Wendy Goldstein
This interview for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society is being recorded on November 6, 2023 as part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society Oral History Project. This interview is being recorded at the home of Wendy Goldstein. My name is Yvonne Burry and I am interviewing Wendy Goldstein.
Interviewer: So, let’s start with Wendy, if you would tell us your full name,
Goldstein: I’m Wendy Claire. Maiden name, Ninesling (N-i-n-e-s-l-i-n-g), Goldstein married.
Interviewer: That’s great. Thank you so much. Do you have a Jewish name?
Goldstein: Yes, and I’m embarrassed to say that I have to look it up because I’m a convert. I didn’t use it a lot.
Interviewer: Okay, okay, that might be something to provide us at a later moment. Who were you named for?
Goldstein: I actually was just named for my mom’s favorite name that she named all her dolls which was Gwendolyn, but she named me Wendy. I was the firstborn, so I got that name privilege.
Interviewer: Wow, and based on this paper that you gave me how far back can you trace your family?
Goldstein: Oh, to the my great-great grandparents. In the like, early 1800s, and I think we have limited further back, on my mother’s side.
Interviewer: Do you have any legends or stories from the past that we’re told and retold in your family, about your ancestors?
Goldstein: Yeah, my grandmother was great about telling stories. My grandmother, Alice, was an actress. My kids would stand behind her, and as she would tell the story for the umpteenth time, they would mouth it behind her. (laughs) So yeah, we have some good ones.
Interviewer: Okay, do you want to share just one or two little snippets?
Goldstein: Well, once my grandmother’s parents came. Two generations came from Norway. On the way, they made a bisque-head doll on the ship. The hands of the doll are actual leather hands with fingers that were made from the kid gloves of her great grandmother, and I still have that doll. Yeah, and all the clothes are handmade too, a lot of them on that trip. So, there’s that and, old dog, Tray, used to ride on the running board of the car and lean when the car turned, in Lead, South Dakota where my grandmother was raised.
Interviewer: Oh, it’s good. Well, I’m sure you can tell me what your mother’s and then your father’s full names are or were.
Goldstein: Oh, my mother is Ann Lois Yourman (Y-o-u-r-m-a-n.). My dad was Arthur James Ninesling, which I spelled before.
Interviewer: Yes, right, and your mother’s maiden name was what?
Goldstein: Thorpe (T-h-o-r-p-e).
Interviewer: Okay, thank you. In what country were your parents born?
Goldstein: Well, my parents were born in the United States as were both of my grandparents, but their parents came from Austria. My dad’s side of the family was German, and there’s also some Scandinavian in there somewhere, Norwegian.
Interviewer: Most of this was two generations ago?
Goldstein: Yes. We do have, sort of, interestingly enough, my husband who’s passed away, We were divorced, but then he passed away, David Goldstein. On his side of the family, there is a survivor that just passed away a month ago. He was in Houston and really instrumental in the Holocaust Museum in Houston. We did not find each other. He did not find any family because he was a like a runaway survivor as a 13-year-old and made his way to the United States and didn’t find any family until three years ago. He died shortly thereafter. Everyone that was related went to see him and meet him.
Interviewer: That’s fantastic. Oh, that is a cool story.
Goldstein: A “23 and Me” story.
Interviewer: Is that how it happened?
Goldstein: That’s how it happened.
Interviewer: Fantastic. Do you remember hearing stories about your mother and father when they were young?
Goldstein: Yeah, nothing that really jumps out. My dad was raised actually High Episcopalian, and he was an altar boy, so I heard a lot of stories about that and the family general store in New York which was called the Ninesling General Store. Then on my mother’s side, lots of stories because my grandmother’s husband, my mother’s dad, passed away of a stroke at 35, in her arms, going on the way out to work. They were living in Gambier, Ohio. I believe working for Continental Can which was headquartered there then. Two weeks after, (She had two children, I’m pretty sure, eight and five, my mom was eight. She was the head of the drama club there in Gambier and had gone to college a couple years in Chicago where she met her husband in drama) she packed up her house and her kids and moved in with her mother-in-law in New York city to make a living as an actress. I can’t even imagine what that was like in, let’s see, she would have been in her 30s, you know, as an independent woman in her 30s, and a young widow trying to make it in theater and film, but she did it. She was on the original Amos and Andy on the radio and the Guiding Light on the radio and then transferred to Guiding Light on television, and had a very, very successful career, worked into her 70s. So, lots of strong women.
Interviewer: Very good, mother and father’s siblings, were they from big families, small families?
Goldstein: My mother had one brother who lives in Alabama and ran a 76 truck stop. My father had, also just one brother, who of course, he’s passed away too. Oh, he worked for Corning, and was the sales rep for Corning Manufacturing for cookware.
Interviewer: They’re all deceased now?
Goldstein: My mother’s brother is still alive.
Interviewer: Okay, okay and where are they now? Where is he now?
Goldstein: Alabama.
Interviewer: Okay, he stayed in Alabama?
Goldstein: Yeah, in Alabama, he married a West Virginia girl and ended up getting doing the truck stop there, so that’s where they raised their kids.
Interviewer: The next question is about your mother and father’s country of origin, and I realize that’s the United States to some extent, but are there any family members in Europe that you’re in contact with, or are there any family members there?
Goldstein: Not that we’re in contact with. I mean or that we’ve tracked down.
Interviewer: This next question is easy because you have a lovely chart there. The names of your grandparents and great grandparents.
Goldstein: My grandparents were, on my mother’s side, were Clarence Yourman and Alice Anderson Thorpe. He was from New York. She was from Illinois. They met in Chicago, going to school. And then on my father’s side, less information, Charlotte was my grandmother. She was a secretary for a principal of a school. And my grandfather’s name, I never knew either of my grandparents. Pretty sure his name was Elmer, and I’m pretty sure he was also from New York, but I don’t know for sure.
Interviewer: And his last name would be?
Goldstein: Ninesling.
Interviewer: Okay, tell me a little bit about your parents, how they met.
Goldstein: I think they met while they were in school in New York, and they were young. I think my mom was 19 and he was 21 when they married. She dropped out of school, and he finished school. I think they started having children shortly after, a couple years after they got married. There were six of us. One never was born and the other died a couple days after he was born, and so four survivors.
Interviewer: Your parents were married where?
Goldstein: They were married in Manhasset, New York, out on Long Island. (Pronounces Long Island again and laughs).
Interviewer: You have to get the right pronunciation.
Goldstein: Right. He was from Great Neck, and she was from Manhattan because my grandmother would commute into work, into the city, in New York City.
Interviewer: How did your parents make a living?
Goldstein: My mom did odd jobs and raised kids. My dad made a living, he was a packaging engineer and he worked. I think he worked for Continental Can, early on, and then he worked for, I remember the longest he worked for, we lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he worked for Warner Lambert, which makes Listerine and other pharmaceutical products, and he did all the, was responsible for all the packaging, and then he worked for the Mennon Company.
Interviewer: For those who remember their ads. I guess they sort of disappeared and got swallowed up by some other company by now.
Goldstein: Yeah, exactly.
Interviewer: And you have brothers and sisters?
Goldstein: Yes, I have two sisters and a brother. I’m the oldest. I was a costume designer for my career in theater and then corporate logo characters, had my own business doing that.
Interviewer: What was your business name?
Goldstein: It was named Costume Specialists, and I ran that for 37 years.
Interviewer: Tell me about your siblings then and their names and…
Goldstein: My next sibling is Jerri Lynn. She’s still a Ninesling, and she was an art history major but ended up doing a lot of not-for-profit work in Europe. When she was, her husband, at the time, was on the legal team, rewriting the constitution in Czechoslovakia when the law came down. So, they spent a long time in Europe and Brataslava and Budapest, and she traveled all over Europe, helping countries as they were coming into democracy and trying to commercialize more. Now she works for the, she lives in Seattle, and works for the, she worked for the Bar Association for a long time and now does independent HR work.
Interviewer: That’s the first sister.
Goldstein: My second, Lisa Ann, she is a Hill now. She married. We’re very diverse. She married a black man, and they are both civil engineers, and had four children, three adopted, one biological. So, you know they say be careful what you wish for (laughs). My brother, James Stephen Ninesling, is a marketing expert, and he was always in sales and marketing, in the sound industry for a long time, doing like audio work, stereos and speakers, and currently works for a company that did the first wireless earbud, which is out of Denmark. He runs the United States division of that company and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. My sister, Lisa, is in New Jersey, and here I am in Ohio, so we have the United States pretty covered.
Interviewer: But you grew up in Ohio, all of you.
Goldstein: Lancaster, Pennsylvania and my family moved. When I was in college, the family moved to New Jersey, and I came here to go to Ohio State and never left.
Interviewer: Okay. Do you have some early memories of growing up with your brother and sisters?
Goldstein: Oh, of course. Let’s see. I remember going to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, it was so safe. We lived in a lovely suburb, and we rode our bikes to school as a herd. You know, we would ride together and with our friends. We would go out in the morning and not come back until my mom rang the dinner bell. It was that kind of a place. My parents were amazing parents in terms of being there for us and supporting us and encouraging us to be independent thinkers, which was pretty cool for my dad at that time.
Interviewer: So, what were you like as a teenager?
Goldstein: Of course, I was rebellious (laughs). I was a sewer. I was a 4-H girl and I learned how to sew when I was like in 4th grade or something. So, by the time I got to my teens, I was sewing my own clothes and mixing patterns to be able to make what I wanted. You know, this was in the 60s. So, you know, I was doing hippie clothes for my friends. We would go to the thrift store and buy stuff and cut it up and make clothes. And there, it was a lot of feed sacks, like hop sacking. We did a lot of that.
Interviewer: Was that your first job? I mean, did you make some money from it, or you just did it?
Goldstein: No, I just did it. Then I got interested in theater. When I was in college, I started doing theatre with a theater major in college. But then, my dad said, “Well, you know, you realize, you have to make a living doing that.” I got nervous and I switched to fashion retail studies and actually graduated, and then went on to get a Master’s in fashion retail studies. Going back to my family, it was like a one, like we lived on a hill that was apple orchards. At the bottom were tobacco farms and chicken farms. Lancaster was a hub for stock. It had a big, giant stockyard. It was farm country right next to Amish country there.
Interviewer: What was your first job? Where did you make some money for the first time?
Goldstein: The first time I went to work was working at Kresge’s when I was a teenager, in Lancaster, at the soda fountain. We always had to work in the summers. I worked at the factory where my dad worked for summers for years, Hubly Manufacturing, which was a metal toy company in Lancaster. It’s all production line work and my parents said that it was important for us to understand how the people in the United States made their living, and that it could encourage us to go to college.
Interviewer: So, it was purposeful. You had your primary education in Lancaster and then you came to Ohio State for college.
Goldstein: We were all expected to go to college. It was not even a choice.
Interviewer: Okay, why Ohio State?
Goldstein: I actually went to the University of Pittsburgh for my first two years, in Johnstown. That was a branch campus. And then, I transferred to Ohio State, following a boyfriend (laughs). I wanted to go to Kent State because I knew I was interested in fashion and theater, but my parents wouldn’t let me because it was right after the Kent State massacre. So, they wouldn’t let me go there. They had a better program in fashion.
Interviewer: For some of the people we interviewed, they’re of a vintage where they can remember the Great Depression or were involved in some way in WWII. For you, those might be family memories. Are there any?
Goldstein: Family memories. That was history. I was born in 1953 so I have Vietnam War memories and civil rights memories?
Interviewer: But long ago from family members, are there any memories?
Goldstein: My uncle, my father’s brother was in the Korean War. That’s the closest that I can say.
Interviewer: Okay, what is the name of your former husband?
Goldstein: I was married twice. My first husband was Steve Herz. The Herz family was a Jewish family in Columbus. I’m sure there’s records of that. We were married, just for a few years, right out of college, and then divorced, no children. Then I married a few years later to David Lee Goldstein who was a china buyer at Lazarus, where I was working. I had been hired there after school in the buyers training program. So, we met at work, at Lazarus, F&R Lazarus.
Interviewer: That’s why you were at Ohio State. The thing that I want to ask you is about your decision to marry and the proposal. You have, I guess, two stories like that.
Goldstein: It’s circumstantial. I met my first husband at the Jewish Center because we worked with Harold (Eisenstein) in the theater. We did theater together. He was a setting and light designer and I was the costume designer. There were four or five shows a year done at the Jewish Center here in Columbus. It was a way of life. I’d work at retail. I started, my first show was, I was still in college, so I did a lot of it for probably two years in college, and then did it for years and that’s what gave me the idea for the costumes, to start a costume company.
Part of it was when the old Jewish center was torn down and they had no place to put the costumes, that we stored for them, and they used them for free and could use other costumes that we had for their productions. It was a shared agreement.
Interviewer: So that was the first husband? That was just a few years?
Goldstein: Then while I was working at Lazarus, I met my second husband.
Interviewer: Are the proposal stories from either of those guys something to talk about?
Goldstein: No, but I just find it really interesting that I, I mean I wasn’t even particularly, well, I was still doing theater at the Jewish Center, but my second husband had nothing to do with the Jewish Center. I just met him there. It’s very interesting to me that I was attracted to two Jewish men and converted before we had, well actually, after my daughter was born so we both were mikvahed (went to the mikvah).
Interviewer: Okay, so this is the second marriage, and you converted after you got married?
Goldstein: In the process, and then finished, didn’t finish before my daughter was born. So, we mikvahed together. But, I have to add in there that my grandmother that was the actress, her husband was Jewish. You know, they were married. She didn’t even know he was Jewish when she married him because it was McCarthyism, and there was all of that craziness going on, and so he didn’t tell her. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t have cared. My mother was raised with more Jewish ideology that she even knew, and when I converted, she wanted to, to study the materials I was studying, so we did it together and she totally learned really who she was and how much of her upbringing, even though she was only eight when her father passed away, how much of her early foundation had Judaism ideology in it. So, to me it’s not like I was even looking for it, but it was not an uncomfortable fit, the decision to marry a Jewish man. It was when we decided to have children, and it was really important to him that the children were raised Jewish, and I thought it was important for them to be raised with one upbringing, and, you know, we picked.
Interviewer: So that’s sort of describes the early years of your marriage. How many children did you end up having?
Goldstein: We had two, a girl and a boy. Sarah Beth Goldstein was named after David’s grandmother, who was a Sarah. As I said, she mikvahed when she was a couple months old. As soon as I felt comfortable like dunking her under the water, she was mikvahed. My son, Stephen Michael Goldstein was named. David’s father had passed away and his name was Sydney. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t do Sydney, so I said, okay, we’re going to do that, so we did Stephen.
Interviewer: When were your children born?
Goldstein: Sarah was born in 1981, December 17th, and Steve was born in 1985, July 1st.
Interviewer: Where are they now?
Goldstein: Stephen is still in Columbus and he’s a graphic design merchandising person. He does visual merchandising for a company in town called Zen Genius and works, he’s right now an independent contractor at Victoria’s Secret doing their visual merchandising. He planned all the visuals for Christmas set up, which they just did at Easton. So, he like designed fixtures, does signage and lots of computer graphic work. My daughter, on the other hand, Sarah is a pediatrician. She lives in and she did her residency in Houston, Texas because she was a fluent Spanish speaker and that was an asset there. She was a DO doing an MD residency, which was interesting, and ended up getting a great job there, meeting a man and falling in love and getting married, and having children.
Interviewer: So you have some grandchildren.
Goldstein: I have one grandchild. I have a granddaughter, Lucy Victoria Smith. (Smith, laughs).
Interviewer: Let’s see, what else do I need to ask you about? A special memory of each of your children as they were growing up?
Goldstein: Well, my daughter went to the Jewish day school at, well, she went to daycare at Agudas Achim, and then went on to the Hebrew school, the Jewish day school, on Noe Bixby. What the heck is it called? I can’t remember. Anyway, at kindergarten, and you have to remember like, I’m a creative like all over the place and she was not. She was a very logical processor and so we had butted heads a lot, but she’s obsessive compulsive. It was really hard for me to do theater at night and get up and get kids off to school in the morning. I said to her as I’m helping her get dressed, I have to remember to blah blah blah. I don’t even remember what it was anymore. So, I get a phone call from the school about 10 o’clock in the morning and it’s my daughter on the phone, who in kindergarten had excused herself from class, gone to the office, gotten permission to make a phone call to remind me to do blah blah blah blah (laughs). I knew I was in big trouble. So, that was that story. Steve was just a wild child, the other way, he’s the creative. He needed some extra attention and so I knew, because I was so busy that I needed to find a different kind of daycare for him. So, I found a nice Jewish grandmother that was doing some daycare at home. He came home, he was probably like three. Her name was Beth. He said, “Beth and I went for a walk today mom, and I was picking up leaves, it was the Fall, and I found these really cool leaves, and she said to me, ‘Put that leaf down,” and I said, “Well, what was that about?” And he said, “Well, did you know mom that God knows how many dogs pee on leaves?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Yeah that’s what Beth said to me, put that down. God knows how many dogs peed on leaves.” And so that’s a perfect story about my son.
Interviewer: Oh, those are wonderful. Thank you for sharing those. You told me about your grandchild already. Is there anything special you like to do when you get together with your kids?
Goldstein: Oh, we like to cook together. I always take out, like when a group is coming like a family reunion or something, we always take out the picture books and all the old family records. One time we did a jewelry distribution from my grandmother, like, and it was like four tables full of stuff because she had so much. She was an actress.
Interviewer: Oh, I yeah, of course. That would make sense. What about family vacations?
Goldstein: We try to get together every year, all of my siblings together and we did a really good job. It’s a tradition that started after my mom passed. She passed in, I’ve got to look because, you know, we never remember this stuff, 1990.
Interviewer: So you’ve been doing this for 30 years, where you’ve been getting together?
Goldstein: Yeah, where we’ve been trying to get together. It took us a couple years to figure it out and then it hasn’t always been every year. Often people come here because I’m sort of central like it’s easy from New Jersey, Atlanta, where my brother is, and then my sister has the long haul from Seattle. We’ll all get together and spend either Thanksgiving or 4th of July together, and have had times where all of the kids were here too. That’s less and less frequent now. We hang and we cook together and tell stories and do sports and go hiking and, you know, we just hang. It’s great. We all like each other. There’s not a lot of family drama (laughs).
Interviewer: Oh of course yeah you’re right, you’re totally right. At this point are you doing community work?
Goldstein: I serve on two boards. One is the national Institute for NAWBO, which is the National Association of Women Business Owners, and the Institute is the side of their board that does education for female entrepreneurs. So, I do that, and I also work with the Columbus Fashion Council which promotes education and provides a platform for designers in Columbus to grow their business and show their work. The founder, they’re 14 years old now, Thomas McClure founded it. There’s a Columbus Fashion Week as a result of it where there’s fashion events every night for a week, ending in a Finale Runway Show with a guest designer that comes in from out of town. It’s a big deal, yeah. You know, there’s always like six or eight hundred people there and it’s a big event. That’s a non-profit. Columbus, believe it or not, has the third largest population of independent designers in the United States.
Interviewer: I’ve heard Columbus is really on the map in fashion.
Goldstein: A lot, because of The Limited and Lane Bryant and Abercrombie and, you know, we have so many headquarters and then these are all spin offs from it in one way or another. That’s been my, and I do some work for the Sewing Guild of Fundraisers for Children’s Hospital.
Interviewer: Do you consider yourself retired or still working at this point?
Goldstein: Well, I’m just retired. I taught at Ohio State as I was in the process of preparing my business to sell. I taught there for 14 years in the end. I overlapped.
Interviewer: What subjects were you teaching?
Goldstein: I taught the history of 20th century fashion and branding of fashion, and law. I mean I had like seven to eight hundred students a semester. I loved it. I had already gone to teaching online during COVID. So, I was able to, at the end, I was just teaching online, and it was great. I mean, I missed knowing the kids as much, but it was fine for that many students. I loved that I felt sort of I give back. It gave me a lot, kept me mentally active, and I love being in touch with young people. I still try to be involved and I still have friends from doing all that. I have some students, some of my students have gone on to open fashion stores in Columbus or I run into them all the time. “Oh my gosh you’re my professor and I’m you know a buyer now at Victoria’s Secret,” or whatever. Yeah. And so sometimes I’m at dinner and they come over and go, “Oh my gosh, are you Professor Goldstein? You don’t know me because I had you in an online class but I loved your class and blah, blah,.” you know (laughs). So, it’s great.
Interviewer: Any other hobbies, anything else you do?
Goldstein: Oh, I’m really an avid gardener, that’s flowers and vegetables, better at flowers than vegetables, and I have lots of space here. Anything with fashion, and I still sew. I still do work for people. Now I get to do my special stuff like I just cut apart a girlfriend’s wedding dress to make a christening gown for one of her grandchildren. You know a confirmation gown and I’ve made some wedding dresses and I do alterations because I love it, not because I’m working.
Interviewer: Okay, any other interests?
Goldstein: Sewing and fashion mainly, and well like right now, I travel.
Interviewer: Where’d you travel?
Goldstein: My favorite is Italy, but I’m an adventure traveler. I’ve done Tibet. Last year I did Iceland, and we’re going to do Singapore, Bali and Australia this year. I travel with friends and a lot of my trips are with a small group that we travel with a professional photographer and take pictures. It’s learning how to shoot, and it’s an extension of my eye. You know, I developed a pretty artistic eye over the years, and so I enjoyed that because it’s sort of keeps me in tune.
Interviewer: It sounds good. We’re going to shift a little bit here and talk a little bit about your loved ones and if they’re, you know, they pass away. Are there any stories or recollections of some of your loved ones and their passing that you feel like sharing?
Goldstein: Oh, and their passing. My grandmother was my mentor, Alice, the actress. When I was in college, I would often get to see her in New York, and she would plan theatrical excursions for us. So, one day, we saw Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell in the same day. I mean I got a theatrical education. We were just really close because of that shared passion. She’s the one who really encouraged me to keep doing it. She lived in New York. When she got older and was not really comfortable being in New York on her own anymore because she didn’t really have other family there, we moved her. My mom and I moved her out to Ohio, and I was her main caregiver. She lived to be 93 and was totally cognizant. She did have some health issues, but it didn’t affect her too much mentally. Even though her husband had died quite young, she had always been in love with him. When she talked about it, you could tell. She had some health issues at the end and ended up having an infection and needing to amputate a lower part of her leg. But, this is how she handled life, she looked up at me when I was explaining to her for the 10th time what was going to happen. She looked at me and she said, “Really,” and I said, “Yeah, I ‘m really sorry.” She looked at me and I thought she got a little wrinkle at the top of, over her nose, and she said, “Well, honey, guess my dancin’ days are over.” (laughs)
Interviewer: Wow. Oh, she must have been amazing.
Goldstein: She was incredible, just incredible. She was like a quiet mountain of strength. She was amazing and a heart of gold.
Interviewer: That’s great. One little final thing about your adult life. Is there anything unusual that occurred in your adult life that you’d like to share?
Goldstein: Wow, these are hard questions. I think I still go back to I’m awed and amazed at the cycle of my life that my grandparents were Jewish and then no one knew because my grandfather didn’t tell and that it cycled back around, and only with me, I apologize, not with my other siblings, and not unexpected, because we were raised to be particularly accepting of all diversity. Some of that’s because my mom had a black nanny and we all had black baby dolls and that was my mom’s way of keeping us open to, that people are different and that’s what’s so interesting. So, it’s not unexpected that I would be, that I would have totally embraced, like, changing my faith, but I’m still in awe of that’s how it works. So amazing. I think those are the kind of things I think about now and the beauty of life, art, and theater and you know, all of that. You know, there’s new little surprises all the time in life. I mean, to see, I’ve had the privilege of being able to travel just to see that in different cultures is amazing.
Interviewer: Let’s shift back to organizations that you’re active with. You mentioned several, are there any other organizations that you participate in that we haven’t mentioned yet?
Goldstein: The Costume Society of America is one, actually set up a scholarship there that funds entrepreneurs to come speak, entrepreneurs in the costume field of some sort that support, and these are all educators or museum curators or theater educators, or spin-offs like, mannequin suppliers, you know all the supplies. I set up a fund to pay for speakers to come and address the group on their national conference about those different versions of careers and costuming, like mine was. Who thought, who would have thunk it when I started, and there we were.
Interviewer: Are there any other board positions you haven’t mentioned? You talked about a couple of those already, too.
Goldstein: I served, I’m a past president for the local chapter of NAWBO again. When I was younger, I did a lot of work at the temple, like helped with, like I was the buyer for the gift shop for a while, like just volunteered a lot there. I don’t know, since I really just stopped teaching last spring, and spent the summer sort of getting my life organized, I feel like I’m just now settling into what’s next. I’m not done.
Interviewer: Are you affiliated with any temple or synagogue?
Goldstein: Yes, I’m a member of Tifereth.
Interviewer: Okay. Committee involvement there?
Goldstein: Have not been.
Interviewer: Board involvement there?
Goldstein: Have not been.
Interviewer: You talked a little bit about your family life during holidays. The next part is a little bit about personal philosophy and values. The favorite holiday for your family would be what?
Goldstein: Oh, it’s tough.
Interviewer: Or the top two, maybe because I know you’ve mentioned a couple also.
Goldstein: Well, I think it’s really hard when your kids are across the country. I mean I always liked Rosh Hashanah. So, what we’ve done is, every once in a while, my daughter will come, but now it’s way easier for me to travel to her. If I’m here for the Jewish holidays, my son will come with his girlfriend, and we try and invite other friends of his that are Jewish and often Jewish friends of mine and always someone that’s not Jewish, so that we’re supporting. I loved the holiday. I loved the food for Rosh Hashanah (laughs). We only ever celebrated Hanukkah in our house, and then would travel to family and my kids would experience Christmas with family members. Only in our house, did we ever do, celebrate the Jewish holidays.
Interviewer: So, would you say that religion plays an important role in your family’s life?
Goldstein: Yes, very much so, in a spiritual sense. We haven’t been much temple goers. However, my daughter did the entire service in Hebrew, and she had to help me study my little section for her Bas Mitzvah. Then she went on to tutor students, who were studying, and they all also did the entire service. I mean, from like nine till one, you know whenever, it’s a long service. Totally was on the bema the whole time, all in Hebrew. All of her students did the same thing, which is unusual. I said to her, “How did you do that?” She said, “I just didn’t tell them otherwise, that’s what they did.” I said, “Okay, good for you.”
Interviewer: Absolutely, would you describe your family as having strong ties?
Goldstein: The religious ties?
Interviewer: Well, it could be religious or just social.
Goldstein: Our familial ties are really strong. Social skills, all of us are really like social people, and I haven’t been, I think, because I’m so involved in arts, I haven’t been as involved in other areas, politically, religiously, or a lot about Israel? I just haven’t. That’s not been a focus in my life.
Interviewer: Thinking about your family when you were raised and then you’re raising your own family, what values, or ethics, or philosophy do you think has been strong carried through?
Goldstein: The importance of family; integrity; hardworking, all of us. We’ve all been really lucky to have lived, in comparison to many people, privileged lives and very, in general, I think modest and not assuming anything, and I think that helped me. I have to diverge just for a second with my business because, in the United States, only one percent of the female business owners have a business that does more than a million dollars, and I achieved that and raised my kids pretty much on my own with my work. I think that all goes back to the values and willing to work hard and not expecting handouts and the value of a religion or a spiritual base because you’re going to need it in your life at some time. You might not think it when you’re young, but it happens.
Interviewer: Who had the greatest influence on you when you were young?
Goldstein: Oh, definitely my grandmother, my maternal grandmother.
Interviewer: Quick question on asking you to compare the lives of children today with when you were young, grandchildren, so kids now, kids when you were a child.
Goldstein: Well, they’re way smarter (laughs) and more exposed to more things than we were. We were more colloquial, I think. Now, with the internet and travel and the experience economy, they’re just, it’s amazing to me what they do and how much they know and travel, and I mean, both kids went to Israel, did their trips to Israel. About my daughter’s, we were, active when I was being raised, we just always went to church on Sunday, and our social life was in the church. When the kids were younger, we were very, very involved in the temple. I just have to say I, as a single woman, it’s just harder for me, I don’t feel comfortable, like to go and sit by myself at temple. It has to be an organized thing with somebody. I just don’t spend my time doing that, but I still consider myself to be really spiritual and tied to that, it’s really funny. I was camp counselor in, actually, an Episcopalian church camp and I went back for a 40th reunion with the counselors, and there was 15 of us there, which is saying something. That’s how much we were linked and many of us have stayed in touch all through the years, but I had not been back to the camp. It was in Delaware, and it was based more on Indian culture and nature. Two things, one, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the inside of the front cover the paper was all religion. You know, the churches. So that’s the world I grew up in and then went to this church, or this church camp, and I forgot it was like so good to go back because it took me to my roots of why I feel so strongly about a religious foundation. I don’t know that I strongly feel that it has to be one or the other. It’s whatever the family or the person’s choice is, but it’s so true. To me, it’s just so important for values, and my daughter knows it. My son likes it. I honestly have to say, I don’t think he knows why. He hasn’t gone that far. So, we’ll see how that one nets out. I mean, he’s a man now, he’s not a kid anymore, but he doesn’t have a family yet, so we’ll see.
Interviewer: Yeah, that may make a difference. The item here is about television and it’s influence. I guess personally, I would just expand that to internet and its influence, but thoughts about that?
Goldstein: Wow. Well, I could go on and on about the current times and television and internet exposure but will side-step that (laughs).
Interviewer: One little capsule, what would it be? What would you want to tell?
Goldstein: Well, I think that there’s a, I think it’s really difficult to impact family values in the world today with so much exposure to other values and it’s difficult for people, for young people to build a base to give them a solid enough foundation to be able to make their choices and go forward in life, because they’re being bombarded with stuff all the time. It’s hard, I think for them to know, and I think it gets muddier and then gets harder as they’re adults. So, I think there is some disservice in the internet and television to the value system because you’re bombarded.
Interviewer: So, we’re just about at the end of the interview. Are there any stories that came into your head while we were talking and you didn’t get a chance to say them, anything you’d want to say now?
Goldstein: Well, I do think that so much of my life was about my work and that I sacrificed a lot of time with my children because I was a single mother at 40, and with two children who I knew that I was going to have to put through college myself, and I was determined they were going to go. So, I made choices that, I had to make choices to devote time and energy to grow in my business when my heart really wanted to be more with my children. So, I have a really strong relationship with my grandchildren. It’s like, I missed a lot of it the first time, but I’m not missing the next generation. I have to say that I’m very proud of the work that I did, actually the business work. We dressed a lot of the congregation, but definitely the staff at Tifereth for, you know, the costume events for the holidays, and just donated, that was our contribution to the temple. We dressed the rabbi and Cantor Chomsky . They had a different theme every year. They coordinated their themes. We had a lot of fun, building a social life around a lot of what happened at temple also. But, I think my, the business was such a strong focus that I think that’s the story of costume specialist is unique and the fact that it was a woman. It was always, even when my husband and I started it, we did it as a female owned business and I think that it taught my kids about hard work and how you can be members in the community through your work and giving back to the community with your work. So, those values, I think, came from me as the income earner versus which is very different than a lot of kids. It wasn’t easy, especially not when I did it, you know. Our generation was well wishy-washy about some of that stuff. I mean there were some very verbose women about women working, but in general that wasn’t really what was happening. It was starting, it was the seeds. So, I hope that those choices have allowed my kids to see some opportunities for themselves, about themselves and how they can live with the community through their work.
Interviewer: That’s segues into the last thing I want to ask you and that is if you were to give a message about life and love to your children, your grandchildren, the generations to come. What would that be?
Goldstein: Ah it’s my favorite quote. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “You must do the thing that you think you cannot do.”
Interviewer: Okay. It’s wonderful. So, on behalf of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society. I want to thank you for contributing to the oral history project. This concludes the interview
Goldstein: Thank you.
Transcribed by: Rose Luttinger
February 12, 2024
Part 2
Interviewer: This is July 15th, 2024, and we are talking to Wendy Goldstein. This is the second interview with her. This interview for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society is being recorded on July 15th, 2024 as a part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society’s Oral History Project. The interview is being recorded at, your address?
Goldstein: XXXX (redacted) Dublin Granville Road, Columbus, Ohio.
Interviewer: My name is Yvonne Burry as the interviewer and I’m interviewing Wendy Goldstein. So, we’re talking today about your career and how it evolved here in Columbus and then any ties that your career and you through that process might have with the Jewish community.
Goldstein: Okay. Okay.
Interviewer: Yeah, so, I know that you didn’t grow up in Columbus, correct, and you got to Columbus as part of going to your college education.
Goldstein: My second half of college.
Interviewer: Your second half. Right. You started off in Pennsylvania.
Goldstein: In University of Pittsburgh.
Interviewer: Right. And then you had this epiphany and decided, ‘I’ve got to get someplace else’ and that someplace else turned out to be Ohio State University.
Goldstein: Uhm-hm.
Interviewer: Okay. Tell us a little bit about that.
Goldstein: Well, I came, well, it was actually two-fold, one following a boyfriend as many of us did then, and who had graduated from college and was working and originally from Columbus, but two, I was, had realized I had a real strong interest in theatrical costuming and I came to join the theater program at Ohio State and it was only after I was further into it that I realized I had to get a design degree there which included sets and lighting and I couldn’t have cared less about that, so, I managed to put together a self-designed degree that was fashion merchandising and, in the Fashion Retail Studies program. Then it was Textiles and Clothing and the Art program so I could learn how to draw and the Theater program which offered additional history of fashion for costume designers and so I ended up graduating in the Textiles and Clothing. It was actual a Bachelor of Science at that time…
Interviewer: Wow.
Goldstein: …which is crazy, but we had to take textiles, like, ten hours of textiles so it was, it got pretty technical and I graduated and then had the reality check that my father said, “Well, you know, you have to make a living now that you’ve graduated from college” …
Interviewer: Yes.
Goldstein: ..and the boyfriend was no longer in the picture and I went to work for Lazarus as a trainee.
Interviewer: And this was downtown at the old Lazarus.
Goldstein: This was downtown Lazarus when it was corporate headquarters before Macy’s bought it. They had the best training program in the country at that time for buying, to become a buyer…
Interviewer: Uhm-hm.
Goldstein: and my training had nothing to do with fashion. It was in the glassware department. I was assistant buyer in lamps and then I became the bath shop buyer, so, all of my tenure was in home goods, but it gave me a really good business foundation and I also at the time got involved with the director of like, Visual Merchandising and Special Events at Lazarus and they found out I did costumes, so I was hired to do costumes for some of their special events, so, I totally revamped Santa Land at Lazarus when they took it to be the Nutcracker and when the ballet came out with their Nutcracker, so, it was a whole downtown effort to promote the Nutcracker.
Interviewer: About what time was that era?
Goldstein: That would have been, oh, good question, in the late 70s, early 80s…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …because I actually founded the company in the basement of my house in 1980.
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: So, I was working for them. First it was just me and then I realized, oh, it was a little bit like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, like, “Let’s make costumes!” but I had my friends come over, etcetera, but then I realized that I really loved doing that and I left the retail world and started my business…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …and my husband and I did it together and he had been at Lazarus too and that was David Goldstein, so, in those early days, we had a lot of, um, we did a lot of work in the industry, a lot of which was Jewish, the costume industry, believe it or not…
Interviewer: Yeah.
Goldstein: …and we opened our first retail store in 1981.
Interviewer: In Columbus.
Goldstein: In Columbus, and we were doing Halloween, drag, special events. We had a sewing room and I did custom sewing in the back, back room, but I would say a good 75% of my vendors for the store were Jewish, so, in fact…
Interviewer: And this was local? How local are you at that point versus national or international?
Goldstein: Well, we were local, only local retail sales, but we were going to national shows, like to find vendors…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …and I remember one of the main makeup companies which was Stein, which still exists today. He used to travel with his wife and she would crochet. I have crocheted baby presents from her for both my kids.
Interviewer: Oh, wonderful,
Goldstein: You know so there were a lot of those life-long relationships created then and the vendors at that point were primarily from New York.
Interviewer: Yes. Did you get involved in any New York theatrical things?
Goldstein: Not ‘til later, but I did.
Interviewer: Okay keep going with your story and we’ll come back to that.
Goldstein: So, my husband, the very first thing I got hired to do was trunk shows at Lazarus after the Santa Land, and it was for the gift pro…the gift department there and Royal Doulton makes little figurines, one of which was Peter Rabbit and they wanted a costume to promote their things that they could travel with, and I was like, “Well, I know how to do that.” I had no idea how to do it. I just had had a theatrical class for making Canadia Doll Art Day Mask which is an Italian special event and it’s like, it was like, they do a plaster mask and I had done that in college. I had learned how to do that and I went, “Well I guess I could probably make a whole head out of that” so, I said, “I’ll do Peter Rabbit,” so, early on, my very first head was for the actual Warne Family who wrote Peter Rabbit and who still owned the license so I was involved with licensing characters.
Interviewer: Oh, boy. Okay.
Goldstein: So, you had to get approval for every step from whomever the license holder was…
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: …and we did Peter Rabbit and the interesting thing was in the retail world then, the marketing involved a boxed set that had a ball and a plate that had Peter Rabbit on it, some sterling silver, a book and a little stuffed animal, so, that one job got me into the stuffed, the plush market, the book market, and the special events market, so, and it sort of just grew from there, and let’s see, by 1983, so, you know, only a few years later I was hired by a Children’s Palace which is now defunct…
Interviewer: Right.
Goldstein: …to create Peter Panda and they wanted a hundred and seventy-six Peter Pandas which is a lot of costumes…
Interviewer: Right.
Goldstein: …especially for a young company. I had to rent a whole other space, hire all additional people, rent additional equipment and there was a 20% penalty if we didn’t deliver on time, so, it was big business for us then.
Interviewer: Yeah, and these are life-size costumes.
Goldstein: These are life-size costumes…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …and, I sent, you have the image of it. Here, let me get this.
Interviewer: Oh, sure.
Goldstein: So, this is some of the images from our little temporary work space, but we got it down to the day. I think there was going to be, we were shipping at the end based on how long it took UPS to get there and I think we were shy like five costumes and they were like, ‘Are you kidding? We don’t care.’ So, I sort of learned early on that I had this ability, one, to design it, two, to figure out how to do it, but I knew how to build relationships and that was what a lot of it was.
Interviewer: I’m sure that was a lot of it.
Goldstein: And then, we, so, that was huge and sadly, my mom was dying from cancer during that and I had two young children, so I, just that is all like a blur in my life ‘cause I was juggling all of that trying to get it done, and after that, so I had the retail store and I’m doing sewing out of the back of the retail store, so, we’re doing theatrical costumes. My husband was buying a lot of the goods for the retail store at that point and we were trying to make it a go as a family business, but we had set it up in my name initially because there was benefits to being female owned…
Interviewer: Sure. Sure.
Goldstein: …so we took advantage of that. The thing I didn’t know and many business women that started in the 80s, we didn’t have, we couldn’t get credit, so, our, like, we had credit cards as you well know, but they were in the credit of our husbands, so, the, even though the business was mine, he had to sign everything that was financial because it was really based on his credit, and owning a business didn’t really change any of that. It even made it, it wasn’t until years and years later when there were enough assets in the business that I was able to use the equity of the business to secure financing so, it was because of it being early times for women to own businesses, it was a challenge…
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: especially when I got divorced.
Interviewer: Yes.
Goldstein: So, and we went on and grew and we had two locations and by 1993 I knew that we had to separate the sewing operation from the retail store. It needed more space and we had not, it was silly to pay what it cost to be in retail space for sewing space.
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: So, that’s when we moved into 211 North Fifth Street. That building was owned by Mark Menster and part of the reason that he gave me space there because I, when I was, was because we were yiddishe cup, right?
Interviewer: Right.
Goldstein: so, ‘cause we were young and it was a lot of space and he but he had an affinity for artists. He also had some CCAD professors that had studios in his building and he let me take space for a really reasonable price. I had, working with the broker and he said, “Well, how much can you spend and I said, “Oh, like a dollar fifty a square foot,” and he said, “Do you want heat with that?” I said, “Preferably.”
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: So, it was a tough time and we worked it out. We also did a first option to buy and I still own that building today, so, and then, from that time going forward, I started a lot of relationships with book publishers, from that Peter Rabbit job, so I had, was sort-of the darling of the interestingly enough, children’s book publishing business, ‘er Christian book publishing, but also a lot of the big characters because this is the growth period of all the big box book sellers – Barnes and Noble, Borders, so we had relationships with all of them and would make the costumes for the publisher but using advertising dollars for, like, Borders would own them but we would have to develop them with the publisher because they have the licensing rights.
Interviewer: Right.
Goldstein: at that point, so it was an interesting time to have been in that business.
Interviewer: And these would be costumes for what kind of…?
Goldstein: for events promoting the books.
Interviewer: So, someone would dress up as Peter Rabbit and go to an event with a bunch of kids [?]?
Goldstein: Uhm-hm. Uhm-hm. And then we would, I came up with this idea of building a program because a lot of times, like, the marketing intern was in charge of this costume and it needed to be cleaned and repaired and shipped, so they didn’t really get their first they needed to maintain their brand identity which it wasn’t even called yet – that’s today lingo – and then they couldn’t use it as much because it wasn’t taken care of. So, I was actually at Penguin Publishing and meeting with that marketing intern, and said, “Well, do you think you’d pay,” like, she said, I said, “What are all those trunks outside your cubicle office?” She said, “Oh, those are all the costumes I’m supposed to take care of and the only person I can find to fix them is my grandmother and I have to drag them home on the subway and get my grandmother to sew them and we…
Interviewer: Oh.
Goldstein: …can’t figure out how to wash them,” so, with all my textiles and clothing training, I knew how to do all of that because I was, I could draft patterns and I knew fabrics. I knew how to clean them.
Interviewer: Right.
Goldstein: I knew, you know, what could get dry-cleaned, what can’t, because at the time there was very little regulation on having that information in a custom-made costume. So, I said to her, “Well, you think you could find some money to pay somebody to do that for you?” So, I created what I call costume management and it developed into a million-dollar division of my company in that we would find three-year contracts with companies to manage their costumes. We would take the reservations. We would clean it, repair it, store it, send it out on time for events and get it back or send it on. So, we were managing, like, Borders and Barnes and Nobles, and we even got to working with, oh, who has Blues Clues? Nickelodeon, you know, some of it as time went on, and then we did, like, Dora, Diego and over time, you know, this all evolved. So, it was timing. I was just at the right place at the right time and it sort of evened out that, the business, because the retail store did, like, 75% of its business the last quarter, between Halloween and Christmas.
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: I mean you had an Easter Blip but, in the Fall, we did all the Jewish holidays, ‘er, the Spring, like for Purim we would do Purim for people…
Interviewer: Right.
Goldstein: and we were working with schools at that point so, that was a very up and down, not consistent, and custom business has a really long selling cycle. You have to develop a relationship, so it was a terrible combination…
Interviewer: Yes.
Goldstein: …to maintain business integrity, to keep your staff, to be able to pay rent monthly, and so, costume management sort-of saved all that ‘cause we had monthly payments from people, so that’s sort-of when the business took off.
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: Let’s see, what else? And then we, do I have time? In 1993, when I did costume management…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …and I had an appointment at Barnes and Noble that I had been trying and trying and trying and trying to get, and I already had the program going with Penguin, so, I had, I had beta-tested it. I had hired somebody to help me write a software program to manage the reservations ‘cause the first ones were, like, hand-written on calendars, right?
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: So, we developed a database, but Barnes and Nobles was going to, like, blast it off and I had figured out, okay, I’m going to need $10,000 of laundry equipment and if this deal goes through and I need to hire these people, so, I had the whole plan laid out. Finally get an appointment in New York City, travel to New York and sit down at the appointment and it turns out it’s the new person’s first day.
Interviewer: Oh, wow,
Goldstein: He had taken over the past person’s calendar. I mean, he still had boxes of paper clips on his desk from, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, this is not going to go well, or, this guy’s going to want to make a name for himself and it’s going to go great.’ So, we pitched it and we got it, so, so I came back immediately and I had set up, like, loans that I knew that I could get, and so, that was the launching of costume management and I, honestly, I don’t really know where I had the nerve to do some of that, you know, because it was all gambles, but somehow I figured, I did what I had to do, and I was divorced then and taking care of my kids so, I think the lioness came out when I had to take care of my kids.
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: And then we diversified in the 2000s and did, we made, so, we had made up, we had made the first million dollars a year in 1995. When I took over the company when I got divorced, which would have been, I don’t know you probably have that in the old, the date, we were doing about $350,000 a year, I think, so, like, less than ten years later, we hit a million, which was, like, my goal, and then of course you just, like, go to another million, you know, what’s next then?
Interviewer: Sure. Sure.
Goldstein: I got divorced in ’94. ’95 I had thirteen employees. In 2000, I bought the Two Eleven (211) building which I had been renting up ‘til then. 2001, I had thirty employees and I bought The Costume Factory, a company in California that made inflatable costumes. This is all in the presentation, so, and I also joined, that’s when I joined MAWBO.
Interviewer: Okay, so, let’s define that.
Goldstein: National Association of Women Business Owners, so, I was ready now. Like, after you hit that first million, you’re in a whole other realm of needing to learn how to do business, so I learned a lot of that from NAWBO…
Interviewer: Okay
Goldstein: …and other women that were in the Columbus area that were entrepreneurs at that time. 2008, I was on the Key Bank Board for Women. I joined WPO which is the Women’s Presidents Organization and by 2009, I had 46 employees. I, and then we hit 2010, the slow-down.
Interviewer: Yeah, things quieted down.
Goldstein: So, I had to pare it down. I had to cut pay, I had to, but somehow, we pulled out of it and survived. One of the, one of the big quotes that made a difference for me then was, “You need to identify the activities where you’re talented or figure out what you’re best at, then find people who are better than you to do the rest…”
Interviewer: Exactly.
Goldstein: and that’s easier said than done, because it involves being honest enough with yourself to do it and strong enough to admit your shortcomings and then learn how to manage people that are better at it than you.
Interviewer: Yes.
Goldstein: So, I’m probably preaching to the choir with you, but, and then I was mostly focused on how am I going to merge this new expanding inflatable company, and the inflatable company, I closed on that in August, right before 9/11, so, all my suppliers are in New York. My fabric suppliers. My daughter’s in New York living on Wall Street a few blocks away from the Towers, and I, I just, it was just a really hard period and so many of the suppliers went out of business during that time period, but our, but what happened was, this company that I had bought that I was, like, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to make my payments now?’ right? was Fortune 500 companies who were influenced less at that time than my prior customers would have been, so we were working with, like, Michelin and Veggie Tales and Key Bank and Nickelodeon and Sesame Street so we were able to, if I hadn’t have bought that, I’m not sure I would have made it through, so, you know, you just don’t know. Let’s see, what did I, so, in 2018, I sold the retail store. I’m sorry. I’m going to go back. I sold the retail store earlier. I sold the whole company in 2018.
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: So, I had sold off the retail store. Then I sold off Theatrical and then what was left was costing management and the, what we called Production which was the custom-making of costumes and then I sold that because I knew no one else was going to want to deal with, you know, retail, wholesale, rental, and service with costume management. I had every aspect of business trying to stabilize the company and, so, I did sell it and I sold it for what I wanted…
Interviewer: Which is wonderful.
Goldstein: which is amazing and it was paid up front which is even more amazing.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yes.
Goldstein: So, I had a, a good run. I think it was 37 years all together and I was just shy, I was at 2.8 million when I sold, a year,
Interviewer: That’s pretty good.
Goldstein: …which only 4% of women entrepreneurs have businesses over a million, so, I feel that was an accomplishment and that I was, that I could figure out a way to make it go on and retire from it.
Interviewer: Yeah. Absolutely.
Goldstein: So, I feel that it was a, and then of course, I, there was that blip at the end with Ohio State so everything I learned, I wanted to pass on.
Interviewer: Well, let’s just go through that a little bit because you then did what a lot of people do and that is, you go and teach for a while so you can pass on that knowledge. I mean…
Goldstein: Well, yes, and I actually did that. I started…
Interviewer: You know, that’s the wise older person in Jewish culture and many other cultures, right? that it’s like, okay now I’ve got all this stuff I know, I have to get the young…
Goldstein: and pass it on.
Interviewer: Do it.
Goldstein: I was, I came at it accidentally from a business perspective because I had grown up with the company. I was too involved with the daily operations and I knew that I needed to pull myself out if the company was going to have the value I wanted to get out of it, because you can’t be needed in the company if you’re going to sell it, and so, I up, I promoted someone internally to take care of daily management and I started teaching before selling the company to make myself pull out, so, we had a good, I think it was, a, let’s see, when I retired in ’23, I had been there 12 years.
Interviewer: At Ohio State.
Goldstein: At Ohio State, so I had started there in, do the math for me. 23, I’d been there twelve years.
Interviewer: So 11.
Goldstein: Eleven.
Interviewer: And then just quickly, what were you doing at Ohio State?
Goldstein: I came in to teach two classes, that people were retiring and my mentor there was a woman that I was her T.A. in graduate school.
Interviewer: This is Nancy Rudd.
Goldstein: Nancy Rudd and she’s the one that encouraged me to come in and I did have the master’s so that made it possible for me to be there…
Interviewer: Sure. Sure.
Goldstein: …and I taught pattern drafting and the, like, sort-of basic intro class to the business of fashion because I had had enough background, and that morphed over the years to when I was leaving I had taken over the history of costume, of 20th Century Costume or Fashion it was called, and I was teaching a branding class that I designed and got approved to be a class and wrote a textbook for which is still in print, ‘cause there wasn’t a lot of focus just on the fashion side of the business which is a little bit different and I had grown those courses so, originally when I took over the fashion class there was 70 students in it. When I left there was a face-to-face class and an online class and between the two, 700 students.
Interviewer: Oh, my goodness. Wow.
Goldstein: because I also got it to be a, oh, what did they call it, a history credit.
Interviewer: Okay, so a requirement for graduation.
Goldstein: It was, well, it was an option, not a requirement…
Interviewer: But it was a choice they could take to fulfill a requirement for graduation.
Goldstein: …and people from outside could take it as their history credit, so, outside the program…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …and then Branding had about 300 people in it so, I was teaching, like, a thousand students a semester there…
Interviewer: Wow.
Goldstein: …and so, you know, the people that, so, professors don’t really like to do that much work, but to me it was so easy after what I’d done, to be totally honest with you…
Interviewer: Yes.
Goldstein: …and I was bringing in a lot of money to the program so nobody really complained, so, for a lowly paid, you know, I wasn’t even a professor. I was a lecturer, so, it’s okay, but I loved it. I loved staying in touch with the kids and learning their perspective and how social media, like, came in a totally changed the face of fashion and retail…
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: …and I helped some of my students start their own businesses, so, one of which is now a large business in the Short North, so, I, you know, have passed that on, and I just, like, went to her wedding and she calls me, like, “I just got out of a meeting about this. What do you think?” you know, so, it’s so great and I love that.
Interviewer: That must be very satisfying and very fulfilling for you.
Goldstein: It’s really fulfilling and to see her succeed…
Interviewer: Yes. Absolutely.
Goldstein: …and she’s about ready to maybe start having a family so, she’s trying to decide, you know, what to do,
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: …how is her attention going to be divided, so, as we, you know, all know, we have to make those choices sometimes.
Interviewer: Absolutely.
Goldstein: So, I think that in the early days, the support of the, I mean there were many times where, and I’ve mentioned them, where my affiliation with the Jewish community helped. I had some trade relationships with people, like my pediatrician, and the temple and you know, so, we did lots of work supporting things that we thought were important, so, and my, my kids were all involved in all of that, and they’re actually both entrepreneurs today so, I feel like I did it on that side and made a difference in the community, like, Costume Specialists was a fixture in Bexley for costumes for a long, long time.
Interviewer: Yes, and you were actually making vestments for some of the rabbis at one point?
Goldstein: I did the chuppah for Tifereth Israel and I did repairs on some of the vestments…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …and Tifereth Israel loved to dress up for Purim so, I provided all of that…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …so, there was, yeah, we had some fun relationships ‘cause I just like to sew. That’s the end of the story. I like to sew…
Interviewer: Yeah, and you’re very creative and…
Goldstein: …and I’m still doing it. Actually, it’s morphed a little. I’ve been doing way more needlepoint lately but, and, but still sewing. I send stuff for my granddaughter and, you know, it’s fun.
Interviewer: And have your grandchildren picked up on that, on your creative bent then?
Goldstein: Have they? Oh, I just have the granddaughter but yes,
Interviewer: Oh, okay.
Goldstein: …and it’s sort of funny because her dad’s not, well, it’s a generation, too. You know, our generation’s, the last, like, handy-man generation. Men of the 50s, their fathers taught them how to do everything.
Interviewer: Right.
Goldstein: Nobody knows how to do anything today, but I have my own tool bag, and my granddaughter, when I get to Texas, she has her mending laid out on my desk, like on display with the holes on the top, so I know exactly where stuff is, and she’ll say while I’m there, “Don’t worry, Daddy, [Mimi?]’ll fix that.”
Interviewer: Oh, so you are the last generation.
Goldstein: So, I am. My daughter’s slowly learning, however, my son, can do everything. He could build a house if he needed to. I mean, he knows plumbing and electric and, so, I passed it down on one side. The other, we’re still working on.
Interviewer: Okay, well, it gives you a project, right?
Goldstein: Exactly, but I did just do, this is totally a, an aside, you know, cause I just love it, I did, I bought, when my daughter was born, so that’s forty-two/three years ago now, my husband and I bought at a, I think a Jewish auction actually, like a fundraiser at the temple or something, we bought a doll house kit which somehow I never managed to do when she was born, but I had it still and I had it sent down, my son sent it to me when I was in Texas for COVID, and I finished it this last trip on the outside and so, I did a Victorian dollhouse.
Interviewer: Oh, my goodness. Oh, that’s wonderful, so, that’s in Texas?
Goldstein: That’s in Texas…
Interviewer: Oh, that’s beautiful.
Goldstein: …so, I painted it and constructed it. It was a kit so I had, it came flat so, it’s all totally
Interviewer: …but it had everything there.
Goldstein: Everything was there, except for the shutters. I had to buy those, but…
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldstein: …but it’s all, and she loves it, loves it, loves it, so…
Interviewer: Perfect.
Goldstein: …now I’m, we’re going to start on the inside ‘cause she’s going to help me decorate it, so, this is the way I can get her…
Interviewer: …to teach her about decorating.
Goldstein: …about how to decide on the color and you do one room at a time, and, you know, so, we’ll, we’ll have fun with that one.
Interviewer: Oh, it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Any, any other comments as we’re wrapping up on this that we want to say? This has been a delightful…
Goldstein: Well, I don’t, oh, thank you. I don’t, I don’t know, and I think women today, including Jewish women have a little more room to explore their ability to run a business but it’s also, as I’ve been reading, one of the reasons that families are less involved in religion ‘cause they’re so busy both working and taking care of the children, and so that makes me sad, because I feel that it’s such a cornerstone of community and I would be intrigued at how women could, younger women could help change that, might bring that back into the family, because my daughter’s very involved but my son is not and they’re both wor…they all are working and my son’s girlfriend’s working and so the priorities are different and it isn’t until you need that foundation in your life, when you have a child, or somebody passes away, that you realize how important it is…
Interviewer: Absolutely.
Goldstein: …and things wouldn’t have even happened in my business if I hadn’t been supported by the community.
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldstein: I don’t know how to make that a reality but I think young working mothers need to think about it, so…
Interviewer: Yeah. Well, that’s lovely tone to end on so, on behalf of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society, I want to thank you for contributing to the Oral History Project and this concludes the interview. Thank you.
Transcribed by: Linda Kalette Schottenstein
September 2, 2024