Susan Woolach Marcus

Tarlow: Susie, I’m going to ask you some of the mundane questions that we need to know: when you were born, where you were born, who were your parents.
MARCUS: OK. I was born on October 23, 1936. I was born in Portland, Oregon, at Wilcox Division of the Good Samaritan Hospital.

Tarlow: Let’s talk a little about what you remember in your childhood.
MARCUS: Memories are so selective; they have more to do with what people tell you. But I remember the time when we lived in Los Angeles. I was a little girl. My father was working for the May Company, in the tire division at that point. We lived in Beverly Hills, on Crestview Drive. We lived in a pretty good-sized house with a very long staircase, which I fell down once. That is probably why I remember it. It was a traditional house with all of the accouterments, with a living room/dining room on one side, the kitchen on the other. I remember going to school there, which is what I did prior to coming to Portland.

Tarlow: So who lived in your house?
MARCUS: My father and mother, Harry Woolach and Stella Woolach . . .

Tarlow: And you went to school, so how old were you?
MARCUS: I went to preschool. They must have been very eager to have me be somewhere else because it seems to me that I went to school at a very young age. In fact, when I arrived in Portland I had already been through the first grade even though I was younger. The Portland Public Schools, in their wisdom, made me repeat the first grade because of my age. So I sat outside the door of the first-grade room on a little red chair most of the time in Portland, Oregon, because I had already done everything.

Tarlow: [laughs] You were a naughty child!
MARCUS: I don’t think I was so naughty as — frankly, they didn’t know what to do with me.

Tarlow: No, I think you probably wanted to teach the class.
MARCUS: That’s probably right. I was probably an aspiring teacher even then.

Tarlow: What school was that?
MARCUS: I went to Alameda grade school.

Tarlow: So you lived on the East Side?
MARCUS: We did.

Tarlow: Tell me about Alameda grade school, what you remember, who your friends were.
MARCUS: I went to school with Carol London. She lived right near the school. And she lived right near Bob Tobias, my cousin. I remember Alameda as being kind of an old, dumpy place with a ramp. This was before handicapped access, but they had built part of the school with a ramp. I remember the school as being a good place; I liked to go there. I think I learned a lot. Across the street from Alameda was a church, and after school they had classes. So my mother enrolled me — there is a story there — and I took Spanish, which of course influenced my life. I was taking Spanish in the second grade. I also think she must have been really eager to keep me busy. I took ballet. I took piano. I was good at none of those, but I did take them. I took Spanish, swimming, you name it. I remember Mickey [Hirschberg] at the Jewish Community Center. That was my swimming instructor.

Tarlow: When you did all of those activities, how did you get to where you needed to be?
MARCUS: The church was right across the street from the school, so I would walk. When I went to other places, I was chauffeured by my mother.

Tarlow: Let’s go back to your mom and dad for a minute. You were born in Portland, but you moved to LA and then you came back to Portland. What brought you back? What brought your dad back to Portland?
MARCUS: Woolach Brothers Tire Store. They were working for the May Company, and then my uncle Jay, who was the elder brother, opened a store, and my father came back to be part of the business.

Tarlow: Was that a good move for you? Were you happy about that?
MARCUS: I think I must have been very happy. I don’t remember any angst about moving from one city to the next. I think I was young enough so that it wasn’t like I had a whole group of friends that I had to give up. It was just preschool.

Tarlow: Did you have cousins and playmates when you moved back to Portland?
MARCUS: I had neighbors that I played with. But I did have my cousin Bob. His mother was Anna, my father’s sister, and we saw a lot of them.

Tarlow: What were some of the things that you did when you weren’t in a formal class in the church? How did you spend your time as a kid? Did you have a bicycle?
MARCUS: I might have, but I don’t think I rode it well.

Tarlow: Did you ever jump rope?
MARCUS: Yes, I probably did that. I think that it was more about — I remember listening to programs on the radio after school. That was a very big deal. We used to follow, I guess we call them soap operas today. The radio was one of my chief sources of companionship. I listened to the Portland Beavers. I became a fan of the Beavers. There were wonderful plays on the Lux Radio Theater. It was a source of great entertainment for me, being in my house and listening to the radio.

Tarlow: I think that goes with being an only child. I can relate to that myself.
MARCUS: Yes.

Tarlow: You had your secular education at Alameda grade school. What about your religious education?
MARCUS: Temple Beth Israel. But it’s interesting, I have lost most of it [the memories] until Confirmation class. I don’t remember it all, but I’m sure I was there. Confirmation class was a huge deal. It was my friendship base. The issue of getting a religious education at that point was pretty much fact-based. I think it was more the social opportunity that I enjoyed. I don’t think I was crazy about going there for learning. We had a project in eighth grade. I chose the State of Israel, which was in its infancy. I was born in 1936, and Israel became a state in 1948.

Tarlow: Who taught the class? The rabbi?
MARCUS: Part of it. I can’t remember the names of my teachers. I had several teachers: Markewitz, Trachtenberg. I remember those people. I’m sure they were totally annoyed by us as teenagers and below teen age. I remember throwing our coats off the pews. It was not for the love of learning that we were there. Julius Nodel was the rabbi. He was a very colorful guy. He took those same coats and threw them off — dramatic.

Tarlow: With the lights dimmed?
MARCUS: Yes, absolutely dramatic.

Tarlow: How about Judaism in your home?
MARCUS: There was a fight between the Christmas tree and the wreath on the door and Christmas presents, and Judaism. My father’s family were not religious. My mother’s family, which had come from Canada, were much more traditionally religious. They were connected to their Judaism. I don’t think my father’s family had any of the warmth and affection and love for Judaism that my mother’s family did. It was a different upbringing, distance from a Jewish community. Living in San Francisco, and then they moved to Portland. All of their friends were Jewish; there was no doubt about that. But I think it was make-up time at that point, and so Jewish kids, to make up for being Jewish, got Christmas, got tons of presents. I remember piles of presents, the tree, the whole thing. But I also remember Passover. We always had Passover, and we often invited a Service person who was not from Portland, who was away from their home.

Tarlow: During the war.
MARCUS: Yes.

Tarlow: You always had the seder at your house?
MARCUS: Yes.

Tarlow: Who came to it?
MARCUS: My mother and father. My aunt and uncle, Bertha and Al. My cousin Bob and his mom and dad. And assorted guests that didn’t have children of their own, like Mary and Dave Greenberg, and so forth. They were very good friends of my aunt and uncle.

Tarlow: So you lived in Portland, you went to grade school, you went to religious school at Temple Beth Israel, and after that experience, you went on to high school.
MARCUS: Yes, I went to Grant High School.

Tarlow: And tell me a little bit about your experience.
MARCUS: Intellectually, it was a really good place for me; I learned a lot. But it was very traditional. It was lecture, take notes, and then during a test you wrote back what you learned. I was good at it, so yay! I could listen. And there were lots of opportunities for courses that were a little bit more demanding. I was part of a Ford Foundation program where I got to teach Spanish at a grade school. That was very fun. It was part of this program.

Tarlow: It’s very interesting to me the way you learned Spanish in the second grade. And then did you just carry it on through your whole education?
MARCUS: I did. By the time I got to college, I already had enough Spanish that I was taking third-year college Spanish classes, and that was my major.

Tarlow: Did you continue your Jewish education while you were in high school?
MARCUS: Yes, that was a major part of being Jewish then. The way the world worked then was that there were Jews and then there was the rest of the world. So I was part of the Jews. I belonged to K’maia, the Jewish club, with other kids from the other high schools. We hung out at the Jewish Community Center on 13th.

Tarlow: What did you do there?
MARCUS: I think we caused trouble and ate more than anything else. There was a little snack bar there that was a big deal. There were dances. And there were a lot of really interesting Israel programs. There was a Young Israel program where we learned to dance the Hora. We learned some songs. The Center, in many ways, was more of an educational arena for me than Temple Beth Israel.

Tarlow: So it was really more of an educational thing than an athletic thing for you.
MARCUS: For me it was definitely not at athletic thing. That was not something I was never good at. Learning to swim was even a struggle. It was a big struggle.

Tarlow: When you think about your high school days for a minute, think about something that really stood out for you that you liked about being that age in Portland, Oregon.
MARCUS: I liked all of my classes; that was good. I especially liked something they called US History then. I had lots of friends who also went to Grant. There was some connection with neighbors, but the social connection was clearly with other Jewish kids. And at that time Stan was going to Lincoln.

Tarlow: This was Stan Marcus, your future husband.
MARCUS: Yes. We met at the Jewish Community Center.

Tarlow: Like so many other couples.
MARCUS: Yes. I was about 16 years old.

Tarlow: So you met Stan when you were still in high school. And after high school, we know you went to college. Tell me about that experience.
MARCUS: I went to Stanford. It was 1954. I graduated from Stanford in 1957. I graduated two quarters early, Stan and I got married in December, and then I went to the University of Oregon for winter and spring.

Tarlow: So let’s talk about Stanford a little bit. How did you get there?
MARCUS: I drove through Ashland with a high school friend.

Tarlow: You drove yourself?
MARCUS: No, I later got a car there. One of her family members drove us. Now that I think about it, I wonder how come my parents didn’t take me to college. But they didn’t. They just said goodbye.

Tarlow: It was like sending you to the class in the church across the street.
MARCUS: Exactly. They got rid of me, but on a more sophisticated level. So today people apply to 12 or 15 colleges. I applied to two, the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford. I got a note from the University of California addressed, “Dear Number 79321.” It was a total form letter. It said, “You will be admitted upon completion of your high school diploma.” From Stanford I got a letter that said, “Dear Susan, we really want you to come here.” So which do you think I chose?

Tarlow: Of course. And one was a state school and one a private school. Did that have anything to do with it, do you think?
MARCUS: I don’t think so. They were actually equally ranked in terms of an education. The University of California at Berkeley was absolutely a top school, but it was much bigger than Stanford. And my cousin Arlene Woolach had gone to Stanford. She was my uncle Jay and Aunt Ida’s eldest daughter. She preceded me at Stanford, and so I’m thinking that must have had something to do with my deciding to go there. I don’t think I had the slightest clue what I was doing.

Tarlow: Well, when you got there you had to find something to do. What did you find to do?
MARCUS: I taught religious school in Palo Alto.

Tarlow: Did you really?
MARCUS: I really did. It was in Palo Alto, Temple Beth Am or some such place. They used college students to deal with the little critters, the little Jewish kids. It was fun.

[recording pauses and resumes]

Tarlow: So on Sunday mornings you went to teach Sunday school.
MARCUS: Yes. Arden Shenker also taught there, and he actually knew what he was doing.

Tarlow: Was he there at the same time that you were?
MARCUS: Yes. He was one year younger than I.

Tarlow: You knew him then?
MARCUS: Yes. We went out to dinner together. I often vouched for him as if he were 21, when in fact I wasn’t 21. But life was different, in the situation with consuming alcohol. The California Alcoholic Beverage Commission was very busy rounding up college kids and putting the violation on their records. And at some point, you could not be a teacher or a lawyer, anything certified by the state, if you had any infraction with alcohol. It was a very bizarre situation. There was lots of alcohol consumed, and people drove while they were consuming alcohol, but if they were caught the punishment was very severe. It could actually change your decision about what you wanted to be.

Tarlow: It went on your permanent record.
MARCUS: Absolutely. So life at Stanford was interesting and carefree. There were lots of opportunities for visiting musicians, artists. It was very well endowed, mostly by wealthy San Francisco families that had gone to Stanford and then managed to share with Stanford. Large performing halls and so forth.

Tarlow: Where did you live while you were there?
MARCUS: I lived in three different dorms. There was a freshman dorm, which was a very old, wooden dorm. I was in a single room, which I liked a lot. I wasn’t ready to share with anyone. Remember, I’m a single child. So I needed a single room. But the next year I roomed with two other women. The last year I roomed with a different friend in the modern, at that time, Florence Moore Hall. I was only there for a quarter of my senior year, so . . .

Tarlow: So what would you say about your time at Stanford overall?
MARCUS: I had the most amazing professors. One history professor, whose name I have temporarily lost, at every single lecture the entire auditorium of 200 students would rise and applaud him. He was that amazing. You could imagine this happening once or twice, but he was so amazing that at every American History lecture people got to their feet and clapped as hard as they could. It was a very wonderful, exceptional place to learn.

Tarlow: Living at home and being an only child, and then going away and being on your own, gave you a whole different perspective on your life, I am sure.
MARCUS: Yes. I was always difficult, and now I was not only difficult but I thought I knew everything [laughs].

Tarlow: What about your Jewish connections, other than your Sunday school teaching?
MARCUS: I had friends who were Jewish, but also friends who weren’t Jewish. There wasn’t a Hillel or a place where Jewish kids gathered.

Tarlow: Women.
MARCUS: Yes, women. There wasn’t a natural mechanism to continue being Jewish. The real issue on campus at that time was the House Un-American Activities Committee, and so I became aware. I had no idea what was going on while I was in high school. When I got to Stanford, they said to me, “What about all of these folks who are now being asked to swear that they are loyal Americans?” For me it was an awakening.

Tarlow: What did knowing that prompt from you?
MARCUS: The feeling that there was something really wrong with a government where you had to swear you weren’t a traitor. Because of course, if you were a traitor, you would have had no trouble swearing it. I became politically conscious of some very difficult things connected with the United States government.

Tarlow: Other than that, were there other things that you became aware of and got involved in?
MARCUS: I am trying to remember. I was in a speech class, but it wasn’t an ordinary speech class. It was a discussion group that met at the professor’s house, and we used talk about various things and make presentations. It was really more of an intellectual gathering. We talked about things that matter, and that heightened my consciousness even more. Plus I was majoring in Spanish, but I was pretty much done with courses, so I had the equivalent of a major in American History. Those were the classes that I really, really enjoyed. I think political activity was the thing. I had no clue in high school.

Tarlow: That’s probably true for a lot of people at that time. You get to college and you see all of these people standing around with signs, that kind of stuff.
MARCUS: Yes, and the Stanford paper itself, actually there was a Supreme Court case involving the Stanford Daily. They were involved in a question of a reporter’s right to ask questions. It was pretty inflammatory for that period of time. I’m trying now to put the pieces together that made me what I am. I think that was important, the environment on that campus. There were all kinds of other things like “Strawberry Pancake Day,” I don’t want you to think that there weren’t, but there was also a lot of talking about very controversial and interesting topics.

Tarlow: I don’t know about when you were there, but in later years the make-up of the student body has been very diverse. Was it that way when you were there?
MARCUS: I don’t know if it was so diverse; I don’t think I ever saw anybody who was not white. And the Jewish population was pretty much made up of professors. There was a large number of Jewish professors at Stanford. There was not a huge Jewish [student] population at that time. But more or less, there was a difference in economic status. I was very good friends with Becky Kaiser, who was Henry Kaiser’s daughter. They had a home on the East Bay that we used to go to. We were invited. They had a glass roof that would open and close. I was used to gadgets. My uncle had gadgets. But for that period of time, this was something else. Who has a house with a glass roof over a swimming pool that opens and closes? Near Oakland, California. I don’t recall that she was spoiled, but there were lots of kids who came from families that went to Europe and did all kinds of things that belonged to another segment of society.

Tarlow: They lived a different life than you did.
MARCUS: They did. Absolutely. But I don’t remember ever feeling that as a problem. The connection we had was that we were learning, not about status. But clearly there were many people who had a great deal of money and political power as well.

Tarlow: So that was your jumping-off place for the political thinking that you carry with you today. Let’s go back to when you left Stanford and went to Oregon. You’ll tell me about Oregon and Stan and if there is a correlation.
MARCUS: Yes. I left Stanford in December of 1957. There were still two quarters left, but I had enough credits to graduate. Stan and I were married that December. Stan was finishing his degree at Oregon, and I used the two quarters to get my teaching degree, and I also did student teaching in Spanish and American History. Is there a theme here? I was very impressed with the University of Oregon. I had been at Stanford and I was expecting — the teaching at the University of Oregon was equal to the teaching at Stanford. I felt very lucky. The education school, not. That was a lot about being in your seat so that they could count you there. But everything else was at a remarkably high level.

Tarlow: Where did you live when you were in Eugene?
MARCUS: We had an apartment off campus.

Tarlow: This little, young couple.
MARCUS: Yes, the wife who didn’t know how to cook, who had to call her mother because she had been given a roast and couldn’t figure out . . .

Tarlow: Someone gave you a roast?
MARCUS: My mother. But she didn’t tell me there’s no “roast” setting on the oven. You have to use “bake” or “broil.” You have to make a big decision [laughs]. So I called home.

Tarlow: This is somebody who is proficient in a foreign language [laughs].
MARCUS: And better still, my friend Renee Holzman, who was Renee Rosenberg at that time, was also at the University of Oregon. She came over, and neither of us could figure out the bake or broil conundrum [laughter].

Tarlow: So what happened with the roast? Not that it’s pertinent to your life.
MARCUS: Well, it worked. “Bake” was satisfactory. I think nobody trusted that I could cook, so I was busy getting instructions. I had a shower, and people gave me instructions for the equivalent of making coffee or tea.

Tarlow: Let’s talk about living in Eugene and getting married. Let’s talk about Stan a little bit.
MARCUS: So Stan was going to school, finishing, and he was also selling magazines door to door at that time. He would go to one of the small towns outside of Eugene and walk from door to door trying to get people to sign up for magazines, and they did! He was pretty good at it. We had fun. I was under a fair amount of pressure because now getting my teaching credential, doing in two quarters what should have been a year. I was doing student teaching and taking very stupid classes, but nevertheless it took time.

Tarlow: Were you working at all? Were you a student teacher?
MARCUS: I taught two different classes at the high school in Eugene. The first was Spanish. When I walked in, the “teacher” walked out. So I did that all by myself. He obviously looked on me as a substitute, and he went and drank coffee. I really was on my own; it was good experience. The social studies teacher I got was a very good teacher and gave me a lot of good opportunities to teach. It was a good place.

Tarlow: So you were teaching and Stan was selling magazines. Was he still in school?
MARCUS: Yes, he had two more quarters to finish.

Tarlow: OK. So you got married in December. Let’s talk about that for a minute. Where?
MARCUS: We got married at Temple Beth Israel. I’m assuming now, from what I remember, that my mother decided everything because first of all, I was taking finals a week before. And I was located in Palo Alto, California, and the wedding was in Portland, Oregon. She must have picked the dresses. Good job! She did well. And hired the photographer, Edris Morrison. There was no color photography, so to get color they would literally paint on the photographs. That was the state of photography.

We were married on December 22 of 1957, and we immediately drove to Eugene. It was icy and cold. We hadn’t eaten. We got to the apartment, which was really nice, modern, and it was freezing in the apartment. Neither I nor Stan knew that you have to turn the switch that says, “On and Off.” Just turning it to “Heat” won’t do it [laughter]. You can see that I had lived a life that didn’t involve such practical details as learning to — but it was fun. We had friends. It was a little like playing house.

Tarlow: I remember being at your wedding, but I can’t say that I remember your dress.
MARCUS: I can’t say that it was a very big do. My mother must have picked that out too, and the colors and so on. But that was really, traditionally how it worked; women didn’t do that. My cousin came from Canada to be in the wedding.

Tarlow: Who was your cousin?
MARCUS: My cousin Norma. I’ll get the last name in a minute. She and my college roommate, the one I lived with my last year, were in my wedding.

Tarlow: Who were some of the other people?
MARCUS: Sandra Spector now. She was Sandra Berenson. Renee Holzman, then Rosenberg. My sister-in-law Sandy. Robin was pregnant with Kelly, so she could not be in the bridal party.

Tarlow: But today she could.
MARCUS: Yes, of course she could. But then, no. And Myra Enkelis. I had a big bridal party. And Stan had every cousin from his family. And Al Goldberg, Merl Greenstein, Bob Tobias, and my step-brother Ozzie Georges, etc. And Harold Schwartz and Ken Schwartz, and you name it. All the family. There were a lot of people.

Tarlow: Amazing.
MARCUS: My roommate’s name was Carla Johnson, by the way, the one who came from Stanford to be in my wedding.

Tarlow: That was a big deal, to leave your studies. No wonder you had to have your mother do everything. You had no time.
MARCUS: That’s right, and I suspect that I also had no interest.

Tarlow: I didn’t want to say that.
MARCUS: I suspect it wasn’t something I was very focused on.

Tarlow: You are an amazing woman. So was Jack in the wedding too?
MARCUS: Yes.

Tarlow: What about Larry?
MARCUS: No. Sandy wasn’t married at that time.

Tarlow: No, I was thinking of Larry Schwartz.
MARCUS: No, just Jack. Jack and Stan were very close cousins.

Tarlow: OK. So now we’ve got you graduated from college. You’re a married woman. Pretty soon you’re going to have to bring in some cash.
MARCUS: Right. So I graduated from Stanford, summa cum laude. I had done all this student teaching and had all kinds of recommendations. I could not get a teaching job at all. So come the first day of school, my uncle Al knew the principal at Madison High School. He called him and said, “Might you have a job for my niece?” That’s how I got the job. Not because I had any qualifications at all. It started out by who you knew. I was very lucky to get a job. It was not easy. That was in 1958.

Tarlow: Where were you living while you were teaching at Madison High School?
MARCUS: We were living in my mother’s house on Hamilton Street because they were nearer. We lived there until we bought our house down from Wilson High School. I taught US History, not Spanish, because that was the job. I was pregnant. Stan went, by the way, to Lackland Air Force Base. He was a member of the Air National Guard. This was during the Cuban scare. So everybody who didn’t want to go to a regular Army situation volunteered with the National Guard. That’s what he did. He completed all the rest of his service on weekends at the airport, which is where the Air National Guard was.

So he was working at Woolach Brothers, I was teaching at Madison High School, and I was pregnant with Hank, who was born in July of 1959, after I got this job. I was, of course, told to leave because you cannot be pregnant and be a teacher. At seven months it was obvious. There were students at Madison High School who were pregnant. That was OK, but no teachers. So I quit teaching because that was the rule. I went back to teaching when the kids were little. I taught at Bridlemile. At that point I was teaching 7th- and 8th-grade Spanish, and I got that job only because my sister-in-law Evelyn was president of the PTA. She said to the principal, “My sister-in-law is a Spanish major. You probably need a foreign language here.” You can see that the course of my life had more to do with people who were members of my family and promoted me than with any particular ability.

Tarlow: As it should be.
MARCUS: As apparently it really is in the world.

Tarlow: Let’s talk about the family. You had Hank. You had to quit before you had Hank. When did you start back to teaching?
MARCUS: It was after Amy was born, so it was four or five years after that.

Tarlow: So for a while you were just a stay-at-home mom.
MARCUS: I was.

Tarlow: So you had Hank, and then you had Amy, who is now Amy Marcus-Newhall, and then there was Rebecca.
MARCUS: Yes, but she wasn’t born until 1970. That was later on. I was in and out of teaching during that time.

Tarlow: How did you juggle all of that?
MARCUS: Stan was a huge help. Mainly he loved being with the kids, so it was very nice. It was not like single-parenting. Much, much better to have someone who is really interested. And every weekend he would take them out somewhere for fun.

Tarlow: While you did the laundry. Did you know how to do that by then?
MARCUS: I did. I became an expert. My granddaughter Naya, who is ten and a half and lives in San Francisco, Becky’s daughter, said to her mother in response to, “What should we get Grammy for her birthday?” She was thinking, “Well, she likes to read, but you know what she really likes? She likes to wash clothes! So we could send her some to wash” [laughter]. So obviously I am good at it, right?

Tarlow: Let’s go back to Bridlemile School. That was your first Spanish teaching job.
MARCUS: Yes, and this was a middle school and I had been teaching high school, so there is a substantial difference. The kids at Madison were really from a different economic group, even then. Madison was a brand-new high school and quite beautiful.

Tarlow: In Northeast Portland, right?
MARCUS: On the way to the airport off 82nd, yes. The students at Bridlemile were at a very high scholarly level. It was very different teaching in a place where kids really just sopped up the learning.

Tarlow: And whose parents had great expectations.
MARCUS: And whose parents were obnoxious. They were not as obnoxious when I began. When I ended my career at West Sylvan, parents were mostly a block to kids being able to fail and learn from that. Things changed a great deal.

Tarlow: How long were you at Bridlemile?
MARCUS: I was at Bridlemile until I went to West Sylvan. Becky was in the seventh grade when that happened, so that would have been the early ’80s.

Tarlow: And what was the reason for you to move to West Sylvan? How did that come about?
MARCUS: The school district at that time decided that they would use middle schools rather than K-8 schools. The idea was that people were experts in their subjects rather than teaching everything. So I went to West Sylvan, where I taught Spanish and law and social studies and so forth.

Tarlow: What was the highlight of that for you?
MARCUS: A lot of incredible, wonderful students. When you’re in a middle school, you either have to laugh or you have to leave. I had an amazing principal and lots of support. It was hard work though. I used to come home and keep my coat on because once I took it off, I had to go to bed. I was tired [laughs].

Tarlow: How long were you there?
MARCUS: I taught from the early ’80s until 1999, for a long time.

Tarlow: Susie, that’s a long time. Let’s go back to that for a minute, the law part. Tell me a little bit about that.
MARCUS: American History, remember, was the equivalent of a major at Stanford, and that included a lot of Constitutional History. Also, I had the opportunity to take a teacher in-service class through the Classroom Law Project. The instructor, who’s now the executive director of that project, this was her first class ever that she taught in Portland. It was the only job she had. She was a lawyer who couldn’t get a job. She was such an amazing teacher.

Tarlow: Who was that?
MARCUS: Her name is Marilyn Cover. We did things like mock trials and debating. I learned to do these through the Classroom Law Project, and then I taught a law class in which we did a lot of legal kinds of activities.

Tarlow: Let’s carry that a little further. I know that you’ve done some really fabulous, wonderful things because of that program.
MARCUS: Absolutely. I had an opportunity to help kids do mock trials. That was a chance to figure out two points of view, at least, about a single issue. That was very, very interesting for kids and fun for me. Then I got involved with the Constitution project through the Classroom Law Project. It is called We the People. I became a coordinator, which meant that I helped teachers teach about the Constitution. We had a competition — today it’s called a “hearing” — and I helped to organize that. There were high schools that entered this competition, and the winning high school would go to Washington DC. At that point I was the coordinator for Lincoln High School and that district, so I went with that group.

Tarlow: Was this after you were teaching at West Sylvan?
MARCUS: Yes.

Tarlow: Because you couldn’t have done that when you were teaching.
MARCUS: No, I did it afterwards, true, but I also did it while I was teaching at West Sylvan. Then I became a coordinator for Lincoln.

Tarlow: And then you took these kids to Washington DC. But after that you became a world traveler because of this program.
MARCUS: That’s right. At that time Congress funded — it was 1987 when Congress decided to fund civic education abroad, and Oregon was partnered with Croatia. I made about ten trips to Croatia to teach teachers how to teach mock trial, hearings, and variously other legal — but mainly about the rule of law, which was sadly missing in Croatia. They didn’t really get that concept that you have to obey the same rules whether you’re the head guy or the most lowly person. That was a concept that has taken some time.

Tarlow: So how did you feel about doing that? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
MARCUS: I loved it. I have friends that I am still in contact with. Among them were two amazing judges who took the challenge of helping teachers learn about government in Croatia and elsewhere. They became very, very good friends, as did the teachers I worked with. I correspond with them regularly, and those who could afford it have come to visit in Portland, Oregon.

Tarlow: What kind of students were you teaching? Were they high school students?
MARCUS: In Croatia? I was teaching high school teachers.

Tarlow: I’m just fascinated by that whole thing because I know how much it meant to you and how much you got out of it personally.
MARCUS: That’s true. We also took judges with us from Oregon. So we got a chance to work with Oregon judges, the Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court and various other judges and lawyers who had contributed their time in Oregon and then went and helped us in Croatia to judge mock trial. That was a first for Croatia, to do mock trials as a competition.

Tarlow: It’s amazing. And this was all funded by the government.
MARCUS: It was all funded by Congress.

Tarlow: And where is that program now?
MARCUS: Gone. Congress defunded it because it was part of another bill, and all of those add-on programs that used to just come under an umbrella with other legislation were no longer funded. It was considered not appropriate to do that. This last year was the first time that the Center for Civic Education — that’s the umbrella body — was refunded for teacher training. Whether it’ll continue, we don’t know. But there was a long period of time when riders on other bills were considered inappropriate, and the program died.

Tarlow: What kind of an impact do you think that program had on the students that you worked with?
MARCUS: In Croatia?

Tarlow: Here and in Croatia. Even though you were teaching teachers, it must’ve had an impact.
MARCUS: Absolutely. In Croatia, I think it changed very traditional teaching into dialogue. We were able to teach teachers how to have kids think about things and express their opinions. In the United States, it trained a whole group of Constitutional scholars, many of whom became lawyers, including my daughter Becky. She was in the very first year, in 1987. That was the year she went to Washington DC; that was the first time that competition took place. But they weren’t all lawyers. Some of them became politicians, civic servants of one kind or another. I think it made a huge impact on civil life, just understanding the constitution and their role as citizens, a major difference.

Tarlow: Is there anything like that being taught now?
MARCUS: Most of that program has died for lack of funds because it required teacher education and travel, which is expensive. There are efforts to try again. This year, for the first year, we are training teachers again. But there is not the will. Civic education doesn’t know where to be. Social studies doesn’t know where to be. There’s no testing, and if you can’t test it on some kind of a fill-in-the blank, school districts don’t go for it anymore.

Tarlow: Another thing I know that you were involved in with your students from West Sylvan was going to the Portland Art Museum. Talk about that a little bit.
MARCUS: The most important way to learn about anything anywhere is to look at the art and get a chance to read it, in the sense that you’d be reading a book. The discipline-based art education program, which also no longer exists, taught kids to look at art and read what the creator of the art had to say. It was historical, powerful stuff. The Civil Rights Movement is one of the things that was conveyed to students on the basis of the art that was of that period. It was a very creative and imaginative program. Also not happening. The loss is serious.

Tarlow: The other thing that I know about you is that you’re rather involved in being a volunteer in the community, especially the Jewish community. Let’s hear about that.
MARCUS: I’m on the executive committee of the board of Cedar Sinai Park, which means making a revolutionary change in care for the aged. We have a new building, we have a new professional director, and we are struggling to make a place for seniors who really, in most cases, need some help caring for themselves. It’s been very interesting, but a little traumatic, to see how much we need to change to keep up and make ourselves relevant.

Tarlow: How long have you been doing this job?
MARCUS: I have been off and on the board. I served six years, then took a couple years off, and then I came back. So ten to 12 years.

Tarlow: What are some of the other things that you do?
MARCUS: Early on I started out on the board of the old Jewish Education Association. That was appropriate. After-school Hebrew education, which was struggling. And I was on the board of the Jewish Community Center when it went through a major change. I was a board member of the Oregon Area Jewish Committee, which did social justice kinds of things. And I now serve with the Jewish Federation on the Jewish Community Relations Council, which does outreach to other religious and identity groups. That’s a continuation of something that I was doing prior to being involved. And I was on the board of the Federation and chair of the allocations committee at one point. So I have kind of been going in and out with various Jewish agencies.

Tarlow: What kind of changes have you seen over the years in the Jewish community?
MARCUS: In the Jewish community, I’ve seen the lack of volunteers. We used to ask women to do all of the volunteer work, and today they have to work because they need the income. There are still volunteers, but they are in far smaller numbers than when I first started. There have been changes in passion. I was in the generation born right before Israel, and the impact of the State of Israel on me personally and on my whole generation was — I don’t think I can even give you a quantitative response to how important that was. I woke up realizing what had gone on in Europe. The struggle that Israel had just to exist, and now the struggle to maintain a democratic government. Very, very tough. Stan and I went to Israel several times. We led a mission to Israel. Stan has cousins in Haifa, and we are very lucky that we were able to get together with them. I think that’s a passion, making sure that the State of Israel stays the State of Israel.

Tarlow: Yes. Let’s go back to you personally and what you think about the changes in our Jewish community here in Portland, from the time that you became aware as an adult.
MARCUS: I think it’s a societal change. Jews pretty much interacted only with Jews as I was growing up, and actually as a young married. Then the world changed and Jews interacted with all kinds of other people, so their Judaism became less the center of their lives. There were plenty of other things to do that were very good things: the art museum, the symphony, political activity. So what happened was that the energy that had been so exclusively for the Jewish community went to a broader spectrum of activities. So it’s a loss, but it’s also a gain for both Jews and the country.

Tarlow: Maybe a little bit about your political leanings? Do you want to talk about how you feel about what is going on in our country?
MARCUS: Yes. I was telling a friend today — we just had the competition for the Constitution in Portland. We just finished that on Saturday. The director of the Classroom Law Project said to these hundreds of kids assembled there, “I want to promise you that if any of you run for public office, you call me and I’ll write a check.” What that means is that we want to encourage young people in a very, very strange political environment. These are the best and brightest kids. They should be political leaders, no matter what else they’re doing. To run for office is tough but really important.

The changes I have seen, I think, are how hard it is to be in political life. It’s almost sad. If you look at the president [Barak Obama], you can see that struggle. I’ve seen rancor, partisanship. I actually yearn for a period of time when we have viable, progressive candidates in both parties. We don’t. It has diminished life in the United States of America. Oregon is kind of an outlier. We have inspirational judges. We have very dedicated political folks. Our senators, our representatives, they’re truly wonderful, dedicated people. So when people complain about their political representation, I think we don’t have much to complain about in Oregon. But it feels like an island surrounded by a big sea of people who are very angry, and who, I think, are not willing to listen to two sides of an argument.

Tarlow: What you were teaching . . .
MARCUS: Exactly. That was just what I was teaching: “What would the other guy say? I you say that, what would the person who doesn’t agree with you say? What would those arguments be?” That’s a duty that each of us has, and it looks like we’ve forgotten about that piece.

Tarlow: That’s how you come to a solution.
MARCUS: Indeed. And you could even agree not to come to a solution. You could agree just to hear each other. When I look at our society and I see the number of people living below the poverty line, who don’t have shelter, don’t get food, don’t have jobs, don’t have the right to an education — they’re moving to another place when the rent is due. I sound like Bernie Sanders, don’t I [laughs]? I’m looking for inspirational people to be involved in the government.

Tarlow: Good luck with that.
MARCUS: Yes. Exactly.

Tarlow: OK. A few more things: How do you spend your time now that you’re not working and maybe not doing five volunteer things at one time, but you probably are? What are some of the things you like to do now that you are retired and have time to do them?
MARCUS: I actually spend a lot of time on my volunteer job with the Classroom Law Project, which is writing up current events each week that have a Constitutional background along with questions to consider, the very thing I was talking about, which would help kids see various views of what’s happening. I wrote about the State of the Union for kids to think about and about the release of the Iranian-Americans who were in Iran. I find it very stimulating to keep working on these issues, and teachers just don’t have time. So that’s a big part of what I do. It’s published weekly and sent to teachers. It requires a lot of research. So what do I spend time on? I really love having a computer. If I’d had a computer when I was teaching, my life would have been so much simpler. It’s the most important single development. We used to write on these sheets with purple on the back to copy, and then we used to have to take a razor to get rid of the mistakes. How I ever wrote anything!

Tarlow: A mimeograph machine.
MARCUS: My hands were always purple. It’s revolutionary that I’m able to access knowledge from my computer, and I’m able to check to see if that knowledge is well-founded. I can check with sources. I can even look up dog breeders.

Tarlow: And you play bridge with Stan.
MARCUS: I do play bridge with Stan, and I also play bridge with some friends. I really like playing bridge because it’s an intellectual activity as well as fun. You have to remember what you’re doing. You have to communicate with your partner without talking. I think it’s a very interesting, dynamic thing to do.

Tarlow: One thing we haven’t discussed either is your time at the beach.
MARCUS: Yes. Becky was 13 years old when we bought a condo in Cannon Beach. We have tons of wonderful memories of being at Cannon Beach. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say that it was our connection with the Georges/Gittelsohn family that made that very special because, of course, they had places at the beach, and we got to spend a lot of time with them. I associate, even to this day, all those wonderful memories with Shirley, the artist, with Evelyn, the music activist. She was always involved in getting young people to be able to play. Their kids, especially Emily [Georges Gottfried], who was the head of the Oregon Area Jewish Committee and a shining light for justice.

Tarlow: We need to mention, I guess, that you became a part of the Georges family.
MARCUS: Yes. I was 16 years old when my mother married Tom Georges. I had older step-siblings who were incredible. Ossie taught me how to drive, and believe me, anyone who teaches someone how to drive gets medals, right? It’s a scary proposition. We lived next door to Evelyn and Ossie, and Tommy and May lived up on a neighboring street, and Shirley and Bill [Gittlesohn] lived across the street from where we are located here on Hamilton Way. So they were a huge part of our lives, Stan’s and mine and our kids’. A very important part of my life.

Tarlow: I know another important part of your life, and one is Naya and one is Michaela.
MARCUS: Actually, it all started with Rachel [laughs]. Rachel’s 19-1/2 now. She was our first granddaughter. At the time, they lived near Occidental College in Los Angeles, in Eagle Rock. We were in California every month for the first 12 months of Rachel’s life. It was a very special relationship. I haven’t really talked about my family, but they’re certainly the core of everything. We are lucky because Hank lives in Lake Oswego, so we can do everything from compare the weather, which we often do — “What’s it like in Lake Oswego?” — and Kathy, who plays bridge. We’re very lucky.

Tarlow: And Amy’s husband is?
MARCUS: Brian Newhall.

Tarlow: And Becky — are the girls Marcus-Woods?
MARCUS: Yes. I told you, it’s all about hyphens! That’s part of the deal. Can you imagine? The school records were always so messed up when they started doing hyphens because there’s only so much room. You’d end up with students with double first names, double last names. Anyway, my own family. We’re in very close touch. Again, thanks to that computer and my iPhone. I can text Amy in the morning at 5:30 AM and talk to her every day and find out how she’s doing. And I can get a text from Becky, who needs the name of the dog breeder or whatever else from mom. And from Hank. We’re all connected by this device called a computer or an iPhone. That has changed the dynamics of family life. Michaela, who is now 13, taught me to text. She said, “Grammy, you can do it!” She was nine years old then, a very good teacher. She taught me so I could text with her.

Tarlow: I think we have come almost to the end of what we had talked about. This has been wonderful. Even though I’ve known you for a long time, I am learning things about you. Is there anything that you might want to add to this tape that we haven’t talked about?
MARCUS: Yes. I want to talk about Stan’s family. I’ve told you how important the Georges/Gittelsohn family was to me, but I think Stan’s family is unique, and I’ve had the benefit of being part of that family, the Schwartz family, I guess we’d call it. They have incredible support for each other. They have a relationship that I think is so model. They are always there for each other. It doesn’t matter if you don’t see them every day, they’re there. That’s a model, a part of the kind of love and attention that my mother-in-law Flora Marcus had with her family, with her siblings — her sister and especially her brother before he died — and her own mother. They have the kind of family, with concern, caring, and closeness, that makes me feel like that is what a family should be. That’s how we try to model our family. We don’t have fights. We don’t not talk to each other. We don’t do any of those things. We’re so lucky.

Tarlow: I agree. It’s more than a mitzvah.
MARCUS: Absolutely. It is. I would say that it’s particularly about being Jewish and appreciating the connections we have with each other. You know, when you say, “They have your back”? Yes. That’s what it’s really about. In the background of everything that you are is this cadre of people that cares about you.

Tarlow: It’s a wonderful feeling to grow up with that.
MARCUS: And it was even more special for me, an only child, being part of a family where the nurturing and caring is very important.

Tarlow: My dear, I thank you.
MARCUS: I don’t know that I have actually given you all of the data.

Tarlow: Well, we have spent a goodly amount of time, and if you ever want to add anything to this, you know that we can.

END OF INTERVIEW