an interesting
history of the country.

Interviewer: Which is probably why so many left that area and came to this
country.

Meizlish: I would assume that’s one of the reasons. Plus there was a lot of
anti-Semitism there as there was in the Ukraine. My father lived in a little
community called Svinuch or Svinucha.

Interviewer: Do you have any idea how that’s spelled at all?

Meizlish: Yeah it’s probably I think in English would be like S-V-I-N-U-C-H
or possibly an A on the end of it. It no longer exists. There is a book in the
Holocaust Museum in Washington that was written by a man named Diment,
D-I-M-E-N-T, and it’s about the people, the Jews that lived in that shtetl.
And the Meizlish name is all through it. So there were a lot of Meizlish
families that lived there in that particular little shtetl because I know
in Baltimore, Maryland, where one of my father’s sisters lived with her
husband, they had something called a Svinucha Society, which I never knew what
the heck it was as a child. All I knew, it was a lot of relatives. And it was
sort of a collective as was the wont in those days, people would band together
under a circle or all kinds of names to be self-help organizations, you know,
help one another out when they were in trouble and I think that was a family,
self-help kind of a group because they met regularly there.

Interviewer: I think that was probably the way things were in that period of
time when people came from different . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: parts of Europe. They were able to have their own
brotherhood/sisterhood kind of . . . .

Meizlish: Exactly.

Interviewer: organizations.

Meizlish: Or something like, you know, in Biblical times that’s how the
Masonic organization started you know.

Interviewer: There are, as a matter of fact I think that still goes on
because I know families, that people who go to Florida for the Winter for
instance, and they congregate as groups from Ohio or groups from Ohio State. I
mean it’s not the same kind of self-help but the camaraderie that they have
with each other . . . .

Meizlish: Oh yes.

Interviewer: in order to communicate something in common, so I think that’s
kind of an interesting point.

Meizlish: Yeah I remember one other name from New York somewhere that, an
organization like that that was called Workman’s Circle.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Or maybe that was from Columbus, I don’t know.

Interviewer: Workman’s Circle, there was a purpose for that.

Meizlish: Yeah, it was probably maybe like an early union or . . . .

Interviewer: It was.

Meizlish: Whatever.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Were able to help people financially . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah because . . . .

Interviewer: get started.

Meizlish: You know, in those days, too when Marcie’s mother came over, her
father was a tailor and her mother worked, and her mother’s sisters worked in
these sweat- shops making clothes when they were 11 and 12 and 13 years of age.

Interviewer: Hmmm.

Meizlish: And they worked like 12 hours a day six days a week for a pittance,
and they . . . . .

Interviewer: Sure and they needed that extra help.

Meizlish: They needed that extra help.

(Sound fades out for a while before returning to a normal volume.)

Meizlish: . . . . and a lot of people started out that way.

Interviewer: So what do you remember about, you know, your grandparents? Did
you remember anybody besides your grandfather and your other grandparents?

Meizlish: Well on my mother’s side, how, you asked how we came to Columbus.

Interviewer: Okay.

Meizlish: That’s how my father came to Ohio and he lived in a small town
near Mansfield and a little town called Greenville where my sister Sylvia was
born And a little story that’s interesting there, when there was a town
doctor. It was a very small town. And when my mother was ready to give birth my
father sent someone for the doctor who happened to be at a party. And he came
over to the house with his little bag and he was drunk. And as the delivery
started, he passed out.

Interviewer: Oh boy.

Meizlish: So my father completed the delivery of the baby.

Interviewer: Wow that’s interesting.

Meizlish: Injuring one of the nerves in I think it was her left eye which she
kind of suffered with a lot of her life.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Uh huh.

Meizlish: My sister Sylvia who now lives in Tucson.

Interviewer: Uh huh, well we’re going to get to your siblings . . . .

Meizlish: . . . .

Interviewer: in a moment, yeah.

Meizlish: But I think my mother’s father came to Columbus because he had a
brother that lived here and how he got here or why he got to Columbus, I don’t
know. His brother was Fannie Gilbert’s father.

Interviewer: Oh.

Meizlish: And that’s how my mother and Fannie Gilbert were first cousins.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: So that Ivan and his brother are my second cousins.

Interviewer: (garbled ‘ tape fades out)

Meizlish: And the Schottenstein family on the other side.

Interviewer: (garbled)

Meizlish: . . . . But anyway, the family name, when my grandfather came here
his name was Kress, K-R-E-S-S. But he changed the name to Rosenthal. And why did
he do that? Because Ivan’s grandfather, my great uncle I guess, changed his
name to Rosenthal. And I’ve asked Ivan many times if he knew why and he says
he doesn’t know. And of course the generation that would know predeceased my
inquiries so I guess I will never know . . . .

Interviewer: Yeah that’s . . . .

Meizlish: why that occurred.

Interviewer: quite a change of names.

Meizlish: So that, yeah to go from a simple name to Rosenthal. But that’s
what they did. And my grandfather was quite a character too. He died when I was
two years old. I am now 78 so that’s 76 years ago. But he was an Orthodox
rabbi and was . . . .

Interviewer: Your mother’s?

Meizlish: My mother’s father.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And he was the Torah reader at the Agudas Achim in the early 1900s.
My father had bought a Torah for him and it was kept with all the other Torahs
until I went looking for it one day and Rabbi Ciner helped me look for it but it
disappeared. So we don’t know where it was because we wanted to do a L’dor V’dor
to the children and we wanted to use his Torah. So he announced that from the
bima but it wasn’t my grandfather’s Torah ’cause they couldn’t find it.

Interviewer: It’s interesting where it might be today.

Meizlish: And who knows where it is today. And I remember when the old shul
moved here to Roosevelt and Broad Street, I was about 20-21 years of age. My
father being the kibbitzer that he was, asked me to hold the Torah with
the other elders of the synagogue while the photographer was going to come take
our picture. Topy I believe it was.

Interviewer: Herb Topy?

Meizlish: Well he didn’t come back when Herb Topy got here so I, and then
that picture which is also lost somewhere, nobody can seem to find it. So I don’t
think they kept artifacts in a very secure place over the years.

Interviewer: Well I think that’s why we feel so strongly about it here at
the Jewish Historical Society and hopefully they can . . . . recorded and
preserved . . . .

(Garbled conversation.)

Interviewer: If you come up with any . . . .

Meizlish: . . . . I certainly will pass them on. I have the original stock
certificate for the Excelsior Club.

Interviewer: Oh . . . . That’s interesting too. I’m not sure that it’s
in our files. That might . . . . .

Meizlish: Well I do have one at home so I could give it to you.

Interviewer: Yeah think about items you might have around that could be of
interest. That’s all history.

Meizlish: It is, it is history.

Interviewer: Do you know, can you remember a tradition as a youngster that
your family carried on, possibly from their family, holiday traditions or, you
know, things that they, business traditions?

Meizlish: Hmmm. Business traditions. Well I was 25 years old when my father
passed away. I did work for him for five years after I graduated Ohio State. I
was 20 years old when I graduated and went right to work in the family business
which was the scrap iron and the wiping rag business. He had two businesses and
. . . .

Interviewer: Now were they, was that established by your father or . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: We also, we did live in Middletown, Ohio, for four years. I think
it was from ’36 to early 1940. My father was a broker for the Armco Steel Mill
at that time.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And he had kept a scrap yard here in Columbus, Ohio, where Veteran’s
Memorial is on West Broad Street.

Interviewer: Really, that was the property that he had?

Meizlish: Yes that was the property and there was a railroad track there that
came into the scrap yard and the paper yard and I remember that very well. It
burned down during the Depression. That was hoboes that came into a wooden
building full of scrap paper worth a lot of money but with no insurance and
burned the place down. That may be part of why we moved to Middletown. I’m not
sure.

Interviewer: Uh huh. The hoboes would have come off of the train . . . .

Meizlish: Off the tracks. They ride the rails into the tracks. But a lot of
people who hear this probably won’t understand what a hobo was. I don’t know
that I should go into explaining that or not.

Interviewer: Well yeah, it would be, it . . . .

Meizlish: Well hoboes were men that were out of work, legitimately, most of
them, looking for work wherever they could find it. And they had no money and
usually nothing to eat. There was no backup Social Security net to take care of
anyone. The banks had gone topsy-turvy and it was a bad time. So they would ride
on the freight trains until they were caught by a railroad policeman or other
and that’s how they would get from city to city.

Interviewer: But it wasn’t an illegitimate thing to do was it . . . .
(garbled conversation)

Meizlish: Yeah because they were riding free on the train. They weren’t,
and it was rather dangerous too because some of them would be in an empty box
car and other ones would have to sneak on by hanging on underneath some of these
trains to, I don’t really know. I was a child then and it’s only stories
that I’ve heard. But I did see some of these people in the 30s. We lived on
Kimball Place off of Livingston Avenue and I recall as a 7-8 year old child men
coming to the door asking if there was any work could be done. And a lot of
times not for money. “Could I have a sandwich?

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: They were starving.

Interviewer: Yeah I remember that, knocking on the door . . . . (garbled
conversation)

Meizlish: . . . . That’s right.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Yeah. Often times you didn’t have anything for them to do so she
still would give them whatever we had in the house and things were not easy for
any families in those days.

Interviewer: During the Depression?

Meizlish: That’s correct.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Correct. And I think a lot of the families that you’ve
interviewed would probably tell you the same things.

Interviewer: (garbled)

Meizlish: Well I know that as a child, I didn’t know that there was a
Depression. I always had a warm place to sleep and food to eat.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I do know that my first bicycle wasn’t a new one. It was one that
my father must have purchased from someone. It was a second-hand bicycle and I
taught myself how to ride it by leaning up against a tree and falling down a
million times before I was able to ride. Didn’t feel deprived of anything at
the time.

Interviewer: . . . .

Meizlish: That’s correct. I do know that we had a maid in the house who was
earning a small amount of money but wasn’t too small for the time when she was
there, also had her free room and board. And when mother came to her one day and
said that she couldn’t pay her any more but she was welcome to stay if she
needed or wanted to. She accepted the offer ’cause she had no place to go and
would probably not have anything to eat as well. But when times got better,
Father and Mother paid her again. But that’s how tough things were in those
days.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I do know that people whose families have lots of money today were
peddling fruits and vegetables coming down the street off a truck or a horse and
a wagon and the guys with the pushcarts who were collecting whatever junk they
could in the neighborhood to take to the local scrap yard. My uncle Boris
Ozeroff had one of those local scrap yards, not too far away from the shul.
But he was known as the gentleman junk dealer of Columbus. He always wore a
shirt and tie.

Interviewer: . . . .

Meizlish: He had been in the haberdashery business at one time.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And he looked, he was very, he also escaped from the Czar with his
mother. His father I think had passed away in the old country and he was
something akin to a corporal or sergeant in the Czar’s army. And they made
their way across Europe. And I remember his mother we called “Babu”
and she mentioned they always had a gun under the pillow at night.

Interviewer: Now what was their relationship to your family?

(Mixed garbled voices)

Meizlish: And he also, he married one of my mother’s sisters, Alvie Ozeroff,
who had two children, Leonard who became a physician and lived in Warren, Ohio
most of his life and has retired to Florida and passed away down there a couple
of years ago. And his sister, Dolly we call her, lives here in town and married
to Ed Schechter, an optometrist.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: But what I wanted to tell you, I got sidetracked there . . . .

Interviewer: You were telling Boris’ mother . . . .

Meizlish: Oh yeah, Boris’, and Boris had a cousin in New York who married
another one of my mother’s sisters.

Interviewer: . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah, Boris’ wife.

Interviewer: . . . .

Meizlish: Mother had three sisters and a brother.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Her brother’s name was Hellman. My oldest son is named after him
and another uncle.

Interviewer: What was the first one’s name? What was the name of the first
one?

Meizlish: My uncle Hellman?

Interviewer: What was his first name?

Hoffman: That was his first name.

Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Meizlish: My son’s name was Bruce Howard Benyomin Hellman.

Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Meizlish: The second sister named Bessie, who came to Columbus and passed
away at Heritage House, was married to Benjamin Levitin.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And that’s how Milton Levitin, who was a pediatric physician here
for many years and who passed away last year, is my first cousin.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And he had two brothers, one who was named Norman, born about the
same time as my brother Norman and he just passed away this past month. And he
was retired, living in Florida. The third brother is named Howard and he is my
age. We’re three months apart. He was born on Lincoln’s birthday and I was
born on Memorial Day.

Interviewer: . . . .

Meizlish: Holiday boys.

Interviewer: . . . .

Meizlish: Right. And he lives in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a Dean
Emeritus of the medical students at Yale University.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And he, when he was in his thirties, rewrote the medical curricula.
Very bright young man. Graduated medical school age 21. My uncle Hellman, his
uncle as well, had moved to Texas and he was a chemist and he invented some
products during the war and made quite a nice bit of money doing that. And he,
the uncle, married a woman from Cincinnati and her family were named Meyer or
Meyers and they had a shop that made clothing, silk clothing, ladies’ dresses
and was sold door-to-door all over the country eventually. And during World War
II, the government more or less took over their factories, as they did my father’s
factory. They gave them the option of running it and making materials for the
government or giving it to the government who would then give it back to them
when the war was over. In both instances the owners, my dad here and my uncle’s
in-laws in Cincinnati, decided to keep their factories and they made silk
parachutes for the Army Air Corps.

Interviewer: Uh huh. So the government needed those resources?

Meizlish: That’s correct. And they needed . . . .

Interviewer: For the war effort.

Meizlish: wiping rags people, believe it or not. They used them on, a lot in
the Navy, cleaning the equipment and machinery and the guns and etcetera.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: So the government requisitioned everything except a small quantity
that we were allowed to sell to industry or former customers. But it was all
based upon a series of, you had to have a number. What did they call it?

Interviewer: Like a permission kind of thing?

Meizlish: No not a permission. It was a requisite priority. It was a priority
number and you got, the more government work that your factory was involved in,
the higher the priority. If you were a trucking company moving goods to sustain
a popula- tion or the government’s war effort, you had a higher priority. At
that time my father did have a fleet of trucks because he had a scrap business
as well and of course he was able to obtain more gasoline to run the trucks.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I remember in the 30s, and this might have happened in Middletown,
Ohio. There was a big flood in Cincinnati. They were without water facilities,
drinking water, etcetera, and my father had about 15 or 20 vehicles at the time.
And he sort of donated the use of them or most of them to carry water from the
Middletown area to the people in Cincinnati so they’d have drinking water.

Interviewer: Well that was a critical need.

Meizlish: Yeah. Well he, my father was a very charitable guy and he . . . .

Interviewer: Before we go on with this, I want to make sure that I have your
mother’s family covered. We have . . . .

Meizlish: Oh okay. Let’s go back to mother’s . . . .

Interviewer: Yeah, let’s make sure we have all of your mother’s . . . .

Meizlish: My mother’s four sisters. Okay. The second sister, the Levitin,
her name was Bessie. And I already mentioned Alvie.

Interviewer: Right.

Meizlish: And the third sister was Anna who lived in Birmingham, Alabama with
her husband who was born in Mobile, Alabama.

Interviewer: And he was, what’s his name, what was his name?

Meizlish: Oh their name is . . . .

Interviewer: Slipped. It happens.

Meizlish: Yes it does. I’m having a senior moment here. Brook, B-R-O-O-K.
And Brook, and they were in the restaurant supply business, he and his brother.
And they had quite a history there as well as did my aunt before she married
him. She was a very intelligent woman and that’s the picture I donated to the
Historical Society, her graduation from Commerce High in Columbus, Ohio.

Interviewer: Commerce High?

Meizlish: Commerce High.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Haven’t heard of that one.

Meizlish: Well I don’t know whether it was the predecessor of Central High
or not but I think it was downtown and I know that there were other Jewish
people in that picture. One of the gentlemen was an accountant here in town. I
think he went, he died in his nineties as well. My aunt Anna was 92 when she
passed away. She was one of the longer-lived ones in the family. But she worked
for the ZOA, the Zionist Organization of America, in New York City as a
secretary and whatever else they had her do. And she met many of the notables
and early Zionists, the popular names, including Albert Einstein. He was at a
meeting that she was with and he wrote her a thank you note which . . . .

Interviewer: Hmmm.

Meizlish: one of her sons has now, thanking her for her courtesy and all, you
know, looking after her when he was at the meeting.

Interviewer: Well that would be valuable memorabilia.

Meizlish: Yes, well it’s not in my possession.

Interviewer: I understand.

Meizlish: And I’m sure her, she has two boys and one, they’re both
lawyers. They went to the University of Michigan Law School and the one in New
York was a Special Prosecutor for the State of New York a long time and now I
think he . . . .

Interviewer: What are their names?

Meizlish: His name was Hellman. He was named after uncle Hellman ’cause he
was born after my uncle Hellman died.

Interviewer: Uh huh. And his brother?

Meizlish: And the brother was named David.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Which might have been after his grandfather and my grandfather
whose name was Dovid Nochem. My sister’s oldest son for example is
named David Nathan, Dovid Nochem, as well.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah. Your, and your father, I want to make sure that
that generation is covered. Your father’s brothers and his siblings?

Meizlish: Well I wasn’t well acquainted with two of his sisters. I had met
them, one I knew better than the other ’cause her husband had been a
pharmacist in New York and was always going broke and asking my father for money
but his . . . .

Interviewer: What were their names?

Meizlish: Glick. And Howard Glick I think has passed away and he became very
success- ful in business.

Interviewer: But your father’s sister, her first name?

Meizlish: . . . .

Interviewer: Her last name was . . . .

Meizlish: It might have been Sadie. That was Sadie Glick. Yeah. And the other
sister I think I only met one time in my life and she had no children. The
sister that lived in Baltimore, she married a man who was, became shell-shocked
in World War I and never really worked. I guess they have a different name for
shell-shocked today.

Interviewer: What was her name, your aunt?

Meizlish: Sokelar.

Interviewer: Her first name?

Meizlish: Her first name was, again I have to think for a moment.

Interviewer: Do you remember if they had children?

Meizlish: Oh yes, I know their children. One of them lives in Washington,
D.C. right now and is very close with my daughter Ellen. His name is Milton
Sokelar. And Milton Sokelar had quite a career of his own. He was the
highest-ranking civil servant in the General Accounting Office and actually for
a two-year period when there was a not-appointed head of it, he actually ran it.
He was an accountant and an attorney and is still sitting on several commissions
in Washington today. Very well respected, very humble man. Did not brag of his
status at all. As a matter of fact, I had to question him on several occasions
just to learn anything about it. But I did. That was quite a career that he had
there and a well-respected individual. He had, there were two sisters. He had
two sisters. One passed away. She had no children. She married and passed away
probably 25-30 years ago. She wasn’t a very healthy person. And the younger
sister lives in Florida and she lost a 30-year-old daughter in an automobile
accident, as did cousin Howard Glick. It was an unfortunate spate of
circumstances.

Interviewer: Wait a minute. We got your father’s sisters covered.

Meizlish: So those are the father’s sisters.

Interviewer: Okay.

Meizlish: And I’ll probably think of her name because I liked her very much
and we were close at one time and I went to her funeral which was an extremely
Orthodox funeral. And I saw something that I hadn’t seen. Maybe other people
who might be listening to this at some point in the future will know, but the
pallbearers had to actually carry the casket. There was no roadway to the spot
that she was buried in.

Interviewer: Oh carry it through the cemetery?

Meizlish: Through the cemetery. And we stopped about halfway there. I was one
of the pallbearers. And the . . . .

Interviewer: Are we talking about carrying from the funeral home?

Meizlish: Yeah from, no. They drove us to the cemetery.

Interviewer: Oh the cemetery. Okay.

Meizlish: And from there, it was probably a couple of hundred yards that we
had to carry this. And we stopped about halfway. And the rabbi opened up the
casket and took a bag of earth that was in a plastic bag that had came from
Israel and placed it under her head and closed the casket again. Now I’ve
never heard of anyone doing that since or that I thought it was against the
rules to even open the casket.

Interviewer: Open it, yeah, you would think so.

Meizlish: But this was an extremely Orthodox guy. I once . . . .

Interviewer: That was a sharp memory in your mind.

Meizlish: Oh yeah. It really made an impression on me.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I know I was not a young person any more. I had to be maybe 30 or
more. And it happened after, I used to know the rabbi from the Beth Jacob. What
was his name, was it Greenwald?

Interviewer: Greenwald? Yeah.

Meizlish: Greenwald. And I used to drive him places now and then when he had
to go somewhere and I found out from him that he was an authority on burial
rites but my aunt hadn’t passed away yet so I never had the opportunity to ask
him that question.

Interviewer: That never was answered?

Meizlish: Just an interesting sidelight and maybe somebody who listens to
this will give me the answer.

Interviewer: Be curious, huh. Now, and then your father had brothers, right?

Meizlish: He had one brother.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And that was my Uncle Harry who worked with him and for him
according to Florence. That was, we always have different stories but . . . .

Interviewer: Well . . . .

Meizlish: I think my father . . . .

Interviewer: the weight of importance . . . .

Meizlish: Yes, we shall let all of that pass.

Interviewer: Yeah. And who were his children, your Uncle Harry’s children?

Meizlish: He only had the one child and that’s Florence.

Interviewer: Oh okay.

Meizlish: And I described her earlier.

Interviewer: Yeah right, you did.

Meizlish: And she and her husband opened up a bookstore at Ohio State
University near, what’s the, Long’s Bookstore. And he worked for Long’s
for a while in their rare book section. And then they opened a business for rare
books. And then they moved to California and I think that’s where her daughter
was born, so. And I never met her daughter, which I would like to some day.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: My father had cousins in California and as a matter of fact, one of
the cousins was named Harry Meizlish and he was involved in the early movie
business and he became quite wealthy. And I had never met him but intended to
and I was finally able to locate him in a rather roundabout way. I could tell
you the story but it was through my neighbor Willy Goodman’s daughter.

Interviewer: Oh yeah. She lives in California.

Meizlish: Well Willy Goodman lived next door to my father and I lived in that
house as well and lived there with my wife after he passed away, for forty more
years. And she married, Willy’s daughter married a man from, who was a lawyer
and he was more of a corporate-type lawyer, you know. He got a job with Max
Factor in L.A. And then I met some guys, I’m going back in the story. I used
to work with the Advanced Gifts Division years ago for the Federation. And they
had a couple of counsels from the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles were there
and we met them and they immediately recognized our name. I think my brother
Norman was with me at that meeting and I forget whose house it was at. It might
have been at the Melton house or Zacks house. Anyway they said, “Are you
related to the Harry Meizlish in California?” And I said, “Well I had
an Uncle Harry here and I understand that this cousin lived in California,”
and they said well he was a very generous giver to the cause and actually I
said, “Well gee, I’d like to find out more about him.” But they didn’t
have any information to give me on his current address. But a few years after
that, Ed Ellman had made a trip to the hospital that’s in Denver, is it, the
Jewish Hospital?

Interviewer: I think there is one there, yeah.

Meizlish: Okay. And he . . . .

Interviewer: Now wait. Not to interrupt, I didn’t mean to interrupt you but
Paula Goodman, did she connect with . . . .

Meizlish: Oh yes. Well I’m getting to that. Ed came back and he showed me
something, it was in a, in a brochure or something where this relative had
donated and he wanted, also was curious about it. So I said, well I was going to
California to a convention and I’m going to make my way down to L.A. and I did
get a phone number through Paula’s husband who was Max Factor again, I don’t
know. He owned the company or maybe that wasn’t his name at the time but he
knew him and was able to provide a private telephone number. He didn’t have a
listed telephone number. So before I got to California, I was in the Norfolk
area, again relating to this cousin Harry in the movie business. And one of
Marcie’s cousin’s husband, an older cousin’s husband, knew him. He said he
knew him quite well. And he said that he had worked in the movies before he
wound up in Norfolk in the furniture business and he was a tap dancer and a
dancer and he had a picture of the cousin along with himself and who was the guy
that had the big mouth or something you know . . . .

Interviewer: Joe E.?

Meizlish: Joe E. Brown and another man that I don’t remember. And he showed
me that picture. Which I may have. I think he sent it to me and it might be
among my collectibles at home.

Interviewer: That would be a fun picture to have.

Meizlish: So anyway, making my way down from San Francisco to L.A. on
business, I called the number when we arrived there and a gentleman who must
have been a butler or a caretaker or whatever said to me, “Well you’re
about a week too late. Your cousin died a week ago.”

Interviewer: Oh my. So you missed that opportunity?

Meizlish: So I missed that opportunity and I said, “Well are there any
children? Did he have any children and I’d like to contact them?” And the
gentleman on the other end of the line said to me, “No you don’t really
want to do that”. I said, “Well why wouldn’t I want to do
that?” He said, “Well both of them are ne’er-do-wells and I don’t
think you want to know them”. And he hung up.

Interviewer: Oh well.

Meizlish: And that’s all the information I was able to find. Yes there’s
black sheep in every family.

Interviewer: Well that’s okay. It adds a little color.

Meizlish: A little color to the . . . .

Interviewer: We’re almost at the end of this tape, Art and I’m going to
wind Side 1 on Tape A, wind it down and turn it over and we’ll continue in
just a moment. Okay, now we’re on Side 2 of Tape A and you’ve given us, I
think, your mother’s family and your father’s family but I need to kind of
establish where you lived as a child. What homes do you remember as you were
growing up?

Meizlish: Oh I lived on Kimball Place. Actually I was born on 18^th
Street, moved away when I was a month old. So I don’t remember. . . .

Interviewer: You don’t remember that, huh?

Meizlish: 18^th Street. But I’ve heard stories about Grandfather
had the only bathroom on the street and he used to let people, the Jews in the
neighborhood, come on Saturday night and take baths.

Interviewer: Really?

Meizlish: For free.

Interviewer: Well. And now we’re talking about three- and four-bathroom
homes . . . .

Meizlish: Right.

Interviewer: . . . .

Meizlish: Well indoor plumbing was early 1900s. It was kind of rare.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Well . . . .

Meizlish: Especially . . . .

Interviewer: it’s good that you don’t remember that part of it.

Meizlish: I do not. I just know the stories.

Interviewer: Okay but then you remembered Kimball Place.

Meizlish: Kimball Place I do remember and I remember growing up there and
what the house looked like. And it was a two-story/attic where Lola, the lady
that I told you about earlier, lived and whom I crawled in bed with I imagine at
the age of three and four on many a cold winter night.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: And my brother Herb and I shared a room I’m sure. Brother Norman
was much older and I don’t recall as much of him in my life at that period.
Sister Sylvia would baby-sit for us.

Interviewer: Who were some of your neighbors? Do you remember?

Meizlish: Uh . . . .

Interviewer: Neighborhoods were so important.

Meizlish: Yeah there was some, there was, I’ll never forget there was a
lady who was a widow lived next door to us called Dorman or I think there was a
restaurant by that name downtown. I can’t recall now but we used to go to her
house and play Hearts and bamboozle younger brothers and she would throw cards
under the table and we’d all laugh about that. But down the street from us
lived Rose Schwartz who was. No, not Rose. That was when we lived on Bryden
Road. I’m sorry. But . . . .

Interviewer: Now we’re still on Kimball.

Meizlish: Yeah I’m trying to remember on Kimball Place. We lived in a
double.

Interviewer: Was Kimball Place off Livingston Avenue?

Meizlish: Yes. Yeah.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Off Livingston Avenue. It’s cut now. The freeway cut it in half
between, you know, Main. It used to go, it goes out to Main on the other end of
it.

Interviewer: Uh huh. That was a popular neighborhood.

Meizlish: Yes. The names are kind of escaping me at the moment.

Interviewer: Well what was, tell me the next house you lived in after
Kimball?

Meizlish: The next house we lived in was in Middletown.

Interviewer: Oh.

Meizlish: And I went to the last half of the second grade, third, fourth,
fifth and half of the sixth, when we moved back to Columbus on to Bryden Road
near Fair Avenue and it was right next to, what was their name, Houseman. Not
Houseman. He was the Treasurer of the Lazarus Company. I can’t remember his
name now. He had one daughter, I believe who was adopted. But the house we lived
in was owned by the man who was Mayor of Columbus the year I was born and that
was 1928. He obviously was a man of means because the house was a very well-
built home. Had very thick walls and was covered, the interior walls were
covered in burlap and he had true, real wood beams in his dining room with a
bell under the rug to call for the server from the kitchen.

Interviewer: That was a pretty elaborate house, wasn’t it?

Meizlish: It was. My father bought it out of an estate. The people didn’t
want it. And I remember at the time that it cost, I believe, $9,000.

Interviewer: Really?

Meizlish: I remember what the house on Kimball Place cost too.

Interviewer: What was that?

Meizlish: $5,000.

Interviewer: Wow.

Meizlish: And the man who lived across the street it was rumored, had a
$25,000 house on a third of an acre which made him, in those days, a
multi-millionaire.

Interviewer: Yeah that was a mansion that he had.

Meizlish: Yes indeed that was a mansion.

Interviewer: Course Bryden Road did have some mansion-type homes too.

Meizlish: No that was on Kimball.

Interviewer: That was Kimball but . . . .

Meizlish: Well Bryden Road. This was one of the mansions because some of the
Lazarus’ family people lived on it . . . .

Interviewer: What was the address? Do you remember what the address . . . .

Meizlish: His name was Fleischer. We lived at 1788 Bryden Road and I believe
Kimball Place was 727, I think.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Funny how you . . . .

Meizlish: Somehow you remember those.

Interviewer: Yeah, the numbers.

Meizlish: I don’t remember the, oh, well I did live, I remember the house
in Middletown as well. It was on a main street about a block and a half from the
elementary school where I went to school and it had the high school football
field behind it. But the high school was about 20 blocks in the other direction.
Now my brother Norman did graduate from Middletown High I believe.

Interviewer: Do you remember Jewish people in Middletown?

Meizlish: Yes there was a Cohen family who were in the scrap business and I
remember some of their sons who were about my brother’s age and his real name
I don’t know but everybody in town including his siblings called him
“Brother Cohen”.

Interviewer: Oh.

Meizlish: So that’s the only name I can ever remember him by. I understand
that Lakin, Phil Lakin lived in Middletown but I don’t, did not know him at
that time. He was my neighbor on Virginia Lee.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: Um . . . .

Interviewer: So now let me see. After, let’s get you back to . . . .

Meizlish: Back to Bryden Road?

Interviewer: Bryden. And do you remember neighbors there?

Meizlish: Yes. Down the street was, oh golly, he had a pawn shop, Kenny
Solomon.

Interviewer: Solomon?

Meizlish: Kenny Solomon and his family lived there and his younger brother
and his mother and father and they were in the pawn business and . . . .

Interviewer: Used to play . . . .

Meizlish: I think a couple of streets away was Bernard Ruben, Bunny Ruben
lived a couple of streets from there because he and my sister were friends, the
same age, and he always asks me about her anyway. And who else do I remember?

Interviewer: Was Bunny Ruben’s family, were they on Bedford at that time,
do you, did you know them?

Meizlish: There were two streets. One was Bedford and, oh yeah, there was a
doctor too. The doctor, who was the doctor that had the hospital down in the
south end of town?

Interviewer: Ben . . . .

Meizlish: There were two brothers. They were both doctors.

Interviewer: Oh I don’t know. I was thinking of somebody who had a hospital
on Bryden Road.

Meizlish: No this was on South High Street and their brother, Kanter was
their name.

Interviewer: Oh okay. Dr. Kanter.

Meizlish: Bill Kanter and Buzzy Kanter, that family. They lived there and I
remember that one of the doctors, and I don’t know which it was, gave my
father a dog for us children, who promptly ran back to his house. And then he
gave us another dog, was a Collie dog. And I remember that very well. But he too
preferred his previous owner.

Interviewer: Well they took good care of him. Where did you go after Bryden
Road? Where did your family . . . .

Meizlish: We moved to Virginia Lee.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: South Virginia Lee Road. That was in 19–, I think 1950. Yeah about
1950 and I lived there for three years through college and while I worked
part-time for my father. And then when I graduated, let’s see, no maybe before
that. ‘Cause I graduated college in 1949. Okay. So maybe we moved in in 1950.

Interviewer: So your family lived there?

Meizlish: Yeah and I lived at home until I got married. And then I, Marcie
and I lived on East Broad Street in what was commonly referred to as “Robinsville”,
just a couple blocks east of Broad and James.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah those were popular after the war.

Meizlish: Yeah, well they were new and Brother Norman lived there with his
wife until he moved into his in-laws’ house when they retired and went to
Florida. And I moved into the apartment, or no his sister, Connie’s sister, my
sister-in-law had a sister who married and moved in that. And when she moved to
Cleveland and Marcie and I got married. That was in 1951. So I must have moved
into that house on Virginia Lee in 1948 or somewhere in there. Yeah.

Interviewer: Well you and Marcie lived there a number of years?

Meizlish: Yeah. Then after my father passed away my mother lived there for
several years and we lived in some apartments, two different apartments for
seven years and then Mother said that she didn’t want the house any more, it’s
too big. And we had a family of two children at that time and I think the third
was on the way and so we owned the lot next door and I built a house there for
her and she moved in there and we moved into 67 South Virginia Lee. And then she
died six months after that. So that’s, after that, the Glassman family moved
in, Marvin Glass- man’s parents. And then when he passed away and then she
passed away. And then Don Snider’s brother moved in and his wife, who was in
the real estate business.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: You might have remembered . . . .

Interviewer: I can’t think of their names right now. But the . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: I remember them.

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah I was in real estate at the same time she was. So you lived
on Virginia Lee until you moved to your present home?

Meizlish: Which was ten years ago so that would, what is, this is 6, it was
’96.

Interviewer: Before we get any further, tell me about your siblings, each
one. Tell me about each one, their name, who they were married to and who their
children are.

Meizlish: Oh okay. My oldest brother is Norman, Norman Meizlish. And his wife
was Connie and her maiden name was Spaget. And they married during World War II
in a double wedding with one of her cousins who married a Navy guy. Norman was
in the Air force. I think they called it Air Force at that time and they were
married in New York and he was stationed at Wright-Patterson for the most part
of his service time and then they moved to Washington.

Interviewer: Was Connie from Columbus?

Meizlish: Connie was originally from New York. It was her uncle who started
the Alexander’s Department Store in New York which I understand was one of the
first discounters in the United States.

Interviewer: It was very well known.

Meizlish: Very well known and he became extremely wealthy. Connie’s mother
was a sister to him and . . . .

Interviewer: And who are Norman and Connie’s children?

Meizlish: Norman and Connie’s children were Norma who is the oldest. Norma
lives in Madison, Wisconsin now with her husband and she is 60 years old now and
she has a son getting married next year in New Orleans. And she has another son
and her husband is a Philosophy professor at the University of Madison, very
well known . . . .

Interviewer: Wait a minute. That’s her . . . .

Meizlish: Norma’s husband.

Interviewer: Okay.

Meizlish: That’s Norman’s son-in-law. And he has lectured all over the
world and is well known in his field. Without going into that any further, the
next child is Jack Meizlish. Jack married, was married for 20 years to Alyssa. I
think that was, yeah. And had two children, has two children, the oldest being
Marissa who is now 30 and Alex who is now about 26 or 27. Marissa now currently
lives in Australia, in Sydney. And she has her degree from a college there I
believe and is working with a company in the area of conservation. Has a very
good job and very happy. Not married. And Alex is working out west somewhere. I
don’t know what he is doing currently but he seems to be quite happy.

Interviewer: Okay and then I know that Jack got divorced and he had a second
marriage.

Meizlish: Yeah he’s married, he married Sherry, let’s see, her maiden
name was . . . .

Interviewer: She was a Columbus girl too?

Meizlish: Yes and her father was an optometrist and her mother’s family
were in the deli business. Oh gosh, one of the early delis in Columbus.

Interviewer: Well if you remember it, we’ll pop that back into the
interview.

Meizlish: I know it. Why don’t I know it?

Interviewer: Okay, well we covered Norma and Jack do they have another child?

Meizlish: And they have a third child named . . . .

Interviewer: I’ve put you on the spot with names and it’s kind of hard.

Meizlish: You did put me on the spot. She is a, in the, works in the area of,
not psychiatry, what is it?

Interviewer: Psychology?

Meizlish: Psychology in Kansas City.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Has been there for over 20 years.

Interviewer: So that pretty much covers Norman’s family.

Meizlish: That’s Norman’s family.

Interviewer: Okay. And the next sibling?

Meizlish: The next sibling would be my sister Sylvia and she is currently
living in a nursing home in Tucson with her husband because he has Alzheimer’s.

Interviewer: And her husband’s name?

Meizlish: Is Ben Cohen. He was a dentist here in town and many people knew
him. Very nice man.

Interviewer: And their children?

Meizlish: And they have four children. The oldest is named David after his
great-grandfather. He lives in Washington. He has a doctoral degree in English
as a Second Language and worked in the Far East for many years for various
companies and universities, teaching people English as a second language. And
then he worked for a company, or maybe it was the University of California
teaching, under contract to the government, teaching English to the Iranian
pilots and mechanics.

Interviewer: Hmmm. Well he’s had an interesting background, hasn’t he?

Meizlish: This was when the Shah of Iran was in control and he speaks Farsi
fluently. He is a linguist. He then was hired by the State Department, an
officer in the State Department and he was in the, I guess they call it Public
Relations end of it. And there is a name. I can’t remember what it is right
now. And he spent most of his time, he had majored in Chinese and he’s fluent
in Mandarin Chinese and maybe a couple of other dialects. So they sent him to
Taiwan, which he was there for about five years. He might have done two tours
there. I can’t recall. Then they wanted, he would take vacations and like go
to Thailand and Burma and those areas and he learned to speak some Thai and
Burmese, whatever that language is and oh, prior to all of this, he was a
Fulbright lecturer in Sri Lanka for a year.

Interviewer: Huh. Boy he certainly has had a colorful background.

Meizlish: Yes. And he, on a small stipend, which he couldn’t take any money
on anyway. So he had to live there. But then he, back to the government service
again. He always wanted to go to Mainland China but it wasn’t yet to be so
they wanted him to go to Korea, to Seoul which has an entirely different
language than Chinese. So he had to come back to the United States and spend a
year with a tutor in Washington, for five-six days a week, learning the cultural
‘ he was the cultural person, learning the culture and the language, the
Korean language, before he could go over there. So he did go there and he spent
four or five years.

Interviewer: And he had a lot of discipline to go through all that.

Meizlish: Yes he does, and did and does. And he has been married twice but he
has no children. Is not, is currently single.

Interviewer: Is he their, is he the oldest child?

Meizlish: He is the oldest child.

Interviewer: Okay.

Meizlish: And then is the next child, Rena, came went to visit him once in
Korea, decided she was going to, she has a teaching background as well, so she
went and taught school in Korea for a year. She had been married once and moved
to New York and was the, I’m trying to think where it was in New York where
the, you know, the fun stuff is. What do they call it? Coney Island.

Interviewer: Coney Island.

Meizlish: Moved to Coney Island ’cause the husband had an internship. He
was a podiatrist. But that marriage didn’t work either so she was on the loose
and she went to Korea and taught. He then came back and finally got stationed in
China and he was in an area in Chiang Jiang Province which was like the
Pittsburgh of China and he didn’t, he liked being there and being able to use
his Chinese but he, there weren’t very many Diplomatic Corps there and there
were a few other countries that had attaches there and etcetera, etcetera. No
women for him to go out with. And he spent about four or five years there. And
he said the cleaning people who were all Chinese would come in at night, clean
up his place for him and they were always, he’d find his files disrupted,
knowing that they were looking at them.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: But he said it didn’t make any difference ’cause he gave that
stuff away anyhow. He wasn’t with the CIA.

Interviewer: They weren’t of value.

Meizlish: Right. But then he spent another tour in Korea.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Now wait a minute. Now we’ve got two of their kids
covered.

Meizlish: So that, so that, yeah. And his story. So we jump on to Rena and I’ve
given you part of her story already.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: So she still lives in New York and is a photographer and makes her
living at being a photographer. Currently she has a job in the New York City
School System as well. And she is very happy to show us New York when we go to
visit. Now the third child is Sharon who lives in Tucson. And she and her
husband have a business there which she runs the business and he’s the outside
sales person. And they are selling sundry items to the restaurant business
people and through some discount stores.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And his parents live there. His father passed away, mother’s
still living. And she helped to raise his two children, one of whom is now a
rabbi and the other one is not married.

Interviewer: So they were his children from the first marriage?

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: Uh huh. And they don’t have children . . . .

Meizlish: Right.

Interviewer: together?

Meizlish: Right. They do not.

Interviewer: Okay.

Meizlish: The fourth child is, lives in Jerusalem, Debbie they call her,
Deborah. And she has ten children.

Interviewer: Ten children, okay.

Meizlish: And she, I don’t know if she’s 50 yet. She’s not 49 maybe.
And she’s already a grandmother three times.

Interviewer: Wow . . . . she’s busy.

Meizlish: So I do not know most of her children. I knew some of them but
other family members have seen them and gone to see them.

Interviewer: They probably don’t come here very much.

Meizlish: They don’t. Debbie was here about a year and a half ago with one
of the daughters who was allowed to go to school in London. They live in a very
clan-type Orthodox situation.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I was a little surprised they let her do that but she did. But then
when she became 20-21, Mama went out and found her a husband so she got married.
My sister is not happy about the fact that all of her grandchildren live in
Israel.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: And she can’t travel there any more. She hasn’t been able to do
that for probably eight or ten years now.

Interviewer: So she doesn’t, she doesn’t have the opportunity to see
them?

Meizlish: Has very little contact with the children.

Interviewer: Now you have one more brother that you want to tell us about.

Meizlish: And my younger brother, his name is Herb, Herbert. And he married
Ethel who is his widow. Herb passed away, I believe it was 1999 when he passed
away.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And they have three sons. One is Sandy, Sanford Meizlish, and he
lives in Columbus, is an attorney and is, I believe, the managing partner of the
Barkan and Neff firm here in town. And the second son is Brent. Brent is . . . .

Interviewer: Let see, did you tell us who Sandy’s wife is?

Meizlish: Oh, Sandy’s wife, her name happens to be Connie as well.

Interviewer: Do they have children?

Meizlish: They have two children, a boy and a girl, and they are young
teenagers at this point.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And then there comes Brent and Brent has three children by his
first marriage. He is divorced and since remarried. And I think his oldest child
is probably college-aged at this point and the youngest one is, I imagine, in
junior high school.

Interviewer: I think at this point, I just watched the tape to see how far
along we were.

Meizlish: And then the last son Rick, he is married and has two boys Sam and
Nathan named after family members.

Interviewer: Yeah. It sounds like good old-fashioned . . . .

Meizlish: Yes, yeah.

Interviewer: names from the past. I think now is a good time for you to tell
us about your children.

Meizlish: My children. Oh they’re all geniuses.

Interviewer: They’re all geniuses. We already knew that. And you might fit
your grand- children in with each one of your children.

Meizlish: Okay. All right. My oldest is Bruce Meizlish. He lives in
Cincinnati and his wife’s name is Deborah. And he, and they have two children,
Taylor and Kate. And Taylor is about 20 years old now and attended the
University of Cincinnati, is very bright but is now working out in California,
temporarily away from college. And young Kate is, I think she’s going to be 14
I believe and she’s still in school of course. He, being that they married
late, the children are young and he’s now, will be 54 years of age on October
4^th.

Interviewer: What are their professions?

Meizlish: He and his wife are both attorneys and they have their own firm.
They have both spent time with the Labor Relations Board, National Labor
Relations Board, have a background in labor relations and that is the bulk of
their practice.

Interviewer: Uh huh. But they’re together in the business firm?

Meizlish: They are together, right.

Interviewer: Okay.

Meizlish: And the second child is Jody Meizlish who is married to Keith
Golden. Jody has retained her maiden name as has Bruce’s wife. And they have
two children. The oldest is Jared Golden and he is currently a sophomore at the
Business School of the University of Indiana.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And the second child is Chelsea who just started college at Bowling
Green State University as a freshman. And that is that family.

Interviewer: I don’t know if you told us . . . .

Meizlish: Jody is an attorney also and her husband Keith is also an attorney
and they have their own practice here in town at 18^th and Broad.

Interviewer: And they’re together in the practice?

Meizlish: They are together in practice . . . .

Interviewer: I don’t remember if you told us Bruce’s wife’s name. She
said she goes by her maiden name.

Meizlish: Yeah Deborah Grayson.

Interviewer: Okay.

Meizlish: Her father, she’s from Louisville, her father was at one time
Superintendent of the Louisville School System and then he went into business
with a friend and is now retired. He’s a runner at his age.

Interviewer: Runner?

Meizlish: Yeah he still runs many marathons . . . .

Interviewer: Good for him.

Meizlish: at the age of 80.

Interviewer: Really? That’s great. Good for him. Okay, second child. Now we’re
on the third child.

Meizlish: Uh who is my third child? That’s Ellen.

Interviewer: Ellen?

Meizlish: And she lives in Washington, D.C. and is married to Rick and he is
a graphics engineer. Not engineer, he’s a graphic artist and he produces video
learning films for the health industry basically. He has produced one recently
for the National Institute of Health and they put in some of the kiosks that
they have up there, you know, where you press the button and you learn about . .
. .

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Meizlish: this illness or that illness.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: So.

Interviewer: Is Ellen working too?

Meizlish: Ellen had worked for MCI and of course the company that bought them
out and bankrupted them and now she, and then she had, there’s another company
she worked for. She was Director of In-house Video Production for MCI. Had a
nice job and liked it.

Interviewer: So she’s talented too.

Meizlish: Yeah. So she works with and helps her husband now in his business.
It’s their business actually ’cause she knows a couple of ends of that
business very well.

Interviewer: I’ll bet she does.

Meizlish: He’s a very good writer. They met in Cincinnati when she was
still being an actress and ’cause she had graduated from the drama school in
London, England. And take that laugh out of there. And . . . .

Interviewer: But she used that information to go on with her life?

Meizlish: Yeah. She went to school at the University of Cincinnati and
working on her Master’s Degree and she met her husband when he was the
producer of a com- mercial for the company he was with at the time. And she was
to act in it with another actor who didn’t show up so the director, her now
husband, took the part and they became friends and several years later they
married.

Interviewer: See their acting background came in handy?

Meizlish: Yes, there you got it.

Interviewer: Led her to her future . . . .

Meizlish: To her husband.

Interviewer: And their children?

Meizlish: Their children are Lucas and Adrian. Lucas is the oldest and he
graduated from the fifth grade last year. He’s now in the sixth grade and he
had been in a Spanish-immersion school so he speaks a lot of Spanish too.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And maybe a little Yiddish. My daughter’s trying to learn that as
well. And the younger one, Lucas is, I believe he is in the first grade now.

Interviewer: So Lucas is the younger one? Adrian is the older one?

Meizlish: Adrian is the older. Adrian will be Bar Mitzvah next year.
No I think Adrian’s going into the seventh, no he’s going into the seventh
grade.

Interviewer: Yeah it’s hard to remember, I remember their ages. It’s hard
to remember their grades and everything.

Meizlish: . . . . yeah he’s . . . .

Interviewer: Probably going into the seventh.

Meizlish: Yeah, yeah. So he’ll be Bar Mitzvah next year. And then
that’s them.

Interviewer: Fourth child?

Meizlish: And number four is Amy.

Interviewer: I can help you with that one.

Meizlish: Well if you’d like to take . . . .

Interviewer: No go ahead, go ahead. You’ve got the mike.

Meizlish: All right. You know Amy’s background probably as well as I do.

Interviewer: Almost.

Meizlish: She went to Ohio State and got her degree in Dietetics and then
went on to get her Master’s Degree at Tufts University in Boston and got a
Master’s in Nutrition. She lived there for a while and did some work I guess
with the Joslin Diabetic Center, I believe that’s what it was called. And
moved back to Columbus and was fortunate enough to meet Larry Schottenstein.

Interviewer: Oh I know all about him.

Meizlish: And my interviewer happens to know him as well. And they decided to
make it a couple. So now they have some children too.

Interviewer: Tell us about their children.

Meizlish: Tell us about their children. Well the oldest child Ariel has grown
about four or five inches this year and now towers over me and . . . .

Interviewer: His age?

Meizlish: Age fourteen.

Interviewer: Fourteen? Uh huh.

Meizlish: Yeah. Fourteen and a half isn’t he?

Interviewer: That’s right.

Meizlish: Yeah see, you thought I didn’t know. And he’s a basketball
player and a football player and a lacrosse player, a tennis player and a
really, really nice guy.

Interviewer: He is a good guy.

Meizlish: Not that we are prejudiced.

Interviewer: No.

Meizlish: We are.

Interviewer: But he loves to play ball.

Meizlish: And his younger brother Benjamin is also a athlete in that he plays
the same games that his brother does and plays them very well. Is very spirited
and very intellectual in his approach to life. He always thinks he’s conning
me but he really isn’t.

Interviewer: You know the numbers and you can tell.

Meizlish: And now there are two younger sisters in that family, Alissa and
Katie and that gives me two grandchildren with the name Kate. But one is Kate
and one is Katie so that’s how we differentiate them.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And they are two really lively young ladies who keep my daughter
and her husband very busy, as well as their two older brothers and they make . .
. .

Interviewer: They all happen to get along well.

Meizlish: they all get along really well together because they have good
grandparents.

Interviewer: That’s it. We directed them the right way. They are cute kids.
They just had to be.

Meizlish: See, Grandma had to get it in.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah.

Meizlish: And then we have number five which is Steven Meizlish who is now 44
years of age and is married to Caroline Harding and they have two children named
Max, who is, what grade is Max in now? Third grade I believe. And quite the guy.
He’s a husky lad who likes to play hard and he’s very bright and we get
along quite well. And then his younger sister Zoe who is, she’s going to be
three.

Interviewer: She probably, yeah she probably is three. They’ve had her, she’s
been with them for about a year.

Meizlish: Yeah and she should be three about now.

Interviewer: Close to three.

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. She’s a cute one.

Meizlish: And she’s a very pretty, nice little lady and we love her very
much.

Interviewer: Well that’s a lovely family.

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: And you’re lucky that at least three of them live here in
Columbus so . . . .

Meizlish: Yes we have three of them here with all their children and all the
good things and the occasional problem.

Interviewer: Well . . . .

Meizlish: Which are few.

Interviewer: you have to share that too.

Meizlish: Of course.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Tell us a little bit about how holidays are celebrated
in your family and about, you know, your synagogue involvement.

Meizlish: Well we try to get involved in all the holidays because we always,
and growing up we always had Shabbos dinner together. And as the families
get older it becomes sometimes a little more difficult to round everybody up and
because it’s not just allegiance to ourselves but they all have family on the
other side who . . . . .

Interviewer: That’s right.

Meizlish: want some attention as well. So we’ve arranged to allow that,
help to make that happen. So which, of course, is the right thing to do and
keeps peace in all of the families and everybody gets their chance at the
grandchildren and to know the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law.

Interviewer: That’s right. It keeps it very mutual and . . . .

Meizlish: It does, it does. So we just try to do that as often as we can and
every year with, you know, this Thanksgiving and Rosh Hashonah and Pesach

and . . . .

Interviewer: A lot of holidays to celebrate and to share.

Meizlish: Right.

Interviewer: Can you tell us about your Bar Mitzvah?

Meizlish: My Bar Mitzvah?

Interviewer: I’m sure you have memories of that.

Meizlish: I do indeed. I do have very vivid memories of my
Bar Mitzvah. I was 13 years old when it happened.

Interviewer: That’s a good start.

Meizlish: And it was at the old Agudas Achim at Washington and Donaldson. It
was a very beautiful building. I’m sorry that it isn’t there any more. I
wish there were more pictures of it that people could see because it was quite a
beautiful syna- gogue. Curved balconies and very, very nice. My memories of it
are all good. We had Sunday School in the basement.

Interviewer: Was that building torn down? Or did it go to other hands?

Meizlish: Well it was so old and it became a church I believe.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I don’t think it’s there any more. You know I haven’t been
back there for so long but I don’t think it’s there. I’m going to go down
and see.

Interviewer: Check it out. Uh huh. What about preparation? Who helped you
prepare for your Bar Mitzvah?

Meizlish: I believe it was, I can’t remember who exactly did that. It wasn’t
my Sunday School teacher.

Interviewer: Who was your Sunday School teacher?

Meizlish: Gertner I think it was. One of the Gertners. There were three
Gertners and they all, two of them were lawyers or maybe all three of them were
lawyers. I don’t know. It was the youngest one because he wasn’t that much
older than I.

Interviewer: Who was the rabbi at that time?

Meizlish: The rabbi was Rabbi Hirschsprung and I remember he gave his sermons
in Yiddish which confounded those of us who weren’t real well versed in
Yiddish because even though my parents spoke Yiddish very well, they didn’t
speak much Yiddish at home, which in some families they did. And consequently
when more was spoken, the more you learned. But I did learn enough to understand
most of what was said and even speak a little from time to time. My wife learned
more because they, her family had a grandmother that was up into the 90s and
never learned really to speak English so all of the grandchildren and children
had to speak Yiddish in order to converse with her.

Interviewer: But that’s something that ended up being a valuable . . . .

Meizlish: Yes so . . . .

Interviewer: part of her life too.

Meizlish: I remember that I had a speech written by my cousin Howard, who I
mentioned earlier. His father was an engineering graduate from Ohio State but he
became a reporter on the Jewish Daily Forward in New York
and was highly respected. I think he became an editor of one of the sections of
it and he wrote a speech for his son Howard which I also used. It was a
one-pager.

Interviewer: The same speech?

Meizlish: The same speech.

Interviewer: It worked for both of you?

Meizlish: Worked for both of us.

Interviewer: And you probably could deliver it today and it would be
appropriate.

Meizlish: It would be. Yes indeed it would be. And I think I have a copy of
that somewhere. The only thing I remember about the ceremony itself was being
very nervous. But at one point, in reading from the Torah, I halted for what I
thought was five minutes. It was only like about ten seconds. But to me it was
an eternity until I caught my memory again and continued through the reading.
When it was over, people said, “Oh you sounded wonderful. You sang loud and
we liked that pause . . . .

Interviewer: Oh.

Meizlish: that you had in it.

Interviewer: Looked like you were gathering attention from the audience?

Meizlish: I mean they thought that was really something, you know.

Interviewer: Uh huh. It worked out to your advantage?

Meizlish: It did.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Now I might be mistaken in my memory of that. It was either during
the Torah reading or it was during the speech. I can’t remember which but it
was one of those and I was complimented on the pause.

Interviewer: What about the celebration then after?

Meizlish: The celebration, my father being a very gregarious man, knew just
about every- body in town and, ’cause he did work for a lot of Jewish causes,
the old age home for one. And he invited everybody he saw. It wasn’t one where
you had a list who you were going to invite to come.

Interviewer: And no R.S.V.P.s?

Meizlish: And no R.S.V.P.s. It was . . . .

Interviewer: Kind of open house?

Meizlish: open shul and come to the Bar Mitzvah and come to the
celebration. And anybody he’d meet on the street, “Oh Arnie, I didn’t
see you. Come to my son’s celebration.” That’s the way it would go.
There must have been a thousand people in and out during the evening and it was
in the back yard of our house on Bryden Road. And he had, he bought, he must
have bought a cow because there was so much corned beef and he had three or four
slicing machines there.

Interviewer: Oh that was a pretty elaborate party then?

Meizlish: Yeah he brought some men who worked for him at his business and
they were preparing and fixing, serving all the food and also drinking half the
liquor I think.

Interviewer: I bet. A lot of kids?

Meizlish: A lot of children and a lot of the people who, probably a lot who
we didn’t know.

Interviewer: They heard there was a party then?

Meizlish: Party, they just came to the party and . . . .

Interviewer: Do you remember any specific gifts?

Meizlish: Oh there were the usual, you know, clothing articles and some money
gifts and nothing stands out in my mind.

Interviewer: But it was a fun time?

Meizlish: I do still have my tfillin and my tallis that were
given to me by the synagogue.

Interviewer: They’re supposed to be worn out by now, Artie.

Meizlish: Yes. And we’ll just go to the next . . . .

Interviewer: Okay. Next subject. I’m going to stop this tape. We’re
almost at the end. I don’t want to run out. We’re at the end of Side 2 of
Tape A and I’m going to continue on another tape. Okay. We’re on Side 1 of
Tape B. Naomi Schotten- stein still speaking to Art Meizlish and he has a wealth
of information to share with us and we’re very happy to be able to have this
information. Tell us a little bit about what you remember of stores as you were
growing up, butcher shops. delis. I keep hearing about the same delis and
butcher shops and bakeries in the neighborhoods and what were some of the
important stores that you went to? What was the color of, I’m trying to get
the color of the downtown locations of department stores and so forth, shoe
stores? Tell us what you remember about those kinds of things. Okay now we’re
doing some shopping now, Art. And where did people go to shop?

Meizlish: Well we can, you want to talk about Levin’s Fish Market?

Interviewer: You can start there. Got to start with the important things, the
food.

Meizlish: It seemed to be where everybody who was kosher would go to get
their chickens and it was quite a place. It was run by Ruby Levin and his wife
and women would go in and pick out a chicken that was in a cage.

Interviewer: A live chicken?

Meizlish: A live chicken with other chickens. And Ruby or his wife would
reach in, grab that chicken and take it out and it would be squawking and
flapping its wings . . . . .

Interviewer: Kosher women.

Meizlish: and they’d tie up the legs and take ’em out to the shochet who
happened to be Chasen Gellman. Chasen Gellman, as I grew up I knew him as a chasen,
as a cantor. I also knew him as a shochetand I also knew him as a
mohel. And I thought that all cantors were chasonem and mohels
and shochets and I had a terrible time realizing that they weren’t.

Interviewer: I think probably a lot of them were in those days but not as
time went on.

Meizlish: I used to walk home from shul with him and we would talk
about things. And one time we were driving. It wasn’t the Shabbos and I
said, “Chasen Gellman,” I said, “did you ever get mixed up? I
know you do road trips too besides here in Columbus.” And he said,
“Well one time,” he told me that story that he had been in Zanesville,
Ohio for a bris and he met a lot of people, local people, and there was a
woman there that was pregnant and, you know, and told them to notify him when it
was time and he said, and he also had been in Springfield for a similar
situation, similar circumstances. And so when the time came, he got a call from
a frantic woman or something that “It’s time, it’s time,” and he
thought he recognized the voice and he went to Springfield and that woman had a
little girl. He said, “Oh my God, it’s in Zanesville.”

Interviewer: Oh gosh, wrong baby.

Meizlish: He had the wrong town and the wrong (laughter) . . . . I said to
him, “Did you get it all worked out?” He said, “Yeah, yeah, but I
don’t remember the rest of the story.”

Interviewer: He wanted to forget it I think.

Meizlish: Yeah he didn’t want to really remember.

Interviewer: Yeah. He was a sweet man. Everybody has fond memories of . . . .

Meizlish: . . . . enjoyed him very much and . . . .

Interviewer: So he got your chickens slaughtered?

Meizlish: We got the chickens, we did the chickens and I thought, I was just
a little kid then and I thought my mother was so tall and all these women were
so tall then, you know, being very young as I was. After I grew up a little bit
I realized that none of them, all of them were well under five feet.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah they weren’t that tall really.

Meizlish: And it was always a busy place there. It was always a busy place.
And I remember taking, Mother taking the chickens home and I would help her as
best I could when she was burning off what was left after flicking them.

Interviewer: Yeah it was a lot of work, a lot of work.

Meizlish: Holding the knife, I would hold the knife and she would pound it to
break the back and . . . .

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: All those little things. And other stores. I remember Lazarus very
well, going there when I couldn’t see halfway up the counters and gradually
growing to the point where I could see what was on top . . . .

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: and just amazed at all the things there was to see down there. It
was always . . . .

Interviewer: There were a lot of fond memories with Lazarus from all of our
kids, I know.

Meizlish: Can I tell you a funny one that I saw there and relate?

Interviewer: Go ahead.

Meizlish: They had like a mezzanine between two floors which I think
disappeared some- where along the line but on that mezzanine was a ladies’
corsets department and giving you corsets, you know, the big corsets they used
to put on.

Interviewer: Like armor.

Meizlish: And I remember just standing there as a six- or seven- or
eight-year old just gazing at these women who would put the corset on over their
clothes.

Interviewer: To fit them on?

Meizlish: To fit.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: I thought gee that is really different.

Interviewer: Thank God you didn’t have to do it though.

Meizlish: I never could quite figure out what they were doing, but. Then
there was the toy department on the top floor or close to it. That was always a
lot of fun and the restaurants and I remember going down there often with
Mother. In those days everybody dressed up to go downtown. I mean hat and purse
and shoes and all that.

Interviewer: That’s right. Gloves.

Meizlish: And Marcie remembers it too, going down with my mother to Lazarus
and going to the Tea Room and . . . .

Interviewer: Something about Lazarus that was an experience. It wasn’t just
shopping. And when you talk about the other stores it, you know, you went there
to shop.

Meizlish: Yeah. There was Madison’s store and there was the Union, the
Union store, the Levys, and there was another department store. I can’t
remember the name of it right now. That was the basic shopping downtown.

Interviewer: Shoes?

Meizlish: The five and dime store. There was a shoe store where I went as a
kid, my mother took me to buy our shoes and it was owned by oh Sherman, Sam
Sherman. And Harry Gilbert owned it, I think 50-50. And before Sam got into the
building business with Cohen, he ran a shoe store. So I knew him for a very long
time.

Interviewer: And then it became Gilbert’s.

Meizlish: Well no this was a separate . . . .

Interviewer: Another, a different store?

Meizlish: A different store, yeah. No the Gilbert store just grew in
increments. He had the World War I addition and the World War II addition and it
was just a building added on to a building and Harry gave a lot of the Jewish
young fellows jobs there. He was quite a, quite a guy, Harry.

Interviewer: A colorful person, huh?

Meizlish: Interesting man, interesting man. Had a good memory.

Interviewer: What about delis? Do you remember delis?

Meizlish: Oh I remember Hepp’s Delicatessen. I think that was on, was that
on Main or Livingston, I don’t remember? But it was, you know, pickles in the
barrel and all that good stuff. The smells and you know . . . .

Interviewer: Oh yeah, that’s . . . .

Meizlish: There were several delis now and Sherry, Jack’s wife was, her
family, grand- parents, were in the deli business. I can’t think of their
name.

Interviewer: Hepp’s? It wasn’t . . . .

Meizlish: Well a lot of them went out of business over the years. There was a
butcher. What was his name? It was right down the street from my dad’s laundry
business. Um, oh golly, I can see him like it was yesterday, cutting meat on the
butcher block. I know my father would go in there at Passover time and give him
a list of names, Jewish names, and tell him to make up food baskets and deliver
them. And I remember his words as we walked out, and he said, “And never
tell them where it came from”.

Interviewer: Oh.

Meizlish: They’re not to know where it came from.

Interviewer: But he donated them?

Meizlish: Oh a couple of dozen every year at least. He just, people he knew .
. . .

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: because, you know, proud people don’t want charity and he didn’t
want anybody to think that he was giving, I mean, he just did it . . . .

Interviewer: That was a lovely gesture. Uh huh. Do you remember, we pretty
much have the shops. Bakeries, there were bakeries?

Meizlish: Yes there was Schwartz Bakery. Yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard of
that one.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And uh . . . .

Interviewer: It would be nice if we had some of those bakeries and delis now,
huh?

Meizlish: Oh yeah. That was a nice bakery. Yeah.

Interviewer: What about schools that you went to as a child?

Meizlish: I went to Main Street Elementary School at Main and Kelton, between
Kelton and Miller and there was a little Ohio National Bank on the corner and
the school was an old-fashioned school. I remember the first day going, there
wasn’t any kindergarten. I went to the first grade. Mother dragging me up the
stairs and I remember hollering, “I don’t want to go,” and of course
I did and I seemed to enjoy it very much and I remember getting an allowance at
the time, maybe that might be when I came back from Middletown. I finished the
sixth grade there. I actually had the same sixth grade teacher that taught Eddie
Rickenbacher 32 years earlier. She taught school for about 60 years.

Interviewer: Where was it? What school was it?

Meizlish: Main Street Elementary. And I only knew her name as Miss Smith. I
know nothing else about the woman. And I don’t’ remember any of my other
teachers. Some people do but I don’t.

Interviewer: Do you remember any of your classmates?

Meizlish: Very few, very few of them. I just remember one African-American
boy who said to me as we were skipping through the stones and throwing little
rocks at things, at tin cans or whatever happened to be there. He looked at me
and he said, “You know Artie,” Artie he called me, and he said,
“I wish I was Jewish.” And I said, “Well why is that?” He
says, “‘Cause Jesus was a Jew.” And I just smiled at him and we
walked on.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Well you had something to share. He felt that he had
something to share with you.

Meizlish: . . . . I thought it was a, it’s a moment I have never forgotten.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: ‘Cause we were good friends.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah, there was no difference.

Meizlish: Yeah it didn’t mean anything to me.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Then where did you go? Did you go to middle school or
the high school?

Meizlish: No well then I went to elementary school in Middletown also and,
you know, there were several incidents there but I won’t go into all of that.
I went to middle school at Franklin Junior High School which was on Franklin
Avenue I think.

Interviewer: Uh huh, I think it was.

Meizlish: And I don’t know if it’s still there or not. I do remember a
couple of the teachers and some of the remarks that were made, you know. I met
one teacher in the eighth grade who was bawling out the young girls in the class
for putting on lipstick.

Interviewer: She should be around today, huh?

Meizlish: Yeah, right, right, right. She would say, “When you’re young
you’re beautiful. You don’t need lipstick till you get to be old like
me.” I remember her saying that. And I had a coach over there who taught
gym and I admired him. He was a nice guy. Only guy until I got to high school
who could pronounce my name correctly the first time.

Interviewer: The Meizlish?

Meizlish: Yeah. They called me everything Miser to Measles to Mislish to . .
. .

Interviewer: Well that doesn’t sound like it should be too hard to
pronounce . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah well it seemed to be. And in high school . . . .

Interviewer: Where did you go to high school?

Meizlish: I went to East High School which was on the other side of Franklin
Park from Bryden Road and I used to ride my bike home to eat lunch when the
weather was good ’cause it was right through the park.

Interviewer: Oh you lived on . . . .

Meizlish: Lived on Bryden Road . . . .

Interviewer: Bryden Road then.

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And I learned to drive in Franklin Park as a matter of fact. And
Mother told me that Franklin Park at that time, it was a complete circle. You
could drive all the way around. Now it’s, you can’t do that. It’s like the
Oval at Ohio State. At one time you could drive all the way around the Oval.

Interviewer: Was it a beautiful park then?

Meizlish: It was very pretty. And it had a pond and kids would go fishing
there and wading in the pool in the Summertime. And she told me that it had been
a race track ’cause I think it was just a mile around. And she taught me how
to drive, not my father.

Interviewer: Your mother did? So your mother drove, did she?

Meizlish: Oh yes. She came here when she was six years old and she had no
accent. Neither did her sisters. She was the oldest sister. Her brother was a
little bit older than she and she went to Ohio State for a while. She was the
secretary at East High School.

Interviewer: Oh she was?

Meizlish: Yeah I think it was East High. East High School used to be where
Franklin was before they, when they built East High School. I guess maybe it was
in the Depression or just before. I don’t remember exactly when it was built
but there is a place in front of East High School, you can see it today. It
looks like a platform and steps on either side . . . .

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.

Meizlish: Well that was meant to hold a statue of Chick Harley.

Interviewer: Oh I never heard that.

Meizlish: But they ran out of money. Because Chick Harley was the first
All-American from Ohio State.

Interviewer: He played football. Uh huh.

Meizlish: And he died in an old soldier’s home up in,
around Cleveland somewhere. But the city ran out of money so they never did put
the statue up although they did name the football field after Chick Harley. It’s
called Harley Field. So that was high school. High school was, I wasn’t, in
high school I knew, there weren’t very many Jewish kids in high school when I
was there. There had been before the war. I was there in, I started there in the
middle of the war and graduated in January of ’46. I enrolled in college
before the graduation ceremony because for various reasons. Those who I do
remember, there was Si, who’s the fellow in the insurance business?

Interviewer: Sokol?

Meizlish: Sokol. Si Sokol was there and Jack Goldberg the
ophthalmologist was in my class. And Arlene Berman who is now known as Arlene
Hirsh. She was a half a year ahead of me but then I accelerated and graduated
half a year early. And there was one or two others I don’t remember too well.

Interviewer: This was right after the war that you graduated?

Meizlish: Yeah, in 1946, January of ’46. And then I went
right into college and I graduated in January of 1949 from college.

Interviewer: Three years?

Meizlish: Three years.

Interviewer: What about any service during the war, World War
II?

Meizlish: I was, no, but I did join the Ohio Air National
Guard in 1950 and I was in that for about five and a half years. There was a lot
of anti-Semitism there at the time. A good friend of mine was Ray Deems who some
of the people here seem to still remember. He was partners in real estate
business with Friedman who married Ivan Gilbert’s sister . . . .

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Meizlish: Al Friedman. And he and I became very good friends
and he was from the same little town where my dad had a place of business and
they used to sit and talk about it in our house on Bryden Road. And when I
wanted to become an officer, Ray sponsored me and it went to the top where some
big wheel in headquarters told his sergeant major to put it in a drawer and
forget about it.

Interviewer: Uh huh. That was anti-Semitism at that time, big
time.

Meizlish: . . . . And then another fellow, they were in the
ice cream business, came in and he got a commission in six months ’cause his
friends were, you know, the Governor can give you a commission. But if you go in
the regular service you have to get federal recognition. But so I gave up on it.
And after we had our, after Ellen was being born, I said, “I’m getting
out of this thing.” And then Ray said, “Well there’s a position
opening up. I can guarantee you’re going to become a lieutenant now.” I
said, “I don’t want any more of it.”

Interviewer: What was your commitment to the National Guard
before that? How often did you have to report?

Meizlish: Well when it started out it was like twice a month
on a Wednesday or Thursday night for two hours. And then it wasn’t maybe a
year, because when I went into it there were only, there were 11 enlisted guys
and 30 officers and only one airplane to fly and Sam Shamansky used to fly that
one. It was a four-motor, you know, I don’t know what, it was a C23 cargo
plane. And Sam had flown the big ones that had the four motors on them when he
was in service and at one point when I became, I became part of the cadre, as
the organization grew, they needed a supply squadron and they needed a, they
started a medical squadron. I was one of ten guys that started the supply
squadron and I was the head guy ’cause I was a sergeant or something by that
time, I don’t know. And, ’cause I had had some R.O.T.C. in college which I
was also a sergeant there.

Interviewer: Sergeant Meizlish?

Meizlish: . . . . I had to go drill the troops.

Interviewer: Did you get paid for being in the National
Guard?

Meizlish: Yeah you got a small amount of money for it that
didn’t amount to very much. And then, ’cause the base, the whole base out at
Rickenbacher was closed down.

Interviewer: Oh, it was at Rickenbacher?

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And we would go in the main gate. We went where the
generals used to be, in the Headquarters Building. And that’s where, the first
couple of years that’s where we were. And then as it grew and got bigger and
we went to Summer Camps. I went to a couple of those up in Michigan, Grayland,
Michigan, for two weeks at a time. And Sam Shamansky was my commanding officer
at that time and Ray Deems was a lieutenant.

Interviewer: So there were two Sam Shamanskys, weren’t
there?

Meizlish: Well no. Sam has a son named Sam.

Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Meizlish: And he’s an attorney.

Interviewer: Right. Okay.

Meizlish: But Sam and Bob were brothers.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And Sam had a remodeling business. Matter of fact,
my home on Virginia Lee, we had a porch and I made it into like a sunroom,
closed it in. Sam did that for me.

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Meizlish: And put in an indoor grill, the whole thing. Never
worked ’cause it made too much smoke so we never used it for anything.

Interviewer: Indoors, I guess not.

Meizlish: We didn’t have the proper fan to take the smoke
out.

Interviewer: But he did what you . . . .

Meizlish: But it was so pretty that I think they took a
picture of it for the Dispatch HomeSection one time.

Interviewer: So it looked good?

Meizlish: Oh it looked beautiful ’cause we left, you see it
was all stone. The house was all really . . . .

Interviewer: So it was solid, yeah it was solid. Uh huh.

Meizlish: Yeah we left two walls in stone and put, it was
just, it wasn’t big but it was beautiful.

Interviewer: Uh huh. What do you remember about sports? Were
you involved in sports in high school?

Meizlish: Sports? Yeah I was in gymnastics and running. I
wasn’t on any teams. I was, we tried to form a swim team but we didn’t have
a pool to swim in so we used to have to go up to the University, they called it
the Natatorium, you know. I was just up there at the game and I saw where they,
it’s all torn down and put . . . .

Interviewer: Beautiful new building.

Meizlish: . . . . up there.

Interviewer: I hear it’s magnificent.

Meizlish: . . . . beautiful. But that’s where we had to go
and I remember the famous diver and coach they had up there, I can’t remember,
Oh God his name slips me too. It was, the building was named after him I think.
But I thought I was a pretty good swimmer until I was swimming next door to a
Hawaiian who was recruited to come and swim on the swimming team. He had a very
famous diving team at that time. I can’t, I wish I could remember his name.
And I found out I wasn’t such a fast swimmer. These guys would swim like fish.

Interviewer: Yeah, well they grew up swimming I’m sure.

Meizlish: Unbelievable.

Interviewer: But it was a nice activity.

Meizlish: It was and I enjoyed the gymnastics part of it a
lot and . . . .

Interviewer: Did you go to Ohio State football games at that
time?

Meizlish: Oh went to every one of them.

Interviewer: When you were in college?

Meizlish: When I was in college. Absolutely. ‘Cause some of
the members in the fraternity were in the band and you knew some of the players.
And you know, it was more of a personal thing. It wasn’t this cash business
that football is today.

Interviewer: Oh it’s a whole different thing now.

Meizlish: Oh it’s all about money, that’s what. It’s
all about money.

Interviewer: And probably one third of the people in the
stadium as there are today.

Meizlish: Well when I started at Ohio State during the war,
there were 13,000 students. 13, was it 13 or 16? Something, either one or the
other. And at one point, right after the war is when all the service guys kept
coming back. Like Gene Hammeroff came back from the war. He and I were in the
fraternity together but Gene was . . . .

Interviewer: What fraternity was this?

Meizlish: This was Phi Sigma Delta. I just joined that
because my brother happened to belong there. Some of the other guys were what
they called Sigma Alpha Mu which was next door. ZBT up the street. And today
there’s no Phi Sigma Delta. That’s all part of ZBT now. I think there still
is some other Jewish fraternities but fraternities and sororities I don’t
think are what they used to be anyway because I don’t think they’re
exclusively Jewish or Christian any more. They’re just . . . .

Interviewer: Yeah I’ve kind of lost track of those things,
too.

Meizlish: Yeah I’ve been out of that scene for so long that
it’s, doesn’t mean anything . . . .

Interviewer: No. So you did have good memories though when
you went to high school and college.

Meizlish: Well yeah. I had some good memories of high school.
But the last year or so, that’s why I hurried up to get out ’cause I really
began disliking it. A lot of the social activity was curtailed because of the
mix, the different mix of children that were there.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And because there was a lot of anti-Semitism, a lot
of anti-Semitism. There was, they had a high school fraternity and sorority and
they wouldn’t talk to Jews.

Interviewer: I understand that ’cause that was the period
of time that I grew up in and there were community places that you were not
allowed to go like country clubs for instance.

Meizlish: Well one of the Schottenstein clan, Al
Schottenstein?

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Max’s son. He and I were pretty close for a good
15 years or more. And I think he told me one day he got jumped on the way home
and they kind of beat him up a little bit.

Interviewer: Hmmm.

Meizlish: So it was still going on and . . . .

Interviewer: It wasn’t easy for Jewish people to get jobs
either, was it?

Meizlish: No it wasn’t. A lot of places wouldn’t hire you
if you were Jewish. As I understand, even Western Electric was like that until
maybe the mid-60s or so.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: So some people that were Jewish would maybe give
them another name so, whatever.

Interviewer: Not as obvious in today’s world though?

Meizlish: But you know, no.

Interviewer: Tell us about if you, or are you retired Art? I
happen to know you’re not.

Meizlish: Well no, I’m not really retired. I’m semi-, I
tell people I’m semi-retired.

Interviewer: Okay, semi-retired. Tell us about your business.

Meizlish: Oh well it’s changed a lot over the years. I’ve
been in several businesses. I was in business with my dad. First job I had was,
full-time job, was running a laundry that he had. And I had came out of college,
green behind, wet behind the ears as you say. Dad said, “What did you
graduate in?” I said, “Industrial management.” He says, “Go
run the factory.”

Interviewer: Just like that.

Meizlish: So I immediately had about 20-25 people to manage
and organize and take care of.

Interviewer: Well he figured he’d put a lot of money into
you so he was going to get your use.

Meizlish: Well it, you know it was, a lot of people went into
the family business. It was, you know, I didn’t even, ’cause I originally
thought I was going to be a doctor. I took almost two years of Pre-Med.

Interviewer: Oh.

Meizlish: And then switched to business college. I thought I
was going to be drafted because the draft was still on, as soon as I got out of
college. And so therefore I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have in
chemistry. I was starting to have a difficult time and I thought, “Well
this is, I’ll pick it up when I get out of the service.” Well as it
happened I never did get drafted. I went in the Air Guard instead. Long as I was
in good standing there. Because the war was over, the fury of patriotism, the
furor, I, like many other kids wanted to enlist. I remember at 16, I kept
saying, “Mom why not? It’s good experience and this and this .”

Interviewer: Patriotism was so strong then wasn’t it?

Meizlish: Oh everybody was so patriotic at that time and
everybody wanted to be part of it. And she said, “Son they’ll get you
soon enough.” And I remember going on the buses you know to go downtown.
And here I was maybe 17. I’d see the women looking at me like, “Why isn’t
this able-bodied kid in the service?” And you kind of felt that.

Interviewer: You kind of felt a little guilty?

Meizlish: Yeah. I knew there was one kid when I was, I think
I was 17, and we were in the restroom. And he was one of the tough kids in the
school, you know, but we got along pretty well and he was disgusted. I said,

“What’s wrong, how come you’re so upset?” And he said,
“Well,” he says, “even the Coast Guard turned me down
today.” He said, “I’ve been to the Army, the Marines, the Navy, the
Air,” he said. “And the Coast Guard wouldn’t even take me.”

Interviewer: ‘Cause he wanted to go into the service.

Meizlish: He played football and he wrestled and boxed and
did all that and he had about every bone in his body broken at one time or
another and he was a tough kid.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And he said, “I can do it,” but they
wouldn’t pass the physical, so . . . .

Interviewer: So he was upset?

Meizlish: he was upset about it.

Interviewer: Sure, sure.

Meizlish: And that’s the way it was. So but when the war
was over, all they had, they had, a what do you call it, a occupation army in
Europe. Now maybe that would have been an experience but who wanted to go occupy
a country? You got things to do, you want to go on with your life.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: So suddenly nobody wanted to be in the service. And
here is all these millions of people coming back from service and that was quite
a transition for them. And it was, it was, quite a, kind of a lot of lessons I
learned.

Interviewer: Well we were talking about your jobs or what
businesses you were in. Go on.

Meizlish: Yeah. So then I went to, then . . . .

Interviewer: You worked for your dad.

Meizlish: Yeah. Then after he passed away, the, we really
weren’t doing a whole lot. He’d been sick for a number of years and he wasn’t
that old. He was 57 when he died. But in those days, to me it seemed like he was
old. And many stories I could tell about being with him and around him but there
was, we had the laundry business essentially and the building.

Interviewer: Where was that located?

Meizlish: And that was at Livingston and Nelson Road, about a
hundred feet south of Livingston and then it was in the County, it wasn’t even
the City ’cause I know we had the Township Fire Departments. We used to have
these little cages on top that collected the lint from the machines, from the
dryers. They would occasionally catch fire, but we had sprinkler systems in all
of them, see. Anyway we started running the business, the laundry business, and
I don’t know where Norman had been. I know that he, father had set him up in a
jewelry business and he suddenly, he came back. I never really was close with
him because of the age difference. He was seven years older than I so we didn’t
do things together. And I have very minimal memories of him as a child. I know
he could lay down on the couch and go to sleep and nothing would bother him but
other than that, I don’t really…

Interviewer: But you were closer to Herb?

Meizlish: Yeah, Herb and I were pretty close.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And . . . .

Interviewer: Close in age too?

Meizlish: Yeah, about 22 months difference.

Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah, that’s close.

Meizlish: But then I . . . .

Interviewer: So after the laundry business, where did you go?

Meizlish: Well we had that together, three brothers, and we
were deciding how we were going to grow our business. And we looked at the
janitor supply business and we took on different lines of this and that and the
other. And the upshot is that we wound up being in the industrial supply
business selling cutting tools and sand paper and grinding wheels and drills and
taps and anything else . . . . and all the other things . . . .

Interviewer: A lot different than the laundry business?

Meizlish: Quite a bit different.

Interviewer: So the three of you were started in that?

Meizlish: Yeah. And I became the salesman and Herb took over
the laundry and Norman decided he was going to be the inside guy and it went
that way for a while. I take credit and maybe I, for really building the volume
of business that we had and then we got into a size where we were selling a lot
of specialty tools and Norman had the idea that we could manufacture the tools
and oh, it’s a long story. Anyway to make that long story short, I decided to
leave and start my own business in 1973. It was 1972, and I did. And that’s
the business I’ve been in ever since.

Interviewer: Describe what business that is.

Meizlish: Oh I’m in the adhesive tapes business. I started
out as a distributor and I sold all kinds of tapes and introduced many into the
retail market. I introduced the large roll of duct tape, believe it or not, to
the Columbus retail market.

Interviewer: Duct tape became very popular, didn’t it?

Meizlish: Yeah, yeah. I mean, my first sale was to the chain
that Big Bear used to own, remember Golden something or other? They had a
discount chain of stores. And the buyer said, “Who’s going to buy that?
We’ve got duct tape.” They had these little, small little 10-yard rolls.
I said, “A lot of people. It’s something you can use everywhere.”

Interviewer: Uh huh. You didn’t manufacture any of the
tapes?

Meizlish: No we weren’t manufacturing at that time.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And . . . .

Interviewer: Did you sell outside of the Columbus area,
Franklin County?

Meizlish: I did. Started selling in West Virginia, a little
bit of in Indiana, Cincinnati. All over the State of Ohio. Not too much in
Cleveland or Cincinnati. But that was then. Now we sell overseas. We’re a
global company now. We sell, I built the business, the tape business into, I
built a retail line of goods similar to what Al had in his bicycle business. And
we sold to discount stores. I had about 30 items on cards and I told Marcie,
“I’m going to spread your name across the country”. And literally we
did. I had customers from coast-to-coast and border-to-border.

Interviewer: So the name of the company became Marcie?

Meizlish: Yeah, oh it started out as Marcie.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: I wanted to, yeah I wanted to be just Marcie
Enter–, I wanted it Marcie Enter- prises. I had some of it, some, I wanted it
Marcie Incorporated or some—, but some guy in Akron or Canton or someplace
owned some business in real estate or something and he used that name.

Interviewer: Had that name, yeah.

Meizlish: So I couldn’t get that name but anyway that’s
what happened there. And now we manufacture, we have specialty markets. We got
out of the retail market because it just became ultra-competitive. There wasn’t
any money to be made any more and we knew we had to get into manufacturing and
that’s what we’ve done and now we sell product lines of no-residue items to
the glass trade and the after-market auto installation, windshield installation
people, with a line of sundries that go along with that. There’s some tools
involved and . . . .

Interviewer: Do you go to shows where you show this kind of
merchandise . . . .

Meizlish: We do go to shows but with the advent of the
internet we quit publishing a catalog and we publish an on-line catalog.

Interviewer: Oh uh huh.

Meizlish: And therefore we get inquiries from all over the
world.

Interviewer: Is there very much competition in that kind of
business?

Meizlish: There’s always competition.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: But see, we picked out a specialty area and we’ve
built a name around it over the last 20 years so that Marcie Company is now 33
years old.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: So it’s been around a long time now and we’ve
got a good reputation for what we do and . . . .

Interviewer: And your son Steve shares the . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah Steve.

Interviewer: interest in the company.

Meizlish: Steve runs the day-to-day. Yeah he’s the owner
and he shares the day-to-day responsibilities and, matter of fact, he does most
of them now.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: That’s given me a lot of free time this, this has
all happened in the last year to year-and-a-half and they say a good executive
works himself out of a job.

Interviewer: Well you did that.

Meizlish: I’ve pretty much done that.

Interviewer: Before we go too much further, I think we need,
there’s a very important aspect of your life that I’d like you to tell us
about, when you first met Marcie and leading up to your marriage.

Meizlish: Oh.

Interviewer: We can’t wind up without that.

Meizlish: No we can’t, we can’t wind up without that.

Interviewer: Or else both of us will be in hot water.

Meizlish: We didn’t get to tell stories about all the
people I’ve known and . . . .

Interviewer: No, no, no. That will be another tape. That’ll
be another tape.

Meizlish: Anyway I’d been out of college for about two
years and Mr. Al Schottenstein and I went back to college to take some graduate
courses. And I was working full time for my dad at the time so I took a few
courses here and there. Al went on to get his Master’s Degree but I didn’t.
I met Marcie. And I was up there one . . . .

Interviewer: You got your Marcie Degree.

Meizlish: I did. She got her M-R-S.

Interviewer: Uh huh, that’s right.

Meizlish: As they used to say in those days. I was at the
fraternity house and it was Wintertime and I was standing on the porch and it
was snowing a little bit and I saw all the new recruits walking up to the
sorority house next door and I spotted this little face with fur all around it
and I said it looked like a 13-year-old girl to me, you know. And I said to my
friend, “Who’s that little kid walking up there?” you know. I didn’t
pay a whole lot of attention to her. So later on we were in the sorority house kibbitzing

around and I saw her without the fur around her face and somebody told me
she was a student there and I said, “No, can’t be.” So anyway I
became very attracted to her and we started talking to one another . . . .

Interviewer: And you probably looked like a young kid too.

Meizlish: Well I was. I looked very young. I was only 22 or
something like that and she was only 19.

Interviewer: That was younger, yeah.

Meizlish: So here I was a man of the world already and now
you think you know everything at that point. So we started dating and then I did
something, I said to her, I said, “What are you doing every Saturday night
for the rest of the year?” and she said, “I don’t know”. I
said, “We’re going to have a date every Saturday night the rest of the
year.” And we did.

Interviewer: So you booked her?

Meizlish: Yeah, booked her up. And then we, then she went
home for the Summer and had invited me to come down, which I didn’t. And I was
debating all Summer long, is this the girl I want to marry, you know, and then
really think about it.

Interviewer: Sure.

Meizlish: So she took that as my ignoring her. And a funny
thing, Herb went down to, just for a vacation. So she said she’d fix him up
with somebody. I did talk to her.

Interviewer: Oh he went down to visit her?

Meizlish: Yeah, not to visit her. He just wanted to go to
Virginia Beach for a couple of weeks or whatever it was. And while he was away I
met the woman that he eventually married.

Interviewer: Oh.

Meizlish: So I actually knew his wife before he did and we
went out on a couple of dates but it wasn’t to be. My heart was with Marcie.

Interviewer: You still had her . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah. And Ethel turned out to be my sister-in-law.

Interviewer: Well that worked out. You both, both of the
brothers ended . . . .

Meizlish: She was in nursing school at the time.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: And so that’s how it worked out but . . . .

Interviewer: How long after that were you engaged and
married?

Meizlish: Well I met her at the airplane at the old airport,
you know where the old airport . . . .

Interviewer: Still standing there . . . .

Meizlish: Yeah . . . . of it is, about half of it’s still

there. That’s when the airplane, the wheels, the back wheel used to be on the
ground, you know. And, hey I got to tell you a funny story about Jerome, but,
anyhow, I met her at the airport and she had almost written me off as she told
me.

Interviewer: Did you communicate with her during the Summer?

Meizlish: A little bit, not a whole lot.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Meizlish: A couple of letters . . . .

Interviewer: You were being hard to get.

Meizlish: I was really . . . .

Interviewer: Still thinking it over, huh?

Meizlish: Yeah I was really having a hard time with it, you
know. Thinking of my age and, you know, was I too young and this, that and the
other. And so what I did, and she would tell you the story, I just said that I
wanted to take her home to meet my parents. And she was, she didn’t know what
to say.

Interviewer: That gets pretty serious.

Meizlish: Yeah and as we drove by the apartment that I knew
was soon to be vacated by Connie, Norman’s wife’s sister and her husband, I
said, “That’s where we’re going to live”.

Interviewer: You and Marcie?

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: That was your proposal?

Meizlish: When she tells the story she says, “I thought
he was crazy or something”.

Interviewer: Sounds pretty brazen.

Meizlish: And so I took her home and she was, my father, you
never, I don’t think you remember my father. But he was a kind guy but he’d
give a rough exterior appearance and he had a gravel voice (lowers tone) like
that. And he’s scare the children, see? So he said to her, “Little girl,
does your mother keep kosher?” and . . . .

Interviewer: Oh. He was interviewing her, huh?

Meizlish: Anyway, she fell in love with my mother who was a
lovely person and they became good friends, very good friends. And that was
that.

Interviewer: When were you married?

Meizlish: That December.

Interviewer: The same year?

Meizlish: She came back in September, October, we got married
in December. That was the end of her school career because she was pregnant ten
weeks after we got married.

Interviewer: Oh and then that family started growing.

Meizlish: Yeah.

Interviewer: Well it’s done well. It’s done really well.
And I think . . . .

Meizlish: She did go back and get her degree. She graduated
the same year that Bruce graduated.

Interviewer: That’s right. I remember she went back to
college and got her teaching degree.

Meizlish: Yeah, she’d been tutoring for ten years and I
told her, “Well you don’t know anything any more. You got to get a degree
or we can’t let you do that any more.”

Interviewer: So where did she teach after that?

Meizlish: Oh a lot of her teaching was at Old Orchard School.

Interviewer: Uh huh.

Meizlish: Yeah she liked that school.

Interviewer: Okay Art. I think we’re at the end of Side l,
Tape B and . . . .

Meizlish: Well I’m out of, my voice is . . . .

Interviewer: Well good . . . . we’re doing okay but on
behalf of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society, I want to personally thank you
for the time you’ve spent this afternoon and even though you were a little bit
late, but we made up for the time and that worked out fine and I’m happy we
had this opportunity for the input and we really appreciate your time. And
search around. If you find any memorabilia that might be handy for us, we’d be
glad to have it.

Meizlish: And you’ve been very gracious.

Interviewer: Thank you, thank you.