Martin Schneiderman

Crangle: Marty, could you start by stating your full name and your place and date of birth?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Martin J. Schneiderman. April 23 1942.

Crangle: And where abouts were you born?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Here in Portland.

Crangle: And can you tell me a bit about the makeup of your household growing up? Who lived with you?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Well I was the only child. And my mother, Betty Schneiderman – Betty Posner was her maiden name – Schneiderman, and my father Leonard Schneiderman. Basically, I grew up on the west side most of my young life. Actually, my formative years were in Old South Portland. Maybe you’ve had other people talk about Old South Portland. But I was probably the last generation of that group that lived there, because what happened was, in 1952 they had the Urban Renewal, where highway 405, I think, was established. So we all had to move. We had to move. I lived on SW Lincoln Street and I remember that. I remember my dad – I went to Shattuck Grade School, and now that’s part of Portland State University – Lincoln Street and Broadway connected and we lived across from a park. And I was probably – let’s say ’52 – let’s see, I was nine years old. And I remember when we all moved (we had to move) we had a lot of family in the area, uncles and cousins also on Lincoln, further down towards the river on Lincoln Street, on Caruthers and Lincoln. And I had cousins, on my mother’s side, and a lot of friends. 

It was a melting pot. It was definitely a melting pot. You had not just Jewish families, but you had all different ethnic groups and families. A lot of good friends, Japanese friends. A very close friend of ours was Japanese, Ron Sato, who I grew up with. He’s since passed on but he was a great guy and he had a lot of interesting articles and things about his family from Japan. I remember going into his home; his grandparents would be in the back room and they were really from the old country in regards that they did not speak English. And they were in their clothing of Japanese dress and so on. They were very traditional; I remember that. I was quite young then too. But it was a good experience in that area as a young boy. And then we moved further southwest. A lot of people, I think, moved to northeast. So, the diaspora, if you want to call it that, moved us all over the city. My wife lived in the northeast side of town; we had good memories. Good memories.

Crangle: Tell me a bit about your memories of school at Shattuck then. Walk me through a typical day at school.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh gosh, you know, it’s hard to remember that far [laughs]. It was just a normal school. We played a lot of sports. I loved sports. We’d go out in the playground, now which is a parking area, fenced in, but they had baseball diamonds. They had track and all of that. And in the classrooms, it was a basic arithmetic, English, you know, history a little bit. But at that age it was pretty basic. Well now, my fifth-grade teacher, who really stood out, was a Mr. Bussey. There’s a picture of us taken by the Oregonian at the time. We were playing baseball and the photographer – they had an article on Shattuck Grade School – and they wanted to stage a teacher being called out at the plate, so they asked me to be the umpire calling out, you know, “Strike three!” And he was making a funny face thinking, “That wasn’t a strike”, and so that hit the paper. Anyway, that was a memory that I had. But we, you know, some of the crazy things we’d do during break-time. We’d go outside and we’d play marbles. Marbles was a big deal. You know what I’m talking about, marbles?

Crangle: Yeah.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Ok. So, and everybody had their little pouch of marbles, their favorite marbles, and we’d tried to take them away from them. And anyway. But that, those were good memories, you know.

[Brief pause while tea is served]

Crangle: You said you had a lot of friends in the neighborhood. Were they school friends or just people you met out and about?
SCHNEIDERMAN: They were school friends. I had my cousins who were there also. We were of the same age. I had a few cousins that were older than I who lived further down. This was my uncle Marcus and their two children, Ronnie and Diana [Diana Benoliel]. Ronnie is still living; he lives back in New Jersey. Diana lived in Seattle, moved to Seattle, and they’re a few years older than I. They were a few years older. Well what was interesting is that these cousins were actually first cousins of my father, because I was the younger generation in other words. But, yet, their age level was the same, closer to mine than my father. So we were very, we were fairly close and it was, you know, and on my mother’s side, the Berlants, my cousin Melvin, were close. I’m trying to remember the street they lived on– not Caruthers. Anyway, we were close, we all played together. The Glasgow family, too. I can’t think of it.
Sharyn: Eddy.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Eddy Glasgow, who now lives in New York. He and I were very close. We used to play ball together up in the Jewish Community Center. It was walking distance to the Jewish Community Center from where we lived and we used to play basketball there all the time. And they were three brothers and one sister, and so we were close too. The Glasgow family was an integral family of the city of Portland. And it was a good experience to know these people.

Crangle: You talked a little bit about growing up in Old South Portland. Can you tell me a bit about what you remember about the neighborhood? Because I know that it had been a Jewish and Italian neighborhood for quite a long time. Were there still a lot of shops around and stores?
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was more residential what I remember. We lived right close to a Mink Grocery Store which was just a small store that had, you know, a sundry of items. It wasn’t like a Safeway today or a Fred Meyer’s or anything like that, it was a local residential store. And we used to go there all the time, get milk, basic things and so on. There was Mosler’s, maybe you heard of Mosler?

Crangle: I’m aware of him, yes.
SCHNEIDERMAN: You’re very aware of them all? Well it was a tradition on Sunday mornings, my father and I, you know – like all fathers and sons or daughters or what have you – would go down to Mosler’s and pick up a bagel and Russian rye. And it was quite an affair. We would stand in line to take our turns to buy the bread and the bagels, and you could smell it blocks away–the smell of the bread, especially the Russian rye. Because when they came out, when we bought it, it was hot. Still hot, you know, it was so good you almost wanted to eat it right there before you got home. But Mr. Mosler was, in his own way, [laughs] was, you know, a little formidable in the way that he, you know “who is this guy?” type of attitude. But he was a great baker and he would play games with the young kids there. He said, ok, he’d throw a bagel to us. If you can catch it, you keep it, you eat it. That type of thing. And anyway, that was a good memory. I remember as kids we’d also go to Mrs. Neusihin’s pickles. She would make the pickles and they became a big deal, you know, and they were bought out, sure, by bigger food companies. But we used to go into her, we used to go into her garage and they would have barrels of pickles that she would be fermenting and getting ready for sale. So she would have the kids come in, “Okay, grab a pickle!”, you know, eat it [laughs]. And I remember that, you know, we used to go to Duniway Park all the time, which was close by. We used to play there. You know, a big deal in those days was playing Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Cowboys and Indians and so on [laughs]. In today’s day it’s not PC, obviously, but in those days it was because everybody had a cap gun. We’d shoot cap guns, you know, so in those days it was okay compared to today’s world

Crangle: Sure, yeah I understand.
SCHNEIDERMAN: You understand. So, but Duniway Park was – if you drive by it going onto Barbur Boulevard you can see how big it is. It has a cinder track now, a lot of running there, its now below Terwilliger Plaza, that area. But it was a good area, I mean you’re right, the Italian families, Irish families, it was a melting pot, and I think once that was broken up Portland may – you’re looking back – in my opinion it lost a lot. Because it was more like an eastern type city in that regard. Or, you know, LA or anything where you had a concentration of different ethnic groups that lived together. So, but Portland was – the Old South Portland was that way. You had all kinds of families, different ethnic families there, and it was great, everybody basically got along. We had an open-door policy. My uncle and aunt, the door was always open, there was always food on the table. Anybody could come in, you didn’t have to knock. But the cousins, the young kids would always come in and get something to eat. That was just the way it was. They didn’t have any locks. If they had locks they didn’t lock it [both laugh]. You know, so, a different world. Different world.

Crangle: And tell me a bit more about your family and your parents. How did they meet each other?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh they met, they were married in 1940. My mother wasn’t – Betty Schneiderman – my mother and father were divorced when I was a very young boy. And when I talked about earlier when we were in – before we moved out of south Portland – when I was nine years old they got married again.

Crangle: To each other?
SCHNEIDERMAN: To each other. And so that was a very happy time. That’s when we moved, we moved to southwest Portland by Hillsdale. And everything was growing. It was all virgin area, it was all trees. In the ‘50s it became, you know, new homes. And it was a very nice area that we moved into. Unfortunately, my mother and father divorced again when I was a teenager in high school and they led their separate lives. So that was that experience, I was the only child so, but they were dear people.

Crangle: So for the first few years in south Portland, were your parents not living together then?
SCHNEIDERMAN: They were, then they did divorce. So I was quite a bit younger. I was probably four, three or four years old, something like that. And then nine years old, as I said earlier, when we moved they got married again and it was a pretty good time.

Crangle: And can you tell me a bit about Jewish life in your home, was yours a particularly observant family?
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was not. We all knew that we were Jewish and we were all proud of it and we would go to services. My grandparents were members of – in my early years – we were members of Temple Beth Israel which, as you probably know, is fairly Reform compared to the Conservative or the Orthodoxy of Judaism. And I remember going there, but I was not confirmed – well I went to Sunday School and I went to confirmation and all that. But then we moved, I wanted to go to the Ahavai Sholom, which was across from the Center, because all of my friends were there. And it was, the proximity of it was close to my home. And, well before that we all went to the Center anyway because that was a good place to go to play ball, meet people, meet kids, other kids. And, but being, you know, highly religious? We knew Friday night you lit candles, my mother did light candles. Not every time, sometimes. But we knew what to be Jewish was at the time without the intricacies of praying all the time; we didn’t do that.

Crangle: And did you keep a kosher home or anything like that?
SCHNEIDERMAN: No.

Crangle: No ok. And how often did you visit places like the Jewish Community Center?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Often, because it was so close. We met everybody and we would go up, they had AZA and different youth groups and so on. I was never a good person to be a member of different clubs. I don’t know, something about it that just, you know, I wanted to be more independent than it I guess. But we knew all the players, we knew all the kids, we used to play a lot of ball, basketball. I learned how to swim there at the Center. Mickey Hirschberg was the swim coach and I learned how to swim there. And – oh what’s his name that used to play? Early on I used to play racquetball, handball, racquetball, and who taught me was Polly, [Harry] Policar. He was a great guy. And got into that and played that, and I loved sports, just loved sports. It’s not that I was that good at it but I enjoyed playing it. And I wasn’t like my father who was a very good athlete, in fact he got a scholarship to go to school down in California for football, and he played football and baseball for Lincoln High School, went down there but then he was called back during the depression years. You have to understand that, the Depression years, it affected everybody. Not only in our country, but in Europe and all over the world prior to World War Two. It was a devastating period of time for most people. And they were, you know, people that had things that were able to support their families, all of a sudden were not. And it was no different in Portland, I mean, Portland, Oregon too, they had to struggle. But, you asked the question about the religious thing, you know I knew, we knew that we were Jewish and we were very proud of it, and always – that was always part of it.

Crangle: Did you go to any other institutions like a Hebrew school or anything?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh yes. I went to Hebrew school at Ahavai Sholom and I was bar mitzvahed when I was thirteen, in 1955. We were living out in Hillsdale, or in Vermont Hills it was called, off of 45th street. 45th, 47th and Illinois Street. And, oh yeah, I remember that quite well. Mr. Robinson was my Hebrew teacher. Mr. Robinson [says his name with a menacing accent] [laughs].

Crangle: [laughs] What do you remember about him?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Well, I don’t know, he always picked on me because he thought I was the renegade of the class or whatever. I’d sneak out [laughs].

Crangle: [laughs] Was that a fair assessment then?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah probably it was. I would sneak out and want to go to the Center and, you know, but I got through the bar mitzvah and everybody said I did a good job and I did what I had to do and that was that. You know, so, but it was a good experience. It was a good experience.

Crangle: What do you remember about your bar mitzvah? Who was the rabbi at the time?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh my goodness. What was it? Not Nodel, what was his name? I can’t think of his name. It was at the Ahavai Sholom. I can’t remember.

Sharyn: Who was before Rabbi Stampfer?
SCHNEIDERMAN: No it was before Rabbi Stampfer. Rabbi Stampfer, see, Ahavai Sholom and Neveh Zedek combined in the ‘60s, and that’s when Rabbi Joshua Stampfer came on board. And, you know, during the time, growing up, going to school, college, university, Portland State, we were married – Sharyn and I were married in 1965. But I don’t, to answer your original question, I don’t remember the name of the rabbi which is crazy.

Crangle: We can look that up.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Ok fine, look that up. But yeah, I remember, yes I do remember the bar mitzvah and I remember all the family coming in from Seattle, from San Francisco, from all over, you know. The Schneiderman family was – they’re all gone now basically. I’m probably – other than cousins, I have cousins in the east in New Jersey. Ronnie, who I mentioned earlier, that lived down on Lincoln Street, further down, lives in New Jersey with his family. He’s a few years older than I. There was Jeffrey Schneiderman, who was my father’s brother’s son, who lives in New Hampshire. And…
Sharyn: David.
SCHNEIDERMAN: David, who lives in Georgia. They were the two first cousins. And also…
Sharyn: Stephanie.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Lisa
Sharyn: Stephanie.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Stephanie who lives in Chicago. And we’re in touch with one another, it’s tough, we get together. We’ve gotten together a few times, Jeff was out here, David’s been out. He’s a pilot for Delta so he had flown out here often and we’d get together. And yeah, but I can start with saying about – I can start, unless you want to ask me a specific question, with my grandfather Paul Schneiderman. There were five brothers and two sisters, it’s a big family. My grandfather was the oldest of all the brothers and all his sisters. And he, he was born in Russia. The other brother, the younger brothers, they all came – the great-grandfather came here in the turn of the century, 19-, 1901, somewhere around that.

Crangle: Do you know his name?
SCHNEIDERMAN: You know, that’s craziness but I don’t. I remember Joseph as a name, I think it was Joseph and Annie also, great-grandparents. But I have a picture of him.

Crangle: Sure we’d be really interested to say that.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Do we have that? Did we pack that? Yeah, anyway, like this with the beard [gestures that he had a very large beard] and the heavy coats and the, you know, the whole what you would expect to see of your ancestors back in those days. Anyway we had – Paul was my grandfather as I said. There was David, there was Harry, there was Marcus, and there was Hyman. You probably have a book here, The Jews of Oregon.

Crangle: I think we do have a copy of that, yes.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Ok. There’s a, the main picture on the cover of it, there’s a picture of a young boy with a newspaper in his hand stepping on a stool or something, that was Hyman Schneiderman.

Crangle: Really? Wow.
SCHNEIDERMAN: That was Hyman Schneiderman.

Crangle: That was, what, a great uncle of yours?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Great uncle, exactly, a great uncle.

Crangle: Perfect, yeah we’ll have to have a look at that sure.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah that was… The brothers, they were all, we were all close except for David who moved to Coos Bay during the Depression years and opened up, like, a furniture store called the Marshfield Bargain House in Coos Bay. And in those days it was called Marshfield, and his family was there, and cousins Jack…
Sharyn: Harold.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Harold and Jack, brothers – and Jack was first-cousins of my father – and Harold. So I was second-cousins but yet Harold and I were close in age as I said before. But just great guys, we used to have such a great time together. And Harry, who was the youngest of the brothers, move to Seattle. And Marcus did also later on, but Harry was there, he went to the University of Washington. And for the size of this man he was a great football player, amazing. He was, a few years back his grandson – my second-cousin, Paul, was named after my grandfather – Harry was inducted into the Jewish Athletic Hall Of Fame, and it was done here at the Jewish Community Center from Seattle, and he was honored for that because he, you know… In those days, you have to understand, in those days – back in the ’30s and the ‘40s – there was more Jewish participation in sports as there are today. Other than a Sandy Koufax for the Dodgers during, you know, that type of thing here.

Crangle: Have you any idea why there was more participation back then?
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was competition. There was a lot of different kids, Italian and Irish, that played ball together, and Jewish. I mean there was more closeness, I think, in that arena during that period of time. You know, the pastimes, what did they do? They played sports. They weren’t on the phone, they didn’t watch TV. There was basically no TV. There was none of that. You either played together or you studied or… whatever your interests were. Boxing was a big deal. [mentions a couple of names I can’t make out], that type of thing. But my father and a lot of other Jewish guys were very good athletes and went to Lincoln and to Grant High School where you [to Sharyn] went and played ball. And my father in particular, as I said earlier, he got a scholarship to play ball down at, I think it was San Mateo JC, then he wanted to go to USC or UCLA and transfer over. What happened was is that my grandfather had to call, called him back home to help in the business. So he had to, he had to give that up, he had to forfeit his life to a certain extent because of help needed in the family. My grandfather, in 1937 (while my dad was down in California), started a business, a nightclub. I think I mentioned it to you.

Crangle: Yeah you mentioned that on the phone. Can you tell me more about that nightclub, how it came to be?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah it came to be in 1937. I don’t think there were many nightclubs in Portland at the time. And it was a full-blown restaurant with dance floor, bands, big band sounds during those days. We’d come into town. There used to be another dancehall called McIlroy’s. Kids, young teeny-boppers, would go there to dance and have a good time and, you know, all of those things. Prior to the war starting, 1939, 1940, they had an influx of population into Portland because of the Kaiser shipbuilding areas on the west coast. They built ships for the war effort into the ‘40s, and that’s when things really boomed for him [my grandfather]. 

My dad, at that time, came back and helped with the business. His brother, Jerry, also, until World War Two started. Jerry and my father were both in World War Two. Jerry was in the European theater, my dad was in the South Pacific, he was in the Battle of Okinawa. He came home in 1946, he repatriated Japanese prisoners. He went into Tokyo and spent I don’t know how many months there, repatriating the Japanese soldiers back into society and so on. That was during the MacArthur era when he, you know, when they were trying to rebuild Japan. But the nightclub lasted until 1952. My grandfather, he wasn’t sick but he – I don’t know if he got sick at that time or not. 

But what happened was that the city –you see, I don’t know if you know the history of the city itself. The city was pretty wide open. When I say wide open, there was a lot of graft, payola going on. Paying authorities for not good stuff, you know, a lot of prostitution, there was a lot of gambling which was against the law. Prohibition days of liquor. So Portland was probably no different from any other city like Chicago or Philly or New York or whatever, but on a smaller scale. They had the same things going on. As an example, we had the Mills Brothers who, during that period of time, were a great singing group, they were a big deal in those days. They played with Count Basie, with the Dorsey Brothers. I don’t know if they played with Glenn Miller Orchestra. In those days the dancehalls and the dancing and the big band sounds and the, you know, like you see on the movies today maybe, you would see that, it was that kind of a place. 

The Mills Brothers would come to town and they would perform. I will say that Portland was fairly prejudiced during that period of time against blacks. The Mills Brothers, as popular and as successful as they were as musicians and entertainers throughout the world (before World War Two they travelled; they were in Europe) they were not allowed to stay in one of the hotels here in Portland, one of the bigger hotels, because of their color. So my grandfather said, “Screw that, you can stay with us in our home,” which was in northeast Portland. But unfortunately, the blacks were basically relegated to the eastside of the river. Where MLK is now they had their hotels, they had their nightclubs; it was all separate in those days. And the Mills Brothers would come here often and they would play and, you know, I was just a little kid. I was four years old and I would accompany my father to the nightclub. I remember going there. He would put me behind the bar and I’d help wash glasses [laughs]. “Ok, don’t break the glasses there”, you know. Guys would be sitting at the bar having a drink and they had, in those days it was unheard of, but I will say that they had – at the beginning they had also, as entertainment, female impersonators.

Crangle: Ok.
SCHNEIDERMAN: They were, you know, looked upon those days as, well, you know, not part of the main, the mainstream of society.

Crangle: Sure.
SCHNEIDERMAN: But regardless of that my grandfather and my father had no prejudice in their lives at all. They didn’t. Everybody was equal. Everybody was the same. They treated everybody the same. They were people that really enjoyed people. I mean you wouldn’t go into this business if you didn’t enjoy people, enjoy all types of people, because you had all types of people coming in. My grandfather even helped Joe Amato, an Italian family, start a nightclub. Amato’s had a bowling alley in Astoria, Oregon, up on the coast, and he called my grandfather – I remember this story – and said, “Yeah, I’m thinking about opening up a nightclub, a club, can you help me? Could you help me get started?” Well Amato’s became a big deal in Portland. All the bands they would, I remember, they would have, until 2:00 in the morning or whatever, they would be jamming, playing jazz. All these guys would come in and play music. And I was young, still, but I do remember going there a few times and witnessing that, but go ahead.

Crangle: Yeah I just wanted to ask where your grandfather’s nightclub was located. Was it downtown?
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was on Tenth and Stark, Southwest Stark.

Crangle: And what were the surroundings like inside? Was it very decadent or more understated?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Probably understated. I mean there was a dance floor, and they served meals, I don’t know, daily or whatever, to 500 people if the demand was there. At night was the big deal for the bands, the entertainment. You also had a side bar called the – not the (?) room – but the backstage that people would go as a smaller venue. But they would go in and have a drink and just, you know, be with whomever and just enjoy themselves. It was entertainment, to entertain themselves basically, there wasn’t any entertainment there to witness.

Crangle: And you mentioned the female impersonators there as well which, obviously at the time was quite edgy and things.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Very much so.

Crangle: Was that popular with the clientele?
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was because my father (and I didn’t know this until I read it some place). My father would go down to San Francisco and be an agent and bring acts up to Portland, because San Francisco was more open to that even during those days. But the gay community would be part of the clientele as well. Agay community, I’m sure, during that time, was shunned upon. But they had a place to go. Maybe it was because of the female impersonators, maybe, probably. But you had to understand something. When the shipbuilding going on during the war – like 1942. I was born in 1942 – so from ’40 on, shipbuilding was a big deal. And the influx of people from all over the [country], especially from the south land, a lot of blacks came into Portland to work because there was no work during the Depression years. Well there was work here on the west coast, they made good wages. The Kaiser Foundation, which we know as Kaiser Hospital today. He was a philanthropist and he was in everything, but he built ships for the war effort. And these guys were paid pretty good, you know. In those days it was pretty good wages to start their lives, and to be entertained at the Music Hall, which was the name of the club, right? So. I wish I was older to have had experienced it. I was just a kid at four or five years old. It would have been interesting to see what that was like to sit there.

Crangle: Yeah to see it in full swing.
SCHNEIDERMAN: And sit there and see it in full bloom what it was like. I mean these places were a den of iniquities. I mean, you know, you had smoking; you had gambling. I don’t know if you had drugs in those days, I don’t know, probably not, I don’t know if the drug deal was a big deal in those days.

Crangle: And was there ever any criticism of your grandfather, either from the Jewish community or society more broadly?
SCHNEIDERMAN: I never witnessed that until…. The political criticism came during the early ‘50s when a new mayor came online, Dorothy McCullough Lee. Now she was on a suffrage movement to clean the city up. So I think my grandfather’s place was part of the arrow, you know, of discontent, “Well we’re going to have to shut him down,” you know. It wasn’t, she didn’t – because I think, during that period of time, there was a lot of – the head of the city, the police department, I’m not saying offline, sure people were paid off so things weren’t shut down and everybody got a piece of the action, so to speak, in those days. You’ve got to assume that. But when she came in she was on a mission to shut down all the graft, all the prostitution, all the stuff that was going on. And she probably did; she did. Well my grandfather, the real reason that he had to shut down was that the city…. He had a liquor license; he thought he had a license for two places, with the main place being the music hall, the main club, of course. But the Sidebar, the side restaurant and bar, did not. Well that was how they got him, so to speak. “Well you didn’t have a liquor license for this place so we’re going to have to shut you down”. Well it was shortly after that that they closed up because they took away their license. You had to have a liquor license to have a club, you know. When they repealed the law of drinking liquor during the prohibition days, which was a stupid law anyway.

Crangle: Yeah for sure.
SCHNEIDERMAN: For sure.

Crangle: And that was in the ‘50s was it?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah ’52, ’53, somewhere like that.

Crangle: So you would have been about ten years old, something like that.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah, yep.

Crangle: So as you say, you never got to experience it as an adult.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Never did. Really, I mean through my father…. He didn’t really open up and talk about it a lot; he was pretty quiet about it. But there were a few snippets of information that you would gather, listen to, maybe listen to with the rest of the family, you know.

Crangle: I’m sure there were a lot of interesting goings on happened there.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Well it was fairly colorful. My family was, you know, Marcus, Harry, Hyman, his nickname was called Speck because he had, he had freckles. He had red hair, my father had red hair, I used to have red hair.

Crangle: Oh really?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Many years ago. And it was a great family. When we used to have gatherings, getting together and being together, we’d all, you know, a lot of times we’d congregate up in Seattle because Harry was the youngest and we all enjoyed getting together up there. We’d all get on the caravan, go up there and have a good time. For whatever date, birthdays, anniversaries, whatever it was. But we used to have a good time, you know. When you talk about an integral part of this, of Portland or not, they were in their way. There weren’t religiously that involved through the synagogues or what have you. I don’t think that was a main event in their lives. I’m sure they went to synagogue, I went to synagogue, High Holidays, I mean we all did. But to go to Friday night services or Shabbat services, Saturday morning services, or go to a minyan or be open to a minyan… well Harry was, I’ll take that back. Harry was probably the most – of all the brothers. He was really involved in the Jewish community in Seattle. And it was a big deal to him, and his son, Barry, passed on quite early, and Margaret, wonderful great aunt. Just loving people. Really loving people.

Crangle: I want to talk a bit more about when you left south Portland. And you said you moved to somewhere else…
SCHNEIDERMAN: Vermont Hills. It was, yeah, Vermont hills.

Crangle: Yeah okay. How did that feel at the time, do you remember? To leave the community that you’d lived in.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Well it was, you know, it was sad, and also exciting. I mean, you had both sides of it. Even though we moved we kept our, you know, we kept in touch with our family; we still got together. We couldn’t get together as often, obviously. I have to admit that, during that period of time, there weren’t a lot of Jewish people that moved further southwest. We were one of the few in Vermont Hills off of 47th, and the only established business in that area was Alpenrose Dairy, which is still there on Shattuck Road. And they build a brand-new school, opened up a brand new school there. Hayhurst – Elizabeth Hayhurst School. I was there one year, eighth grade. Then they opened up Wilson High School. We opened up Wilson High School in 1956.

Crangle: So everything was there that you needed then.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah, so I finished high school in 1960. We were the first graduating class, all four years. They drew people in, for the first few years, from Lincoln High School, because of the change of boundaries in that area. A lot of people were moving in, a lot of homes being built. It was a whole wave of a new area.

Crangle: Yeah it’s interesting the way the families from that original south Portland area kind of dispersed around the city. Were there any strong feelings in your family, that you remember, about whether Urban Renewal was a good thing or a bad thing, or if it was talked about much?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Well it was talked about. I think it was resigned. I think everybody was resigned to the fact that this is the way it’s going to be. There’s not much you can do about it. I remember we had, there’s only a little snippet of Lincoln Street, if you go up Broadway there’s a little pathway where the street was, and it’s all – on the other side, on the right side of it it’s all freeway. So I used to live across from a small park, which was really kind of a neat little place. And that’s gone, everything.

Crangle: What was the name of that park?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh gosh [laughs]. I can’t remember.

Crangle: That’s okay.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Maybe it was Lincoln Park, I don’t know [laughs], I can’t remember the name of the park. But anyway, it was pretty nice.

Crangle: Because I know the reason they did the Urban Renewal was because there was supposedly a lot of what they called “urban blight” in the area, and that the area was run down. Do you think that was an accurate assessment or…?
SCHNEIDERMAN: I think that was an excuse. You know, the city fathers, they do things that they can make up any reasons they want and follow through with it based on those reasons even if they are not true, or not. We see that often in today’s political arena. I don’t know about blight, I think there were a lot of older homes, the Neighborhood House was an integral part of that area, which was closer to Duniway Park. I mean, when people were coming here at the turn of the century, they had a place to go to find out living, where they could live, schools for their children, how are they going to house their – you know, where they’re going to live, furniture, this and that. I mean the basic ways of starting life, and that was in the Neighborhood House. Jewish Neighborhood House. It’s still there, as you probably know.

Crangle: Yes. Did you ever visit Neighborhood House?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah sure. Oh sure.

Crangle: What are your memories of that?
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was a gathering place of so many different people that you didn’t know. You know, I didn’t spend a lot of time there as a young kid, no. I did see it a few times. We all, I mean, even on the northeast side of town, would see it.

Crangle: Yeah. It was such an institution in the community, I’m sure most people would have gone at some point or other.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Right, right. But it was a full; it was a center. You knew you were Jewish and you were coming here for the first time, this is where you went.

Crangle: Yeah ok. And you talked a little bit about high school there. Were there many Jewish kids at your high school?
SCHNEIDERMAN: No, I can count them on my hands.

Crangle: Really? Ok.
SCHNEIDERMAN: There was five of us, I think. And yet, interesting. There were all economic levels of students, of kids. From up in the Heights, and I consider our family middle class. It wasn’t up above; it was in the middle. We all got along; there was no prejudice. I never witnessed any bit of prejudice, and if anybody was bullied or taken advantage of because they couldn’t basically defend themselves or anything like that. You know, you would step up and say, “You can’t do that.” In today’s world, of course, bullying is common knowledge. Common occurrences all day in schools or whatever.

Crangle: So you never experienced any antisemitism?
SCHNEIDERMAN: I really didn’t at high school. They knew I was Jewish. They knew we were all Jewish. No, not at all, never did. We all got along. I mean our circle of friends and so on – you know, you’re not going to get to know everybody in a big school – but not at all, not at all.

Crangle: And after you left south Portland did you remain, or did your family remain quite involved with the Jewish community? You know, you still went to synagogue and things like that?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Synagogue, oh yes. Oh yes, Neveh Shalom became our center of going to synagogue. Rabbi Stampfer, of course. We were married there in 1965. [Martin turns to Sharyn] So it’s 53, going on 54 years, Honey. 

Crangle: Yeah.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Knocking wood. [touches the table]

Crangle: Sure.
SCHNEIDERMAN: But, you know, it was exciting, it was a brand-new structure. I have to say, all of it, for me personally, by moving – when you said was it sad moving out of South Portland? It wasn’t. I didn’t feel a lot of sadness about it. I felt that, wow, this is – because, you know, we built a home out there, and that was exciting, in the school.

Crangle: Sure, so it was a new chapter.
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was a new chapter in our lives. I was 10, 11, 12, you know, somewhere in there, and at that age you remember much better than when you were six or five or whatever. But those were good times. I mean, it was exciting, it was all new. New friends, made new friends. Yes, the new synagogue was built. A lot of friends from there too. Like I said, I wasn’t a big joiner of clubs and everything, I don’t know, I had a hard time with that. And yet I did, for a while. But I was kind of more on my own. More freelance, so to speak.

Crangle: And what did you do when you graduated high school?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh gosh. I was going to start school, college. Everybody said, “You got to go to college.” Okay, but I wasn’t really ready to. I wasn’t. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t in the moment of saying, “Oh god, I got to go to school again.” I tried the first year and I really did not have my heart in it.

Crangle: Where did you go to college?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Portland State.

Crangle: Ok right.
SCHNEIDERMAN: At that time it was Portland State College, today it’s got university status. I went into the service. I went into the Army. I signed up in ’61. I met you [Sharyn] in ’62. Yeah, ’61. So I was, at that time, it was before Vietnam, so I missed Vietnam because I was before it, basically. It wasn’t getting really started until ’65 and on. But I was getting out of the service at the time. I was in the Reserves and the National Guard Reserves and then transferred over. Then we met in ’62. We were married in 1965. I came back once I was out of the service, not out of the service but out of basic training, and spent my time in Texas, came back and finished school. I didn’t graduate until, was it ’66 or ’67?
Sharyn: ‘66
SCHNEIDERMAN: ’66. You graduated before I did, in ’65.
Sharyn: ’65. And you were in an accident that changed things.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh, a car accident, I forgot about that. Well before that I was in a car accident. I was signed up for – actually I signed up because some of my friends signed up for the Marine Corps. And I was going to go to school, go to the Marine Corps, like ROTC, go to Quantico in the summers and all of that. Well I was in a car accident, and so on and so forth. So that ended that adventure. But I still wanted to go out; everything was ok. So I still wanted to go into the service. I thought that would be a good thing for me. And at that time, more young kids did, I think, during that period of time, until the draft came, until the Vietnam war became such a huge obstacle in America and throughout the world. But I thought it was a good experience. It taught me some stuff–how to take care of myself.

Crangle: And where were you stationed?
SCHNEIDERMAN: I was stationed in El Paso at Fort Bliss.

Crangle: Right ok.
SCHNEIDERMAN: The only time that we were ever thinking about going anywhere and being sent overseas was during 1961, when the Berlin Wall was going up and they put us onto transports, full gear, everything, heading for Germany. Then we stood down [laughs]. I was only 19 for God’s sakes. It’s like in that song, “Please Mr. Custer, I don’t want to go.” I don’t know if you remember that song.

Crangle: So you were relieved then?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Yeah very much.

Crangle: It wasn’t a case of, “Oh, damn I wanted to go”.
SCHNEIDERMAN: No, once you really thought about it. Oooh, hey wait a minute. Unless you did go, well then you were trained to do whatever you had to do, you know. But when you sat there and thought about it, you know, you started thinking about it. And you think, “No, I don’t want to go.” So we locked down, we didn’t go. I got out of the service and I got my discharge papers. And then Lisa was just born, 1968. ’68, wasn’t it ’68? Yeah. So I served my time.

Crangle: And tell me a bit more about how the two of you met.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh, at Portland State.

Crangle: Ok.
SCHNEIDERMAN: We were in a biology class, I believe, and somebody wanted to fix us up – a good friend of ours who was from Astoria – and said, “You want to be fixed up?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know. Tell me about her, what does she look like?” [laughs] You know all the…

Crangle: [laughs] The important things
SCHNEIDERMAN: The important things. I mean, “Does she look good?” You know, all this stuff. So she is good looking [laughs], and we got together, dated, dated, dated, announced our engagement in ’64, that’s right I think, spring of ’64. Got married in ’65, Sharyn was teaching, she was a great teacher, master teacher, incredible teacher, still is. We have a great love affair, we’ve been together for 50, almost 54 years in June. We’ve raised incredible girls – we have three daughters, all two years apart – Lisa, Kimberly and Stephanie. Couldn’t ask for anything better, they’re incredible young women: smart, feeling, loving, just everything about them is just incredible, we couldn’t be any luckier.

Crangle: And was it important for you to raise them with a Jewish education like the one you had?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh yes. Yes, they were – let’s see – Kimmy, well Lisa was bat mitzvahed.
Sharyn: All three.
SCHNEIDERMAN: All three were, I’m sorry, all three were bat mitzvahed, so it was important. At Neveh Shalom, they all had a Jewish education and went to the Center. So they were part of the Jewish groups, you know, as teenagers growing up, so they were all part of that. And they still are part of that in the Jewish community. Our Kimmy, in particular, works at the PJA. She’s a music teacher and she writes music; our daughters have written music together. OyBaby! is one of the CDs that have gone on to so many different families. That was early on with all three of them, they all produced it and sang in it. And Kimmy has completed another CD of music, not just all Jewish themes but, for young people, for young, you know children, and it’s beautiful. She wrote the music. And Stephanie is a professional singer and writer of music, she teaches music. So, what I’m saying is, is that music is an integral part of our family.

Crangle: Right ok.
SCHNEIDERMAN: And same with Lisa. Lisa lived in LA. She has her own business in public relations. She has her own company. She lived in LA almost 20 years. She’s back here in Portland now doing the same thing and she’s glad she’s back in Portland. And Stephanie is married to our wonderful son-in-law, Tony Furtado. We have a grandson, six years old. We have two granddaughters from Kimberly, Sophia and Sarah, 17 and 15, and they’re just incredible, again. I’m surrounded by women all the time [laughs]. Except I do have this one little guy, his name is Liam, I call him Mr. Liam, and he’s incredible, just a beautiful child.

Crangle: And did your daughters marry other Jewish people?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Did I?

Crangle: Did your daughters?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh daughters, good question. They did but…
Sharyn: [interrupts] He asked if they married Jewish.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh did they…

Crangle: Yeah.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh no, no.
Sharyn: You didn’t hear it.
SCHNEIDERMAN: I’m sorry, I’m sorry. No they did not. Lisa’s our only daughter who has never been married. Kimberly has been married, and divorced. Not Jewish, Greek Orthodox. Beautiful daughters out of this whole thing is the best thing. Stephanie is married to Tony, his background is Portuguese and Italian. Just an incredible guy, he’s also a great musician that plays all over the country. And he’s been in Europe a lot, in Wales and Scotland and England. He’s taught music, the slide guitar, banjo, ukulele. I mean, he does it all, he’s kind of a protégé in the regards of self-taught and a student of music and so on. So they have a lot of music. And our little Liam is absorbing that as well.

Crangle: Do you know where they picked up is aptitude for music, was it from either of you?
SCHNEIDERMAN: I think that, Sharyn, you always pushed, early on, music lessons, piano lessons. All went to piano lessons. Stephanie, in particular. They all have good voices and they are all able to sing. They didn’t know that early on until they tried to. Stephanie was probably the first to really try it, and she had this passion for it. When she was at Portland – she graduated Portland State, also – she was in a choir. She went overseas with the choir, she was very well respected in the choir. She went all through Europe with the choir, came back and decided she was – her line of interest in school, as a profession, was…
Sharyn: Speech pathology.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Speech pathology. And she had a degree in speech pathology and music. But her passion was with music and she started singing, and she was in different groups throughout Portland. She’s now has, for many years, been on her own. Dirty Martini was a group, three girls who self, self-motivated in their own music and wrote their own music, got together and formed a group and became very popular. And then she was, before that she was with…
Sharyn: Body and Soul.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Body and Soul it was called. It was a great group. They had, they had a lot of stuff going on in there, this was also a also a good group. And now she’s, you know, she’s busy with her son, obviously. Tony is, travels a lot with his music, throughout the country, and they love it. You know, that’s their passion and – so it started all with her, my wife, Sharyn and I love music. I don’t play. I think I played one thing in school, the trumpet, and then I had a choice: I wanted to play baseball, or play trumpet [both laugh]. I had to give up something, to a certain extent. I mean I, you know, I couldn’t – so I gave up trumpet, didn’t continue with the trumpet.

Crangle: Fair enough, yeah.
SCHNEIDERMAN: So I played baseball instead.

Crangle: Can you tell me a bit about your professional life after you graduated from college, what did you go and do for a living?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh I, I was a stockbroker, investment broker. Started in 1967, ’68, yeah ’67 with Walston and Company. Did that for 22 years, kind of retired from that.

Crangle: What led you into that profession?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Good question. I graduated in political science and I kind of had a minor in history and business as well. And I somehow, I got affiliated with a fellow who was working downtown in the Pittock Block at (?) and company. And they had this board where you – the old-fashioned board that you would mark stocks. You know, you’d come over at (?) and you would mark stocks. I thought that was fascinating. I thought that was really interesting so I got kind of interested in the stock market. I said, well, this is exciting. So I became a board boy also. Then they hired me as a full-time stockbroker. I went to school in New York in ’67. Yeah ’67.

Crangle: How long was that for?
SCHNEIDERMAN: For about three months.

Crangle: Right ok yeah.
SCHNEIDERMAN: It was interesting. It was, today they do it all on the computer. Back then they actually sent you there. You went on the floor, you exchanged, you experienced all of that. Part of the schooling – it was actually a master’s degree in economics. Because we went to NYU, which was like a Portland State University, you know. And professors there, they taught you the ropes and all of it. Anyway, I came back here, became a broker, and did it for 22 years. For a few different firms, we were bought out a few times by different companies. The only down mark we actually experienced was 1968. The market fell 600 points in one day. That was the most it ever did other than the Great Depression, 1929. That was a happening. Anyway, did that for 22 years, or, 22 years, something like that. Then we started a small business, a grocery shopping delivery service called The Grocery Bag shopping service, in 1992 I think it was. We were probably the first ever who tried this, type of thing, in this city. I mean I studied, in Boston they were doing it, San Francisco they were doing it. I kind of got an idea, I talked to people in both cities: what’s your business plan? What are you doing? How did you get it started? So we started it and it became, you know, a pretty good deal. No longer doing it, basically, I’m retired from that. But, you know, companies started – the same type of situation but with more money – and they went bust, it didn’t last. And yet I was still doing it, because my little secret was a little different than theirs. It was all very personal.

Crangle: Ok right.
SCHNEIDERMAN: I had real personal contacts with my people and made it very personal. They loved me. I did a good job.

Crangle: And they kept coming back.
SCHNEIDERMAN: And they kept coming back, and they kept adding people to it because I did a good job and they trusted me. I mean when you’re dealing with somebody’s food they need to trust you. You need to have that. You need to form that trust before you go any further. And that was done. She [Sharyn] helped. She was helping me. Well she was teaching too. You retired from teaching in 1995, I think, yes? But that was our lives. Now we still feel, you know, pretty strong, pretty – next chapter.

Crangle: And have you both remained active in the Jewish community throughout your adult lives?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh yes. Yes, we have, absolutely. We’re very proud of that. We’re members of the Neveh Shalom. Our daughter, Kimberly, is an integral part of Temple Beth Israel. She preforms, she does services with Rabbi Rachel and also the Cahanas. And she’s been a real strong part of that temple, people love here there. And she sings all the Jewish melodies and all the songs, and she is beautiful. We go – well when she’s doing it we go there often as well, other than Neveh, we go to Temple, and it’s a beautiful service. You know, we all experienced, not a few days ago, after this horrendous attack in Pittsburgh, we were all at Temple, over 1000 people, at least, were there for the event for what happened. And Kimmy was there and sang and all the speakers, it was quite moving.

Crangle: Yeah, I heard about that. Sounds like it must’ve been.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh this whole thing. I mean this is…. Never has – obviously a Jewish, Jewish synagogue, ever, experienced anything like this in the United States. You have to go back to the Holocaust, actually, for this overt action of hate. And it’s unbelievable.

Crangle: It is, it’s horrific. I did actually want to bring up the Holocaust briefly. Because obviously, you were born in ’42, so by the time the war finished, you know, you probably don’t have any memory of that.
SCHNEIDERMAN: No.

Crangle: But can you tell me a bit about when you became aware of what had happened during the Holocaust? If there was any discussion in your family about that or if anyone, closer or distant family, were involved at all?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Their involvement was overt (?) – yes, of course we talked about it. We had friends. We didn’t have family that were in Auschwitz or Buchenwald or Dachau or any of those horrible places. We didn’t. Our people, most of my side came from Russia, from the Ukraine, Odessa and Kyiv. They came out of Odessa and they went to New York, they went to Ellis Island before coming out west. The only thing I remember: My dad was telling me that my Uncle Jerry was in the European Theater, and he went through Europe. He was, he was one of the soldiers that went into Germany with Patton’s Army, and he went to the camps and witnessed that. I’m sure there were many soldiers who did that, but as I understand it, he was one of them. Never talked about it, really, of any magnitude. I mean we all, you know, in our own way, like I said before, we knew we were Jewish. Proud, very proud of being Jewish. We don’t wear it on our mantle all the time, we just, you know, with the Holocaust, how we interpreted our lives into that, you know, all you can say is, “never again” for the survivors. But also for the witnesses of, through generations, of knowing this has happened. Can it happen again? Well, we witnessed just last week, it could happen again. In that regard, it did happen.

Crangle: Yeah it’s certainly something to be aware of.
SCHNEIDERMAN: You know, you have to be aware of it. You have to be aware of hate and the presence of it, and to rebuke it at every time, at every point that you can. I only had one experience of antisemitism when I was in the Army. That was the only time I can remember. The guy called me a “dirty Jew”. He was a soldier. So I got into it with him. You know, he never called me a “dirty Jew” again.

Crangle: What happened?
SCHNEIDERMAN: Well we got into a fight. [pauses]

Crangle: [laughs] And he decided it would be a good idea…
SCHNEIDERMAN: And I decided to clean his clock.

Crangle: Ok.
SCHNEIDERMAN: [laughs] You know, so, anyway. But no, I don’t – I learned from my father and my mother to be proud of who you are. You know, we loved going to the holidays, we loved being part of the Jewish community. Portland, Oregon was a small Jewish community compared to other cities. It is still basically a small, unique Jewish population, you know, so.

Crangle: Have you ever visited Israel?
SCHNEIDERMAN: No, have not been to Israel.

Crangle: Is that something you’d like to do, or is it not on your priority list?
SCHNEIDERMAN: My wife would love to go there, Israel. We probably will. I know that there’s a big deal going on with the Federation right now, for the anniversary, the 100th year and so on. We’ve been thinking about that but we haven’t committed ourselves to it just yet.

Crangle: Was anyone in your family, parents or grandparents, particularly involved with the Zionist movement in Portland or anything of that nature? Political campaigns.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Let’s see. I’m trying to think of, no, we were part of the Federation, when the Jewish diaspora went – they were coming out of…
Sharyn: Russian resettlement.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Russia during the ‘60s and ‘70s, we got involved with that, for them to come here and live. We were on different committees. But to be part of Zionist movements, no I don’t ever remember that. Not on my father’s side or my mother’s side.

Crangle: Sure ok. And I suppose the final question I had was a broader one in terms of what changes have you noticed in the Jewish community in Portland over the years? So, thinking back to when you were a kid, through the years until now. I know it’s quite a vague thing to ask.
SCHNEIDERMAN: No it’s not vague. It’s much more organized as a community. Not just with the Federation but with the different [agencies], Jewish Family Child Service, the Robison, you know, they all do great things. Obviously, we try to do our part as best we can, to raise money and all that, for the different needs, the different organizations. It’s much more organized. A lot more Jewish people. I mean, Neveh, when we go to Neveh, there’s fewer of us original families. Newer families that I don’t recognize, I don’t know. You know, I’ve not seen them before. 

But Sharyn grew up on the eastside with Tifereth Israel with her grandparents. I mean if you wanted to hear a story about Jewish life, really Jewish life… I didn’t, my Jewishness on my side compared to after I got married. With Sharyn and her family there was much more involvement with the Jewish feeling of Shabbat and everything, she brought that out in her family, because they were more involved in that regard. Services, commitment to services, her grandfather was one of the original families, or individuals, that started Tifereth Israel. And, you know, so – and my grandparents, on the other hand, went to – it was not totally Orthodox but it was much more traditional, say, than Temple Beth Israel which was much more Reform. I was brought up more Reform in that regard until I made the switch to Conservative Judaism, which we attend now, with Rabbi Stampfer. And he has had lectures in his knowledge of history, he’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. To listen to this man at the age of 93, 4, something around there, he’s so knowledgeable. And so that, you know, the history of it is what’s really important to me. Not necessarily the Orthodoxy or the really in-depth religious part of it. The history is what’s important to me. I enjoy history anyway, and that is, that’s what I like.

Crangle: Ok. Well I think I’ve covered most of my list of questions. Is there anything that you feel like you want to add?
SCHNEIDERMAN: I can’t think of anything.

Crangle: Sharyn, is there anything we haven’t covered that you think might be important?
Sharyn: You’ve done a good job, I think you’ve covered it all.
SCHNEIDERMAN: You’ve done a beautiful job
Sharyn: Honey, I think you did great.
SCHNEIDERMAN: What? Oh.
Sharyn: Thinking about all this.

Crangle: The stories have been really great.
SCHNEIDERMAN: Oh my gosh. Everybody, you know, everybody has a story.

Crangle: Well I will stop the recording there.