Transcript of interview with Lori Chenin-Frankl by Barbara Tabach, June 7, 2016

AN INTERVIEW WITH LORI CHENIN FRANKL An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Maggie Bukowski iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE When not teaching special education in the Clark County School District, Lori Chenin-Frankl embraces many additional roles: mother, grandmother; youth choir director; occasional substitute spiritual leader, with her sister Sheryl Chenin-Webb, at Friday night services at Congregation Ner Tamid Lori (b 1960) is the child of a Holocaust survivor, Fernande Magalnik Chenin, and Simon Chenin, a barber. In 1963, the Chenin family moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to Las Vegas for her father?s health. The city was already home to her uncle Dr. Joe Chenin, the first licensed Jewish dentist in Southern Nevada and a good place for the family to settle in. Her father worked his barber business and her mother was a clerk for the school bus yard. Lori provides a wonderful narrative of her Judaism, her love of teaching children and her devotion to family and music. She talks about growing up in Las Vegas and becoming a bat mitzvah, a rarity for girls in 1973. Throughout her life, including the period where she moved around with her Air Force husband, she sought Jewish connections to help her feel at home no matter where she was. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Lori Chenin Frankl June 7, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface??????????????????????????????????..iv Provides maternal ancestral roots that take the family in the early 1900s from Bessarabia to France where her mother was born; her mother is a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz and Libau; she made her way to the US in 1954. Her father?s family are from White Russia and immigrated to Cleveland where her father was born. Story of how her Uncle Joe Chenin, the first Jewish dentist in town, was stationed at Nellis Air Force base and how her family eventually joined him in Las Vegas in 1963??????????????????????????..????????..1 ? 3 Talks about growing up with a religious father, Simon Chenin, who was a barber and minyanaire at Temple Beth Sholom; living in a mostly non-Jewish neighborhood; USY and Kolod Center; participating in temple?s choir under Cantor Kohn and being an observant Jewish teenager. Mentions that her mother?s Holocaust testimony is available through the Shoah Project under Fernande Chenin; how she talked about the travesty, including presentations to school groups. Tells her mother?s story of survival???????????????..???????.4 ? 9 Elaborates on the French influence on her family; having dual-citizenship. Her father?s health is talked about; mother worked as a clerk/typist at the school bus year. Talks about riding horses at Daydream Ranch; school friends; and how she decided to become a school teacher; attended UNLV and graduated in 1997; avid reader???????????????????.10 ? 16 Talks about raising her children while husband was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base; mohel story and Chabad of Albuquerque; moving around and being involved in the Jewish community wherever they lived. First job when returned to Vegas area was at Temple Beth Sholom as temple preschool secretary. Worked next for a law firm. Joined Congregation Ner Tamid in 1988 and became very involved; started the junior choir. Shares how her first husband died in a car accident; how they met.??????????????????????????????..17 ? 21 Tutors her own son for his bar mitzvah; mentions Bella Schwartz, soloist at Ner Tamid; article in Las Vegas Review-Journal that featured her cooking Passover Seder is discussed. Talks about her own bat mitzvah [1973] when girls were not allowed to do so; remembers calling Dr. David Wasserman (the other Jewish dentist in town) ?King David?; and her connection with Judaism; participating in interfaith Thanksgivings???????????????????.. 22 ? 26 vi Discusses role of women in Judiasm; her daughter; Sisterhood; Bubbe-sitters Club to help nurture Jewish faith in the next generations; Tefillah Time; children wanting to sing; Lola Rivera, soloist; developing song lists; singing at a Seder held at Union Plaza; Cantor Kohn connection story. Talks about leading Friday night services with her sister Sheryl Chenin at Ner Tamid; more about Bella Schwartz????????????????????????????????.27 ? 35 Experiences with antisemitism while growing up; Haddassah and Hadassah Leadership Academy; Nevadans for the Common Good; Chai Society, is chairperson for this. Teaching children about tzedakah. Closing thoughts about being and growing up Jewish in Las Vegas?????..36 ? 45 1 Today is June 7th, 2016. This is Barbara Tabach and I am sitting with Lori Frankl. Lori, please spell your name for us. Lori, L-O-R-I. Chenin, C-H-E-N-I-N, hyphen, F-R-A-N-K-L, Frankl. Okay. So there is a hyphen in there. Well, I don't usually use it, but a lot of people know me by Lori Chenin because I grew up here. And I know that people do know the Chenin name. I've heard it many times. Take me back in your family ancestry. If you can, give me the roots of your Jewish culture and all of that that would be great. My mom's parents were from Bessarabia; her father had brothers and they were all going to come here to America. They left in?I believe it was 1911 or 1912. When they got to the ship, my grandfather had pink eye. So he ended up not being able to get on the ship. My grandparents went to France where my grandfather?s best friend had moved to Paris. His brothers did come to America. My grandparents lived in France and my mom [Fernande Magalnik Chenin] was born in Paris in 1927. She's a Holocaust survivor. She was in Auschwitz and then in a work camp called Libau. She made her way to the United States in about 1954, went home because she was homesick, and then came back in '58 to Cleveland where she met and married my dad in about five months. So she's the immigrant and I'm first generation on that side. On my father's side, his father came in about 1914, 1915, right around there. His mother came in about 1915, 1916. He was from what was called White Russia. I'm not quite sure...I do have a map somewhere that has the area. My grandmother was from Nowy Targ, which at some point belonged to Austria, at some point belonged to...It belonged to many different places. My 2 grandfather had been in the military in Russia and came to visit a family member in Cleveland. World War I started and the Russians called him back. But he said, "I'm not coming back," and stayed put. My grandmother came to Cleveland with one of her sisters. There was an uncle, I believe, or a cousin who had a daughter that was supposed to get married and she passed away from...I don't know...from something. So he took her dowry and sent my grandmother and her sister here to America. She met my grandfather in Cleveland and they got married there. My father [Simon] was the second of four boys. He was born in 1917. The Chenin that you're probably thinking of is my Uncle Joe who is about six years younger than my dad. My Uncle Joe was actually in the Air Force. He was stationed here at Nellis. They wanted him to reenlist and he said, "I'll only reenlist if you bump me up to the next rank." They said, "No, we're not doing that right now; it's not wartime." He said, "Fine," and he got out. I believe he was either the twenty-ninth or thirtieth licensed dentist in the state of Nevada. So that was about 1950. We came to Las Vegas because my dad had his first heart attack when he was about forty-five or so and they told him he'd never survive another Cleveland winter. So he came here where his brother was and that's how we ended up in Las Vegas. It's always interesting how weather brings people to this. Whether it's a legitimate reason or not, but it keeps you here for sure. It's always interesting because I know that people have heart attacks in Cleveland and stay there. So I don't know what that was about, but that's what my dad said is they told him, "Get out of this weather," and he came here. But his brother was already living here. 3 Right. We came here in 1963, my brother [Alan] and sister [Sheryl] and I. My brother is a year older, three hundred and sixty-five days older. So we are the same age for one day a year because it was a leap year. I was his first and best birthday present ever. I always tell him that. My sister is twenty-one months younger than I am. He's Alan Chenin and she's Sheryl Chenin-Webb, and she does hyphenate. We're all still here in the area. My mom is eighty-eight and she is here in the area, but she has a caregiver and she's in a private home; she doesn't talk anymore. She's just here. My Uncle Joe is still here. He's ninety-three. He got married a few years ago to a wonderful lady, Sandy Simon. His children are still here. I think you interviewed his daughter, Suzie Chenin. Yes. And he has a son, Steve. So pretty much we all kind of stayed here. There are a couple of exceptions: my oldest son is in D.C. and Steve's third son is in San Francisco and Suzie's daughter is in the Laguna area. But pretty much we've all stayed here. So the family roots are Las Vegas. You were it looks like about three years old. Almost three. Do you have any memories of being three and moving to Las Vegas? I actually don't. I?ll mention that you did participate in the Growing Up Jewish in Las Vegas panel that we had as part of this project. I really appreciated that? But growing up?we'll just repeat a little bit of that?what are your memories of growing up in Las Vegas in general and specifically being part of the Jewish community? 4 Well, I can't imagine ever not being part of a Jewish community. My dad was in poor health and he had other heart attacks after that. He was never supposed to live to see us start school and he wasn't supposed to live to see us bar or bat mitzvahed or married or anything. Thank God he lived to be seventy-eight and he lived to see my oldest son bar mitzvahed. So that was a miracle in itself. But my dad was fairly religious. He worked hard. He had to work on Saturdays because he was a barber and that's the biggest day for a barber. But he was a minyanaire. A minyanaire? A minyanaire, yes. He was one of those guys who would go as often as he could to make minyan at Temple Beth Sholom. We really, really grew up at Beth Sholom. We lived behind what is now Boulder Station. Back then it started out as the Skyway Drive-In. So it was a drive-in back then. Everybody when we bought the house?it was during a bit of a recession?said, "What are you doing moving so far out of town?" Out of town meant away from the temple area, actually. There was one other Jewish family in our neighborhood, so we were the only Jewish family after they left. It was a lower middle class, mostly LDS, neighborhood. It was a great place to grow up. Everybody knew everybody. You couldn't get away with anything because somebody would tell your mom. So it was okay to grow up there. But really the place that I think, at least as far as I'm concerned, that I felt most safe and most comfortable was the temple. So at the time we had the Kolod Center, which we all talked about at the Growing Up in Vegas thing. We would clean up on Saturday morning and then my mom would drop us off there around noon and we would stay until my dad picked us up. We really lived there. On top of that we went to Sunday school and then we had two days a week of Hebrew school and then we belonged to USY, Junior USY and then USY, and all three of us 5 were also very involved in the junior choir and then subsequently in the teen choir. This was really the core of your life. It was the core of our life; it really was. We went every Friday night. Once we got to high school it was probably a little bit harder because we wanted to go to football games and do your typical things that teenagers do. But we could not leave the house until the candles were lit, starting Shabbat, which is kind of ironic. But my dad said, "You're not leaving until the candles are lit," and then we'd go off. As we got older the teen choir especially was really a very big part of our life. It really held us together. It held us to the temple although I think all the other activities did as well. Actually the last time I sang in the teen choir, unbeknownst to me I was pregnant; I was already married and pregnant with my oldest. We were paid to sing for Rosh Hashanah services and High Holidays at a temple in Whittier. We grew up with Cantor Kohn. When he left, teen choir kind of dissolved a little bit, but brought us all back together to do that. Somebody had hired us. That's interesting. Why did another out-of-state synagogue hire you to sing? Well, because at that point Cantor Bergman had come in and none of us had really an attachment to him; he was new. Cantor Kohn knew the cantor from that synagogue and they had asked him if we could sing there. And so everybody went down there and sang. Our connection really, a big part of our connection to temple was Cantor Kohn, too. Is that where he went, to Whittier? No, no, no. He just was either friends with the cantor in Whittier...I'm trying to even remember if it was Cantor Cane who was like a brother to him?he used to call him his brother?and it might have been that. I do know that at some point he had taped us and we...I don't know...we won some kind of something. I don't even know what it was. He had sent the tape in. We were 6 a very, very talented teen choir. While he was there pretty much we sang almost every Friday night. How many children were in the choir? In the teen choir? Probably about a dozen. So at least half of?actually, probably more now that I'm thinking about it. There were the three of us. There were the Gelbarts, another family. They were a family of seven, but the four oldest sang with the teen choir. The Abramsons. So there were a few groups of siblings. So it was at least twelve or fourteen. Did you come from a musically inclined family? Actually, my mom sang with?it was called Zimrat Yisrael, I think, or something like that. After the war they went to Israel I think in 1952 and they had some kind of a musical jamboree. They ended up being the only young choir. Everywhere they went, she said, everywhere they went people would cheer them and cheer them because coming from the Holocaust and everything, to see young people singing Jewish songs. Years ago she told me...It was a very famous person that conducted their choir. I looked it up years and years ago. I don't know who it is now. But that was the choir that she was with and she went to Israel with them. So my mom sang. I'm not going to say my dad sang. He davened. That's good. He wasn't too bad. You mentioned your mother is a Holocaust survivor. I assume she's been interviewed by the Holocaust Resource Center? Yes, yes. So her name is? 7 Fernande Chenin. So her story is accessible through that? Through the Shoah Project. Then she used to speak at schools here because she worked for the school district. But I will say that growing up she didn't really speak about it. It kind of was something that was a little bit hidden?well, it wasn't hidden; it just wasn't talked about until the late seventies. It was really after Meryl Streep?the Holocaust story with Meryl Streep? It was a miniseries on TV called the Holocaust and Streep was in it. All of a sudden it was okay to talk about it. The only thing we knew growing up was that if she screamed in the middle of the night, we were told that we could not wake her up and that was because if we woke her up, they said that she might remember what she was dreaming about. So I'm not going to say that she screamed; sometimes she would moan or cry or do things like that. But we just knew not to wake her up. My dad told us. I think maybe I remember it very clearly. At one point my parents separated and I moved to my mom's friend's house with her, another French lady, for not a very long time. I think because I was in junior high and I was older I remembered it. Yes, it was just not something she talked about. Actually, my mom was interviewed and my brother was interviewed about ten years ago for something in the paper. I don't know what it was about. I think it was just telling Holocaust survivor stories. He said until she spoke to his children's school, he never really heard the whole story. And then we never really, really heard the whole story until she was interviewed by the Shoah Project. They knew how to interview her, how to put things into chronological order and get?we learned things that she never had spoken about, some of it not so good, just things that she just didn't really express. A couple of things we tried to follow up on. I don't know if you want to talk about that part. Yes, I'm interested. If you're willing to talk about it, yes. 8 I mean my mom was never really afraid to talk, but she didn't make it a horrifying story. She spoke to younger children and she actually preferred to speak to elementary more than junior high and high school. She said, "They always have more questions. The other kids will just sit there, maybe in awe, maybe not really knowing what to say. And you don't have that filter when you're in elementary." But the one thing we did learn through the Shoah Project that we pursued was that she was in a work camp at the end and she saw somebody who knew her brother. She was the youngest of eight. Only seven survived?not the Holocaust?there was one who had died in infancy. So she was the youngest of eight. In 1933, her mother had been hit by an unannounced express train when she was six, and so she and her eight-year-old brother were put into the orphanage. There was a ten-year-old brother who was already in a sanatorium because he had contracted TB; he was in the country. The youngest that got to stay home was my Tata (aunt), the one my mom followed here to the United States. She was twelve and she stayed because she said she would support herself. Twelve years old. It's hard for me to imagine because I work with twelve-year-olds. But she knew how to sew. So that's what she did; she made hats. But the one that was eight, he and my mom were very close. When she was arrested she was seventeen. He was already out of the orphanage and did not declare himself Jewish. So he had joined?not joined voluntarily, but what they would do is they would take the French boys to work in the factories in southern Germany. And so my mom saw somebody that she knew, knew her brother. I have no idea...I guess I'd have to watch it and I don't know that she remembers, but somehow she said, "Can you take a message to him?" And was able to write a message to him and wrote, "Don't worry. I didn't tell them I'm your sister." Because obviously if this guy was captured...She told him where she was and if she's in a concentration camp, then 9 they would know that he was Jewish. Well, after she was liberated she found out that he supposedly died not long after that in a boating accident. And so she said, "I was seventeen years old and what did I know?" When she did the Shoah Project, she said, "I always wondered if it was because somebody intercepted the letter." So I think it was my brother who contacted the Red Cross and they tried to find his grave so that they could take a picture to show that he was buried as a Catholic, but they didn't find anything. So they don't know. She doesn't know. Of course, at this point in her life, she's got dementia and she doesn't know. But it was something that we never knew haunted her all those years that she thought that she was responsible maybe for his death. Oh, my. I actually had a German exchange student several years ago and she said that it's different in Germany. It's centuries and centuries of burying people. After so many years they actually bury somebody else there. And so she said, "That's probably what happened." But we weren't able to find out. One of those secrets that will never be?may never ever know the answer. Right, right. So it's a crazy life. She had a very, very horrible childhood. She was raised in a Rothschild orphanage. Everybody said, "Well, her father was still alive." Well, my aunt told me that he knew at that point that he had stomach cancer and he did pass away three years after my grandmother did. But it wasn't uncommon at that time to have both parents living and the children lived in an orphanage, in the Rothschild's orphanage, because they wanted them to have food and shelter and clothing and education and they thought that they would get that there. But it wasn't the best place to grow up. 10 So you have had this French influence in your life at all? I am actually a French citizen. Oh, really? I just found the paperwork. How does that work? Well, my mom wasn't an American citizen when my brother and I were born, and so she applied for us to be French citizens. When you become an American citizen, you have to renounce whatever citizenship you have, but France does not allow you to renounce your citizenship. It never affected me. We had no proof that I had this until I found the paperwork literally about a month and a half ago. It never affected me, but my brother was drafted when he was eighteen into the French military. Oh, my goodness. They had to jump through ten thousand hoops to get him a deferment. So he had a card saying that he was deferred; otherwise, if he ever went into a French territory, he could be arrested as a draft dodger. But I'm a girl and I never received anything. I was going through my mom's papers. Are you familiar with what's going on with the French railroad? There's a settlement against the French railroad because they put French citizens on the trains. So I was trying to go through her paperwork to submit for whatever. I haven't heard from them. Lo and behold, there it says I'm a French citizen. So I contacted my cousin in California and I said, "What would be the advantage of getting a French passport?" Because she's an American citizen now, about five years ago. It's my mom's great niece. She said, "Well, it's interesting because it's not just being a French citizen 11 anymore; it's being an EU citizen." It's just like the United States; if you go from one state to another, you're not asked to produce?well, you might be asked to produce your Social Security card, but not your birth certificate, but you don't have to get special permission to work from one state to another. Well, if you're an EU citizen, you can work in Germany, you can work in Italy; you can work any country that is part of the EU. So I contacted somebody that she knows at the embassy and she said she'll request my French birth certificate. I'm like, I didn't even know I had a French birth certificate. That's amazing. Yes. So that's the advantage is if I ever wanted to go over there. I thought, ah, I could go for a summer and teach English. I'm an English teacher here. I could teach English there. Why not? Why not? And I would not have to get any special paperwork done. So we'll see what happens there. Interesting. That could be the upside to that whole thing. That could be the upside of that, yes. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Yes. So that's my roots. So your dad was a barber. Did he have his own shop? In Cleveland he had his own shop. That was one of the things that the doctors were worried about was the stress of having his own shop. Do you know what a three-fisted smoker is? No. Oh. Well, he had one in each hand and one in the ashtray. He lit a cigarette in the morning and then he didn't put one out. Then he never had to light another match. He was a smoker. So 12 when he came to Las Vegas, though, he just worked for other people. So whenever he wasn't ill or whatever, he made his living as a barber. My mom worked for the school district. What did she do? She was a clerk/typist and she started out working in schools. Then she ended her career at the Arville bus yard. She actually did buses for twelve years or thirteen years. Actually, she was really known because they could say, "How much mileage is on this number bus?" She had a thing for numbers and she could just say, "Oh, that bus has this many miles and it needs to be..." So she worked for them. She actually was a secretary that opened the Arville yard and she said she could always remember they'd have to drive a mile if they?this is Trop and Arville; there was nothing around at the time?they'd have to drive a mile if they wanted to go get something to eat. That was back in the day. Yes, the memories of all that open space has to be amazing. Yes. Actually, Daydream Ranch; that was the corner of Eastern and Warm Springs. What's Daydream Ranch? Daydream Ranch is where we would go and rent horses and ride for an hour in the desert out here in what is now known as Green Valley. There was nothing there. There was the ranch and wide open space. Do you know who owned the Daydream Ranch? I don't, but my Uncle Joe would probably know. He was really a rider. Suzie was a rider, too. So it was just really desert. And you went to school where? I went to Laura Dearing [Elementary School]. Actually, it was recently in the news because it's right across the street from...I guess a stink hole opened up in the street. It was really a very 13 cohesive community. I grew up in Parkdale; that was the name of the community. People are really into putting down old memories of that area; somebody posted somebody knew somebody who paid off somebody so that they could build in this place where they already knew that there were sinkholes and there was a car that went into a sinkhole, I guess, which I didn't realize back then. Oh my gosh. We grew up there. Physically our home was there, but our real home was really at the temple. We were there all the time. So your parents, you said, they'd drop you off and pick you up. They'd drop us off or pick us up. I went to K.O. Knudson for junior high. Sometimes I'd walk from K.O. to the temple. The Goussacks lived not too far, so we would car pool with them. We car pooled with the Schrecks who lived in our area. So somehow we always made it there, whoever was taking us. How did you decide that you wanted to become a teacher? I don't know if you can put this on tape. Oh, really? Then don't answer. No, no, no. This really is the truth. You're going to laugh. I just told this story last night. My Uncle Joe was a dentist and they were trying to figure out when I was in junior high what I should do. My Uncle Joe said, "I think you should be a hygienist because my girls make good money. They are able to have families. It's good hours." I said, "Oh, Uncle Joe, I don't want to put my fingers in somebody's mouth." He said, "Okay, so what do you think you want to be?" And I'm probably like in seventh or maybe eighth grade. I said, "I don't know. I think maybe I'd like to be a nurse." He said, "You'll be much happier sticking your fingers up their ass." I said, 14 "Okay, I don't want to be a nurse." A couple of years later I volunteered with a bunch of friends, probably from the temple, doing something with Special Olympics and I said, "This is what I want to do." And so in eleventh grade I was a peer advocate with the students at Chaparral High School in the resource room. And then in twelfth grade I was a?I don't even think they would allow this anymore?I was a peer advocate over at Helen J. Stewart. So I only had three classes and I would go there and it was only supposed to be for an hour and I would stay the whole day and just work till the end of the day. I said, "This is what I want to do." But then I got married young, had kids, became a legal secretary. At one point my husband and I talked about me going back to school because he knew I always wanted to be a teacher. The reality is at that time it was going to cost four or five thousand dollars to get my bachelor's. This is like in 1990. But I would come out making less than I was as a legal secretary. And so I kind of scrapped that idea. Then when he died, because he died active duty, I had the education benefits. I came back, went through a paralegal program, and said, "I've always wanted to be a teacher," and decided to go for it. So I became a teacher at forty-five. I went to school for four and a half straight years. Where did you go? UNLV. I went to UNLV. This was home. Bob died in '97. I came home. I'm sorry about that. Oh, yes. What kind of teacher have you been? Special Ed. I always wanted to make a difference. I think there's so much potential. I've seen 15 people who struggle and sometimes you're just not mature enough to learn what they want you to learn at the time and sometimes it's something that really people can help you with. A lot of times it's the motivation. I tell my kids, "You can do anything you want. It may take you twenty hours a day studying, but you can probably do it. It's just having the motivation and knowing that you have to work harder at something than the rest of the people." Which is unfortunate and it's hard. Everybody has their struggles. I was pretty lucky. Everything came easy to me. I was a reader. My dad was a reader. My dad was just a...That was his life was reading. I was a reader; my brother not so much. But he was also a boy. I said we're three hundred and sixty-five days apart. So I'm December seventh; he's December eighth. Back in the olden days you could put kids in school if they're?well, that's what they did if your birthday was by the end of the year. His life was hard until he was held back one year in third grade and things started to click. He graduated and became a barber and then had an unfortunate accident and ended up with rods in his back. He broke his back and couldn't bend because he's got poles holding him up. Now he's an optician. But had they started him in school when he really should have been...Most kids are not ready. I was the exception that I could read. But I was also kind of a chunky little kid because I would literally come home, lay on the couch, and read a book a day; that was my life until I became a teenager and got a life. In those days, did you check out books from the school library or where did you get books? I checked out books from the school library. My dad took us almost every week to the Flamingo Library. We used to buy books at?you know how they sell the books at the Flamingo Library? We would buy books there. I would say though that the majority of the books that I remember having at home were from the thrift shop. We were regulars at the Hadassah Thrift Shop in part 16 because we weren't very rich. They were very good to us. This community was really a good community to us. My dad, when he would have a heart attack, I can remember that we would get boxes of matzah. And I know?I found out years later?that the temple...I remember my dad, because he did it almost until the day he died, every week he would go to the temple with five dollars. And I'm not joking. It was five dollars every single week he would go there. If you think about it, three children in religious school and the dues...And I did find out years later my Uncle Joe did probably w