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 micvahed.
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 micvahed 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 micvahed when she was a couple months old. As soon as I felt comfortable like dunking her under the water, she was micvahed. 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.