Sy Chestler

Rosenthal: We are at the home of Sy and Carol Chestler and we’re going to start by having Sy talk a little bit about where he grew up and how he ended up being in Portland.
CHESTLER: I was born in Cleveland, Ohio on September 12, 1930 to my parents Sid and Golda Chestler who got married in 1927, I guess. I was one of three; I was the oldest. My brother is three and a half years younger than I am. My sister is five years younger than I am. My brother lives in New York and my sister lives in Livermore. I was brought up in a house with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents – my grandfather and my grandmother. We lived a relatively modest life. We lived in a ghetto. The entire neighborhood was Jewish. The main street had shuls on every street corner. On the High Holidays everything closed down, except for the shuls. The school that I went to probably had 30 non-Jewish kids in the whole school and they stayed open for the holidays. When I went to elementary school I thought the world was Jewish because there were no…there were a few gentiles. We had a couple of African-Americans. Basically around the 1940s the neighborhood started changing. The people who were moving in were African-Americans, who usually followed Jews through the neighborhoods. The Jews were moving into the suburbs, and these people had jobs in the defense plants and so forth during the war and had come up with some money. So they were buying into the neighborhoods. The first house in the neighborhood that went to one of the blacks was our nextdoor neighbor. And years later they said they had to get out of the neighborhood because trash was moving in. The neighborhood was really, in the ten years that followed, really changing completely. 

Cleveland has a lot of very ethnic neighborhoods. All these ethnic neighborhoods fed into my junior high school. So at that point I found out that the world really wasn’t Jewish, but it was Polish, Slovak and Italian. We lived in that neighborhood until 1950 when we moved to the suburbs. My high school graduating class in 1949 was the second to last predominantly white class to graduate from that high school. So we had moved into the suburbs. I graduated high school in 1949. In 1950 I started going to Western Reserve University in Cleveland, living at home. We moved into the house in early 1950 and in July 1951 my father died. He was 49 years old. He had high blood pressure. In those days to treat high blood pressure you took aspirin. So he had a cerebral hemorrhage in July. We went to the hospital. That morning at 10:30 I had a physics final that I ended up going to and when I got back to the hospital my father had already died. 

Rosenthal: What did your father do for a living?
CHESTLER: My father worked for an apparel company. It was called Lampl Fashions. At the time he died he had worked there for 30 years. When he died they continued his salary to my mother for a year. It’s amazing because the salary was $125 a week. I was basically a pre-med at college. When I graduated (I changed several times in the middle) I was pre-pharmacy and I was accounting. When I got into my senior year I had 18 hours of chemistry and 18 hours of biology. I had to choose a major so I majored in chemistry with the intent of just getting out, getting a degree, and going out and finding a job. Because my grades weren’t that great, without screwing around for another year or so, I just wasn’t going to get into medical school. 

So the company that my father worked for said when I was out looking for a job that I could go there and they would hire me. It was basically to become a salesman and I’m not the salesman type. I was there for maybe six months. I was in the factory. I was training. When my father was at Lampl’s there was a salesman that was there. His name was Max Reiter. And there was a guy that worked for my father and his name was Morrie Saltzman. Max Reiter and Morrie Saltzman decided to go into business and form a garment company called Ritmor. They asked my father if he wanted to go in there with them. And he said no, he was just too conservative to do that. Well Ritmor turned into Bobbie Brooks. Morrie Saltzman saw my mother somewhere and he asked what was I doing. She said I was working at Lampl’s. He said, “Well if he’s ever looking for a job have him come and see me.” A month later I went to see Morrie Saltzman at Bobbie Brooks. And that was in October of 1952. I stayed at Bobbie Brooks until October of ‘67. I started out working in the production department. I learned statistics, forecasting, purchasing, fabric control, issuing work to the factories, which supported sales that were coming in. So I ended up being in charge of the production department. When I started it was a very friendly, family-oriented company as companies start out. It went public. Life became much more difficult. Every six months or so we were reorganizing the company. I had a guy that worked for me. His name was Lloyd Wasserman. They had a child that was born deaf. Some of the guys from Bobbie Brooks had come out here to White Stag. So Lloyd ended up getting a job at White Stag because he wanted his son to go to Tucker-Maxson School for the Deaf. He would call me periodically and say, “Sy, we have a job for you here.” And I’d say, “Lloyd, you’re crazy. I’ve been here for 12-13-14 years. I’m not going anywhere.” One day he called and we were in the middle of another reorganization. I said, “Okay, I’ll come out and talk to somebody, but I have no intention of taking this job.” I came out in September of 1966, I had an interview with Lawrence Rennett, the president of the company. Warnaco had bought White Stag a couple of years before. White Stag was having inventory problems. They were creating a job that they wanted me to fill. It was in material management. So I came out and I had the interview. It was in September. And September is the most gorgeous month of the year in Oregon. I had my interview. I came out on a Friday. Wednesday and Thursday, when I was at Bobbie Brooks, I was coming down with the flu, and I was sick and everything, so Friday morning I called in and I said I was too sick to come to work. So I hopped on a plane and came out here. On Tuesday they called and offered me a job and I said, “I’ll let you know.” So in a couple days I called them back I said, “I would like to take the job but I have to bring my wife out here.” We both grew up in Cleveland; we knew nothing else but that. So we came out in October and the weather in October is nothing but rain. We came out on a Friday night. We were here Saturday and Sunday. We flew home Sunday night. We knew we were going to end up taking the job. But I just wanted her to come out. So we had put our house up for sale and my mother was staying with the kids while we were here. That weekend somebody came and looked at the house and made an offer. That was history; the house was gone. We were free to go. I wanted to give them ample notice. I gave them like six weeks notice. We’d already made plans with another couple to go to St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. This was in November. They said that was fine so I stayed there. My boss, who was vice president of manufacturing, his name was Stan Marshall, called me in one day and said, “How serious are you about leaving?” I said, ‘We sold the house over the weekend.” So he said, “Okay, we’ll just talk as friends.” So I came out here the middle of December. Carol and the kids –well they had to pack up the house. I escaped before that had to be done. So I came out here. I got involved. I had to find us a place to live. I saw two places. This guy took me out to look at houses. I saw one house out at San Rafael on NE 122nd and I saw another house in Beaverton. Fortunately I made the right decision and we rented the house in Beaverton. The guy was trying to sell the house. And I said, “Look, I’m just bringing my family out here. I’m not going to have you sell the house from under me and then I’m going to have to leave.” I insisted on a one-year lease. So Carol and the kids ended up coming. The day they were coming I bought a car at Ron Tonkin on NE 122nd. The guy was trying to get the car ready and I said, “I’ve got to catch a plane.” He said, “Do me a favor take my car and go get them and come back here and I’ll have the car ready.” We were staying at the Sheraton Inn at Lloyd Center for a couple days until the house got ready and our belongings arrived and we got in the house. People were talking about going to the beach in the winter. And I said, “What the hell do people do at the beach in the winter?” We were at the hotel anyhow. I had gotten a Chevy Impala convertible and we went to the beach. We never got out of the car because it just poured. We said, “These people here have to be crazy.” We just turned around – never got out of the car. Yeah, back to the hotel because we hadn’t been in the house yet. Basically we came here with the three kids, Stuart was nine, Bob was seven, and Larry was four. You know it was crazy. We just picked up from a place we had been living our whole life. And went across the country. The kids were upset. We said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to go to Alaska; we’ll go to all the National Parks.” They were just around the corner! You know it was an easterner’s concept of the west. So Stuart to this day is upset that we never took him to these places.

Rosenthal: So when you were living in in Cleveland were you members of a synagogue there and were you active in the Jewish community there?
CHESTLER: When we lived in Cleveland and when I was about ten years old and it would be time for my other two siblings to go to Sunday school, we joined a synagogue in the neighborhood. It was the Cleveland Jewish Center. It was a Conservative temple. I was a Bar Mitzvah there. My brother was a Bar Mitzvah there. But we were never really that involved in it. My parents went for High Holidays. My father worked six days a week and so we really didn’t get involved in that. When Carol and I got married she belonged to another Conservative temple. We joined Silver’s Temple, which was a Reform temple, it was Abba Hillel Silver’s temple. He had already passed away at that time. His son Daniel was the rabbi. We got involved in the Mr. and Mrs. Club and stuff like that. Each year they had a major theatrical production that the members put on. Carol was always in that; that’s her thing. The kids ended up going to Sunday school there. I don’t know how much detail you wanted me to go into —

Rosenthal: Well no I just wanted to know how involved you guys were in the Jewish community. But then when you came here, how long was it before you got involved?
CHESTLER: Well we joined Temple right away.

Rosenthal: So you did.
CHESTLER: We got here in December, well basically Carol got here New Year’s Eve. In February there was something at Manny Rose’s house. We ended up going to it because we figured we would meet people. So we met Berta Delman and Elaine Weinstein. Until Berta died they were our #1 and 2 friends in Portland. To this day we’re still friends with Elaine and Sandy. I stayed friends with Jay after Berta had passed away. My daughter-in-law Mandi used to go out horseback riding. She had a horse and she would go out riding. Jay and I took care of Zack. Zack was nine months old at the time. Every Tuesday she would bring Zack over here and Jay and I would take him out for a walk and give him lunch we would take care of Zack for the day. So Jay and I stayed friends until Jay passed away.

Rosenthal: When you joined Beth Israel that was a reform Shul. You were comfortable with that?
CHESTLER: Yeah, we had been Reform when were in Cleveland, even though we were both brought up Conservative. Religion is not big thing for me, I join temples because it’s the right thing to do, not because I’m a big believer. I believe in God but, you know….

Rosenthal: What was your involvement in Beth Israel? Were your kids in the religious school?
CHESTLER: When we joined Stuart and Bob started right away. Larry was only four so he was going to nursery school. We stayed there and we were relatively happy there. When this group started getting together and forming Havurah we got involved with that. 

Rosenthal: How did you hear about it?
CHESTLER: I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’m sure Carol heard about it because that’s her thing. When I was out here, I still don’t know downtown Portland because I never went downtown. I worked in Southeast. I worked on Harney and SE 52nd. I knew how to get to work and I knew how to get home. So I never really got involved in Temple. I didn’t join the Brotherhood or anything like that. So basically, we stayed at Temple. The kids were all Bar Mitzvah at Temple. The story with Stuart is he got expelled in pre-confirmation class and his success story he subsequently became president of Temple. So you can get expelled from Sunday school and still have a success story. So we then got involved with Havurah. We got involved in the first Rosh Hashanah. Carol …

Rosenthal: Okay now we’re going to talk a little bit about your affiliation with Havurah and how you got involved in a leadership role. How did that evolve?
CHESTLER: I don’t think I got too involved in a leadership role. The first year that Havurah had incorporated or whatever it did, Gayle Marger was the treasurer. I don’t know whether they left, or if she didn’t want to do it anymore. So then I became the treasurer. Basically it was just a matter of sending out bills and collecting dues. At that time it was writing checks and I would be over at Lesley’s [Isenstein] house, having her sign checks. She was around the corner anyhow. And then it became going over to Joan Rosenbaum’s house and having her sign checks. And I did that for five years, or something like that. Then I think Lou Jaffe took over. And then Mari [Livingston] took over. Then when Mari left we were just coming back from California so I ended up taking over Mari’s books. Some of the pages in Mari’s books were pages that I had originally started. But I wasn’t going to keep books like Mari kept books. I just went on the computer; that’s what I ended up doing. We went from going through dues at $500 to dues at $2500. I’ve got a sheet where I’ve got all this detailed every year where the dues went. We basically collected most of the money that was…. We had adjustments. At that time we collected 85% of what the budget was. And then when we did the budget we said we had to compensate for the 15% that we lost. And now I think it’s something like 70% that we end up collecting and the rest has to be compensated for because there are that many adjustments. I did it for six or seven years and then Mike Morris took it for a couple years and then Karen [Westerman] took over. And Karen has been the dream of Havurah. That’s her thing. She does just a super job. I still do the debiting of the checking accounts for the people who pay monthly or quarterly. And now we probably have half of the congregation on debit and so you don’t have to send out bills and it’s not a headache at collecting. The money comes in every month. It’s just a piece of cake. Karen sends me the list. I go through the list. I update the computer. I update the bank. Once a month I just let it rip and the money comes out of the accounts. So that’s my thing now. That’s all I do. I was on the finance committee for many years and I finally gave up on that. I’m not a committee person. I believe in dictatorship.

Rosenthal: [laughs] What about Havurah attracted you and Carol initially and kept you involved?
CHESTLER: Well I think we wanted to get involved in something smaller and that was more…. I didn’t want to be more involved because that’s not my thing. But Carol got very involved. In fact I was going to say that when they did the first High Holidays she and Alan [Berg] and whoever were on the committee met at her office at Jewish Family & Child Service. They were the committee. Alan said you just invite the whole community and everybody will come and subsequently you’ll get members that way.

Rosenthal: You’re saying Rabbi Alan Berg.
CHESTLER: Rabbi Alan Berg. It was more her thing than my thing. You know I believe in dictatorship. When I was at work I believed in that. I think you just get too involved in committees and there’s a lot of talk and lot of decisions that aren’t made. That stuff bothers me. So I don’t do that. So the finance thing I can do myself. Nobody bothered me. When we did the building- the pledges, the money collecting and all that stuff, that added to a lot of what I was doing and I was spending a lot of time doing that. And that was bills and all that. After a while I got tired doing that and I gave it to Mike Morris and then it ended up with Karen. She took it over. 

Rosenthal: Weren’t you involved with the cemetery also? 
CHESTLER: Not really. 

Rosenthal: Not with the funding of the cemetery?
CHESTLER: No, that was Dave. Dave Weil did all that. One of my claims to fame is I don’t know how I ended up with the office. But when it was over on Vermont there was somebody I inherited, and then there was Madge Motola who came afterwards, and then there was Joan and Diane Schoenfeld. 

Rosenthal: Joan Liebreich. 
CHESTLER: Joan Liebreich and Diane Schoenfeld. During one of these times I ended up getting involved at the post office. I started the bulk mailing for Havurah. So I ended up going there and taking the class and whatever we had to do. At that time it was much more complicated than it is now because we had to get bar codes that you get on the address. That’s the way it was sorted. Now you just have to do it by 972s or whatever so you don’t have to get involved with 97219, 229 or whatever. So that was my big addition to Havurah. 

Rosenthal: Okay. So you’ve been with Havurah since the beginning. What kind of changes have you seen and how do you think they affect the congregation as a congregation and also the community as a whole? We’re talking about the evolution. You’ve been able to see the evolution from a congregation that started out just as a few people meeting then became a congregation. 
CHESTLER: Well basically, when we became a congregation we had a rabbi, because Alan Berg was involved at the very beginning. So we basically always have had a rabbi.

Rosenthal: We had two or three years where there was no rabbi after Alan and before –
CHESTLER: Before Roy? 

Rosenthal: We had some years with no rabbi.
CHESTLER: I don’t know. I don’t remember those years.

Rosenthal: Okay.
CHESTLER: Then I remember Roy, and when Roy left to go Chicago—

Rosenthal: Roy Furman
CHESTLER: Roy Furman. We were gone at the time Joey Wolf was hired. We left about that time. We left in May of 1987 and went to California. We were down for four years and then we came back.

Rosenthal: And why did you go to California? 
CHESTLER: I went to California, because some guys at Warnaco decided that they wanted to take the company private. It was a public company. And these guys were going to wax rich by taking over the company. It brought attention to the company. There was a group in Los Angeles that decided that they were going to have a bidding battle for the company.

Rosenthal: I’m going to interrupt you for a minute. So when you came out here you were working for White Stag. 
CHESTLER: Which was a division of Warnaco.

Rosenthal: It was already a division of Warnaco. Then you stayed with them from the time you came out here—
CHESTLER: Until the time I retired. 

Rosenthal: Okay. So then in 1987 was when all this happened; they decided to privatize.
CHESTLER: I’m all screwed up. In 1984-85 that’s when this privatization and takeover took place. The company was taken over by this other group, in 1985 that’s when they took over. In 1987 they decided to consolidate the company in Bridgeport in the east and in Los Angeles in the west and the various divisions that reported. In 1987 I was offered the opportunity to go to California with the company or to lose my job. In 1987 I was 57 and I decided I didn’t want to start looking for a job at that point. So I said I would go to California. We didn’t have any idea of how long we were going to be down there for. We thought it was a minimum of six years and God knows how many more beyond that. We went down. We sold our house here. We bought a house down there. My job became very difficult down there. The first year we were down there we had four division presidents. The second year we were down there the company was up for sale. A group of old White Stag people got together and we tried to put together an offer and bring the company back. Fortunately we failed. Another group that was involved backed out. The third year we were down there the company was for sale again, a group from San Francisco was looking at it to buy it. And the fourth year we were there we decided to close the division and we spent the year closing everything down, getting rid of inventory, producing what we had sold, and getting it down to nothing. At that point we came back to Portland. And that was in June of 1991 when I retired. 

Rosenthal: And then you took up your relationship with Havurah.
CHESTLER: Yes. We did, we got back involved in Havurah again. Our kids ended up getting married around that time. Stuart got married in 1980, the second weekend that Mt. St. Helens blew off. We were still members at Temple at that time. We stayed with dual membership for probably four years or something like that. So Stuart wanted to get married and he wanted to get married at Temple. Rabbi Rose was definitely the rabbi. We said we would like to have Alan Berg also participate in the wedding. Rabbi Rose agreed that we could do that.

Rosenthal: At that time was Alan Berg in Pittsfield or was he in California already?
CHESTLER: No he was at Havurah. This was 1980.

Rosenthal: Oh 1980! Oh, okay, okay.
CHESTLER: So Rabbi Rose agreed to do that. However, Rabbi Rose was the only rabbi that married Stuart because Alan was in Denver and they weren’t flying flights because of the ash. So we ended up with that. When Bob got married we had already sent a resignation letter to Eve Rosenfeld. Bob came. They came over and said he and Patty wanted to get married and they’d like to get married at Temple. So I called Eve Rosenfeld and said, “Throw away that letter you got. We’ll be members another year.” So Alan was back at Temple at that time. This was 1983. And Roy Furman was our rabbi. So Roy Furman and Alan officiated at Bob and Patty’s wedding. At Larry’s wedding Rabbi Joey was the only rabbi that participated. We didn’t have joint alliances at that time. Carol gets more involved in the stuff than I do. I do the finance, which I can do by myself. I don’t have to be involved with a lot of people looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do.

Rosenthal: But watching the congregation then from afar rather than being all the way in as you say, what do think about the changes from it being a very small group? How have you seen it evolve as far as religious practice or community involvement or that kind of thing?
CHESTLER: Well you know our involvement was different than a lot of other people. Because when we joined Havurah our kids were older already. Havurah started in 1979 or something like that. In 1979 Stuart was 22. Bob was 19. We didn’t get involved in the religious school or anything like that, because we never, we just didn’t participate in that. In terms of how things evolved or that, we weren’t involved in that kind of stuff. We went to services and stuff like that. 

Rosenthal: Why did you go to the services? What did the services give you that…
CHESTLER: Services didn’t do a lot for me. As I said earlier, I’m Jewish; I believe in God. I’m not a super practicing Jew. We brought up our kids Jewish. They all married non-Jewish girls. They all have Jewish homes. Their kids have been brought up Jewish. Whether they remain Jewish is a different story. We were the nucleus of this Jewish family. We more or less kept it together. Patty converted before she and Bob got married. Melody converted before she had Elaine. And Mandi, she’s still her own thing. But the families are Jewish. The kids are Jewish. They all had Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. We celebrate Passover here, everybody’s here. We celebrate Chanukah. Two of our kids live here in Portland, so that makes it easy. Larry lives in Minneapolis. He basically has been in the airline business and always has flying privileges so whenever we have Chanukah or that, they’re always here. As far as Havurah is concerned, I believe in it. I support it. I think what’s happening now with all these young families that are coming in and young children, I think that Havurah has a future. It’s not a bunch of old people that started in 1979 that still get together. It’s a vibrant organization. And I think it has a future. I think they’re talking about they’re running out of Shabbat school space and something has to be done. We’re renting space at the Lutheran Church. But, that’s just not my thing. We don’t have young kids. We almost don’t have young grand kids. So that’s something that somebody else has to worry about. It’s not my problem.

Rosenthal: What about the Jewish community as a whole? 
CHESTLER: I’ve never been involved in the Jewish community. I’m not a joiner. I don’t want to sit on committees. I told you I’m a dictator. 

Rosenthal: A benevolent dictator [laughs]. 
CHESTLER: Dictatorship is the way to go. You can’t have everybody giving opinions. It’s good to listen to opinions, but somebody has to decide.

Rosenthal: Ookay. Is there anything about your involvement with Havurah as a family that was a negative? Or has it all been positive?
CHESTLER: It’s all been fine. It serves the amount of Jewishness that I need. I can participate as much as I want. I can participate as little as I want, and that is perfect for me.

Rosenthal: And your kids that live here in town both belong to Beth Israel?
CHESTLER: Yep.

Rosenthal: Have they ever come to Havurah? For things?
CHESTLER: I think in the very beginning when we were sort of hippy-oriented and some of the people would show up without shoes and stuff like that, it just turned them off. So they were never interested in Havurah. They were brought up at Temple. They were Bar Mitzvah at Temple they were married at Temple. Their kids were Bar mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah. So they’ve been happy there. It covers the amount of Judaism that they need. I think Havurah would be a little too much for them. Sometimes it’s too much for me. So they’ve always been at Temple. Larry and Melody belong to the Reform temple in Minneapolis. 

Rosenthal: You talked a little bit about maternal grandparents. Was it your maternal grandparents that lived with you?
CHESTLER: They lived with us.

Rosenthal: Were they Orthodox? 
CHESTLER: We were Orthodox. I remember that we had two sets of dishes and we salted and soaked the meat and we did all those various things. My mother became less. My grandmother died in 1938 when I was eight years old. My grandfather lived with us forever. He outlived my father. My grandfather died in 1953, I believe. And I inherited his room in the house because up to that time my brother and I shared a room. My grandfather was very frum; he used to go to shul every morning. He used to love it when someone had a yahrzeit because then they would have sponge cake and booze. And his big thing was he would come home plastered from shul.

Rosenthal: Was he born in the United States?
CHESTLER: Oh, no. 

Rosenthal: Where was he born?
CHESTLER: My grandmother and grandmother were born in Russia. Born in Lithuania. So I didn’t know a lot about my paternal grandparents. I think my paternal grandmother had died before I was born. I’m not so sure about my paternal grandfather.

Rosenthal: And were they from Eastern Europe too?
CHESTLER: Yep. My father was born in New York. My mother was born in Cleveland. Carol’s mother born in New York. Her father was born in Germany. 

Rosenthal: Okay, is there anything you want to talk about or share?
CHESTLER: I don’t know, I think that does it.

Rosenthal: Okay. Well I thank you very much on behalf of Havurah and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center.