Alan Rosenfeld

Weinstein: I would like to start by asking you to tell me something about your family. When did they come to Oregon? Why did they come to Oregon? How did they come to Oregon? 
ROSENFELD: It starts with my grandfather, Sol Rosenfeld, who was actually born in this country, I believe in Hagerstown, Maryland. His family originally came, [my] great-grandparents, from Bavaria. He came out to Portland about 1860, I am assuming overland, and established a small business in wholesaling tobacco and candy. I think his impetus for coming was the prosperity with the Gold Rush and people coming across to this part of the country. The family had settled in Ohio, and he went back to Ohio and married my grandmother. Her name was Bertha Wendel, and so they were associated with the Wendel family, and he brought her back here.

My mother’s family, as far as I know, my grandfather was born on the California-Nevada border and came out here as a young boy, as a peddler. One of the stories they tell about him is that his father, who was the treasurer of the county, used to take the gold from the gold mines in Nevada, into San Francisco. He used to ride into San Francisco with him. So he was born in his country.

Weinstein: Do you think the gold was taken in to be assayed?
ROSENFELD: Yes, assayed or, whatever. 

Weinstein: Deposited there.
ROSENFELD: Yes. I’m not sure about my grandmother on my mother’s side, but she was born in the United States. They got married in California and settled in the Los Angeles area. My mother used to talk about living in what was called Venice, California, which was built on the model of Venice, Italy. They lived in California for many years. She grew up in southern California, and my uncle also. She came up to Portland for my uncle’s wedding and met my father, who lived in Portland. They got married around 1919.

Weinstein: Who was your uncle whose wedding she came to?
ROSENFELD: Arthur Goldsmith. My mother’s family name was Goldsmith. Arthur was a well-known attorney in Portland and well established in the Jewish community. His wife, Amy Goldsmith, the library at Temple Beth Israel is in her name. I was one of three. I have a sister, Helen Lachman, who lives here, and my brother Ed passed away a couple of years ago. He was married to Elise Feldman. I will let you ask the next questions.

Weinstein: I am interested to know about your grandparents. Did you know them?
ROSENFELD: I knew my mother’s parents quite well. They used to come up from California every summer.

Weinstein: Was there any trait that you would recognize now that would prompt them to move to the frontier and create a life for themselves? It’s pretty unusual.
ROSENFELD: Well, I think it wasn’t too unusual for people that had come from Europe to come across to where there were some opportunities. In both cases, I think that the West was starting to grow, and being merchants – my mother’s father was, I guess you would call him a manufacturer’s representative today. He chose to live in California. I knew my father’s mother. Interestingly enough, their last family home was right down here on Vista Avenue. The white house across from the Vista St. Claire. On the corner. That was their third family home. The first family home that I heard about was down on Broadway and Washington. They kept moving uptown as the city started to grow.

Weinstein: That was your father’s family?
ROSENFELD: My father’s father. I didn’t know him. He passed away before I was born.

Weinstein: Can you tell me about what business they established in Portland?
ROSENFELD: Yes. He had established a business with the name of Rosenfeld, Smith. I don’t know much about Smith. As I said, they wholesaled tobacco and candies. One story they say is that he introduced Lifesavers candies to the western United States. 

Weinstein: So they were wholesalers, or retailers?
ROSENFELD: Wholesalers. I guess they must have prospered because there were seven children in the family with my father, and he was able to send my father and his brother to medical school, and a couple of the girls to finishing schools. The business was sold in the late 1920s, and I think it became Bernstein’s Cigars.

Weinstein: Oh, yes. Over on the east side.
ROSENFELD: Well, the original business was down on Second and Alder.

Weinstein: OK. Would you tell me the names of your father’s siblings? You said there were seven children. It would be good to have their names.
ROSENFELD: The oldest was Walter Rosenfeld, who never married. He took over the business and then sold out and was able to retire. A sister, Jesse, who married I. M. Lipman, who was one of the original families from Lipman Wolfe. My uncle James Rosenfeld was a well-known pediatrician in Portland. I think the story is that he had most of the Jewish babies [as patients] that were born. Then my father Arthur Rosenfeld was an internist. Actually, in his private practice he started with the Coffey Hospital and then was at Good Samaritan, and for 34 years he was associated up at the medical school as a volunteer professor. In those days they were not paid. He spent two mornings a week up there. Then there was Sanford Rosenfeld, a bachelor who did not marry. Helen Rosenfeld married Jonah Wise, who became a very well-known rabbi. He was the rabbi of Temple Beth Israel when he met her here in Portland. Then they moved back east. He was one of the well-known international rabbis (I should say Jews) because he was one of the founders of the Joint Distribution Committee, which you know now as UJA.

Weinstein: So he was progressive, socially.
ROSENFELD: Very progressive. Then the youngest daughter was Ruth Rosenfeld, who married Aaron Frank of the Frank family. The youngest of the seven, Ruth was the first to pass away. In fact, all of the family passed away almost in reverse order. The two oldest were the last two to pass away. None of that family are living, but quite a few of the cousins are.

Weinstein: What you just told me is the history of a family that was very involved in the community.
ROSENFELD: Yes, as a matter of fact, I guess my grandfather, my father’s father, was one of the earliest members of Temple Beth Israel. The rest were in various categories in the community.

Weinstein: Was your grandfather, the one that was involved with temple, was he very active? Was it during the founding years?
ROSENFELD: It was. His name is really not mentioned, but he was one of the early members, and I’m sure he saw the building of Temple Beth Israel. He was not active. My dad was on the board for a short time. He left the board about the time they were building the present Temple Beth Israel structure.

Weinstein: Tell me about the religious observance or ritual involvement of your family.
ROSENFELD: I would say generally that the family was not seriously religious. Of course, the family were all Reform Jews, with their origins in Germany. Probably on my mother’s side there was more of a religious tendency. I believe there was a grandfather on her side that may have been a rabbi and was very active in Jewish [community].

Weinstein: They came from Germany as well?
ROSENFELD: Yes.

Weinstein: Did you go to religious school?
ROSENFELD: Yes.

Weinstein: Did you like it?
ROSENFELD: Not particularly [laughs]. I went as far as confirmation. In our time, Temple Beth Israel, following the Reform regime, practically across the country, there were hardly any bar mitzvahs, and of course no bat mitzvahs. As I remember, in the years that I attended, I believe there were no bar mitzvahs, maybe one or two. Our rabbi, who we liked very much, was Rabbi Berkowitz. He was very much involved with the young people.

Weinstein: That was before my time in Portland, but I’ve heard the same thing from several other people. Young people, especially, really identified with him.
ROSENFELD: Yes.

Weinstein: Any special remembrances of your religious school experience?
ROSENFELD: No. I do know that in one year of religious school we learned the Hebrew alphabet. That was about as far as we got in Hebrew. And I think it was in our senior year our teacher was interested in taking our class to other religions’ churches. We did go to several other denominational churches as part of our learning. The rabbi was very serious that confirmation was not just standing up and getting a diploma. We had parts that we had to memorize. I remember him being very strict about how we presented ourselves and spoke. We had to really project, and of course we didn’t have amplification and microphones.

Weinstein: Did you spend much time with other Jewish young people from other congregations? Was your social life mainly at temple?
ROSENFELD: It was, yes. The early Portland community was really kind of divided. Reform members pretty much stayed in their own social strata, and Orthodox and Conservative had their social amenities. It really wasn’t until after World War II that there was an assimilation between the groups.

Weinstein: To what do you attribute that?
ROSENFELD: Well, I don’t know whether it was a prejudice that came with the old-ime German Jews who came here. They became more assimilated in the general community than the Conservative and Orthodox Jews who tended to stay in their own groups. There was sort of a melting into the general community of the Reform, and they kind of felt that this was a status symbol that they were more or less respected. As I look back on it now, it was not a very healthy thing for the Jewish community as a whole.

Weinstein: Something interesting that you told me earlier was the fact that your parents were both born in this country. Maybe that generation took pride in being American-born and more advanced because the goal was to become as American as you could be.
ROSENFELD: I think that is true. As I said, not only the parents but all four of my grandparents were born in this country. There is this feeling of being pioneers. I think that is the way they felt, that they were Americans, and they tended not to be as religiously oriented and not live in as much as a communal group as the Conservative and Orthodox Jews tended to do.

Weinstein: Was there any distinction, or were you even aware of the existence of the Sephardic Jews when you were a young person?
ROSENFELD: No, and that is interesting because I had never heard the word Sephardic until after World War II [when] I finished my education up at the University of Washington and pledged the Sigma Alpha Mus, the Sammys, at Washington. I found out up there that there was also the ZBTs, which really was practically 100% Reform Jews, and then the word Sephardic started coming up because they did not pledge Sephardic Jews. I had never heard that word in Portland, probably because there was a smaller Sephardic population. As a matter of fact, I think there were Sephardic Jews in Portland who went to temple and were Reform.

Weinstein: Really? Do you remember any of their names?
ROSENFELD: Well, for one, Jean Hasson. That is the only one I am sure was from a Sephardic family.

Weinstein: I would like to know more about that person. Maybe later on we can talk about that.
ROSENFELD: I don’t know much about her. I think she was related to Vic Hasson. I know there are several Victor Hassons. I don’t know where Jean ended up; in fact, she may be deceased.

Weinstein: Maybe later on we can try and do some detective work on that. That would be an interesting thing to investigate.  Where did you go to school?
ROSENFELD: I went to Ainsworth School. My family lived two blocks away in our growing-up years. And the old Lincoln High School. I went to Stanford for two and half years, from which place I went into the service. When I got out of the service, rather than go back to Stanford – I really was not happy down there. It was not for me a social school at all. It was strictly academic. I decided to go to the University of Washington, which also at that time had a better established chemical engineering school than Stanford did.

Weinstein: So that was your field, chemical engineering. When did you graduate?
ROSENFELD: I graduated in the summer of 1948.

Weinstein: I would like later on to go onto your experience in the war. But I am interested to know about your experience in college. You said you were a member of the “Sammy” House. Did you meet a lot of Seattle people? Were there many Oregon people there then?
ROSENFELD: There were quite a number of us from Portland, names that you and I both know: David Lipman, Marv Nepom, Irv Layton came up to the University of Washington, Howard Cohen, and Leonard Blank. I knew David. I didn’t know any of the other Jewish boys from Portland. They were somewhat younger. And I really didn’t know any of the Seattle Jewish people. But I met more Jewish people through that experience than I practically knew in Portland (outside of Temple Beth Israel). As far as the girls were concerned, again most of the girls who were my age had already been through school because they weren’t in the service. When I got up there in 1945, why, most of the Jewish girls I knew had already gone through the University of Washington.

Weinstein: So what was your social life like when you were up there?
ROSENFELD: Well, it was a much more involved social life through the fraternities and sororities. It was pretty much contained within them. Washington was a much different school than Oregon. I guess the Sammys in Oregon dated non-Jewish girls quite a bit, but up in Washington it was almost all social between the two Jewish fraternities and the two Jewish sororities.

Weinstein: Do you feel that was because of necessity or choice?
ROSENFELD: I think it was generally the campus atmosphere because the four houses up there, there was very little communication with the non-Jewish fraternities and sororities. And Washington, being in Seattle, there were an awful lot of home residents. So they went home to their own homes and the people they grew up with.

Weinstein: But did you feel it was a good experience?
ROSENFELD: Yes, it was. I met some very interesting people. One of the most interesting things that happened was in our house in late 1947. We brought in a Hungarian refugee. His name happened to be Tom Lantos, who has been a US Representative, and very well-known in California. He and I were very good friends up there. I have had no contact with him since. On the weekends, because we both, by necessity, had to do a lot of studying, we were two of the few people who were home and not out gadding about.

Weinstein: Have you retained a lot of friendships from those years?
ROSENFELD: Yes.

Weinstein: Tell me about your high school years. Did you go out? Did you socialize more with people who were not Jewish?
ROSENFELD: I would say mostly non-Jewish kids.

Weinstein: Did you date non-Jewish girls?
ROSENFELD: Yes.

Weinstein: Did you run into any opposition from your family? Was that an issue?
ROSENFELD: No. I should take that back. I did date Jewish girls. I did take a Jewish girl to the last prom, the senior prom. But Lincoln was pretty much assimilated. There was a large proportion of Jews that lived…. well, of course, South Portland was a part of Lincoln High School, and the whole west side. Lincoln was the only west side high school, and it extended clear out to Oswego, Multnomah, and all the West Hills. There was quite a mix of the elite people from the non-Jewish community, and most of the German-Jewish population, and South Portland, and the people who lived in China Town. It was a very assimilated school.

Weinstein: How did you feel about that?
ROSENFELD: It was a good experience.

Weinstein: Do you think that that contributed in any way to your activities later on?
ROSENFELD: I can only say that I got a good education and more of a feeling of assimilation.

Weinstein: You went into chemical engineering. Was that something you always were interested in?
ROSENFELD: Yes. It started, actually, in high school. I decided I wanted to become a chemical engineer. I should say I chose the wrong school. Stanford had a different type of approach to the subject. They were not accredited as a chemical engineering school. They taught engineering subjects and chemistry subjects, and you had to take both. Professional chemical engineering as it is taught in an accredited school, there are chemical engineering courses.

Weinstein: So the two would be integrated.
ROSENFELD: Yes, and so when I got out of the service I found out I had to backtrack and take an extra year of chemical engineering subjects. Today Stanford has a very fine chemical engineering school which started in the ’50s.

Weinstein: Where was most of your career spent?
ROSENFELD: Crown Zellerbach Corporation. I was located in Camas, Washington. My first job was in the research division in the fields of pulping, bleaching, chemical processing from the products that came out of the process out there. We got into environmental studies quite early, and in the later years they actually separated out the environmental group into a separate division, which is where I spent the last twelve years of my work with them.

Weinstein: Did you like it? Was it gratifying to you?
ROSENFELD: Very gratifying in that I got out into all the mills in the corporation – big projects, meaningful projects where you can see results. It was not going to the office every day and sitting. There was a lot of hands-on work. I might even say there was a lot of work out in the production end where we were doing a lot of testing. We were out in the elements, climbing stacks and doing all sorts of things that had labor involved.

Weinstein: Really? That must have been kind of scary.
ROSENFELD: Well, I think that one of the last jobs I had was. It was in an old mill back east where we were doing some test work. They had a brick stack that came out of their boiler, and we were taking an EPA-type test required to find out how much emissions were coming out of it. The way we had to do our sample, I wondered whether this stack was going to hold together [laughs].

Weinstein: I’d like to find out about how you met your wife.
ROSENFELD: I met my wife at a fraternity brother’s wedding. This was Cal Green, who married Diane Barde. I was one of his ushers at the wedding in Portland. I met her at the wedding and decided I would like to go out with her. She said she was going off to graduate school in New York. She went to Columbia University. She had gone to the University of Oregon in social work. So I didn’t see her until about a year and half later. I was invited to a party that Gerel Green (now Gerel Blauer) gave for a lot of the younger people. She was there. We became acquainted and started dating. I proposed about seven or eight months later, and the next summer we got married.

Weinstein: How long ago?
ROSENFELD: That was July 23, 1953. We have been married almost 51 years.

Weinstein: Have you lived always in Portland since your marriage?
ROSENFELD: Yes. At that time it was five years after I went to work for Crown Zellerbach, and I lived as a bachelor up in Camas, Washington, but maintained my social life mainly here.

Weinstein: And after you were married you lived in Portland. Tell me about your family.
ROSENFELD: A year and half after we were married our son David was born. We lived over in Northeast Portland because of commuting to Camas; that was a good area for me to live in. Eve had been working as a social worker for Multnomah County in the Children’s Service Division, but she gave up her job and had our son and then two daughters. We had three children under the age of three. We had to move to a larger house when we found out that number four was coming along, our youngest daughter. And that was six years later, after our third child. We moved in the same neighborhood, walking distance from where we were, and lived there until the kids grew up and then even after they left. They all married pretty much in order of their age. David and his wife had two daughters. One just graduated high school. David passed away a little over a year ago. He and I were very close for many years, especially growing up through our involvement in Boy Scouts and his various activities. 

One daughter lives in California and has a son who is eight now. Our daughter Sally lives in Portland. She went back east to medical school and married Andy Frank, who came out here from Manhattan. We never thought they would move west because he was an only child in New York, but they are here and have two daughters. The youngest daughter became a physician and lives in Dallas, Texas, and they have a little boy.

Weinstein: The scouting experience. Was that something that you got into as a young boy?
ROSENFELD: Yes, I was a Boy Scout for three years and went to camp down at Camp Meriwether. Our scout troop was associated with Ainsworth Grade School, in our neighborhood. It is kind of interesting. My son became a Webelo Scout, and I was a Webelo scout master. We went on into a church-sponsored scout troop, and a couple of years into that I ended up being a scout master for three years. It was kind of an experience being a scout master in a church-sponsored troop. They had pretty much gone through all the men in the church who wanted to be scout masters. It was a very busy year. He was also going through his bar mitzvah, taking music lessons, and scouting, and active in sports.

Weinstein: Was there any church influence in the troop?
ROSENFELD: Very little. We met in the church. I think the only real church experience was that the whole troop assembled and went to church services just before we went to scout camp every year. That was the only time we sat through services. It was a Lutheran church. There were no prayers associated with our normal scout meetings.

Weinstein: How did you feel about the inclusion of any church activities? 
ROSENFELD: It didn’t bother me. It was a good experience living in Northeast Portland. We were one of the few Jewish families in that neighborhood and school. And in the scout troop David was the only Jewish boy. But there were several African-American children in the troop. The school was integrated, and the neighborhood became integrated. Although our children were brought up in that neighborhood, they went to religious school and had quite a bit of religious activity in the Jewish community. But in the neighborhood itself there were practically no Jews. A few here and there.

Weinstein: I’d like to talk about your involvement in the general community in volunteer activities. I know you have been very active with Meals on Wheels. 
ROSENFELD: Yes. I started in Camas, Washington. In a small town one of the big activities is the Junior Chamber of Commerce, for people under 35. I became associated with that up there and ended up being president of the local group there for a year. And I became the state director, which was very interesting because JC had meetings all over the state of Washington, and you met young people who were very much involved in communal activities. Along with that I ran the American Cancer Society program for a couple of years in Camas. 

Then when I moved to Portland and got married, things kind of slowed down. Early on I was on the early Jewish Community Center board when they were still in their old facility. I was really not very active in that. As time went on, I was on the temple board of trustees and was active as a solicitor in the Jewish Federation, which I still am. I had two different sessions on the Jewish Community Center board, one in the cultural arts category. 

After I retired I became interested, through my mother, in Loaves and Fishes. Temple Beth Israel had a women’s group that volunteered at one of the centers as a serving group twice a month. She was getting on in age,  and so I would take her down there. I started driving for Meals on Wheels and Loaves and Fishes and went on through the activities there. I was chairman of the steering committee of their center for a couple of years. I’ve been on the board of Loaves and Fishes, their overall community board, for six years. Another activity, which started in 1993, was that I started volunteering at the Jewish Community Center. They had a program called Center Peace, which was a daycare center for people that had dementia, and for all the years there, that was a four- or five-hour program, twice a week. As a volunteer I was there helping the one staff person that they had and also doing musical therapy. Then that program moved to the Robison Health Center, the daycare center there. My volunteer activity continues there up through now. I go out there once a week now for just an hour and do musical therapy.

Weinstein: With the same population?
ROSENFELD: Pretty much the same. Both centers are open not only to the Jewish community but to the general community, and there are several non-Jewish people that come to these programs. It provides the caregivers with a respite period where they can leave their spouses or whomever they are taking care of.

Weinstein: It provides them with?
ROSENFELD: Well, it’s amazing to see how they respond to some of the therapies that we use, like music. They respond to music. Some of them, who have probably not done art since their younger days, do drawing. We even have people who have never played golf. We had a little golf thing that we’d extend out and get these people up in one room in their wheelchairs and give them a club. They could hit the ball up a little pathway. It was pretty interesting to see the response. Rather than have them not in any kind of a situation like that, it must be pretty much of a therapy for them. It has been very gratifying.

Weinstein: I would imagine. I have experienced that in Seattle with my mother. Any time someone would come with some kind of participating kind of activity it did make a difference.
ROSENFELD: Yes. And the same thing has been true with the Meals on Wheels program with Loaves and Fishes. There are people that don’t see anybody else during the day. The program is not just throwing a meal at them and walking out the door. You visit. You observe how they are getting along. In cases where you see some need, Loaves and Fishes does have outreach people who call on them to see that they are getting proper nourishment and that their other requirements are satisfied. They are not social workers themselves, but they refer to the proper agencies. That itself has been a very gratifying thing, to realize what is going on. That program is going to get bigger and bigger because of the demographics. Unfortunately, people associate it with denominations, because Loaves and Fishes is not denominational, and it is not really a charity. There are many people on the program who can pay and help defray some of the costs.

Weinstein: I think that message needs to be made more clear to the general public.
ROSENFELD: It is very well known, and they are doing as much as they can to do that.

Weinstein: What influence was Eve on your social services involvement?
ROSENFELD: I think very much so, in most categories. Eve is very much more religious than I am. In fact, she is really more of a student of religion. She has been very active in many of the Jewish agencies. She is a former president of Jewish Family and Child Service. She has been on the board at the Robison Home. She has done work with the Federation. She has a broad experience in the Jewish community and is a perennial volunteer, more than she can handle at times [laughs]. But she has been a very good influence. And I would say, with all of that, she has been a wonderful mother, very compassionate.

Weinstein: And a good friend to a lot of people.
ROSENFELD: She is very friendly. She has been very much a person of hospitality in the general Jewish community, in making people feel comfortable. She has done a lot of things with the refugees, the New American programs here. She has tutored Russians. Of course, I get some involvement through her activities and interests.

Weinstein: And you have maintained a wide circle of friends that you have had for a long time.
ROSENFELD: Mostly, I would say new friends, many of whom she has been associated with. I would say that the people I grew up with in the Jewish community, not so many of them are still active in the Jewish community. There are some of the old-time Jewish families that still are around, and I maintain a friendship with them.

Weinstein: Can we go to your war-time experiences? It is up to you.
ROSENFELD: Well, OK. I will be kind of brief. I got involved in college, through ROTC at Stanford, and then went into the enlisted reserve. Actually, that program was in the ordnance category. I entered the service as an ordnance enlisted reservist, waiting to go to officer’s training. But at the time I was in that category, the Air Force came around with a program where they were trying to replace their overseas crews that had been pretty much decimated in the early stages of the war in Europe. They offered people in the category I was in to go right to pre-flight and enter the Air Force, which I did.

Weinstein: That was the Army Air Corps at that time.
ROSENFELD: Army Air Corps. I went through pre-flight and actually was designated to be a bombardier, which required going to gunnery school, bombardier training. Our crew was assembled up in Walla Walla, Washington, which was close to home. I did get home. Our crew went to Europe in the fall of 1944, and we started flying our missions in December of 1944 in the 8th Air Force. I was a bombardier on a B-17. We flew 34 missions and completed them just about the time the European war ended, VE Day. Fortunately, we survived.

Weinstein: Were you scared?
ROSENFELD: Yes, very much so. We had one very serious incident where our plane was pretty much shot up. We had no real injuries, but we had to force land, fortunately in American territory, in an advanced base in France. It was from anti-aircraft fire. We had a number of holes in the ship, and two of our engines were gone. The pilot did a magnificent job of getting us down on the ground. We had some other close calls.

Weinstein: Were you discharged from the Army at that time?
ROSENFELD: No, after completing the missions, they rotated us back to the states, and I was sent down to Midland, Texas. That is almost home territory for our president. In Midland we were training to go into B-29 planes, which were flying in the south Pacific. But while we were there, the atomic bombs were dropped, and of course, that brought a quick end to the war and brought about VJ Day. Because I had an accumulation of what they call “points” in service and combat and so-forth, I got out of the Air Force on the first of November of 1945, which enabled me to get back to college. I would have chosen Oregon State except that they had already started their classes, and the University of Washington started their semester in November. That is why I went up there.

Weinstein: Did you have any experiences that are unique as a Jew in the military?
ROSENFELD: I think only once. I heard this through another person. In bombardier training, the officer that was my trainer was anti-Semitic. We were sent out on practice bombing missions, and they did have the authority if the air was too rough for dropping bombs (you dropped on targets and were scored and evaluated on what you were doing), you could not drop bombs accurately because the plane would not be stable. Everybody was called in one particular time except myself. He kept me out there, and my bombs dropped all over, outside the target area. That dropped my standing down. I realized why, that he was trying to project his anti-Semitic feelings. Other than that I can’t say that I was aware of anything. There was one fear that I had. That if you were shot down and you wore dog tags that had an “H” on them, that identified you as being Jewish. I had a friend up at the Sammy house in Washington who was a prisoner of war and was tortured in Germany.

Weinstein: I’ve heard of people who, when they went into combat, were given special dog tags without that designation, for their own safety.
ROSENFELD: Yes. I think they have done away with that anyway.

Weinstein: Overall, looking back, can you tell me any observations you have about how things have changed? What kinds of things have recurred and have been present throughout the years as far as being a Jew in a more secular community?
ROSENFELD: Yes, as I alluded early on, I kind of felt assimilated into the general community, and the society I had during high school and early college was pretty much integrated with the non-Jewish community, but [still] you always felt uneasy. You knew there were places where Jewish people were not accepted. Many of the social clubs here in Portland, the athletic clubs. Of course, at Stanford I lived in dorms there. There were no Jewish fraternities and no Jewish people in the fraternities or sororities. It seems that after World War II there was more assimilation. I think one of the interesting things that happened was that the non-Jewish community in the ’50s, when Israel became a real entity and showed that they could fight their own battles, people became more accepting of Jews. In my association with Crown Zellerbach, again there was the feeling in Camas. There were no Jews living there when I was there. Well, there was one family, and there was a business run by a Jewish person. I heard quite a bit of anti-Semitism, remarks in Camas, although I never felt it myself. I don’t know whether being Jewish in my career had any direct bearing, although people who had the same status that I had, some of them seemed to advance more rapidly. In the general community I became more involved in the Jewish community. And I feel more comfortable in the non-Jewish community; I think we are more accepted.

Weinstein: How did your children feel about being Jewish? You can’t speak for them, but just your observations.
ROSENFELD: I don’t think they ever really experienced what we experienced. I will go back to the ’30s. This was a period of anti-Semitism in this country. It reflected not in overt activities, but in covert things like people not being admitted. Like when my dad went to medical school — there was a quota for Jewish people. People were not asked into, of course, the social clubs and the athletic clubs. I always felt that I was not entirely comfortable being Jewish in those days. But I am very comfortable being Jewish now.

Weinstein: And your children probably, too.
ROSENFELD: Yes, and my experience, which has been very positive, in Loaves and Fishes, when I became a member of the board — these were people that were very well established in the non-Jewish community. I would say they were some of the very top people in the Portland community in their activities and where they were in their professions, in society — I kind of felt that I was the “Jewish Person on the Board,” but I was never made conscious of that in any way. And we have become friends.

Weinstein: I remember your mother. Years ago temple Sisterhood used to have a rummage sale every year. Your mother was on in years but used to come and sort the rummage. And she always wore gloves.
ROSENFELD: That’s right.

Weinstein: She was so elegant and lovely. A really outstanding woman.
ROSENFELD: Yes, she was a role model. She never got angry. And like you say, she was very happy to move to where we are living now because we were only two blocks away and she was very late in years. So we had almost daily contact.

Weinstein: Tell me about your dad. What was he like? What was his personality?
ROSENFELD: Dad was more of a rigid person. I would say that Dad went along much more with the German-Jewish thoughts. He was less assimilated. He was stricter. He was very much a professional person. Certainly during the Depression days I know he carried an awful lot of patients who couldn’t afford to pay, and his activities were very much connected with the Depression. As I said, he volunteered as a professor at the medical school for those many years. But he grew up with us and was very much interested in us as children. We always vacationed together and picnicked every Sunday. He liked the outdoors. He was a very good tennis player. I have a cup that he earned at the Irvington Club in a tennis match.

Weinstein: Was he a strong influence?
ROSENFELD: Yes, he was. He was the dominant person in our family. My mother just tended to run the house.

Weinstein: Well, that was a very traditional role.
ROSENFELD: Yes, it was.

Weinstein: But she still found time to be outside the home.
ROSENFELD: Yes, through Sisterhood. And in later years she was a perennial volunteer at the Red Cross. It wasn’t until she got too old to drive her car, when they were over on Corbett Street – in fact I think she had her first and only car accident when she was going over there or coming home from there, and we all decided it was time for her to stop driving. She realized it herself, and I know that is a difficult thing.

Weinstein: Is there anything else you would like to add?
ROSENFELD: No. I think this is a very positive thing you are doing, and I feel kind of badly that it wasn’t done enough enough in my older family’s time because we have so little history. As I said, I don’t know much about my grandparents. We don’t have good records.

Weinstein: Well, from a technological standpoint, they didn’t have the devices to be able to do all that recording. It was a different time. We are really trying hard to interview a lot of people and get it down so that the archives can be opened up for research. Even just for families to research their own family histories, too.
ROSENFELD: I know that we came to the exhibit at the Jewish Museum that is on now. We didn’t find much on the Rosenfeld family. It was just never documented. I always say I can go back to my great-grandparents, where they were born and their families, but there are a lot of empty spaces.

Weinstein: Well, if there are any artifacts that you would like to put in the archives from your families, of course they are always welcome. We want to thank you very much for participating.
ROSENFELD: Thank you. You are a very good interviewer.