Edward Weinbaum

WEINBAUM: He (Father) was with the Narragansett Brewing Company and he graduated from the University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany. He was a brewery engineer and he was brought to this country in 1888; I was born in 1891 in Providence, Rhode Island, then when I was about five years old, we moved to St. Paul and there he had [taken a job]. It was [with] the Hamm Brewery Co. 

Grad: Do you recall anything about your trip across from Germany? Oh, you were born here. 
WEINBAUM: I was born in Rhode Island. 

Grad: What about your trip across from Rhode Island? 
WEINBAUM: I was too young. I must have been about five years old. Then my dad went into the oil business. He had a number of tankers and would go out and sell kerosene to farmhouses. Then Rockefeller put him out of business, because Rockefeller sent out his own tankers. My father had a contract with the Standard Oil Company, [but] at that time Rockefeller [was] under-selling my father. So that was the end of that. Then he went into the insurance business with the Prudential Insurance Company. He started out in Omaha, Nebraska where we lived two or three years and then he was transferred to Buffalo, New York, and we lived there for several years. One of my sisters, who has since passed away was born – no, my sister was born in Omaha, and then my only sister left, I had two sisters, [one] born in Buffalo; she lives here in the city. From Buffalo he was transferred to New York and from New York to Providence and from Providence back to New York where I went to school. I went to school in Providence, too. We lived on 72nd and Lexington Ave [in New York]. 

Grad: What prompted his move to Oregon? 
WEINBAUM: Then he was transferred from Buffalo to McKeesport, Pennsylvania. I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1909 and went to work on the Pittsburgh Press as a cub reporter. I got my newspaper training there, and then went with the Associated Press. The Associated Press had sent out a group of newspapermen to make a tour of the United States to see what the chances were for the re-election of President Taft. This party came into existence at that time being opposed by Teddy Roosevelt, and of course, Woodrow Wilson was elected President. Woodrow Wilson was Governor of the State of New Jersey, and when I came out here I had a letter of introduction from the political editor of the Chicago Tribune to Mr. C. C. Chapman. He was also the political editor of the Tribune but came to Portland and he established what was then known as the C. C. Chapman Advertising Agency. He was the promotion manager of the Portland Commercial Club which was located on the corner of SW Fifth and Oak and he talked me into staying here. So I resigned. I didn’t complete my trip around the country and he gave me a job. 

Grad: What were his reasons for talking you into staying here? 
WEINBAUM: Well, C. C. Chapman had an unusual background. He was a Chicago waif and he sold newspapers right in front of the Rothschild Clothing Company on State Street. It was a very blustering winter blizzard and here he was standing on the corner with a little cloth cap and a threadbare coat and he was going to night school to get an education. One of the Rothschilds took pity on him, went out and said, come on in out of this blizzard and he asked him where he lived, and he said wherever I can find a place. Well, how do you live? He said I sell newspapers and I am trying to educate myself. So he said, and this was told to me by Mr. C. C. Chapman, himself, he said, well, I’ve got a room in back of the store here and you can sleep there if you will sweep out the store every day and I’ll see that you go to school in the daytime and I’ll pay you $3.00 a week. So C. C. Chapman, as I said, became political editor for the Chicago Tribune. Then he had consumption and he had to leave Chicago. He went to Denver and he worked on the paper there and then he came to Portland, Oregon and he established this successful advertising agency. He was most successful as manager of the promotion department of the Old Commercial Club which later consolidated with the Chamber of Commerce. C. C. Chapman later became State Immigration Commissioner to bring out farmers from the midwest to settle the farm lands of Oregon, so I went with him and then I remained with the Chamber of Commerce until I retired on December 31st, 1959. I have held a number of national offices, with national organizations and one organization that was a special issue of Life Magazine. 

Grad: What was the name of the organization? 
WEINBAUM: National Retail Dry Goods Association, which was an organization composed of all department stores and high class specialty stores in the United States. 

Grad: How did you become involved in that profession? 
WEINBAUM: Well, I’m leading up. So in 1922, I felt there was a great need of organizing the retailers in this city. There was a tremendous amount of fighting between the specialty stores and the department stores and it was touch and go. It wasn’t doing the Jewish people any good because a good many of the retail establishments were non-Jewish and the leader at that time was Julius Meier. Julius Meier was one of the leaders in the department stores here but all the specialty stores fought Meier & Frank and we finally got around to it, but after I organized it. The second president was Charles F. Berg. The first was Charlie Mattlis and the second was Charlie Berg and he was the only Jewish president that served for more than one year. Well, I served as manager of the Portland Retail Trade Bureau from its inception until the date that I retired, December 31st, 1959, but I was in a dual capacity. I was also manager of the Trade and Commerce Department of the Portland Chamber of Commerce from 1915 until I retired. Now, that’s part of my background. 

In January 1960, I was made honorary consul for the Federal Republic of Germany. For 12 years I was counsel and the figures are available, I got restitution for our people, a little over $60,000,000, and I never took one red cent as I felt that it was something that our people needed. Now the German government made this restitution wherever Jewish property was confiscated by the Germans, whether it was Germany, Holland, Belgium or France, no matter where, they made this restitution. The last thing I did was for the shammes of the Shaarie Torah, who came to me about six months before my retirement and he said, I have heard of so many things that you have done, maybe you could help me. The man’s name is Mink, Mr. and Mrs. Mink, and he was the shammes of the congregation there. He came in one day and he said I’ve heard what you’ve been doing; is there a possibility that you could help me? He told me his story and he lived in Mink, Russia and his name was Mink. Well, within six months I gave him a check; I got it. I worked awfully hard, day and night on it. 

Grad: What did you have to do? 
WEINBAUM: Well, it makes a long, long story what I had to do. I had to get the names of the people who lived in that town that he knew. It had to be verified by the German government. I had to verify that his property was confiscated. People that he knew gave the information. He was a businessman and when I called him up and told him I had some good news for him, if he would come in with Mrs. Mink, and I gave him the check and he said what do I owe you and I said nothing. He said, what do you mean nothing. She grabs my hands and started kissing it, and I said, “Please don’t, you embarrass me.” He said, “If I had an attorney I would have had to pay him in advance and probably he couldn’t have done what you did, at least tell me what I owe you.” I said, “Mr. Mink you owe me nothing.” This was just a couple of weeks before Purim and he comes in with a big bag of hamantaschen and apologizes that Mrs. Mink couldn’t come because she wasn’t feeling well. He got his operation, which he needed and she had an operation and he resigned as shammes because he didn’t need the pay anymore. Those are some of the things. I could go on to tell you a good many things. So I stayed in Portland and my folks came out. My dad was transferred out here. 

Grad: Where did you settle? 
WEINBAUM: On the Eastside. We lived on the Eastside. We did not live on the Westside. There was a little ghetto. All this area here was a ghetto. Well, my father was one of five men who organized the Tifereth Israel Congregation on the Eastside, John Weinbaum. We lived on Sacramento Street on the Eastside when we first came here, that is when my folks first came here and then my father bought a house on Northeast 16th Street between Wygant and Prescott Street. We lived there. 

Grad: What did your father do here? 
WEINBAUM: Prudential Insurance Company. He was transferred out after I came here, but I did live on Jackson Street for nine months with a second cousin of mine. The house is still standing. The only building that is standing. 

Grad: What was his name? 
WEINBAUM: Dubiver. 

Grad: What was his first name? 
WEINBAUM: David. He had three daughters and three sons. Sam Dubiver was manager of Dan Marx and then later he married a niece of Dan Marx. 

Grad: How did you come to live there? 
WEINBAUM: How I came to live here? 

Grad: With the Dubivers? 
WEINBAUM: Well, my mother had written. I was going to stop off at Portland, so they insisted that I live with them and then when my dad was transferred, there was a series of articles about me in the Journal. I don’t know whether you ever saw them. I met Lovey and we were married in 1921, November or December, that I met her here in Portland. 

Grad: What were you doing then? 
WEINBAUM: I was with the Chamber of Commerce and she was with the Veterans Bureau. She was an army nurse in World War I and we were married June, 1922, that was the year that I was President of the Portland Lodge of B’nai B’rith, 1922, and I am one of the oldest members. 

Grad: When would that have been founded? 
WEINBAUM: The B’nai B’rith? 

Grad: Yes. 
WEINBAUM: Oh, the B’nai B’rith was founded … they had their 100th anniversary several years ago. It is an international organization. They were responsible for the first community center, it was founded by the B’nai B’rith on 13th Avenue. I gave them my stock. I had $500 and the stock in that building was supposed to be $100 share and I just gave it to them. That was built around 1914 or 1915. Well, I have been active, as I say, in many national organizations and have been president of several of them, national president. My work used to take me back east three times a year in Washington. The late Senator Bob Taft was a very good friend of mine. He should have been President of the United States. The Republican Party played a dirty trick on him because he was known as Mr. Republican. Had he been elected President, I would have been probably one of his secretaries.  

That [pointing] was given to me by the Congregation Tifereth Israel’s ladies auxiliary in 1917. I organized the Sunday school there for them. I was superintendent of Beth Israel Sunday School here too, when Milton Markewitz was president, the father of Arthur Markewitz. He was a wonderful man. He came to me during the depression and he said we are in a bind. We can’t afford to keep our Sunday School. He said I would like to have you take over the Sunday School and see what you can do with it. Well, he talked me into it and I did for several years and I found that we were getting all the boys and girls the children from the other two congregations, from Ahavai Sholom and Neveh Zedek, as it was called then, they later merged. Well, the rabbis there couldn’t get any attendance at Sunday School, we had them, so I called the parents up and I said, alright, if you want your children in our Sunday School it is going to cost you $100. We got some, so we had some money to pay our teachers and they had their own Sunday School. We put it on a business basis, so that was that and we got some members too. But all congregations were in a tight squeeze during the Depression, so that was that. 

Grad: How else did the Depression affect you? 
WEINBAUM: Me, personally? It didn’t affect me personally at all. 

Grad: Did you see its effect on many other people? 
WEINBAUM: Yes, on many, many people. We had more of the business interests in Portland in Jewish than non-Jewish. You know, Julius Meier was a great man. He became Governor and he brought out General Smedley Butler at his own expense to organize the State Police. 

Grad: Who was he? 
WEINBAUM: General Smedley Butler? He was General of the United States Marines. 

Grad: And what did he do after bringing him out here? 
WEINBAUM: He organized the State Police under Governor Meier. Now Governor Meier never accepted the salary as Governor. He gave it to charity. 

Grad: But he felt the need for it? 
WEINBAUM: Yes, that’s how the State Police was organized in the State of Oregon, through Julius Meier. He was a wonderful man, a wonderful man. I worked with him very, very closely. Now, let’s see what else you have here. Well, now you know how I came to Oregon, how my parents came here. My only brother worked for the post office. He was with the gas company and then with the post office department. Our police commissioner under Mayor Simon, Joseph Simon was Sig Sichel of Sichel’s Cigars and Tobacco. It was located on Washington Street between Broadway and Park Street. Another great man was Bill Lipman, of Lipman, & Wolfe and his senior partner, Adolph Wolfe who still spoke with a German accent that you could cut with a knife. He had one daughter who married Dr. Ettelson, who was a dermatologist and his son died, this was during the flu epidemic. There was a very, very bad epidemic of the flu here. 

Grad: When was that? 
WEINBAUM: Oh, that was in 1915, 1916. They turned the auditorium, George Baker, who was Mayor, turned it into a hospital. They died like flies. 

Grad: Was that in the Meier & Frank building? 
WEINBAUM: No, no. Meier & Frank’s first unit was four or five stories high from Morrison to Alder. It was a buff brick building, and then they built the annex on the corner of Sixth and Alder that was 12 stories and then many years later they bought the corner of Sixth and Morrison. There was a music store, there, a piano store, and Meier & Frank bought that 100 x 100 [parcel]. Then they tore down the brick structure, and built [from] Alder to Morrison on Fifth, ten stories.

WEINBAUM: He [Meier] was a Republican. He was the mayor of the city and he also, prior to that, he was in the United States Senate, but Roosevelt, President Roosevelt made him resign. 

Grad: Why was that? 
WEINBAUM: Well, he protected the lumber interests, that Simon represented some lumber interests, but prior to that we had the President of the State Senate, Ben Selling. He also served as Speaker of the House and the Durkheimer family came from Prineville. Now you ought to get Sylvan Durkheimer. 

Grad: Yes, I understand they have. 
WEINBAUM: They had large land holdings there, cattle, and so on. Sylvan is a very good friend of mine. A good man. If you go down to Ashland, Oregon – from Ashland, Oregon you go over to Jacksonville. There’s a building that still stands and there is a sign that tells of the Masonic Temple on one side and the Jewish synagogue where they worshipped, on the other. And there is a Jewish cemetery there too. 

Grad: I understand that there is. 
WEINBAUM: Now, you take the city of Heppner, [which] is named after Henry Heppner, one of the greatest Jewish characters in eastern Oregon. Today [it] is Leo Adler of Baker. No Jew ever goes away without a contribution from Leo Adler. Now the [Oregon] Jews have played a big history in the United States. Solomon Hirsch was United States Ambassador to Turkey. His family lived in a big mansion on SW Washington, King Street and I forgot the name of the street that goes up to Portland Heights from Washington Street. Its now Burnside but then it was Washington. The street going up [to] Park Place goes up into the park, this one goes to Portland Heights. Vista Street. They had a tremendous big mansion up there and as I said he was United States Ambassador to Turkey under [the] Cleveland administration. The son, two sons and the two daughters, the daughters got mad for something that happened and they became Christian Scientists and their wonderful collection of oriental rugs, Turkish rugs all went to the art museum. Every once in a while they put them on exhibit. All their art objects, everything went there. There is quite a little background to that. It would have gone to the Temple. They got so mad at Rabbi Berkowitz for something that he had done that they became Scientists. What else do you want to know? I can ramble on, that’s what I’m doing, just rambling. 

Grad: That’s fine. How do you feel that the Portland community has changed? The Jewish community? 
WEINBAUM: I think they have a pretty good, strong Jewish community. The strongest and wealthiest is in San Francisco. It used to be when the movie moguls were down in Los Angeles, Hollywood, but that’s all phased out. 

Grad: Why do you suppose that it affected the Portland area so much? 
WEINBAUM: That I can’t tell you, but we had ties. Many of them from California came up here after the earthquake in 1907. 

Grad: How do you feel the Second World War affected the people here in Oregon, in Portland? 
WEINBAUM: It affected us a great deal and to the extent that it was much better for us, for our Jewish community. 

Grad: In what way? 
WEINBAUM: In many ways, because we became a little more established in world affairs. Many of the medical men came out here to be with the Veterans Bureau, served in the Army and many of them came to do research work in our University Medical School. One of the outstanding men we have, Dr. Stanley Jacobs, who discovered this DSMO. 

Grad: Where is he affiliated? 
WEINBAUM: Up here, at the University of Oregon Medical School in research. I think our Jewish people have not given him or received him as great as he has been received in South America and in European countries and in the East. 

Grad: Why do you suppose that is the case? 
WEINBAUM: I don’t know. I think its jealousy. I have a feeling it’s jealousy. When DSMO is cleared with the Federal Drug Administration, the University of Oregon will be one of the richest medical schools in the world, because all of the royalties will go to the University of Oregon medical school. He discovered it. And it is nothing but the waste of our paper mills. I use it for my arthritis. I put it on in the morning on my back and within five minutes the pain is gone. I rub it in my hands. 

Grad: Has he been a researcher all his years? 
WEINBAUM: Yes. Very highly thought of all over the country, but our Jewish people here have not taken him into their bosom, so to speak, as the rest of the country has. I can’t understand it. There seems to be a lot of jealousy amongst our people here. 

Grad: How do you see it? 
WEINBAUM: I see it and I’ve seen it when I was President of the Lodge, the B’nai B’rith Lodge, Portland Lodge #1. I’ve seen it in so many of the other things. I am a life member of the American Legion here too and I didn’t seek it. They sought me out for what I have done. I have had honors galore placed on me and I don’t brag about it. 

Grad: You must have always felt that… 
WEINBAUM: Let me show you something that I am very proud of. The Sunday School, the Ahavai Sholom, the old Ahavai Sholom Congregation and then I organized the Tifereth Israel Sunday School and they gave me the Mogen David medal, which you saw, in 1917. Then when Milton Markewitz became President of Temple Beth Israel during the Depression years, he asked me to take over the Sunday School and put it on a basis where we would get our own children [in]. Members of Congregation were crowded out by the youngsters of the other synagogues who came to our Sunday School, so we made the Board approve it that we charged them $100 a year and as a result we got some paid, some became members and it helped the other two congregations with their own youngsters. We have had some great Rabbis here. Stephen S. Wise, no relation to Jonah B. Wise. Jonah Wise was a great man. He served on the library board here in the city. He was in great demand as a speaker. We had the only Jewish weekly newspaper in the entire Pacific Northwest. That was the Jewish Tribune, published and edited by the Mosessohn Brothers, Dave and Moe Mosessohn and the father, Nehemeiah, [who] was Rabbi at one time of Neveh Zedek Congregation. He was the editor. He wrote the editorials and that paper, the Jewish Tribune, had a very, very wide circulation clear to Chicago. Then when the Mosessohn brothers moved to New York, Rabbi Jonah B. Wise bought the Jewish Tribune and changed the name to the Scribe and he edited and published the paper for three or four years until [he] was called to the Central Synagogue in New York. Then we had no Jewish paper here. 

Lovey: Well the Cohens bought the Scribe here, David and Miriam. 
WEINBAUM: Well, he didn’t buy it, Love, he handled it for the advertising that he could get out of it. 

Grad: Why do you suppose those papers faded out? 
WEINBAUM: Well, I can only realize one thing and that was that they had no more interest in it. They had gotten to be a little hoi polloi. 

Grad: How did the paper differ at the time that they were circulating? 
WEINBAUM: Nothing, nothing, just news. So and so had a party and so and so daughter’s engaged to so and so and that’s all. It became a social publication, and before that, after Rabbi Wise moved to New York, it was just a social publication, that’s all. 

Grad: What purpose did it serve before? 
WEINBAUM: Before, it kind of kept our people together. The topic was, if you got two or three together was, “Did you read the Scribe?” or “Did you read the Jewish Tribune?” There was always something of interest. 

Grad: Do you think that the Jewish Review that comes out now is sort of fulfilling that gap? 
WEINBAUM: It is fulfilling the gap; they’re doing a good job. I know they’re trying hard, but it isn’t easy to run a paper, it isn’t, especially when you don’t get advertising support, and it is costly today to get a paper out, very costly. 

Grad: Did you ever become involved in sports at all when you were young? 
WEINBAUM: No, I had no desire for sports, never interested. 

Grad: You actually never lived in the area considered South Portland as a youngster. 
WEINBAUM: No, I never did. We lived on Sacramento Street, Albina. When the folks first came out and then my father bought a house on Northeast 16th Avenue, it was called 16th Street then. Oh, Leslie Sherman, who married one of Lloyd Frank’s daughters was born in the Alberta area of Portland. His mother had a little grocery store on 18th Avenue, 17th or 18th Avenue. The father had a stroke and he was paralyzed and the mother ran [the store] and educated the boy and a daughter, Hilda Weinstein, Hilda Sherman; she married Eddie Weinstein and she was a secretary to Bill Lipman of Lipman and Wolfe. Eddie Weinstein was a buyer of the men’s department at Meier & Frank and she mingled with the hoi polloi of the Meier & Frank Company and that’s where they met. Leslie, she was the matchmaker; Hilda was the matchmaker. 

Grad: For everybody? 
WEINBAUM: For the Meier & Frank family. The only one that intermarried in the Meier & Frank family was Jack Meier. At that he was a good scout. He’s very good. 

Grad: Were there any other Jewish people who stand out in your mind as being quite active in the community? 
WEINBAUM: Yes, there were the Lowengarts. I lost track of them, whatever became of them. Ida Loewenberg who ran the Neighborhood House. I used to teach two nights a week English. Sam Zidell was my pupil, I taught him. 

Grad: How did you get associated with the Neighborhood House? 
WEINBAUM: Through the [National] Council of Jewish Women. 

Grad: Did you contact them? 
WEINBAUM: When I first came [to Portland] I always had my stories with a by-line. Leland’s father, Leland Lowenson’s father, George Lowenson, who married one of the daughters, there were two daughters, Minnie’s daughter, and they were active in the Neighborhood House activities. Mrs. Dorothy Lowenson was Leland’s mother. 

Grad: You used to help with the Americanization [by teaching English]. 
WEINBAUM: Yes, well, here’s a man like Sam Zidell, came from Russia, a poor immigrant boy and he becomes a millionaire. There’s a story in it by itself. A heart- breaking story and he was the hardest man to get a penny out of. He was married twice. We happened to be up in Seattle on a matter and we ran into Sam Zidell and I said, “What are you doing up here?” He said, “I’m on my honeymoon.” 

Grad: So, did you go and offer your services in teaching English or did they seek you out? 
WEINBAUM: They sought me out because of the newspaper articles that I used to write. 

Grad: Is that how they got good teachers at the Neighborhood House for most of their subject? 
WEINBAUM: Yes. 

Grad: Required teachers, because I know they had sewing classes, cooking. 
WEINBAUM: They used to do a tremendous job. The younger element hasn’t come anywhere near where the older women [did]. 

Grad: Why do you think that that’s the case? 
WEINBAUM: I don’t know, I just don’t know. Times change, and how they have changed. You can see just what happens here. Poor families. The son of a poor family, marries the daughter of one of the largest mercantile institutions in the United States. Now Bill Lipman used to live on Fifth and Oak and the old Beth Israel Temple synagogue was where the Oregon Building was on Fifth and Oak right across the street and Bill Lipman was a Beau Brummell in his days and the way he used to entertain. We had what was known as the Concordia Club, a Jewish club up on Morrison and 14th. 

Grad: Who organized that? 
WEINBAUM: That was organized by our Jewish people because the Arlington Club wouldn’t take Jews in, in those days, so they had a place of their own. Our Jewish wouldn’t be accepted as members in any of these golf clubs, so we organized the Tualatin Golf Club, the Tualatin Club. 

Grad: And what did this Concordia Club do? 
WEINBAUM: Well, just what any club does, where the men would come. 

Grad: Was it a social club? 
WEINBAUM: It was a social club. The elite Jews of Portland belonged to the Concordia Club. 

Grad: Then it was restricted in a sense? 
WEINBAUM: Yes, it was restricted. They wouldn’t take a rag peddler. No, the junk peddlers. The Bardes at that time couldn’t belong to the Concordia Club. They had a big junk shop. 

Grad: Who made that decision? 
WEINBAUM: They did themselves and it comes back as a bombshell on their own heads. If we don’t take our own people, who will? 

Grad: So what did they do? 
WEINBAUM: Well, that’s what happened. 

Grad: What did these other people do that the Concordia Club restricted? The ones who would have liked to have been members, did they form another club of their own? 
WEINBAUM: It wasn’t cheap to belong to the Concordia Club. It was done more or less for social functions amongst the Jewish people, just like the Arlington Club and some of the others. You know we are our worst own enemies. I found that out many, many times. 

Grad: And yet we’ll do anything to stay together as a people. Can you pick out any one specific memory that was the happiest time in Portland? One thing. 
WEINBAUM: You mean my happiest time? 

Grad: Yes. 
WEINBAUM: When I met Lovey. 

Grad: That would surpass anything else I am sure. 
WEINBAUM: Nothing else. The Jews played a great part in the history of our state. The German Aid Society celebrated its 100th anniversary a year ago, two years ago, 100 years old. Who were the originators? Three Jews organized to help, [because] they were from Germany, to help other Jews and then they started in taking in other Germans and so on until they got the upper hand and the Jews were let out, very few of them until the Nazi situation came up and there were no Jews left in the organization. I once said to Aaron Frank, “Aaron, I think the biggest mistake you people ever made was to sell that property on Front and Yamhill where your parents originated Meier & Frank.” You see, one of the Meiers of Meier & Frank, Aaron Meier married a sister of Sigmund Frank, that’s why the Franks had a greater interest than the Meiers in the Meier & Frank store, because Aaron’s mother was a sister to Aaron Meier. 

Grad: But they always managed to keep it in the family. 
WEINBAUM: Always did, until later years, something happened. What it was I don’t know. Aaron Frank wouldn’t have anything to do with the Jews. He practically kicked one of the rabbis of our Temple out of his office when he went up there. 

Grad: You don’t know why he had this feeling? 
WEINBAUM: Well, I know why but I don’t want to repeat it. 

Grad: That’s fine. 
WEINBAUM: I don’t want to repeat it. I had a lot of arguments with Aaron Frank. When he went anywhere and anything was said, nobody would dare say anything about me. He would call me up and laugh about it and tell me that he had a talk with so-and-so and I says, “That S.O.B.” and then he would say, “Well, the only reason I’m telling you who the S.O.B. is ….” But he always took pride wherever I was to call on me to introduce everybody who was in that room and once, I don’t know what it was, there was a little over a hundred people in there and it came to the last man, I couldn’t think of his name. Finally I jumped up and I said, “I failed to introduce one man and his name just came to me.” But he always used to put me on as a showman to do that, but we had a lot of arguments. Just a few months [ago], about two or three or four months before he died.