Judy Blauer was born on March 17, 1941, the second daughter of Sol and Mildred Albert Sax. Judy’s maternal grandfather, Louis Albert, had immigrated from Russia as a young man and settled in Portland. He was well-known in Portland as the “Soda Pop King” as he invented and marketed several popular flavors of soda. Judy and …
Read MoreJeremiah Jerome “Jimmy” Berg was born in Edmonton, Alberta on June 25, 1914. His family lived in Great Falls, Montana until 1919 when they moved to Portland. In 1920, Jimmy’s father purchased the Grant Street Theater, the Kearney Theater, and the Sunnyside Theater. He later owned the Lincoln Theater. The whole family worked at the theaters. …
Read MoreIrene Balk was one of six children born to Peter and Rebecca Goldbaum, who had immigrated to Portland in 1911 through Argentina from a small village near Odessa. Her siblings included Al (Tom and Michael Grant’s father, also a vaudevillian performer), Larry (both brothers changed their last name from Goldbaum to Grant), Betty Stone (Marilyn …
Read MoreHarry Arnsberg was born in 1911 in Republic, Washington to immigrant parents from Grodno gubernia, Russia (which is sometimes in Poland). Harry’s parents met in England and married in Liverpool in 1900. They had their first child, Harry’s oldest sister Mildred, in England before moving to South Africa, where they had their second child, Harry’s …
Read MoreLouis Albert was born in 1891 in Kiev, Ukraine where his father was a Rabbi. He was supposed to be one too, but when he was 13 years old, he went into the forestry business with his uncle. In 1906, he immigrated to America. After a few years in Portland, Oregon, Louis moved to Fall River, …
Read MoreBorn in 1927 in Portland, Martin Zell was a second-generation manager of the successful Zell Brother’s jewelry business. Martin’s father, Julius, was one of four brothers who emigrated from Austria to the Pacific Northwest around the time of the First World War. Julius and his brother, Harry, took over the drugstore of their cousin, Mike …
Read MoreLinda Popick Veltman was born in 1943 in Portland to Rae and Hy Popick. She was the product of a “mixed marriage,” a father from Russia and a mother from the Isle of Rhodes. Linda’s Sephardic grandfather, Avram Honeo, was the spiritual leader for many years at Congregation Ahavath Achim. The family alternated and blended …
Read MoreEugene Nudelman Sr. was born in 1906 in Portland, Oregon. He is the grandson of Joseph Nudelman who brought an agricultural colony from Russia in the 1880s to start an agrarian collective farm in North Dakota. When that farm failed the group moved to Nevada and then California before arriving in Portland, where there were …
Read MoreErnest Markewitz was born in Portland, Oregon, on January 11, 1903 to Milton and Frances Markewitz. His family had been in the United States for several generations. His parents were born in Portland, and met and married there. They had two sons, Ernest and his brother Arthur. Ernest’s father Milton co-founded the Bushong printing company, where …
Read MoreArthur Markewitz was born in Portland June 2, 1908 to Milton and Frances Lachman Markewitz, and passed away on November 29, 1984. His father, Milton, was born in San Francisco, where his own father worked as a coppersmith in California and then came up to Portland through Jacksonville. Milton was a stock (paper) cutter for …
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