Leah Nepom

Frankel: Good morning. I would like to start by asking you to state your full name, and date and place of birth.
NEPOM: OK. I am Leah Nepom, and I was born, of all places, in Fredonia, Kansas, on February 29, which is a leap-year birthday, 1928. 

Frankel: And your maiden name? 
NEPOM: Tkatch [spells out]. 

Frankel: Describe a little bit the house you grew up in. 
NEPOM: My parents were immigrants from Russia with some very interesting historical facts about them, like many of the immigrants have. And of all places to land in —Fredonia, Kansas. I think my father had first gone to Illinois, but someone had told him that there was cheap land in Kansas, so of course he went, sight unseen. It was cheap, but it wasn’t good [laughs]. We only lived there for a few years. My two sisters and I were born here. My parents had been married in Russia and had children there, but only one son survived to come here. He was already 19 when I was born. After just a few years in Fredonia my mother insisted on being someplace with at least some Jewish community, so we moved to Topeka, Kansas, which was some improvement, but not much [laughs]. It was a very small community. And then I left for college on the West Coast, and I met my husband and have lived in Portland since 1947. 

Frankel: What languages did you speak at home? 
NEPOM: My parents spoke Yiddish. I was never able to speak Yiddish, but at that time I understood it. 

Frankel: And was it a Jewish home? 
NEPOM: As much as you could be in Topeka. They tried very hard, but it was difficult. 

Frankel: Were you sent to religious school?
NEPOM: Yes. Topeka had a very small Reform temple. In fact, what I remember about it is that the rabbis changed almost every year. We would either get young men right out of rabbinical school or older men on their way to retirement. It was a very small community, so small in Topeka that my Sunday school class had five students in it that represented two grades in public school. My Sunday school education was Reform, but my home life, they tried to be closer to Orthodox. 

Frankel: So did you have any other relatives in Topeka?
NEPOM: No. My father had some cousins that lived in Illinois, and that’s all the family we had. I’ve often envied people with aunts and uncles and grandparents. I’ve never had any. 

Frankel: So did your parents come alone to this country from Russia? 
NEPOM: My father came first. He left my mother in Russia with three children — no, four children. He left her with her brother in Russia. At that time, World War I came through, before the 1920s and the Russian Revolution. They were separated for seven years. My mother made her way out of Russia in 1920. When she got to Poland, she went to the Jewish agency, they contacted my father, and he sent tickets for my mother and their three children, but there was only one. He didn’t know it. 

Frankel: Did they die of diseases? 
NEPOM: I don’t know. I never knew. She used to talk about them a little bit, but not very much. They were all infants, the children that died. She came over with this one little boy who was 13. It was a difficult time. At that time, though, one interesting aspect of it was that at the same time she came here, he had left her with her brother there, and her brother was killed. Her brother’s two daughters made their way to Palestine at that time. They were part of the youth movement, and they worked their way to Palestine and settled in the Haifa area. Their families, their descendants, they’re still there. 

Frankel: You mentioned a brother who was much older and a sister. How many siblings . . .?
NEPOM: My two sisters and I were born in this country. They were both older. I was the last. My mother was 42 already by the time I was born.

Frankel: What were the names of your parents and siblings?
NEPOM: My parents were Chaya and Yelic — Joe. My oldest sister was Bessy, my next sister was Edna, and then me. Everybody is gone except for one sister, who is now 92 and lives in California. 

Frankel: When your father went to Fredonia, did he work the land? Was he a farmer? 
NEPOM: No, only enough to feed the family, a kitchen garden. He became a peddler. He would go out and pick up whatever he could find and sell whatever he could find. 

Frankel: So was he on the road a lot?
NEPOM: A lot. In the Fredonia area, which I’m sure had no Jewish person anywhere around, and my mother could only stand it for a few years.

Frankel: And then when you moved to Topeka, what was his occupation?
NEPOM: He was a junk man. It’s interesting, though. Because he’s a junk man, my brother went into the same business, except he’s a recycler [both laugh]. Steel and all that kind of stuff. It’s a different generation.

Frankel: So how long did your parents continue to live in Topeka?
NEPOM: They lived there until — I was the youngest, and what happened in Topeka, even in the small Jewish community there was, the girls especially, when they got out of high school they were sent out of town. And this was during World War II. My oldest sister was dating a boy who was stationed there at the airbase in World War II. He was from Seattle, so they moved to Seattle as soon as he got out of the service. And I was going to have to go someplace when I got out of high school. She said, “I’m lonely. It’s beautiful here. You’re leaving home. Why don’t you come out here?” So I did. I had never been out here, and I came here and stayed. I went to Seattle, which is where she was living, and got involved in a sorority at the University of Washington with all kinds of things going on. And she was just as lonely as she had been before, and she convinced her husband to move back to Topeka.  So I was left alone, and I’ve been the only one out here still. They moved back to Topeka, and they’ve since died. 

Frankel: What are your memories of the war, when the war broke out?
NEPOM: Yes. How old was I in ’41? I was in high school. I remember the boys running up and down the street or in the back of trucks shouting, “Extra! Extra! Pearl Harbor bombed!” And of course, I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was, but soon found out. Even in Topeka during World War II, I remember the blackouts. Who was going to bomb Topeka [laughs]? But it worked that way. And we had car rationing, but we were lucky because you could go further on a tank of gas in Topeka than you certainly could in most places. 

What I do remember, though, is that my parents took the Jewish Daily Forward, which I’m sure was several days late by the time it got to them. I remember them after supper, at night, sitting at the kitchen table and reading the paper. I don’t remember how old I was, but I do remember them crying over the newspaper. I asked what was wrong, and they wouldn’t tell me. It turns out that there were a lot of articles being published in the Jewish newspaper about what was going on in Germany that weren’t being published in any other newspaper, and they would sit there and read these articles and cry. 

Frankel: Did you have any relatives left in Europe? 
NEPOM: In Russia, yes. They kept in touch with the two nieces that went to Palestine. Through them, they kept in touch as best they could. Most of the older people had already been killed. My father at one time had been drafted into the Russian army but had gotten out somehow. 

Frankel: And your brother who was in this country, was he drafted? 
NEPOM: No. He actually — there’s so many side stories to it [laughs]!

Frankel: Go ahead.
NEPOM: When my mother was in Poland, waiting to hear about how she could get out of there and come to the United States, there was a woman there with two daughters, whose husband had also come ahead of her and was living in California, and they became friends and kept in touch. Many years later, when she was in Kansas and this other lady was in California, the other lady sent her daughter to visit, who became my sister-in-law. He was married already. He married young, and they had children. My niece is only four years younger than me. 

Frankel: And he stayed in Kansas as well, your brother?
NEPOM: Yes. He was in Topeka until he died in his 90s. My parents, though, as I started to say, after I came out to college — and I was the youngest — shortly after that my father retired from his business, and they moved to Kansas City to have a better Jewish life. And they did. They lived not far from a synagogue, my dad went frequently, and they were lonely, but I think they went there simply because of the Jewish life, and they moved into a Jewish neighborhood. 

Frankel: Growing up, did you ever experience antisemitism? 
NEPOM: No, not really. My friends in high school were all, of course, not Jewish, and I kept in touch with at least some of these women. A couple of them over the years have commented on various things that had happened with my parents, or with my Judaism, that they remembered. 

Frankel: Positive things?
NEPOM: Yes. I think that there was some sort of social club that they belonged to, where they were teaching ballroom dances, that I wasn’t invited to . . .

Frankel: Because you were Jewish?
NEPOM: I think so. But basically, nothing that really stood out. I think I was pretty much accepted into this crowd. 

Frankel: And what about in the city, were there places like country clubs where Jews were not allowed?
NEPOM: I never paid the slightest bit of attention. I’m sure there were. There might have been two or three other families from Europe that my parents sort of connected with, although there was certainly not a large social crowd for them. But I was able to get along in high school.

Frankel: And at home you celebrated Friday night?
NEPOM: Yes, we always lit the candles on Friday night. I think one of the ways they tried to keep kosher, my dad used to kill his own chickens. When they moved to Kansas City later, of course they were able to. There were kosher markets of all kinds. They tried the best they could. 

Frankel: And when did you find out what was going on with the Jews in Europe? You said your parents read the Forward, but when . . .?
NEPOM: In terms of what was happening with the Jews in Germany, I think I was close to adulthood before all this came out and we started really learning the facts. We were certainly more aware of the war, and there were soldiers everywhere, even in Topeka. 

Frankel: When you left, you had graduated from high school and you went to the University of Washington . . .
NEPOM: I came to Seattle. I went to the University of Washington. I joined a sorority there.

Frankel: A Jewish sorority?
NEPOM: Yes. The Alpha Phi house. And Marv was there, at the Sammy [Sigma Alpha Mu] house. I was having a good time at the university. About the middle of the first year I met Marv, and we married while we were still in school. We came back, and Marv went back and finished college. I didn’t; I dropped out. 

And as soon as he finished we moved down to Portland. That’s where he was born. His parents were living here — super, super, super nice people. We lived with them for a few months, I got pregnant, and we built a little house out on SE 48th. His parents had a grocery store on 11th and Hawthorne, on the east side. He had a very interesting story of his own. There were a lot of similarities, the type of people they were, no question about that. Marv’s parents also were refugees, immigrants from Russia, and living in Portland. His father at that time, I think, had a men’s clothing store downtown. They lived in Laurelhurst; they were doing just fine. In fact, I have a picture of them on the porch of their house. It was at the height of the Depression, and they all looked so happy and prosperous, and they had nice furniture. I don’t know how it happened [laughs]! 

But his father died when Marv was only about two years old. I think a bowel obstruction or something horrible that would never happen now. His mother was left with two children, Marv and an older sister. And Dave Nepom lived here in Portland, and he’d been in the grocery business.

Frankel: And who is Dave Nepom?
NEPOM: Dave Nepom married Sophie and became Marv’s father. 

Frankel: Oh. So what is Marv’s father’s name?
NEPOM: Rogoff, when he was born. But this lovely, lovely man named Dave Nepom was alone, and he knew Sophie slightly, as the Jewish community in Portland at that time all sort of knew each other. He decided that she needed help, and he wanted a family, and he actually pursued her for that reason. They married, he adopted the two children and they took his name, and he was just the kindest, nicest father you could ever imagine. All through Marv’s life and to me. 

Frankel: Was he American born?
NEPOM: No. He came from Russia as a 17-year-old boy, and he’d tell stories about selling newspapers on the street corners in Portland. In fact, he’d tell us stories about selling a Sunday paper that was so big that he called it the “Zuntik-Montik” [Sunday-Monday] paper because he thought it was for two days, it was so big [laughs]! He worked as a young boy here and eventually brought his father, his brother, and his sister. His mother had already died. His brother was Manuel Nepom, who lived here until he died, and his sister Rose Russell, so the Russell boys were his nephews. That became Marv’s extended family even though they were not birth-related. 

Dave had a grocery store. First — there were several firsts, I think, of different stores — but I remember one on 6th and Broadway in Northeast, and then later on 11th and Hawthorne. When Marv and I first came down from college, he installed Marv in the grocery store along with Marv’s brother-in-law, who was Herman Bardy. Herman Bardy married Marv’s sister. So they ran the grocery store, and we lived there ten years later. 

I had three little children in the house, and Marv was working long hours because the grocery store was open long, and he came home one day and he said, “I signed up for law school,” which stunned me a little bit because I didn’t have any idea he was interested in law school, but I knew he wanted something other than the grocery store. A man named Leo Levenson was a family friend, and he’s the one that encouraged Marv to go to law school.

Frankel: Are the other Levensons related to them?
NEPOM: Very likely. Leo didn’t have a family, but his brother lived here, and his sister was married to a man that had a drugstore — I can’t remember the name — and so Marv started law school at Northwest Law School, which was a night law school. He ran the grocery store during the day, and he went to law school at night, three nights a week, for four years. He was running the store, and I was running the family, and I started getting involved in the community. I look back at some of the things that were going on then, and I have no idea how I had the energy to do that because now I don’t have the energy to do anything [laughs]! But he ran the store with his brother-in-law for three years, and in the fourth year of law school they sold the store and he went to work as a sort of assistant to Leo Levenson. 

Frankel: What did Leo Levenson do, also grocery?
NEPOM: No, he was a lawyer. Leo was a friend of Gus Solomon, who was a judge by then. There was an established legal community of the few Jews who started their own firms because they weren’t welcome in other firms. They were such good, smart, nice men.

Frankel: You said that Marv had finished college. What did he major in?
NEPOM: Business, I think, but he always felt like it was a total waste. 

Frankel: But he didn’t mind going into the grocery store?
NEPOM: No, he really didn’t. He knew he had to do something. He already had a pregnant wife, and he knew he had to do something. He knew he was going to get to something else; he just didn’t know what yet. 

Frankel: His family, was it a traditional family?
NEPOM: Not really. They were members of Ahavai Shalom, and Sophie, his mother, was very active there. She had come as a young woman from Russia, and I don’t think she ever really learned how to write English. She certainly spoke English, and she was a very sharp businesswoman, but I don’t think she ever really became Americanized that much. But she worked in the store, and I know she used to run the kitchen at the synagogue. The Jewish Community Center at that time, they were very active there. 

Frankel: And what language did they speak in Marvin’s home?
NEPOM: I think it was English. I never heard Yiddish there.

Frankel: And so David Nepom, that was his first marriage? 
NEPOM: No, he’d had a brief marriage before. 

Frankel: But no children.
NEPOM: No, and I think that’s why he went looking for children. And he couldn’t have been a better father. 

Frankel: Were there many Jewish stores on the east side? Because we always talk about South Portland.
NEPOM: Yes, there was actually a whole Jewish community in Irvington and Laurelhurst, a lot of Jewish families at that time.

Frankel: Including Jewish businesses?
NEPOM: Yes, as far as I know. 

Frankel: Were you familiar with South Portland?
NEPOM: Yes, we’d go to the Jewish Community Center on a Sunday morning, and then go across and get some bagels and whatever we needed. Of course, Marv was in AZA [Aleph Zedek Aleph] and this kind of thing, and he knew a lot of the South Portland Jewish kids.

Frankel: Do you know what elementary and high school he went to?
NEPOM: Yes, he went to Laurelhurst and to Grant. He hated Grant; he felt that it was very prejudiced at that time. They had social clubs, and I guess they had separate Jewish social clubs, as the regular Gentile social clubs would not accept Jews. Maybe one or two exceptions. I think he mentioned at one time that Don Lander was in his class, and Don was later a judge. He said that Don was an athlete in high school or something where he was accepted in this club. But Marv said that there was a lot of prejudice against Jewish kids at Grant. 

Frankel: By teachers and students?
NEPOM: I don’t know that. I know that he was not that fond of Grant High School.

Frankel: And he had a bar mitzvah?
NEPOM: Very informal. I think his father took him to synagogue, and he had a bottle of Schnapps and some bagels or something for whoever was there on that particular morning, and that was it. 

Frankel: Any reason why?
NEPOM: No. I think his parents at that time were in the grocery store, which was open long hours. Marv did go to Hebrew school on the east side. He got on the bus and went to Hebrew school, didn’t like that either. Eve Rosenfeldt talks about being in his class, and she’s younger; how she ended up in his class I don’t know. But he was not a good student in Hebrew school. He went to Sunday school at Ahavai Shalom. 

Frankel: Do you remember who the rabbi was at the time, or who the teachers were at that time? 
NEPOM: No. I remember some of his classmates. My mind has just skipped the names completely, but he’s talked about some of the young people he grew up with there. He was never really involved with any of the South Portland kids that were his age, just a little bit maybe. There was a difference. 

Frankel: And he was too young to be drafted into the Army?
NEPOM: That’s another story, though, in that he wanted to join the service, and as soon as he got out of high school, he went down to enlist. His birthday was in August, and he had just turned 18, I guess. He went down to enlist, and they found out that he had a heart murmur and very poor eyesight, so he was rejected. So by then it was too late. It was in the fall, and the University of Oregon had already started classes. The University of Washington was on a different schedule and didn’t start until October, so he didn’t go to Oregon, he went to Washington, and that’s how I happened to meet him. So just by chance that he was turned down for the Army. 

Frankel: And what did you study?
NEPOM: Art. 

Frankel: Did you do artwork before you went to college?
NEPOM: Just a little, not an awful lot, but the rest of my life I have until fairly recently, when I don’t do much. That metal sculpture, that stained glass, that’s mine. Various little flowers on the table. I have a loom downstairs, and I did a lot of weavings, the fabrics on the pillows. Just one thing after another I’ve done over the years. 

Frankel: So various mediums. Not just stained glass, but sculpture and weaving . . .
NEPOM: Metal sculpture, jewelry, weaving. Crafts more than fine art, more than paintings. But I do have a few paintings around that I’ve done. There’s a lot of it that I’ve done. That will be one of the hard things about leaving the house. I will leave my windows. My major bathroom has another set of stained glass windows. Things that I’ve made and done to the house. But anyway, art was a stupid thing to do [laughs], it really was. I learned very little in college. But after we were married and after we got home, all these years when Marv was working those long hours, and sometimes I’d help out in the store, I was still taking art classes. 

Frankel: You mentioned that his biological father had a clothing store. What happened to that?
NEPOM: I have no idea. I think it died when he did. 

Frankel: And what did Marvin’s sister do? Did she go to college?
NEPOM: No, she did not go to college. She married fairly young to Herman Bardy, and he was drafted, and he was in Europe. I think he was like a day or two after the major Normandy invasion. Never talked too much about it, except to say that he was scared. After he got home, he went into the grocery store with Marv. When Marv quit to start going to law school and start practicing law, he went into a different business, and the store’s been rented out since, but we still own the building. 

Frankel: How far did you live from the grocery store?
NEPOM: Not very far. It was on 11th and Hawthorne, and we were on 47th and Burnside, not too bad. 

Frankel: What was the name of the grocery store?
NEPOM: Best Buy Foods. Lots of other places are Best Buy now, but he was a Best Buy grocery store. And all those years he was in law school, he had an office. There was a balcony in the grocery store, and he had a desk upstairs in the balcony, and any time he had in between business, if it wasn’t too terribly busy, he’d run up to the office to study. He would study a lot at home. 

It didn’t seem like that much at the time, but in retrospect, I think that his being in law school at that time was extremely influential on our children. He graduated law school the same year our daughter graduated grade school, and the boys were a little younger. My kids are very studious. They all had absolutely outstanding grades. One went to Harvard, one went to Yale — from the public schools. In those days we never thought of private schools. I think they saw Daddy studying, Daddy’s getting good grades, Daddy’s having tests today — I think it made a tremendous impression on them that we were unaware of at the time. My son Jerry — who graduated from Harvard, then went to medical school in Seattle, then back to Harvard for some further training — is acknowledged as one of the finer researchers in the world. 

Frankel: In what specific field?
NEPOM: He’s been the director with the Benaroya Research Center in Seattle, which works with all the autoimmune diseases like diabetes. They’re on the trail for a cure for childhood diabetes. They’ve been doing testing for a long time. He was hired in Seattle to start this immunology research lab, and it’s now huge. Just this year he’s retiring from that job, but he’s not retiring because at the same time that he was doing that job, he was hired by the National Institutes of Health to manage one of their major divisions. It’s the ITN, the Immune Tolerance Network, which is transplants and all kinds of research involved with that. He’s the director of the ITN. It was in Washington, DC, but he did not want to leave the lab or Seattle, so they established a satellite office in Seattle, and he runs it out of Seattle. So every year they have at least one meeting in Seattle and another one in Bethesda, Maryland. And he’s running it from there. So he’s giving up the Benaroya Research Lab and has passed it on to his assistant, and he’s still running the Immune Tolerance Network.

Frankel: And he’s your middle child? 
NEPOM: Yes.

Frankel: And married?
NEPOM: Married with one daughter, and she went to Columbia and lives in New York. My younger son became a lawyer with Marv, practiced with Marv. They never formed a partnership; they just shared office space. 

Frankel: What is his name?
NEPOM: David. He has three children, all grown up now, two of them here in Portland — fortunately for me, because they’re terrific grandkids — and one in Seattle. He’s still practicing in the law office that we built on Barbur, taking care of me and taking care of all these children. 

Frankel: What are the names of his children?
NEPOM: There’s Eric, who just recently got married. He married a Jewish girl who grew up in Ashland. The second child is Jake, who’s now 31 already, and their daughter Jenny. She’s living in Seattle, and she too is doing some interesting work. She’s working for National Health [NIH?], and she’s working on several Indian reservations, working on health issues of indigenous people. I think that’s the field she’s pursuing. 

Frankel: And your daughter is the oldest?
NEPOM: She’s the oldest. She was married briefly. She was a lawyer for a while and didn’t like it. She went to Berkeley. She graduated there, she married, she divorced, she went to law school, then she went back and got a license for professional counseling, and she had a counseling office and a counseling practice for many years, and this year she retired.

Frankel: What is her name?
NEPOM: Hanna. She used to be Dori Nepom. When she grew up she decided she didn’t like it, and changed her name to Hanna Zaiv. She’s got her own name and her own personality, and she calls me every morning, and she’s here all the time. The children have been incredibly helpful since I’ve been a widow. 

Frankel: Going back a little bit, were your families, both yours and Marvin’s, Zionist in any way?
NEPOM: Yes, my parents particularly. My mother never got to Israel, but she kept contact with these nieces and their descendants. Both of the original ones are gone, but the ones my age, most of them are still alive. 

Frankel: Did they ever come and visit?
NEPOM: Yes, in recent years. The early part of Israel was very difficult, waiting years for a telephone, the typical things that were happening when it first became a country. But they all have succeeded, and yes, they’ve come here. There’s one family in particular that lives in Haifa. They’re my age, and we’ve been close to them. We’ve visited them a number of times. Marv and I have traveled a lot, but always our favorite place to visit was Israel. We’ve been there at least six or seven times. And that’s the family that my mother kept in touch with. A letter would come in Yiddish now and then. It was always a big excitement when she got a letter from Palestine. But she never got there, and she was not alive when they started coming here. 

Frankel: If you were Zionist, do you remember 1947 when the United Nations voted in favor of the partition? 
NEPOM: I was already out here, so I wasn’t at home to see what was going on with them.

Frankel: What about you, yourself?
NEPOM: Oh, it was an excitement. It was thrilling. There was concern every time there was a war, or another incident. I’ve never thought about moving there, but we’ve visited a number of times and thoroughly enjoyed that. 

Frankel: And Marvin’s family, were they also Zionist?
NEPOM: Yes, but here again, his mother died fairly young and she never got there, but his father later traveled to Israel, too, and had a fine trip there. 

Frankel: So where did you get married?
NEPOM: We were married in Topeka, by a rabbi from Kansas City. The thing that’s interesting in terms of that, when we first moved back to Portland, the friends that I had at the University of Washington were all Temple Beth Israel, and my Sunday school, actually, was Reform. When we first moved to Portland, we joined Temple Beth Israel, even though his family — by then it was Neveh Shalom, or was it? No, it became Neveh Shalom later. But anyway, they were just happy to see us join, and my kids went to Sunday school at Temple Beth Israel, which I now regret because I don’t think they had that great of a Jewish education there. 

Frankel: Who was the rabbi then?
NEPOM: It was Nodel at one time. I think Nodel was the first one. And, of course, we were there when Rabbi Rose came. But my parents were very much involved with Ahavai Shalom, and at that time, when we first moved here, the Jewish Community Center and the new synagogue out here, they all happened close in time. This west side of Portland became very involved, and my father-in-law was very fond of Rabbi Stampfer. We used to go to synagogue with him to keep him company. This was after Marv’s mother had died. And then after a while, I got very disenchanted with Temple Beth Israel. After my children had grown, we switched over to Neveh Shalom, and I always regretted that we hadn’t done that sooner. But this was 30, 40 years ago. I can’t even remember how long! We just admired Rabbi Stampfer, and the kind of man he was, which was very different than what we had seen before [laughs]. 

Frankel: And Marvin’s parents, you said his mother was very involved with the community. Was she involved in other institutions?
NEPOM: No, not that I’m aware of. Perhaps Hadassah. I don’t remember specifically, though, if that’s the one she was in. 

Frankel: What about you?
NEPOM: Oh, my goodness! I got involved in so many things so soon, and I don’t remember why or for how long. We lived on 48th Street, and Faye and Phil Blank moved in across the street from us. 

Frankel: Southwest or Southeast?
NEPOM: Southeast. I was very involved at the temple. In fact, when my youngest child was only about five years old I co-chaired the rummage sale that they had then. At that time, Temple Beth Israel always had one huge rummage sale every year, and I co-chaired it. I was young, I had young children and everything, but it was just what I did. I was active in the school, I was a Camp Fire leader, and I became involved in the Council of Jewish Women. 

When Faye became president of the Council of Jewish Women, she asked me to be a secretary, and I was. From there I went into vice president, I became president of the local section, and after I finished that term I went to the national board. I was on the national board of the Council of Jewish Women for a two-year period, then off for a little bit, and then again for a four-year period. It took me to meetings in Washington or wherever once a year. As a matter of fact, our first trip to Israel was because of that. A woman from New York, who was on the board, donated the money for a wing of Hadassah Hospital, and she was invited over to Israel. She said we should all go with the board, and so we did. 

Frankel: Do you remember the year?
NEPOM: 1972, ’73 maybe. Early ’70s. We were treated as special guests because we were with this woman who had given I don’t know how many millions. I remember a reception in the home of the president; I remember meeting the prime minister. In fact, I had a tour guide, Zev, the man who wrote the original tour guide thing. 

Frankel: Zev Vilnay? Wow.
NEPOM: I have a book that he wrote. He was our tour guide. I have pictures of me with him. They’re charming. I was young! But anyway, I remember visiting our family over there and telling them things that we’d seen. “Oh, this is when we were with the vice president.” They thought I was crazy! But yes, that’s how we went our first time. It was really interesting, and I had a good time on the national board. At the same time I was doing all kinds of things in Portland. I was taking art classes at Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, which at the time was over by the temple in Northwest, and then they moved to the new campus out here. I was on their board of directors and on their executive committee, and chair of their fundraising art show, and later I became involved at the Jewish Community Center. I taught there. I was on their staff for a few years doing adult programming.

Frankel: You were teaching arts and crafts?
NEPOM: No. I was teaching various adult classes, I remember.  We had a “stop smoking show,” we had some films, we had a whole bunch of things that we were doing. In fact, did you ever see that very large tapestry that used to hang there? That was my project. We started that, and at that time the wall there was a huge concrete wall, and I didn’t like that, so we designed this thing that was supposed to be some sort of an aspect of the skyline of Jerusalem. We did it in sections, with rug-hooking equipment. We had a section in the lobby of the Center, and when people came in, they would do it. Some of the kids took part in it, too, and that was sort of a mistake, because they quite often would tear it. But anyway, we finished all that, and I put the sections together here. It got very, very heavy. We had it framed and put it up, but now it’s disappeared. 

Frankel: You don’t know where it is? 
NEPOM: When the Center got remodeled this last time, a lot of things happened. It disappeared, and I have asked several times where it is. I was first told that it was out for cleaning, but it was in for cleaning for about a year [laughs]. I have since asked, and since then, no one seems to know where it is or what happened to it. The leadership at the Center has changed. I don’t think they have any idea that it ever existed. 

Frankel: This is not a small piece that could disappear.
NEPOM: It was a huge piece, but it was all rolled up. First it was in cleaning, then it was in storage, and then I asked Jordan — he was in charge of the thing — I asked him if he knew where it was. He said, “No, I don’t, why don’t you follow it up and see what you can do with it?” I have no idea where it is. Anyway, that was one of the projects when I was there. I worked there for a few years, and then I quit because I was doing adult programming, which meant that the programs were almost always at night because that’s when the adults were available, and that wasn’t for me anymore. So anyway, I worked there for a while, and later I was on their executive board. I was on the board of their synagogue, their executive board, co-chair of the original renovation board when we put the glass in, all this. So I’ve been involved in a lot of stuff. 

Frankel: Who were the leaders besides Rabbi Stampfer and Rabbi Rose? In the Federation, other synagogues?
NEPOM: In the community? A lot of it has changed. Council received a bequest from Florence May. We did a study to see what we should use the money for, and that’s when we decided we needed it for older people and first came up with the idea of a senior center. Our committee looked into putting it on that land that is next door to the Jewish Community Center. That land is actually owned by Federation, and they said no, they didn’t want to use it for that. It still hasn’t been used for anything. I think they use it for volleyball or whatever it is there. But no, they said they didn’t want it. So then we went out to the Robison home, and we started talking. 

We formed a committee of three Council members and three members of the board. There was Phil Blank and Stan Eastern and Milt Carl, and three of us from Council. We started talking about building a residence there. First we wanted to put it right next to the building. We started doing that and found out that there was an underground stream there that was really unstable. That’s where they’re building today. Whether they ever found the underground stream or did anything about it, but that’s where they’re digging. When they had the groundbreaking and I saw the picture of them out there with their shovels, I was thinking, “I hope they don’t hit that underground stream!” But it was still there. Anyway, that’s when we decided to go across the street and build the May Apartments. I was involved in the first committee meetings of that. 

Frankel: So the May Apartments, it was assisted living or independent living?
NEPOM: It was for independent living, although we had a very different concept of what it would be like, and how much it cost to live there, and how old the people would be that lived there. Totally unrealistic at that time for us to think that. I was too young to know the difference. We got Jordan Schnitzer involved, which we thought would be a good idea but wasn’t [laughs]. We built the first May Apartments, which were named after Florence May, who gave the money to Council.

Frankel: And how many apartments are there? Do people still use it as the original idea? 
NEPOM: Yes. It’s assisted living rather than full care, with a big list of things that qualified people to come. You had to be able to dress yourself and bathe yourself and feed yourself, toilet yourself, and if not, then you needed the other side of the street. We built the tunnel under that road. We had to pay for that extra road that goes in there. All of that took a lot of time and effort, too.

Frankel: When you started working with National Council, did you still own the Neighborhood House?
NEPOM: Yes.

Frankel: And what was happening there? 
NEPOM: We were not using it as the place for immigrants that it was originally built for. By then things had changed. We were still using it for board meetings and some activities, but mostly it was being used by the Neighborhood House group. There were other people coming in, and the building was getting very run down. It needed a tremendous amount of work. We started getting offers to buy the place. We had some men who were our advisors — Milt Carl was one of them — starting to think about what we were going to do with this building, as we were going to need a fortune to renovate. They suggested that we sell it, so we did. Actually, I believe it was the beginning of the end for the Portland section. 

Frankel: Of National Council of Jewish Women.
NEPOM: For the simple reason that that money was then put in the bank, and future groups of younger women, who I won’t go into, were using that money like a little piggy bank. 

Frankel: To do what?
NEPOM: Whatever they decided they wanted to do, nothing major that I could see. There were a few projects going on. But whenever they needed money it was there. There were a few of us older members who realized how much money was just being siphoned off and said, “This cannot go on.” I was involved in the establishment of the first thrift shop. We built a thrift shop as our fundraiser. 

Frankel: Where was it located?
NEPOM: One of the first was down on Third and Washington, and that was very successful for a long time. Everybody was giving. We had a policy that after donating, maybe it was $200 worth of stuff, they would get a free ticket to the Angel Ball, for the people that were our angels. That was very successful for a number of years. Angel Ball got more expensive to give free, but it was working very well. Recently, it got moved up to 12th Street, across from the library. Some of us old-timers that were involved — Rose Rustin was one of them, Carol Chestler is another one — anyway, we were looking into what was going on when we were no longer involved, and money was just spewing out like crazy. And the thrift shop by then had seven paid employees; it was no longer run by volunteers. 

Frankel: It used to be run all by volunteers. 
NEPOM: We had one full-time woman who ran the shop and was a main seller, and the cleanup person, a person that would always come in the afternoon and clean everything up. But mostly it was run by volunteers. I worked there for years. Anyway, we found out that they had seven paid employees, with no oversight as to what was going into the bank, and when we started looking what was being rung up on the register and what was going into the bank, there were two different sums. It was costing something like $7,000 a month to run a charitable organization. 

And so there was a group of us that got together. It was Rose, Carol, and a whole bunch of us. We decided we’d better step in and do something about it, and so we voted ourselves back in, and I took over the thrift shop to close it. We had a month-long sale, and we sold everything out of the shop. Fortunately, the lease was owned by Barry Menashe; he owned the building. Phil Blank is the one that went and talked to him, saying, “You gotta let these girls out of the lease” [laughs], which he did. And so we sold everything out of it. This was just two, three years ago, maybe a little more than that, not very long ago. And that was the end of Council. 

Frankel: Then you had money left?
NEPOM: Yes, and it’s been used. Part of it went to Kehillah Housing. 

Frankel: Can you explain a little bit what Kehillah Housing is?
NEPOM: The Kehillah Housing is the housing that’s been built on Beaverton highway, which is housing of a very limited size. It has 20 rooms, maybe? 

Frankel: It’s not adjacent to the Rose manor? 
NEPOM: No, it’s a separate building, right next to the place that sells appliances there on the Beaverton highway. It’s behind the Robison home, but it isn’t connected, although they’ve been administering it all these years. They have a resident manager there. It’s meant as a housing place for people with disabilities. They have had a huge waiting list from the day that they announced that they were going to do it. So many people have a child that they’re worried about, thinking, “What will happen to this child when I can no longer take care of them?” 

Frankel: And do they accept both Jewish and non-Jewish?
NEPOM: Yes. They’re using federal funds to help subsidize it, and that means totally open in terms of religion. But it was first geared towards Jewish. Although the Cadillac people put money into it; I think they must have someone in need. And quite a bit of Council’s money went into it. 

Frankel: That’s a wonderful, wonderful concept.
NEPOM: It is, and I think it’s been very successful. Very little turnover and a long waiting list of these young people that need it. And they have a resident manager. Eve Rosenfeld is on that advisory committee. I haven’t been involved in that at all. 

Frankel: So did all the money go to Kehillah?
NEPOM: No, I cannot remember what the rest of it was. It was distributed in various places in the Jewish community, I’m quite sure. There was some controversy. The national organization felt that they were entitled to the money, but we didn’t think so, and there was some concern about how that would be handled. We thought that having a national organization sue one of their subsidiaries was not very . . .

Frankel: It didn’t look good.
NEPOM: No. It didn’t happen. In fact, I just recently got a letter from National saying that the Portland section is now officially closed. It’s interesting, though, that getting money is actually what ran the company down, that and the people who were running it had no concept of what was needed. 

Frankel: You think that there’s a need and room for a similar organization to be established?
NEPOM: Not really. I think the whole volunteer picture is much different from what it used to be in the ’50s and the ’60s and the ’70s. There were a lot of women like me who felt like they had abilities and intelligence, but they were not expected to go into the workforce. Stay-at-home mom was the thing to do. They really wanted to feel like they were doing something useful. They wanted the socialization of it; they liked the contacts. I met an awful lot of nice young people. They’re not so young anymore, but they’re people I’m still friendly with through that. Later on, more women went into the workforce. More women, I think — the saying we had at that time was that they were either working or working out. The emphasis seemed to change on what young women seemed to want to do. I think if there’s a really good, outstanding involvement with the community, you can still get a good volunteer group, but it has to be well promoted, well organized, well run. Otherwise, I feel like they’re wasting their time. 

Frankel: Having talked now about the changes in the role of women, looking back, how do you personally see the changes in the expectations and the roles of women?
NEPOM: Oh, very, very different. I think that even when I first started working at the Jewish Community Center, the small little job I was doing — I was a part-time employee, I was not full time — people were still thinking, “Are you taking a job a man would have?” There really was a lot of, “What are you doing there? You don’t need it. Your husband’s successful. Go be a volunteer.” I had a lot of that. I think there were still very prominent women doing very prominent things, but it was not the ordinary thing to do. In fact, I was a docent at the art museum for many years, and even that program, the original docent program, was served by the Junior League, and they weren’t taking outside members as docents for a long time. 

Frankel: You mean non-Jews.
NEPOM: Yes. That was what they had to do. It was part of their qualifications. 

Frankel: And how did you respond? Did people just say, “Oh, that’s just the way it is”?
NEPOM: I think that was mostly the way it was. I had a friend in college who used to stand on her soapbox and preach about everything that she thought was wrong, but not too many of us did. Most of us just went along, thinking, “OK. If you’re doing that, I’ll do something else.”  

Frankel: You mentioned that Marvin felt prejudices at Grant. In his work, both in the grocery store and as a lawyer, did he also encounter prejudices? 
NEPOM: At the beginning, yes. He shared office space with Coben and Meyer, and at that time they were self-promoting themselves as the biggest Jewish law firm in Portland because most of the people in there were Jewish. But they were not accepted. Gus Solomon, I know, was one of them that was advocating for involvement, and he’s the one that was pushing some prominent people to go join the Portland Golf Club or some of those others to break down the barriers, and a few people did. It was not unusual at all to be excluded. But I never felt it, and a lot of people I know didn’t seem to feel that it was a problem. “Okay. So they’re doing their club, we’ll do ours.” 

Frankel: And to be accepted in law school, was there a quota?
NEPOM: No. Law school at that time, the Northwest College of Law, was a night school that Marv got in. He was a college graduate, but he never took a college admission course, he just signed up and went. One of his best friends there was a guy from England who had been out here in the Navy, and had actually only finished school in England, had never even been to college. But it was a different level of education. And he got into law school. You couldn’t do that anyplace else. It was taught by practicing judges and lawyers in Portland, and they thought they had the finest education imaginable. These people really knew what they were talking about. It wasn’t just theory on a piece of paper; they knew how to work in real life with real clients. He thought that they had some of the finest teachers around. 

Frankel: Where was the campus?
NEPOM: The campus was the third floor of a downtown building. They used to claim that their recreation hall was in the hall where they had a Coke machine! And it was taught at night. It was after he was there that they joined Lewis & Clark, and all of a sudden the criteria for entering were totally changed. The amount it cost was totally changed. Everything about it was totally different. 

Frankel: So it wasn’t affiliated yet with Lewis & Clark.
NEPOM: No. It was just simply on its own. When it joined Lewis & Clark it really changed the tenor of the place. At that time, they wanted to make it a day school, and some of the alumni were having a fit. They said that the night school serves a different group, and it needs to be available. So they do have a night program still at Lewis & Clark, but it costs just as much as going to day school. At the time, it was very much cheaper. It wasn’t even accredited at first. To be accredited, they had to have a certain amount of professors, certain library standards, certain criteria for entering, and all that. It took them a while to get accredited. 

Frankel: But by passing the bar, he was able to practice.
NEPOM: Yes, but it was different. Our son is in there, and he went to law school . . . 

Frankel: At Lewis & Clark.
NEPOM: So he had a different background altogether. 

Frankel: What type of law did Marvin practice?
NEPOM: General, everything. He started out with anything that walked in the door, and he ended up doing products, liability. I think the biggest case he ever had was against Ford. 

Frankel: The car company Ford? 
NEPOM: It was at the time when the Pinto was being sued over and over for bursting into flames. He had a client who had been killed with a gas tank exploding. It wasn’t a Pinto, though; it was a different line of Ford. I think one person had died and one person had been severely burned. So they came to Marv, and he took the case. I think David was still in law school; I don’t think he had practiced. Anyway, Ford sent out their crew of lawyers, and one of them made some comment about little-town lawyers, which made Marv mad mad mad mad. He was determined on that case. They did a lot of research on it. They found some films that had actually been made by Ford himself in testing these things, where they were testing them and the gas tank was exploding. And they took it to court. 

In fact, he found a mockup of the body of the Ford that showed where the gas tank was put in the car, and how there had been some bolts that were pointed in instead of out or something, and that’s what was causing it. He had this mockup of this car, just this part of it, and they took it into the courtroom. I remember they couldn’t get it into the elevator in the courthouse, and he and David and a few other guys carried it up two or three flights of stairs to the courtroom. They won the case, the biggest case he ever had in all those years. He practiced for 50 years. He was president of the Multnomah Bar. Good times. At the end of that trial, they brought the mockup down, and they put it in our garage. 

Frankel: Do you still have it?
NEPOM: No, but our grandkids used to call it “Papa’s broken car.” Many years later, he got a call from a lawyer in Texas asking him if he still had it. This guy had a similar case and he had heard about this mockup, and could he have it. He said, “Sure, come and get it.” So they sent out a truck with a driver, and they called me when they got to town to get directions to the house. And I went down to meet the guy, and he was in this gigantic, huge truck with this big trailer on it. I directed him to the house, and here was this little mockup! Anyway, we just gave it to him, and he hauled it out of here. But it was used again, apparently, in another case. So he always referred to that as the biggest case he had, the one that he talked about with other people that they had a good time with. 

Frankel: Going back to family life, did your children go to Jewish camp?
NEPOM: BB [B’nai B’rith] Camp. My daughter didn’t; she went to Camp Fire Girl. She was horse crazy at that time. She went to horse camp. The boys went to BB Camp. In fact, Marv used to go with them. He’d sort of fill in with the Boy Scouts or whoever. They went to Boy Scout Camp or BB Camp. 

Frankel: As a kid, did he go? Was there a BB Camp here? 
NEPOM: I don’t remember. I know my kids went to BB Camp. I remember Gerry coming back. I’m thinking of that man at the Jewish Community Center who was there for so many years, who was in charge of it. Anyway, I remember Gerry would come back and say, “What’s so great about ping pong?” David went to the camp from the temple in California. 

Frankel: NFTY [National Federation of Temple Youth]. 
NEPOM: Yes, I think.

Frankel: And did your children go to Israel? 
NEPOM: My daughter went, when she was in college, for a summer and had a good time. My boys — Gerry went with some young people when he was in college, and David did not go until recently. We took the whole family. 

Frankel: And so again, growing up, did you have Friday night dinners? Seders?
NEPOM: We always had a Seder. Always had Seders. Friday night was less formal usually. We’d do the candles. I was cooking in those days, which I don’t do now. We’d have Friday nights here, but we never had an extended family. We had just the three kids and us, and that was it. The Seders we usually tried to invite people because it was more fun. 

Frankel: In general, how has the Jewish community and the community at large changed over the years you’ve lived here?
NEPOM: I think it has changed. For one thing, it’s grown tremendously. It’s a huge enlargement from what it was all those years we kept claiming that there were 8,000 Jews in the state. And now there’s what, 50,000? Who knows. But lots and lots of influx of Jewish people. And my kids, not David so much, but Gerry always had Jewish friends in Portland. He was very involved in AZA. Dick Brownstein was the leader of their group, and I remember him particularly because he used to always rave about Gerry. Gerry became involved with conventions all over for BB. He ended up marrying a non-Jewish girl. David, who was never involved in the Jewish community, married a Jewish girl. 

Frankel: You never know.
NEPOM: Right, you don’t know how they’re involved. 

Frankel: And so besides the size of the community, what else have you noticed or can you comment on? 
NEPOM: I really can’t say. It seems like there’s so many more organizations, all of them asking for funds. It seems that most of the mail I bring in is solicitations, and that seems to be tiring. Everybody asks for their own. Some of these things seem to have come out of Federation that maybe we should combine, which makes sense to me, but they never seem to go anywhere. 

Frankel: A few have combined, Cedar Sinai and Jewish Family and Child Services.
NEPOM: Yes, but they both still look for money. 

Frankel: Separately?
NEPOM: Yes. I think I’m still getting pleas from almost every organization in town, although I think the Jewish Community Foundation is a good step forward in that it does collect money and does invest it and give it out to whomever their donors want. I think it’s an asset. In fact, Marv used to like that group because he’d say the money basically stays there, and it’s the interest that gets out. When you donate to places like Federation, it just gets spent and then they want more. 

Frankel: In terms of the Jewishness of the community and the younger generation, do you notice a change?
NEPOM: A mixed bag. When I go to synagogue now, I don’t know very many of the people; they all seem younger. There’s a group that seems to really know how to daven. They know how to lead, which is exciting, but not widespread I don’t think. But there is a core of really dedicated Jews that’s new. They never used to really consider Shaarie Torah Orthodox; to an Orthodox that’s not Orthodox. And all these other groups that have come in, the Chabad and other groups, have made a difference in how you see the community. 

Frankel: And in the general community, what changes have you noticed?
NEPOM: I’ve never really felt any antisemitism in the Jewish community. I’ve been involved in a lot of non-Jewish organizations — at the [Portland] Art Museum, at the School of Arts and Crafts — and I don’t know, as long as you’re willing to work for their end goals, there doesn’t seem to be any difference. 

Frankel: Right, I didn’t mean so much anti-Semitism, but the growth of the city.
NEPOM: The growth is overwhelming, really, in terms of sheer numbers and how downtown has changed. 

Frankel: Is it better?
NEPOM: Good question. I never go downtown. Is that better? I used to shop downtown, but I don’t anymore. 

Frankel: Why?
NEPOM: I don’t like the parking. I don’t walk around that much. It’s easier to drive to Washington Square or whatever, so every time I go downtown it looks like another building is spurting up where I never saw one before. I don’t know, the city has spread out so far; there are so many different places to go. Traffic is horrible. It’s changed. I think that for me, I’ve sort of hunkered down. I’ve cut back a great deal on anything in the community, and even in where I go personally, and I think these are all reasons that I’m now contemplating moving to a home. I’m 87 next week. As I said, my birthday is leap year. 

Frankel: So you’re younger [laughing].
NEPOM: I’m only 22, if you can believe it, and boy, do I look terrible for a 22-year-old [laughing]. But anyway 2016 will be a leap year, so I’ll have another one, and that will make me 22. My kids get a great kick out of my grandchildren, the fact that they’ve had more birthdays than I’ve had. But anyway, it’s time. That’s getting old. Marv was 88 when he died, and it was just a year ago. My daughter says to me, talking about moving, she says, “Well, you’ve had a year to mourn. Maybe it’s time to get on with the rest of your life.” 

Frankel: Do you have any other stories that you wish to share about Marvin?
NEPOM: He was such a good man. I don’t know. He wasn’t that involved socially with all the young groups. When he was young, there was the Ramblers, and all of these groups of young men, and he was never really that involved, although he always had a few good friends, a few of them Jewish. Some of his best friends were two men that he’d gone to law school with, who were not Jewish. He worked hard. He was a very good employer. He was a lawyer for 50 years. Every year they’d give out a 50-year award, and he got that. He was still practicing until the year before he died. 

Frankel: And he stayed with the same firm?
NEPOM: His own firm. He never had a firm as such. He was a sole practitioner. Even when David — they were not partners; they were sharing a space. And he had three other lawyers that were sharing a space, and we built our own office down on Barbur. He was comfortable with that. He liked doing things around the building to make sure it was okay, and taking care of things, and that was an extra help for him. And we’ve had some property. He’s enjoyed puttering around with that. He never played golf or was a big social card player or anything. But he was such a good father. In fact, my daughter, at his funeral, she spoke, and her first comments were, “Dad was 22 when I was born, and somehow he already knew how to be the perfect father.” 

Frankel: How beautiful. Very sweet. 
NEPOM: We were young, and when we raised the kids, we were like kids, too. Fortunately, one of the things that happened — actually, I think it started in the ’70s, when we went to Israel while I was on the National board — is we started traveling. And I’m so grateful for some of the places that we went and some of the things we did while we still could.

Frankel: Did you travel with the kids, or just the two of you?
NEPOM: Just the two of us; by then the kids were gone. When they were young, we used to do things like Seaside and Black Butte or something like that, or go to Disneyland or whatever. But Marv and I started traveling, and I think we pretty much covered the globe. We had some very, very interesting trips.

Frankel: Where did you go?
NEPOM: We went to Australia, and we went to New Zealand. That was the same trip. We went to Japan, we went to India, we went to China, we went to most of Europe, although not though not too much in Eastern Europe. But we were in Europe, and Israel, and Turkey, and Egypt. I think Egypt and Morocco were the only places we went to in Africa. We didn’t go down any farther. Lots of places in the West, several times to Hawaii, several times to Israel. A lot of really nice travel. 

Frankel: So would you just go on your own, or did you join a group?
NEPOM: No, one of the things we liked was the Smithsonian. They do good trips. We’d use the Smithsonian and took each one of the grandchildren separately, without their parents, to Washington, DC, when they were each about ten years old. We had really interesting trips with them. We were with family, too. My sister’s son lived in Philadelphia, and we’d go back there. His two children, each one had a b’nai mitzvah. One was a girl. My other sister lived in California, and we’d go down there. We tried to keep in touch with whatever family we could, even though we didn’t have a lot of family here. 

Frankel: Did all your children have bar or bat mitzvahs? 
NEPOM: Not my daughter. We were at Temple [Beth Israel] at that time, and at that time they weren’t doing it for girls. My two boys were at Temple, and everything went fine. My grandchildren had their b’nai mitzvahs at Neveh Shalom, but they did not continue after bar mitzvah. 

Frankel: Any stories about you, your family, that you would like to add? Or about your own experiences?
NEPOM: I think I’ve had some interesting experiences. Fortunately, they weren’t terrible like my parents’ histories. The kind of wonderful life I was privileged to have, to grow up in this country with parents that supported me, that were so generous in every way with helping us get started, both my parents and Marv’s parents, to help us in business, to help us with the house, all these kind of things, and then we took it on from there. He was really a good man. We were married for 67 years. We married young, so we had all those years together to sort of grow up together, and I feel very, very, very grateful that even his manner of dying was considerate of his family. 

He died at home. We knew he was ill for a long time, but it didn’t really manifest itself into a fatal illness till near the end. He managed it well. The kids were here; they all came. We were sitting with him at home, with the help of hospice. Everything was taken care of. He had his financial things all in good shape for me, the children, and his grandchildren. He just handled things. He took care of everything. And the fact that his family was the main consideration, that and his practice. 

He loved being a lawyer, had a really good time at it, and I think he did a really good job of it. He seemed to be highly regarded by some of the notices I got, very much so. He was influencing people. I got several notes from people saying, “He helped me and didn’t charge me,” those kinds of things. I know one of his clients had a baby girl and named it Marvina [both laugh]. 

I just feel so privileged to have led the kind of life I have, and I’m now looking at it, “OK. What do I do now? Do I hang on here as long as I can and have something unexpected happen that causes tragedy for the children, or do I take care of myself?” Because I do have health issues, too, quite a few of them [laughs]. I’ve survived a lot of health issues. I’ve had breast cancer; I’ve had both of my breasts removed. I have heart failure, I’m diabetic, and I keep thinking, “OK. Maybe it’s time that I go somewhere where I can get cared for.” And is that the place for me? I don’t know. I think that the Jewish atmosphere of an assisted living place is important to me. 

Frankel: More familiar.
NEPOM: I think so. There are lots of places in the community now where you can go if your finances aren’t in great consideration, and I think I would be much more comfortable in the Jewish atmosphere. Now, that’s different. I’m not sure that would affect any of my kids. I don’t think that would be their prime concern. 

Frankel: Whether it was a Jewish place? 
NEPOM: Right. Is that something I did or didn’t do, or is that something that just happens? 

Frankel: I don’t think you can take responsibility for those types of things. 
NEPOM: I don’t think so. 

Frankel: A lot of luck is involved. 
NEPOM: I think so. I’m feeling lucky now, my grandson is married Jewishly [sic]. I have four grandchildren and only one of them is married, and we’ll see what happens. 

Frankel: Thank you very much. 
NEPOM: Thank you for listening! 

Frankel: My pleasure.