William Rosenbaum

Fuks: I’m interviewing Dr. William Rosenbaum in Portland, Oregon. It is September 2nd, 2016. Bill, I’m very glad to have this chance to chat with you. I’ve gotten to know you over the years, but I’m glad to do this on behalf of the Jewish Museum, so thank you. Bill, how old are you now?
ROSENBAUM: I’ll be 100 in two weeks.

Fuks: 100 in two weeks. Wow, that’s fantastic! I want to be able to talk about your memories and your work and your career and anything else that you would like to talk about. Why don’t we start with early memories? Were you born in Portland?
ROSENBAUM: No. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska.

Fuks: How long did you live in Omaha?
ROSENBAUM: I lived in Omaha about 50 years.

Fuks: You went to college in Nebraska also?
ROSENBAUM: Yes, I did.

Fuks: At what university?
ROSENBAUM: University of Nebraska.

Fuks: Is that also where you went to medical school?
ROSENBAUM: Yes, also medical school. They’re separate institutions, but they’re both in Nebraska.

Fuks: Tell me a little bit about your childhood. I know that you had one brother, Ed, who was also a doctor. Were there any other children in the family?
ROSENBAUM: I had one brother. He was my only sibling.

Fuks: I take it you were pretty close to each other.
ROSENBAUM: Yes, we were.

Fuks: Was he the older brother or the younger brother?
ROSENBAUM: He was 16 months older.

Fuks: Tell me a little bit about your boyhood with Ed and your parents.
ROSENBAUM: As children?

Fuks: What do you remember?
ROSENBAUM: My parents were merchants. They had a clothing store. My mother used to spend time at work with my dad when she could. She’d go down there, particularly on weekends when we were — she would go down to the store. My dad was a partner at a little clothing store with one of his brothers. We used to play together Saturday morning while Mother had already left to be with Dad. Then near the noon hour we would go down to the store. My mother was very close to Dad; she always wanted to be with him. She went down every weekend, every Saturday to work in the store, but she wasn’t a necessary [inaudible word]. She identified herself as such in order to justify — not really the home life on weekends. She was in the store. We were a close family.

Fuks: What was school like there, your early education? Do you have any special memories of going to school?
ROSENBAUM: School was difficult in that we lived in a ghetto. I realize that we created the ghetto. The few Jews who had migrated to the city all lived together, and we were amongst all the Blacks. We were in a poor area of the city.

Fuks: But did you feel poor? It sounds like you were having a pretty good time. You said it was a poor area of the city, but your family had a store and you were doing okay, I guess.
ROSENBAUM: Well, the store was downtown. My dad was a partner with a brother. I guess they made a living, or barely made a living. A cap was typically worn; a man always wore a head covering. A cap was $1.65.

Fuks: Any special memories of going to public school?
ROSENBAUM: No, I don’t have any special memories, except the cap business was doing poorly and so — I should digress a little. Before that, apparently there was a little period of prosperity, and my parents and my dad [note: uncle?] and his wife, the four of them built two small houses next to each other. So business was okay. They weren’t very expensive. It was in a new little suburb of the city, and there were rows of inexpensive houses.

Fuks: So you were born in 1916. The US entered World War I in 1917, and then you grew up in between the wars, is when your childhood took place.
ROSENBAUM: I was born in 1916 in Omaha, and my dad was in this little business with his brother. They were doing pretty okay, but pretty soon things went bad and so they had to devise a system of making a living. So they took one of our bedrooms and made a sewing machine shop out of it. My mother and my aunt sewed caps that my dad sold for $1.65 in the store.

Fuks: Was that during the Depression that they were doing that?
ROSENBAUM: That was really before the Depression. The Depression was at a later stage, when Roosevelt came in, or just before Roosevelt.

Fuks: What do you remember about the Depression and Roosevelt and that era? You were pretty young when that was going on.
ROSENBAUM: I can remember the Depression very well, even though I was small. Two dollars for a day was a big day. They were very difficult times. There was no movement of economics.

Fuks: When Roosevelt came in, did that give you hope? Did that make a big difference to you or to your family?
ROSENBAUM: No, he was already president when the Depression moved in. They published the [War?] Act, in which people worked in the camps or worked for the government. Two dollars a day was, I think, about the income.

Fuks: What year did you enter the University of Nebraska?
ROSENBAUM: ’36. Actually, I went to Creighton for pre-med in order to get into medical school because Creighton was in Omaha, and therefore tuition was less than it would have cost me to live in Lincoln. The medical school was in Lincoln, but the tuition was higher there. I didn’t go to Lincoln because I’d have had too many expenses. This way I lived at home. I went to Creighton, and we lived not too far away. I walked home for my meals, and I had minimal expenses.

Fuks: That makes a lot of sense, given the times. Before we talk about medical school and your becoming a doctor, you mentioned that you sort of lived in a Jewish community that was a little bit isolated from the rest of the community. Did you go to Hebrew school? Did you have a bar mitzvah?
ROSENBAUM: Yes, we went to Hebrew school before we moved into the ghetto. My parents had a nice little home, and we went to that school there which was the most [elegant?] school in the area. When times got difficult, when they started sewing the caps in one of the bedrooms, then it was shortly thereafter that we sold the houses and we moved in with our parents. So Mother moved in with her parents, her family, and my uncle, he moved in with his family. We moved back into the ghetto.

Fuks: So in order to save money, people sold their houses and consolidated living together. That’s pretty intimate. You were all pretty close together then.
ROSENBAUM: Yes. They didn’t have any money to spend.

Fuks: That’s what you do when you don’t have money. You take care of each other.
ROSENBAUM: As I said, we lived in a ghetto, which I realize we created ourselves as well as being created by the community.

Fuks: Thank you for giving me that piece of background. Let’s talk about medical school and becoming a doctor. How did you get interested in medicine?
ROSENBAUM: From my standpoint, I didn’t have any interest. I just did whatever my brother did. I didn’t have to know anything; he was the leader. One factor of putting us in medical school was that the medical school was in Omaha, and therefore it was cheaper to go to medical school than it was to an arts college. In Nebraska the college was in Lincoln, so it was cheaper to go to medical school.

Fuks: So medical school was less expensive than going to a liberal arts school. That’s interesting. Because you didn’t have to live in Lincoln.
ROSENBAUM: Right. I used to walk to school in the morning, walk home for lunch, and walk up to school for the rest of the day. I really did whatever my brother did because he seemed to know what he was doing.

Fuks: I think for the record we should mention that your brother was Dr. Edward Rosenbaum, and he was a very accomplished physician, as you were. I believe he was one of the people who worked in the first MASH unit that was ever created for the US Army, during World War II. He had a very interesting and remarkable career himself. What did you specialize in as you became a doctor? Did you have a medical specialty?
ROSENBAUM: Medical school, there are a lot of points I’d like to make about it. It was very difficult to get an acceptance into medical school. The Jewish student had a quota. This quota was 64%. There were 400 medical students every year, and the initial quota was of women. There was a four percent women quota. Now, the pre-medical minimum was three years of college, and I applied with two years of college. The dean finally said that if I would go to summer school he’d give me credit; that would give me my three years. So I got into medical school after three years of pre-med.

Fuks: That’s a big accomplishment, really.
ROSENBAUM: Right. There were five of us that got in that way.

Fuks: And there was a quota. What was it, four percent?
ROSENBAUM: The quota was four percent. This was not published, but it was known, four percent. At that time a person who lived in most of the United States, a Jew could get in with his application, but they had their own quotas. Nebraska took other states like Nevada or Wyoming who didn’t have a medical school, so you were competing against them, too. But anyway, four percent was our quota.

Fuks: Four percent Jews and two percent women?
ROSENBAUM: Four percent women.

Fuks: Talk to me about the experience of medical school. Did you have a medical specialty? Did you become a surgeon?
ROSENBAUM: There were advantages of being a medical student. Before the exam, your former [inaudible word] come over to speak to you. In other words, I’m the obstetrician professor at the medical school. I used to be a member of this fraternity. I come over and give you a lecture tonight on what the exam is tomorrow. So there were a lot of games going on.

Fuks: Was that an advantage for you?
ROSENBAUM: Was it an advantage? Yes. How could you stay up with these fellows that had the professor give them the quiz questions?

Fuks: So after you graduated from medical school, what happened then?
ROSENBAUM: My brother interned at the St. Louis Jewish Hospital. It was an excellent institution, but it was entirely private. It was of very high quality, but you had to work hard. When you came into the dean and asked about where can I apply for an internship, he instructed a certain person to apply there. He filled that, shall we say, “blank spot.” So the dean had a quota, and you had to follow. Ed went to the Jewish Hospital, which was of very good quality. When it came my turn, he said go to the city [hospital] where the quality is good [inaudible], and I tried to apply to the dean there after resistance. After he’d filled the Jewish medical school with a Jewish boy, then he let me apply to the city hospital.

Fuks: So you ended up doing your internship at the city hospital. Was that a pretty busy schedule you had there?
ROSENBAUM: Yes. The Jewish boy had to almost work around his prejudices. It was hard to get past the quotas. There definitely were quotas.

Fuks: Did you experience those kinds of prejudices against Jews when you were practicing medicine? Did other doctors give you a hard time?
ROSENBAUM: One reason we’re in Portland is that there was only one little hospital in Omaha that a practicing Jew could get into.

Fuks: To get admissions privileges.
ROSENBAUM: Admissions. None of these things are said; they’re just known. But in Portland, when Ed came, you could get into St. Vincent, you could get into one good hospital. By good I mean the larger one. You could get into one larger hospital without any trouble, and with manipulation and by talking to different people and stuff like that you might get into a second. But at least you had an opening.

Fuks: So it was easier to get privileges here.
ROSENBAUM: Right. In Omaha it was really hard at that time to get privileges as an individual.

Fuks: When did you make that move to Portland?
ROSENBAUM: Right after World War II.

Fuks: Let’s talk about Portland in a minute. I’d like to talk a little bit about World War II. You were a physician during World War II. Were you in the military?
ROSENBAUM: I was in an internship when the war . . .

Fuks: You were in your internship when the war started?
ROSENBAUM: No, I was a junior when the war started. I was Class 3-A because we had already had a baby. Meanwhile, the draft wasn’t bothering me because I was in Class 3-A, in addition to which I was working in the City of St. Louis institution, which was outside of the central city. When they asked for our draft CA they didn’t strike me, so I was immune in a sense.

Fuks: I see. So you didn’t get drafted.
ROSENBAUM: But I had a friend who felt strongly that it was wrong for him and me to be out of the draft, so we went to the draft board and applied. The board complied, and they took me instead of him.

Fuks: They rejected your friend, but you got accepted. So you did enter the military.
ROSENBAUM: I went in the military.

Fuks: Which branch of the military were you in?
ROSENBAUM: Combat engineers.

Fuks: What was your role?
ROSENBAUM: We were attached to the engineers. I had a battalion.

Fuks: And you were the doctor for that battalion?
ROSENBAUM: Right.

Fuks: Where did you go?
ROSENBAUM: We were sent to Europe. We entered D-5. It was called D-Day plus 5. We were in boats. They were shooting at us from up above as we came in.

Fuks: So you came in at Normandy.
ROSENBAUM: At Normandy.

Fuks: Wow! Sir, that’s impressive. Then you traveled with the combat engineers through the Battle of the Bulge?
ROSENBAUM: Yes. We went south to Saint-Lô, and then we headed north. Then we ran out of gasoline, so they stopped the activity and gave us a pass to go to Paris. I went to Paris, and I bumped into Ed in Paris. I had lost track of Ed; Ed was in a different outfit. So I bumped into Ed at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Ed was leaving for home the next day, so I was lucky I got to see him.

Fuks: That’s an interesting place to run into somebody.
ROSENBAUM: Yes. An impressive place I saw in Paris was at the southeast corner of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, across the street. There was nothing to see but a brick terrace. You walk down a very narrow brick staircase, which is about three feet wide. You walk down maybe 40, 50 feet. There was a platform in brick. Then there were [inaudible] down there. It was very impressive because it was so depressing. The architect must have had the assignment, “make something impressive but don’t spend any money.” That’s what I got out of it. Well, from then on it was just me with the outfit until we got home.

Fuks: And you traveled with them as they supported troops through the Battle of the Bulge.
ROSENBAUM: We were part of the battle. When they needed engineering help, they’d call us.

Fuks: You were married before the war, then, and already had your first child. How did you meet your wife?
ROSENBAUM: Oh, she met me!

Fuks: She met you [laughter]!
ROSENBAUM: I remember AZA had a national convention at that time. They gave a dance. Her brother, who was two years older, convinced her parents that there would never be another AZA in the years to come and they should let her go. So they did. She was 14, and I was 16.

Fuks: This was in Omaha.
ROSENBAUM: This was in Omaha. So we went to the dance together, and we pretty well stayed together ever after that first meeting.

Fuks: How long were you married?
ROSENBAUM: Seventy-seven years.

Fuks: That’s remarkable.
ROSENBAUM: Well, we [inaudible] for a good marriage. One is you have to be the right age, plus or minus, real close. You need to be the same religion. You need to be the same education. You need to be the same compassion. I think the more you’re the same, the more likely your marriage is to succeed.

Fuks: I would say you made a pretty good success of it, Bill. That’s pretty remarkable.
ROSENBAUM: We never had any conflict. I don’t ever remember an argument. We never argued about anything. We [inaudible].

Fuks: How long were you away from her during World War II?
ROSENBAUM: About two years.

Fuks: That must have been hard. Did you correspond much? Did you send letters?
ROSENBAUM: We sent every day — there was an Army letter, a V-Mail, where you could write a full letter.

Fuks: So you wrote her every day.
ROSENBAUM: Every day.

Fuks: What was it like then, coming back after the war?
ROSENBAUM: Coming back. I didn’t have any choices to make because I didn’t make any. Ed made all the choices.

Fuks: Ed was the leader in the family.
ROSENBAUM: He was definitely the leader. We went into practice here in Portland.

Fuks: So Ed moved out to Portland first and you followed him?
ROSENBAUM: Right. Portland was more generous than Omaha. In Omaha, it was extremely hard to get into a hospital attendance, but in Portland a Jew could get into one main hospital. We’re talking realities here. So a Jew could get into St. Vincent, he could get into Providence, he could get into Emanuel and Good Sam, but it was hard to get into, say, Good Sam and St. Vincent. For a Jew it was almost impossible. But fortunately, they left space for one or the other. That’s what kept us out of Omaha. There was one little hospital that would be like Holladay Park in Omaha. Basically they didn’t let you in. So he came here and had a practice and did very well because he was knowledgeable and responsive, and so I came. I made some contacts among referring doctors and made a living, too. We’ve done extremely well, medically speaking, in the area. We worked hard; we were responsive.

Fuks: Responsiveness made a big difference.
ROSENBAUM: Right.

Fuks: Your wife was Goldie, is that correct?
ROSENBAUM: Right.

Fuks: How many kids did you and Goldie have?
ROSENBAUM: Three.

Fuks: One of them, I know, was born in Omaha. Were the others born in Portland?
ROSENBAUM: Bob was born in Omaha, when I left overseas. My mother did most of the care of him. Not that she was needed for the manpower, but she enjoyed it so she helped raise him a lot.

Fuks: Tell me about your other kids. So Bob was born in Omaha.
ROSENBAUM: Bob was born in Omaha. When he got into college, they had a special program. He went to Johns Hopkins. I don’t remember what they had [inaudible], but Hopkins was a nice little school. After that he went into the Medical Reserve and he became a neurologist. Then Tom came along, and Tom became a neurosurgeon. Then Jean came along, and she was a neurological technician. So they all got into medicine.

Fuks: The whole family was involved in health care.
ROSENBAUM: Of course, Ed was very smart. He was really our leader.

Fuks: I remember walking around in the Providence system, and you couldn’t turn a corner without running into a Dr. Rosenbaum somewhere.
ROSENBAUM: There were 15 of us recently, and now there are 14. Even today, the head of the eye department at the medical school is Jim, and the head of the eye department at Good Samaritan is Jim [note: the same Jim]. Then Sandy Lewis [note: Jim’s wife], she’s in the heart department at Good Sam. Her two daughters are physicians. One of them is a writer, and she has a lot of respect. She writes for the New England Journal of Medicine and others, but the New England Journal of Medicine is the top journal.

Fuks: It clearly is. Could you talk a little about the Jewish part of living in Portland and your involvement with that, or your family’s involvement with Jewish Portland? What was it like to be a Jew living in Portland? What was it like for your family to encounter Jewish Portland?
ROSENBAUM: I was brought up in a Jewish ghetto [inaudible]. When we moved here, we joined the temple and enjoyed the temple’s work. They do a good job.

Fuks: So you found yourself in a community that you were happy with and a congregation that you were happy with.
ROSENBAUM: When my dad got older, my folks moved here, and he was Orthodox, so he joined Neveh Shalom. So we joined it also to give him support, but we stayed with Temple.

Fuks: So you belonged to both congregations.
ROSENBAUM: We belonged to both. Then Rabbi . . .

Fuks: Rabbi Stampfer or Rabbi Rose?
ROSENBAUM: Rabbi Stampfer was a friend of Ed’s, so I joined. I wanted to join Stampfer’s synagogue, too, so I did. I was a member, and I still am, a member of the three of them.

Fuks: That’s great. So you really made strong connections with the synagogue community. Did you get involved with the Jewish Federation at all, or any of the other agencies in the Jewish Community?
ROSENBAUM: No, no [inaudible] regular commitment.

Fuks: You gave generously. I know you did. How long did you live at the Rose Schnitzer Manor, across the street?
ROSENBAUM: I guess a few years.

Fuks: It felt like at least about ten years.
ROSENBAUM: No, not that long. Maybe we were there two or three years. Then we moved . . .

Fuks: Then you moved over here. Bill, one of the things that was remarkable to me about what you brought is that you’re a sculptor. Could you talk a little bit about your artwork and how you got into doing sculpture?
ROSENBAUM: One day I said to Goldie, “We ought to get into painting because it seems like a good hobby.” So we went to the art museum and we took a class in painting. We were going to weekly painting classes at the art museum. They were very nice. They gave you a locker and they brought in a model. It cost maybe five dollars. One day a fellow brought in a piece of stone that he had sculpted. I asked him if he would show me how, and he did, so I started doing stonework, [inaudible word] in stone, and I started doing stone sculpture. I did that for a while. Then a fellow showed me a piece that he had . . .

Fuks: A metal sculpture?
ROSENBAUM: Metal. And so I got into metal sculpture. That’s how I got involved in these things. It kept me busy and it was enjoyable.

Fuks: You’ve done some remarkable work. I know that here on the campus of Cedar Sinai Park there are a number of your pieces that have found a home. It’s been a wonderful thing that you contributed those.
ROSENBAUM: It’s been a wonderful hobby. I don’t enjoy athletics.

Fuks: Athletics was not your thing.
ROSENBAUM: No. I would like to work in the yard, or else I did my artwork.

Fuks: Those are great vocations. So as you’re about to become 100, do you have any reflections that you want to share or any wishes that you want to share?
ROSENBAUM: No, I don’t think so.

Fuks: OK. I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. It was a real pleasure to have a chance to get to know you a little bit better. One of the pleasures I had when I worked here was to see you and Goldie. You were very encouraging always of what I was doing, and I appreciated that very, very much.
ROSENBAUM: Thank you. I would say that we’ve been very fortunate in the kind of institution we have here. It’s number one. They always sought for the best, and I say a small portion [inaudible]. That’s the way this place is, nothing but the best.

Fuks: That’s a nice note to end on. Thanks a lot.