...writing your life story

• I Turned a Key and the Birds Began to Sing
• Life Is a Game: Bet on Yourself
• The Music of My Life
• The Candelabra and the Prayer Book
• Nothing To Lose But My Life
• Billy and Me: 65 Years of Love and Adventure
• You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

• Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist
• Los Pastores: The Shepherd’s Play
• Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?

MEMOIRS & LIFE STORIES

“I Turned a Key and the Birds Began to Sing” is the memoir of Carol Rubin Meyer, a New York socialite who was born into a prestigious family that established many of Manhattan’s cultural and social welfare organizations.  Carol forged her own path – first studying opera after graduating from Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts, then becoming a suburban wife and mother while teaching French in the local elementary school in Harrison, New York. Following the untimely death of her husband, Seymour, at the age of 52, Carol went back to college and became an expert in pre-Columbian art studying with Professor Michael Coe at Yale University. Now a member of the Society of Women Geographers she volunteered as a researcher in the Metropolitan Museum’s Rockefeller Collection for twenty-five years, and traveled to over forty countries. Here is one of her fondest memories:

The following summer [in 1937], I went to the south of France with my parents, Isidor and Sylvia Rubin, and my brother, Harvey. My singing teacher from Smith College, Mrs. Garrison had a villa in Eze, which she shared with her husband, who was a musical conductor. Every other day, I took a forty-minute bus ride from our hotel in Cannes to Eze for singing lessons. The bus followed a winding road along the pebbled beach until it climbed up over one thousand feet to the cliffside village of Eze. With its narrow medieval alleys and inns, it is one of the most charming spots on the Riviera.

Mrs. Garrison instructed me in lieder; her piano sat right next to a large bay window and as she played the music of Bach, Brahms and Schubert, I would sometimes catch a glimpse of a yacht sailing along the coast. I imagined its fashionable passengers disembarking at Beaulieu for a splendid lunch at La Reserve. If I felt like it, I would stand outside under the open window while Mrs. Garrison played for me from inside the house. The view was quite spectacular, and the garden was filled with succulent plants and vibrant flowers. The color of the Mediterranean was always changing with the light. I am reminded of Vincent Van Gogh’s words that he wrote in a letter to his brother, Theo:

I am writing to you from Ste. Maries on the shore of the Mediterranean at last. The Mediterranean has the colours of mackerel, changeable, I mean. You don’t always know if it is green or violet, you can’t even say it’s blue because the next moment the changing light has taken on a tinge of rose colour grey……

As I stood singing into the breeze I could not imagine a place more beautiful. Since the neighbors were all music lovers, they did not mind my outdoor singing; they might even have planned to sit in their gardens when they knew it was time for my lesson (page 53).

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"Life is a Game: Bet on Yourself” is Al Azus’ rags to riches story. With Horatio Alger as his inspiration, Al grew up in a Turkish immigrant family in Chicago. At the age of eight, he had his first job – selling chances to win a prize by picking the right number on a punchboard; by age eleven he was selling ice cream, and at the age of fourteen he worked for the fanciest men’s clothier in the city where he met union leaders, mobsters, and businessmen. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the military and ended up in Europe at the end of World War II, guarding German prisoners of war, including SS officers. He married, moved to California with his beautiful wife, Serene, his two young children, and worked as a door-to-door salesman eventually finding a niche for himself in the envelope printing business. Today he is one of the leading businessmen in his industry, married to his third wife, Hedi, and a great philanthropist supporting children’s charities, Jewish causes, and museums. As a boy of fourteen, he recalls one of the astonishing coincidences of his life:

Just before one of the Jewish holidays, it was about ten degrees below zero – one of the coldest days of the year in Chicago. I had to deliver a suit to one of our customers, Lou Schnitz, who owned a shoe store on Wells Street about fifty miles from Didech Brothers where I was working. I took the streetcar. Walking from the stop to the store, the wind was blowing fiercely and I was freezing cold – my hands were practically numb, and I had a hole in one of my shoes. When I delivered the suit, Mr. Schnitz said, “Gee wiz, kid, what are you doing going out like that? You have a hole in your shoe.” He told me to sit down and warm up. Then he gave me a pair of shoes and a dollar tip....

Years later, I had just started my own company in Los Angeles and I made a sales call on a man who needed envelopes. He looked at me strangely and asked, “Where are you from?”

“Chicago, I answered not really knowing where his line of questioning might take the sale."

He said, “Hey, I'm from Chicago, too. And what did you do there?”

“Well, I delivered suits.”

“Are you the kid that worked at Didech Brothers and came to my shoe store?”

God, I couldn't"t believe the coincidence. Lou called all his workers together. “You don’t know who this kid is, but from now on I want you to buy all your envelopes from his company.” That was in 1958 and I kept him as a good customer until the day he died. I had gone out of my way for him and he turned around and helped make my business grow some twenty years later. I have met a lot of great people in my life and Lou Schnitz was one of them (pages 22-23).

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"The Music of My Life” takes its reader on a journey from Geldsdorf, Germany where Hedi Giese lived until the age of five when her father sent three first-class tickets on an ocean liner for her mother, Elise, her brother, Freddie, and her to come to America. The year was 1925 and her father had established a small copper piping company in Woodhaven, New York.  The Depression took its toll on the family business and Hedi went to work in Manhattan’s garment district.  She became a model, and then had the good fortune to meet the man of her dreams, Sydney Hoffman.  When World War II broke out, Sydney enlisted in Officers’ Candidacy School. Upon graduation, they were married, crisscrossed the United States from one army post to another traveling along famous Route 66.  Ultimately Sydney was stationed in the South Pacific and for over three years, the Hoffmans carried on a correspondence.  Many of the letters are reprinted in this memoir which gives a glimpse into military life.  After the War, Sydney saw his daughter for the first time.  Life was good until Sydney died of a heart attack.  Hedi was forced to make a life for herself, becoming an independent woman working as an account manager at the Gibraltar Savings Bank in Los Angeles.  Her positive outlook carried her through many difficult times, and she never gave up the dream of finding her second Prince Charming, who walked into the Bank and shortly afterwards proposed marriage.  Hedi and Al Azus have been married for over 27 years sharing the joys of watching their grandchildren flourish.  Her overriding philosophy is that “Only one thing matters.  That wherever we go and however we go we hear the music of life.”

In this excerpt, Hedi describes her big break into modeling:

Whatever perils the city might have held in my mother’s imagination, it was also a place where I could find a job.  At sixteen I applied for a work permit and Mother looked for a summer job for me in the “Help Wanted” section of the newspaper.  With the Depression on, there were few jobs for young girls with little or no work experience, but she saw an advertisement that caught her attention, “Hedi, look at this.”

Peering over Mother's shoulder, I read the newspaper ad:  “Assistant needed for high-fashion showroom.  Madame LaTour located at 59^th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Manhattan.  Call Templeton 7-3510 for an interview.” 

I look the elevator train that ran right into Sixth Avenue and headed straight for the garment center.  I was hired on the spot and from the minute I started working there, I loved everything about the place – the high-fashion models, the elegant clientele and Madame LaTour.  In the beginning I served coffee to her clients, and handed the pins to the dressmakers as they adjusted the made-to-order dresses for the wealthy women who could afford the clothes. I made about $15 a week, which I turned over to Mother for our household expense…

As the summer progressed I learned a lot about fashion and was given more to do.  I ironed hems, sewed on buttons, and learned how to make plackets from hooks and eyes because zippers had not yet been invented.  During lunchtime, I would sometimes walk over to the Horn 'n Hardart Cafeteria and for twenty-five cents I would buy soup and a roll, which held me over until dinner- time.

Madame LaTour had three collections: the cruise line, the holiday line and the spring line.  There were usually five models to show the clothes, although during the summer months, there were as few as three models. On one occasion, one of the models called in sick and in a panic, the head designer grabbed one of the girls, “Get Hedi. Put her in the blue dress, and put makeup on her.  She'll have to take over.”  I felt like the understudy who becomes the star on Broadway and I loved showing the clothes.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the customers admiring me, and the chauffeurs giving me approving glances, as they struggled to keep their mistresses’ tiny fluffy dogs from yapping and jumping out of their laps.  It was very exciting to be the center of attention.

I was asked to appear in a fashion show on Broadway called Bundles for Britain.  During intermission we would model clothes and collect money to send to England to help support the troops there.  Whenever there were military men in the audience they always wanted my autograph.  I guess they thought that I was some sort of celebrity. A Navy man came backstage to ask for my autograph, and I gladly gave it to him.  He read my name, “Hedi Giese” as if I had just written “Hedy Lamar” (pages 21-24).

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“The Candelabra and the Prayer Book ”

Born in Berlin in 1932 Moses and his parents escaped the Nazi storm and settled in Palestine only to be swept up in the country’s War of Independence against its Arab neighbors. After serving in the army and working for the Israeli bureaucracy, he changed the course of his life by electing to become a doctor. He studied in Vienna and Munich and eventually found his way to the United States with his wife, a pathologist, and their three children. He was a real trailblazer in the field of kidney dialysis, opening free-standing treatment centers so that patients did not have to travel far for care. In his book, he shares his philosophy that a doctor must not only be an excellent clinician but also an empathetic counselor. The descendant of an illustrious Jewish family, Dr. Spira introduces his readers to his great grandfather:

My great grandfather, Rabbi Yosef Zalman Spira, lived near Bardiov in the village of Hrabske, Slovakia. There is a wild story about my great grandfather that illuminates his character and brings him into clearer focus from out of the mist of nineteenth century Eastern Europe. Imagine him walking across a verdant field at mid-day surveying his farm. He is dressed in black from head to foot wearing a long coat and boots. The ground is muddy after a heavy rain and the stream running downhill is pregnant with gushing water. Suddenly from behind him, he hears the rumbling of carriage wheels over a narrow bridge, and a woman’s screams. He turns around; shading his eyes from the blinding sunlight he sees the carriage fast approaching. With his heart racing and his boots engulfed in the heavy mud, he stands directly in the path of the oncoming carriage. Somehow he manages to throw himself onto the neck of one of the wild horses – their flanks lathered in sweat and their mouths dripping with foam. With all the strength left in him, he pulls hard on the reins. The horses come to a halt just yards from the roaring stream. Inside the carriage is Austro-Hungarian Empress Elisabeth (page 6).

In the closing pages of his memoir, Dr. Spira speaks of his own physical challenges:

About two years ago, I started to lose my eyesight.  I developed tunnel vision.  If  you look through a straw that is how much eyesight I have left.  Now I am legally blind.  I can still detect light and dark, and if I look down at the ground I can sometimes see the leaves on my doorstep, but I really cannot see who is standing in front of me.  I have learned to rely on voices and I am familiar with where everything is in my house so that I am quite independent at home. I have a harder time when I go out and lately I have been losing my balance.  I have also lost the use of my left hand. The doctors tell me that I have had a series of small strokes that are causing these problems.  I am going to the Braille Institute for classes in ceramics, singing, art history, music appreciation and current events.  I am even taking Latin dancing which is supposed to improve my balance. I am planning to take French lessons by listening to tapes.  I want to practice my Spanish and Russian.  I have a lot of plans for the future.   What is essential is not to give up (page 150).

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"Nothing To Lose But My Life” is David Wiener's compelling memoir that begins with his vivid recollection of his childhood in Lodz and Krotoszyn, Poland surrounded by loving parents and siblings who were part of a vibrant, religious Jewish community. At thirteen, he witnessed the Nazi invasion of Poland, and his safe world was abruptly and brutally destroyed. Escaping the Lodz ghetto, virtually alone, he wandered from ghetto to ghetto narrowly escaping death, until he was conscripted into a slave labor camp and ultimately transported to Auschwitz. Working in the Messerchmitt airplane factory and in the mines, he and 300 other prisoners were put on a Death March. David ran for his life, and was saved by American soldiers three weeks before the war ended in Europe. Haunted by nightmares of the war and unimaginable personal losses, he began a new life in America, starting a family and building several successful businesses in Los Angeles. Nothing To Lose But My Life is both a witness account of the Holocaust and a personal memoir of one man's determination to survive in order to keep alive the memory of those lost forever. For sixty years, David Wiener remained silent. Now he tells his life story, with fiery determination.

David is conscripted by the Nazis to build a railroad and almost loses his life when he is hit by a locomotive as it travels slowly down the freshly laid tracks.

During the winter of 1942, I was selected by the Jewish Council to work on building a railroad into Deblin. Everyday, I thought that it was to be the last day of my life. It was bitter cold - the snow and fog were so thick that I could not see 100 feet in front of me. I had no gloves and the flesh on my hands stuck to the ice-cold railroad tracks. The wind was ferocious, blowing snow into my nostrils so that it was hard to breathe. But I had to keep on working or die.

I was bent over fitting the wooden trestles between the train tracks and a locomotive moving slowly along the freshly laid tracks crashed into me, hitting me in the head. I was knocked unconscious. A couple of the men lifted me up onto a stretcher. As I lay there feeling no pain because I probably had gone into shock, one of the men said, "Why should we carry the Jew? Let's just throw him into the locomotive coal bin and let him burn." And then I heard one of the men argue, "No, I know where the kid lives. Let's take him home." They carried me to my Aunt Pearl's house.

I was shaking all over and running a fever of 105 degrees. Aunt Pearl filled a cow bladder with ice and put it on my head to try to bring the swelling down. She was up day and night praying that I would somehow survive. She would never have forgiven herself if her sister's son died in her house. She was truly an angel the way she took care of me....

My aunt stayed up 24-hours a day taking care of me, covering me with blankets and filling the cow bladder with fresh ice from the cellar to bring down the swelling. Eventually my fever broke but I could not turn my head for a month - my neck was stiff as a board. Sixty years later, I still have pain in my neck and a scar on the back of my head from where the locomotive hit me.

When I was strong enough to go out on the street, my friends looked at me as if they were seeing a ghost. "Is that really you?" They could not believe that I was alive; some kids actually ran away from me and others wanted to touch me to make sure that I was human. I felt like I had come back from Hell. I kept repeating my name, "Yes, it is me, Dufce Wiener from Lodz" (pages 19-21).

At the end of the war, David goes to Frankfurt in Main. Everyday, he checks the lists to see if any of his family has survived. His oldest brother, Jacob, and he are miraculously reunited:

I wanted to get out of Germany. I registered as a schlosser (which meant that I had a trade) with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), an American organization that assisted survivors to find safe haven in the United States. As a young person, I had a good chance of getting the help I needed. By that time, I had given up all hope of finding any members of my immediate family.

But something unbelievable happened. My oldest brother, Jacob, had survived the war and was on a train traveling through Italy on his way to Palestine. While he was waiting at the railroad station, he asked some passengers from Lodz if they knew of a Dufce Wiener. "Yes, he is alive and he is living in Frankfurt in Main." Jacob jumped on a train heading back to Frankfurt and in three days he was standing in front of me. That was in July 1946. We had not seen one another since 1939 and could not have imagined that we would ever see one another again. It was truly a miracle, if you believe in miracles. I thought that I was seeing a ghost. We hugged and kissed one another, tears streaming down our faces - I could not tell where his tears ended and mine began (pages 43-44).

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“Billy and Me: 65 Years of Love and Adventure” is a valentine to an extraordinary marriage and partnership between Tootsie Veprin, the book’s author, and her husband, Billy. Tootsie takes her reader back to the days of vaudeville in San Francisco, where Tootsie and Billy first met when she was four and he was nine. They were reunited years later and after a whirlwind courtship set out together building businesses in Vallejo, Guam, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and the San Fernando Valley. Whatever they did, they did together, supporting one another to achieve success. Their devotion to one another extended to their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, as well as legions of friends who entered their warm and charmed circle. Incorporating pages from Billy’s unfinished memoir, "Billy and Me" is the final collaboration of a enviable marriage.

Here is Tootsie describing her appearance on stage at four years old:

I waited backstage at the Fillmore Theater for Charlie Chaplin’s movie, The Gold Rush, to end. When the lights went up, the announcer came on and I took my place in line with 11 other kids who were part of “Ellen Rose’s Kiddie Review.” I was only four years old, and I was the youngest performer in the troupe. I am not sure how I had the nerve to go out on stage but something came over me when the music started playing and all my shyness disappeared.

With intelligence, humor and honesty, Dorothy Gould shares her life’s journey in her memoir, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.” Growing up in Ventura during the Depression and World War II, Dorothy depicts small town life on the California coast. Taking a leap of faith she married Joe Gould, a “city slicker” and moved to Los Angeles where she became a community activist, Jewish communal leader, devoted mother and helpmate to her businessman husband. Despite the challenges that 84 years of living inevitably bring, Dorothy enthusiastically claims that “The world has been my oyster.”

Dorothy reminisces about life in Ventura during World War II:

My father used to drive me to the dances along with my friends and he made sure that I was safe in the midst of all these servicemen. The “Plunge” was one of the most popular dance spots. Located on California Street in the center of Ventura, it was built over a swimming pool and there was a pier that extended into the water. There were also big indoor dance halls with live bands. My friend Anne’s future husband, played in one of the bands for a couple of years. He was stationed at Port Hueneme and he used to play for the dances every weekend. There were also dances in Oxnard for the Air Force pilots. These dances were somewhat more exclusive. You had to be invited. By the time I was 18 or 19 I was really enjoying all this socializing.

When her husband Joe retired from the banking business (his second career), Dorothy was busy with community activities and wanted to make sure that he kept himself occupied:

Joe retired from the banking industry in 1990. During his career he had run seven banks including the Los Feliz Bank which became the Hollywood National Bank, the Pan American Bank, Mechanics National Bank, First State Bank, the Larchmont Bank which became the Wilshire Bank and the Omni Bank. I told Joe that he needed to find something to do with his time. I said, “I married you for better or worse but not for lunch.” This was a common saying among active women like myself who were reluctant to cater to their husbands after they had retired and no longer had busy lives.

FILMS

“Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist” is a one- hour documentary for PBS produced by Loren Stephens and her partner, Judy Chaikin under the banner of One Step Productions. The film, narrated by Burt Lancaster, explores the impact of the Blacklist on families of writers, directors, and producers, who were named as Communist sympathizers by their peers, and by the studio heads who cooperated with the U.S. government. Many of those named including Michael Wilson, Dalton Trumbo, Sam Ornitz, and others were ruined and their families paid the price of their choice to remain silent rather than reveal their political affiliations or implicate others.  The recipient of a Cine Gold Eagle and a national Emmy nomination, the film is available through Cinema Guild, and can be ordered by emailing them at www.cinemaguild.com.

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“Los Pastores: The Shepherd’s Play” is a bi-lingual half hour documentary that takes place in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico and Colorado. Loren Stephens served as executive producer of the film that explores the significance of this Catholic liturgical drama upon the lives of the communities that participate in recreating this Christmas story with its antecedents in Medieval Spain. The play, performed by volunteers under the direction of Taos resident and historian, Arcenio Cordova, and teacher and actor, Larry Torres, was filmed in the eighteenth century San Jose de Gracias Church on the High Road between Santa Fe and Taos. The film was shown on select PBS stations throughout the country and was included in the Smithsonian Hispanic Heritage Festival as well as the Folk Art Museum of Los Angeles. “Los Pastores” impresses the viewer with the value of preserving traditions as a way of keeping communities alive and vibrant. This film is also available through Cinema Guild at www.cinemaguild.com and is produced under the One Step Productions’ banner.

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“Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?” is a docudrama produced, co-written and researched by Loren Stephens for Coronet Films and New World Television. Intended for classroom use, the film recreates dramatic moments in the life of freed slave, abolitionist, and woman’s rights activist, Sojourner Truth. Although she could neither read nor write, she was a powerful orator and together with Frederick Douglass, fought for the rights of Blacks and women in America, linking the two causes together. The pivotal moment of the film is her famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” where she equates her strength, savvy and power with that of a man. Starring Julie Harris and Roscoe Lee Brown, this film won a Golden Apple from the National Education Association. The film contains rare archival photographs, letters, and selections from Sojourner Truth’s diary (written by a woman who followed her journey throughout the country.  The film is currently unavailable.

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