Eugene Nudelman Sr.

Shirley: We have the book that you wrote and everybody is going to be able to see all the wonderful things that you researched, but we would love to hear your story about your life in Portland, [and] maybe a little bit about your ancestors coming here. 
EUGENE: Fine. My life in Portland is my entire life. I was born here in 1906. We were originally a large family of three girls and two boys. We originally lived out in the Alberta district, until I was about twelve years old; then we moved down in the Irvington district, just before my Bar Mitzvah. Then, instead of attending Vernon School, which was the Alberta school, I went to Irvington School and subsequently wound up in the old Commerce High School in South Portland. That’s quite a long story. 

Shirley: How did you happen to go to Commerce? 
EUGENE: Well, it seemed like Hy Barr, who was the principal of Irvington School, had a real thing about sending some of the fellows to Benson, and as soon as I arrived at Irvington, they started to talk about Benson High School. At that time it was a mechanical school, and I didn’t feel I was very mechanical. So my only outlet was to get away from Mr. Barr and his planning, and one day I said to him, “Look, it is not for me to be a plumber or an electrician.” Maybe that was the biggest mistake of my life. I told him that I wanted to go to Commerce High School because I thought bookkeeping and accounting and other facets of the commercial life would be more in keeping with the things I had planned for life, and he didn’t fight the idea. 

Shirley: Did you live in South Portland at all? 
EUGENE: I did only one year, and that was when I was about seven or eight years old. My grandparents, the Rosencrantz’s, lived on Second Street, near Lincoln, just where the street turns–they had the double house behind the Shenk family. I lived with them one year when my mother was very ill when I was a child. The family was still out in the Alberta district at that time, although I would say truthfully that most of my leisure time, or time when I had school activities or things to do in the family store, I spent in South Portland at Neighborhood House. 

Shirley: Then your friends were from there? 
EUGENE: I would say the majority of my friends are still friends that I made at the Neighborhood House. 

Shirley: A lot of the Nudelman family lived in Alberta, isn’t that right? 
EUGENE: Yes. Grandpa Nudelman, Joseph Nudelman, lived on Alberta between 24th and 25th. Right across from him was Uncle Sam Nudelman, who was a brother [Sam was actually the father of Herman] of Herman Delman of shoe fame, and Morris and Manuel and Rose–quite a large family. We lived on 26th, between Alberta and Sumner, and then the Garbers [Aunt Dora and Uncle Isadore] lived around the corner from grandpa on 25th. It was quite a Nudelman colony there–all family. 

Shirley: Now when you went back to South Portland, and you went to the Neighborhood House or to go shopping and things, do you remember some of the things? 
EUGENE: Yes, let me preface it now. Let me go back to the High School days for just a minute. My dad had a grocery and meat market right on the corner of First and Market. When I started high school, I had been working at the store summers and evenings and so forth. But when it came time to go to high school, my dad would leave the house at 5:00 am every morning to go to the vegetable market; so I would go with him to go to the Farmers Market, which was on the east side at that time, where he buys vegetables and produce from the farmers who raised it. Then I would go over with him to the old Madison Bakery over on First and Madison, and we would have doughnuts and coffee; we would wind up at the store about 7:00 am, and I would help to put out the so-called “front.” In those days we didn’t have a refrigerated case–everything was out on the sidewalk. Then I would walk up to Commerce High School, which is on Sixth between Harrison and Hall. It was a long walk. Then after school, if I couldn’t beg off, I was back to work at the store. 

Shirley: Commerce was on the west side then. 
EUGENE: Commerce yes, it was on Sixth and Hall, right across the street from the Neveh Zedek synagogue. Since then Commerce High School is out on 26th and Powell. My sister Anne was in the first graduating class. It was called Commerce, but now it is called Cleveland High School. 

Shirley: That’s where my sister went. 
EUGENE: A lot of the kids went there. 

Shirley: Now when you went to the Neighborhood House, what are the things that you did? 
EUGENE: I had a hankering for things artistic. I think I still do. Maybe in the next year I will take some real time off and start painting, because I have a hankering to paint. In those days it was drama, and they had some very good drama teachers there–I have been away from that a long time. 

Shirley: Do you remember any of their names? 
EUGENE: Golly, you are going back a lot of years, like fifty years. I can remember my art teacher from Commerce High School because she always impressed me so greatly as unbelievable. Her name was Mrs. Meriden. Her brother was the window decorator for Powers Furniture, the old Powers Furniture Co. on Third and Yamhill, where the Director boys have their store now. I remember the names of a lot of teachers at school. I probably could remember some of the names of the drama teachers at Neighborhood House if I really had to and could research back in my memory. In addition, there was a club here called the Cometus Club–we are still talking over 50 years ago–and I joined that club and had some very close friends there, like Gene Kaufman, and just a lot of people from the South Portland area. We stayed with the Cometus Club until we had just outgrown it. Then some of us went to the Ramblers, and some of the others joined the Parkway; that was the evolution. The Loewenberg sisters were at the Neighborhood House then–one of them ran the Neighborhood House; the other one ran the Library in the Park across the street. You may remember that. 

Shirley: Very vaguely. 
EUGENE: Oh, they were wonderful. Miss [Ida] Loewenberg was at the Neighborhood House; her assistant then was Harry Vidgoff, the doctor’s brother. I have just wonderful memories of the Neighborhood House and South Portland and all the people who were there. It was a great experience of part of my life. 

Shirley: Who did you spend most of your time with? 
EUGENE: At the Neighborhood House? I was very close to Gene Kaufman. His folks lived on Fourth–I don’t recall exactly the cross street–where the theater is on Third Street. I spent many nights there in their homes, staying overnight. We were active in drama together. He had a great flare for art. In fact, when he left Portland, he went to the Chicago Institute of Art. That was going to be his life’s work. He is now an illustrator for one of the great lithograph companies in Los Angeles. I haven’t seen him or heard from him in the last seven or eight years, but I did see him on a visit here before his mother passed away. We had a real get together, a good get together. 

Shirley: Let me ask you one thing, even though you were born here and you don’t remember about your parents coming to this country, except for what you researched, can you remember why they came here, why they picked Portland, for anyone who has not read your book. 
EUGENE: I think coming to Portland was a matter of evolution, in going from one city to another. My grandfather, to make a real short story out of a long one, …was sent to this country by the Rothschilds…to find areas to which to bring colonies of Jewish people from Russia. At that time they were already having pogroms, and this was in the early 1880s, and so he came alone; when he got to New York they gave him a pass to travel on all the railroads–the railroads were coming out West, and he came out as far as Colorado.  He worked in the silver mines, and he just experimented around for a year or more, and then when they thought he would bring some colonies out here. He brought this group to New York, and they said, “You should bring this group to North Dakota; it needs developing. There is good, black soil there, and we think that the colony can survive there and be happy there.” He went back to Russia to get the first group and bring them here. His first wife was ill and he couldn’t go with the colony. So he came out, and that group was sent up into Canada. About a year later he brought the second group here to the United States. They went to North Dakota as they had planned. His first wife lived a few years there and then she passed away. Then he married a woman from Chicago, who had come out that way visiting with her father. They couldn’t live in North Dakota; they couldn’t raise crops. They didn’t know what a goldmine they had. They had to get out. They couldn’t raise wheat. They didn’t know that the ground was full of oil–the best oil lands in America in that general area, around Bismarck and that general area. 

Shirley: Jews seem to have an aversion for oil! 
EUGENE: But walking away from it, sadly, you know. Another Moses making the wrong turn, you know. This one’s name was Joseph. They went to Nevada, and things didn’t work, and to California, where one of his daughters was living. Then some of the Nudelmans, who  had come to Portland ahead of my grandfather, said, “Come up here. We are on a beautiful river and there are lots of trees here and good soil. It would be wonderful to have the whole family together.” Of course, everything I am telling you is hearsay. It was repeated 58 times at least. And it may be a little bit distorted. But generally that’s the story. That’s how we got here. 

Shirley: And they lived in Alberta rather than in South Portland. 
EUGENE: Some of them lived in South Portland. Some of them lived in Alberta. You see there were 13 brothers and sisters and they didn’t all live in Alberta. In fact, one of the brothers decided that he wanted to live in Aberdeen, Wash. He lived there almost all his life, and he raised a family. Some of them are in Portland now, [and] one moved to Eugene. One of his sons, and some of the brothers, left and moved to San Francisco, etc. They dispersed again, as Jews always disperse. 

Shirley: Your father had his business in South Portland. 
EUGENE: My grandfather, coming off a farm from Russia to North Dakota, didn’t know anything about business, except that he knew how to raise cattle and produce. So when he got here the first thing he did was he opened up a kosher butcher shop in South Portland, where the bridge used to be, near Caruthers, in that general area. Subsequently, my dad opened a meat market down on First and Market. He later expanded into a meat and grocery store, and was there until 1917. 

Shirley: Do you remember any of the other businesses that were around in there? 
EUGENE: Across the street from my dad’s store on First and Market, Hartfield Furniture was there. I remember especially the art department because they had paintings and drawings and materials for their purpose within the furniture store, and there was a Franz Bakery on the corner. On the next block my father met my mother. That’s how they happened to get together. On First and Montgomery was the Karis Grocery, and they eventually bought the building, which my dad was using for meat and groceries. So eventually they bought out my dad. That’s the corner that’s the Volkswagen headquarters today, right catty-corner on First Street from the auditorium. 

Shirley: What sorts of things stand out in your memory as being very important to you? Religion, or making a living, or Americanization of your family? 
EUGENE: I think the tax [of] Americanization of my family was not difficult. My grandfather, although a very orthodox man, felt very strongly about religion. In fact, Joseph Nudelman built the first Shaarie Torah synagogue; he was president of it. He also built the first Old People’s Home up on Third Avenue. So, it was sort of hereditary for my dad to build the Old People’s Home on Bertha in Beaverton and for me to build the first infirmary. I don’t know if my son is going to build something for the Jewish people, but he will do a job. 

Shirley: I am sure he will. Was education important, or sports, were you active in it? 
EUGENE: No, I was not active in sports, never have been. I have been a good spectator but not an active participant. I do enjoy golf, we enjoy a lot of dancing, and we like to travel. We like to go to museums. That’s really the main thrust of our relaxing. 

Shirley: Since you have been away from South Portland, what were the changes that you noticed since the years went by, in the Neighborhood House, the Community Center, after the people started leaving the area? 
EUGENE: Are you talking about the changes in the make-up of the neighborhood or the people? Somebody who left here in 1920 and came back today couldn’t find his way around; it’s impossible. There are no landmarks anymore except the Neighborhood House, if you are oriented from there. It just isn’t there. As soon as you get to Third, where the Urban Renewal starts, like on the west end of the bridge (even though the bridge is no longer a bridge), there is still some old South Portland on the other side, but it would be impossible. What’s to happen to the people? The people aren’t there any more either, except for a few exceptions. There are some who still live around the synagogue on Meade Street, and some people just hang on desperately, on First Avenue, on the two or three blocks that are still left of the old neighborhood. I haven’t been in there recently. I don’t know if the little grocery store is still there on First and Hooker or not, and I don’t even know if the library is still in the park across from the Neighborhood House, but I assume it is, a good little library. Miss [Zerlina] Loewenberg ran that for years. 

Shirley: Do you remember any of the activities that went on in the park, in Lair Hill Park? 
EUGENE: Not too much. My wife could tell you some fantastic stories about that because for a couple of years she was supposed to be “Queen for a Day” there, and I think she missed it both times by one vote. So she has some very strong memories about Lair Hill Park. I know what happened to Lair Park since. Maybe for the last couple of years it became a real rendezvous for hippies, and they almost destroyed not only the park, but [also] the Neighborhood House. I am glad to say that Neighborhood House is still there, and I hope it will be for a long time. 

Shirley: What is your memory of the happiest times in Portland? 
EUGENE: You are talking about my youth or after my maturity? 

Shirley: Both. 
EUGENE: I guess as your age changes, your happiness takes different outlooks. When I was young it was a good date to drive up to Tacoma to have an evening out with a pretty girl and to drive back the next morning. Today it is relishing the family, the children, the grandchildren, and the family in general. 

Shirley: Do you remember some of the things in Alberta that all the family used to do together? 
EUGENE: Yes. Grandpa Nudelman had a great philosophy about keeping the family together, and he established what was known as the Nudelman Family Association. All the brothers and sisters and eventually the children of them joined this association, and paid like $5 a month dues, and whenever someone had a problem and needed some money, they could borrow it from the association–$100–and pay it back if and when they could. My dad was the treasurer, and subsequently, I became the treasurer, and the fund became defunct, but it lasted for at least 20 years. In connection with this association, we would meet every two weeks at a different home in the family. My grandfather really held the family together but he passed away and things started to cave in, I am sorry to say, but we get so involved in present day problems. Some may be a little bit selfish with our time, and we don’t give as much as we should to our own family. 

Shirley: It’s gotten to be a very big family. 
EUGENE: “You know Jimmy Nudelman?” or, “You know Bill Nudelman?” Someone might say and I would say, “What generation?” “He is the son of Morris Nudelman,” or whatever. After all, we start with 13 elders, and you multiply that by sons and grandchildren, and pretty soon it is impossible to know them all. 

Shirley: That’s true. 
EUGENE: I always say, “If the name is Nudelman, we are related.” 

Shirley: Do you have any unhappy memories of your youth? 
EUGENE: I don’t know. You know, when you are young, you really are not affected by sadness as when you get older. I know Hattie remembers the loss of her little sister. Hattie was younger than her little sister but she was always called the little sister. She was killed by an automobile on Third Street near Grand, when Hattie was about five years old, or something like that. They were sitting on the curb, and a car came along and hit the child, and she remembers that. She remembers her father dying when she was seven, and all the struggle her mother had to raise the family of five, or four–two boys and two girls. I feel I have been very fortunate. I never had any great tragedies in my life or things to be really sad about when I was young, except the natural attrition that happens in one’s family–people pass away. But when you are young….At least it didn’t affect me this much as it did her. 

Shirley: Did the Depression affect you? 
EUGENE: No. I think I had a lot of fortitude during the Depression. That’s when I got married. The Depression started in 1929 and I had the courage to get married in 1930. I wasn’t going to take a chance of losing her. So I got married in 1930. 

Shirley: There was a great interest in the Weinsoft family, since there was a double. 
EUGENE: Yes, we really do have a double. I married Hattie, and my sister married her brother Ben. So we have a brother and a sister marrying a brother and a sister. We are really tied up, and we are all in business together. Ben and his family run our Seattle operation, and of course, I am here. 

Shirley: How about World War II, did that make any changes? 
EUGENE: Well, I guess I was just plain lucky, because I was born at a time when I was too young for one war and too old for the other, so I never got into the service, although we were serving many of the facets of the military by virtue of government edict. As a firm in the uniform business, we had to supply all the commissioned officers of the Army and the Navy and the Marine Corps with uniforms furnished by the government. We were paid a small fee for doing it. It was a necessary part of our business at that time. My brother Victor was in the service during the war. He had unbelievable, horrible experiences. He came home OK. 

Shirley: What about Urban Renewal in South Portland. Obviously, it didn’t affect your life any, how about any of the businesses down there. Do you know how it affected any of them? Were you still involved with any of the people over there? 
EUGENE: Not really. We were out of there in 1917. My dad decided that there was no future in the grocery business and he decided to go into the clothing business. Things were really tough. He went broke a couple of times but he had fortitude. He stuck by it and went into it again, that was the thing he wanted. I am sure that many of these businesses that were being displaced by Urban Renewal suffered. Although I think by the time Urban Renewal came along, the area was really in need of rejuvenation. I don’t think that area would have ever been good for anything if they hadn’t done what’s going on there now. 

Shirley: Do you know what happened to any of the people who left? 
EUGENE: Not really. I am sure that a lot of them went into other areas of the city. That area was the home for most elderly people of our faith and other faiths too, and little by little those people passed away. A lot of the homes were up on Second and Market, and up on Third and Montgomery. There was a large apartment building. Little by little they were being emptied of people because people didn’t want to live in the area anymore; it was getting so badly run down. My mother-in-law lived in an apartment on Third and Montgomery. Hattie’s mother lived there until she could no longer live by herself. I think that is what happened to most people who lived there. I think what happened was for the good of the area and the good of the community, and even for the people. Some were dispossessed, but I think they were better off, even if they were treated that way. 

Shirley: Do you have any remembrances of special things that you did with your family, maybe holidays that were special? 
EUGENE: We always liked to pile in the car on weekends and go up to Mt. Hood or go out to parks, just picnic together. We never traveled much as a family. I think our children today do more traveling than we did in those days. To raise a family in those days did not leave much money for traveling. It was all within the community. I don’t think we did any at all. 

Shirley: I remember seeing in the Nudelman family book pictures of maybe a Passover celebration or some kind of get-together and the family looked quite big. 
EUGENE: We used to go to Grandpa Nudelman’s house for Passover. He would get in as many as he could. They had a rather large house on Alberta Street. They would prepare the Seder. One of the cute things that happened that I recall very vividly [was] that Grandpa Nudelman was a great fan of Amos and Andy. He had to hear them every night. He got his evening prayer in before they got on. We were all there for Seder and the Seder was going along. He was watching his watch and pretty soon he says, “Okay, we’ll stop the Seder.” and my dad said, “What for, Pa?” And he said, “We are going to wait till Amos and Andy is over.” And sure enough, we had to sit there half an hour–nobody got to eat dinner or to finish the service until Amos and Andy was off the radio. As Orthodox as he was, he was very liberal and was a very understanding man. 

Shirley: Do you remember doing any kind of activity at the synagogue? 
EUGENE: Over the years I was naturally involved. Actually, after we were married we were members of Neveh Zedek for a while, and then we went to Park St. Synagogue [Ahavai Sholom]. Of course now, since its consolidation, it is called Neveh Sholom. I was vice- president for a while at Ahavai Sholom and served on many of the committees with the rabbi. It was an enjoyable and interesting time of my life, I think. 

Grandma Rosencrantz lived on a duplex on College Street, between Sixth and Broadway. That was about two blocks from Commerce High School. When I started high school, she told my mother that I must come there and eat lunch every day, for she didn’t want me to eat goyish food. This was great, you know, for a while. Pretty soon I got so tired of gefilte fish, and her cooking was unbelievable. She used to make pickled watermelon, which I dearly loved. I only wish I could get my hands on some today. She would take these small ice-cream watermelons, and she would pickle them in her basement in a big 50-gallon barrel. Well, there is no description of them, anyway. I would go there at least two or three times a week, and then I got a hankering for something goyish, a hot dog, a cream puff–one of those twisted things with meringue all through the middle–or a coke, but invariably when I didn’t show up, she’d call home, and she’d tell my mother, “He is eating goyish food again.” It’s like the girl who called Hattie and said, “I saw him in a restaurant today, and he had a doughnut. That’s not good for him.” Everybody was watching over me. Where I got my goyish lunches was a place run by the Israel family. It was a grocery on the corner of Sixth and Harrison, and catty-corner from there was a drug store where we used to pick up all our school supplies. We loved to go over to Israels because they saw that that we had good food. It was nice and clean, and we had a chance to be very close to Ruth Israel and her folks and her brother. We became lifetime friends there, but there was also another family that had a grocery on Sixth and Hall. I can’t remember the name of the sisters. There were three sisters (a Jewish family) and they, too, ran a sandwich lunch service. We used to go in there occasionally and divide our business between Israels and the other family. That was the only place out there where you could get a sandwich unless you wanted to go to your grandmother’s. A lot of kids had grandmothers living around there, believe me… 

Shirley: Were there a lot of kids at Commerce at the time? 
EUGENE: Yes, the Schneidermans were there and the Kaufmans, and the Rosencrantz’s were all there. Uncle Abe Rosencrantz was the cantor at Sixth Street [Neveh Zedek] at that time, so his sons went there, and his daughters went there. In fact, Uncle Abe and Grandpa Rosencrantz shared the same building; it was a duplex. Grandpa and Grandma Rosencrantz lived upstairs and Uncle Abe and his family lived downstairs. 

Shirley: I didn’t realize that Commerce was on the West side. I guess my mother would have gone there. She went to Commerce, but I always thought it was the East side. 
EUGENE: I don’t know what year it was that they opened over there. They needed a good school. Before it was Commerce High School it was a regular grade school. And if you go back far enough, my Dad said that he went there. So it goes back a few years. There was no auditorium. We would meet in the hall and the kids would be on the stairs going up to the second floor. There was no elevator and there were two stairways going up to the upper floors. During any kind of a school get together the main lobby would be full of kids and both stairwells all full of kids. It was a school with a lot of enthusiasm. Lincoln was built later and there was great competition between Commerce and Lincoln in those days. They were only about four or five blocks apart, and on the rare occasion when we would beat Lincoln in an athletic contest, our school would close and we would march around. But I don’t think we had this more than once or twice during the four years we went to Commerce. 

Incidentally, the first I ever heard of radio was in an English class at Commerce, so it must have been in the year 1921. The English teacher announced that the radio station (and she tried to explain what a radio station was) would be operating in Portland within a matter of a few months and for us to go out and get some plan and build us a radio stand. As I said, I was never very mechanical. The young fellow here who lived within a few blocks from me was very good with anything mechanical. He built a little radio. He used an Albers Flapjack box, which was round, for the coils. Then he helped me build one. We would go to bed and have the earphones on. It was an old crystal set. We would listen for the music and the words to come over, and invariably, I would fall asleep. The next morning I would wake up and my glasses would be broken, because I turned over in bed and the stems had snapped. I used to sleep on a sleeping porch in the house on Irvington, and it was either awfully hot or awfully cold in there. One of the most vivid disasters I can remember, [is when] I went up in the attic to string a wire for an antenna and I missed the girder; I stepped through the plaster ceiling, and I couldn’t get my foot back up, because I had gone down and couldn’t pull my foot through there. My mother had to call a neighbor in. She kept the sleeping porch closed for a whole week while she got a guy in to repair it so that my dad wouldn’t see it 

Shirley: I remember your father very slightly. There must be some great stories about him that you might tell us. 
EUGENE: He was very active. He was active at the Al-Khader shrine and the greeters. He and some friends were at the head of a committee that raised the funds for the first George L. Baker disaster car and gave it to the fire department. He was involved in the founding of Oregon Pioneer Savings and Loan, and the building of Robison Home. He was just a doer. He was really a doer, like his father. He loved building. He liked to get a crow bar and start wrecking anything. Anything that would come apart he would tackle it. He didn’t mind getting involved just in anything. 

Shirley: That’s good and that shows in his whole family. 
EUGENE: We are all semi-inclined that way in our own way. We get involved. 

Shirley: And Sol is very active in the City of Hope in Seattle. 
EUGENE: That was a pet of mine of a long time. 

Shirley: You were president of the City of Hope… 
EUGENE: Of the local chapter, and then I have been on the National Board of Trustees of the City of Hope. I still keep a great interest in what they are doing down there. 

Shirley: You have any other things that you would like to mention? 
EUGENE: I headed up the B’nai B’rith summer camp for the children for 18 years. I think that is a pretty long stay in one job. I saw the camp grow from its infancy. It’s really great now for the community. We are now in the process of replacing cabins that were built in 1921, something like that. The cabins were really in terrible shape, and we are doing an auction to raise enough money for five or six new cabins. All will be winterized. They are good accommodations, and we hope that the community will use it a great deal more than they are now because of the new facilities, and also that we will be able to lease it when we don’t have need of it for ourselves to the community around Devil’s Lake and Lincoln City and that general area. The school districts have already evidenced an interest in using the camp. It’s getting away from Portland, but it’s really an activity which started here in Portland. 

I have been very close to the Portland Retail Trade Bureau as president and I am still serving on the executive committee. I hope one of these days to walk away from Nudelman Brothers at least two days a week, so I can start painting–that’s my great ambition right now. I don’t know how good I’ll be. If I find it’s a disaster, I will give it up real quick-like, but I am getting a lot of encouragement. The fact is that for my birthday last year, they came in the house with a box about eight feet tall, and I said, “What in the devil is that”? I thought maybe another movie screen or something like that, and Gene was there with his family, and Marilynn was home from the East with her family. This was a present from all of them. They opened it up; it’s an artist’s easel for painting. Little by little they have been buying things, like paper palettes and things like that for me. I have everything now including paint, but no brushes. I have to wait for somebody to guide me through the problem of picking brushes, and I have lots of people who volunteered to help teach me. 

Shirley: I really appreciate your taking the time. 
EUGENE: It’s been nice reminiscing. I hope it will be meaningful to some of your people who will be editing it. My feelings won’t be hurt if you dump the whole thing!