Transcript of interview with Bernie and Barbara Kaufman by Barbara Tabach, October 27, 2014

AN INTERVIEW WITH BERNIE AND BARBARA KAUFMAN 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 Community Digital 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, Amanda Hammar 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 Bernard ?Bernie? Kaufman and Barbara (Raben) Kaufman were married in 1961 in their childhood home of St. Louis, Missouri, at the ages of twenty-one and nineteen respectively. In 1968, they moved to Las Vegas, joining Bernie?s brother, Herb, in the growing city who had opened the first store. Bernie assisted in managing the family businesses four stores, until they were sold in 1982. At that time, he went into the car rental business; he sold that business in 2000 and then went into airport advertising. Barbara focused herself on raising their children, Carrie and Andrew, and once the children were in their teens, she went to work for her brother as a bookkeeper. In this interview, the Kaufman?s reflect upon their upbringing in St. Louis, where they met and married, and making the decision to move to Las Vegas. They discuss the experience of running the stores and the impact on business as the retail environment changed over the years. The Kaufmans also talk about their involvement with the Jewish community, including B?nai B?rith and Sisterhood, and how it?s grown over the years. They also discuss the impact of the Jewish community members in gaming as well as other sectors, and the increase of congregations over the decades. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Bernie and Barbara Kaufman On October 27, 2014 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv Share story about how they met, as teenagers; reflection of childhood hometown of St. Louis. Bernie remembers his father?s furniture business in St. Louis. Both talk about family ancestry; moving to Las Vegas, adjusting to new city; raising children in Las Vegas; details about daughter and son?s education and career journeys, leaving Las Vegas and eventually returning???1-10 Bernie discusses managing four store locations with brother, Herb; a typical day at a store; structure of lease agreements with suppliers; changes in retail environment. Mentions?s community engagement; their history with Michael and Naomi Cherry, Ron Lurie, Barry Eisen. Reflects on changes of Las Vegas retail environment between 1960s and 1980s, when operated ; emergence of high-end options???????????????????????....11-17 Talk about Wonder World?s marketing strategies, led by Naomi Cherry; family members also relocating to Las Vegas. Discuss Temple Beth Sholom and its early spiritual leadership; the growth of additional congregations; eventually joining Midbar Kodesh Temple. Barbara mentions involvement with Sisterhood, organizing plays. More about challenges associated with abundance of congregations; changes in spiritual leadership over the years. Mention difficulty of keeping kosher when moving to Las Vegas?????..?????????????...18-30 Reflect upon social life as young couple in city; going to lounge shows and marquee entertainment like Elvis Presley, Bill Cosby; participating in fundraising dinners, programs ?s community engagement activities. Talk about raising children in Las Vegas; their extracurricular activities; closeness and safety of community during that time. Share about granddaughters? experiences with anti-Semitism; differences between current Jewish community in Las Vegas as compared to their previous home in Illinois????????????...31-36 Bernie discusses involvement with B?nai B?rith; mission of organization. Both think about how the local gaming industry has changed, from personal ownership and service, to corporatization; growth of Jewish community member?s involvement in gaming over the years, and overall population, impacting various sectors of political and economic life?????????..37-41 Talks about getting into car rental business after selling Wonder World; then airport advertising and challenges associated with selling space. Mention their love for basketball, especially UNLV basketball during Coach Tarkanian days; current state of the team and university.....42-47 Index........................................................................................................................................48-49 1 Today is October 27, 2014. This is Barbara Tabach and I'm sitting in the Kaufman home. If you would state your names and how to spell Kaufman for the record that would be great. Barbara Kaufman, K-A-U-F, as in Frank, M-A-N. And Bernard Kaufman, K-A-U-F-M-A-N. You spell it the same way. That's great. Nice. Isn't that something? Weird. That's right. I've had it longer than she has. And how long have you both shared that last name? Fifty-three years. Wow. So we're going to start with meeting each other. Who wants to tell me where were you living? We were both living in University City. It was my birthday and I happened to be down the street from where his cousin lived at a girlfriend's house. We were walking back to my house to get my dad's car. And I was dying to meet his cousin. While we were walking back, Bernie and his cousin came walking out. And so we all stopped and we were all talking. I was talking to his cousin and Bernie was talking to somebody else. Then a few days later his cousin asked out my friend and Bernie asked out me. And that was it. That's funny. How old were you? I was seventeen. I was going into my senior year of high school. Wow. You were young when you met. We were very young. I was nineteen when we got married; he was twenty-one. Congratulations on that. That's great. On being twenty-one or...? 2 Well, both. Oh, I see. Okay. I mean that's a long time, at a young age. Well, we dated two and a half years before we got married, too. Were you both, then, from the St. Louis area? Yes, born and raised. Whereabouts were you raised in St. Louis? Maplewood, Missouri, which is a suburb of St. Louis. Then in my junior year we moved over to University City and I went to the University City High School. University City was predominately Jewish. When they had a Jewish holiday, the whole school...there was practically no one there. So they could have closed down because it was predominately Jewish. Were you in a predominately Jewish neighborhood yourself, then, too, Bernie? Not in Maplewood. In University City I was. But not in Maplewood? No. Maplewood was mainly a Catholic neighborhood. But my father, when he bought his house there was only four houses on the block type of thing and also in the suburbs. Just right across one street was Clayton, Missouri, which was also very heavily Jewish. So this was right in that area. But no, it was predominantly in a Catholic neighborhood. In fact, we were one of two Jewish families living in this old section. We had rights to go into the Little Flower Church. We were like unofficial members of the Little Flower Church. So I learned a lot about the Catholics. Of course, I knew about the Jews and grew up. So it wasn't all one sided; I knew a little bit. 3 What kind of business was your father in? My father was in the furniture business. He owned furniture stores. Did your mom work with him in the business? She was a housewife, but she did work with him. They had a small furniture store and got bigger. They were predominately in the black neighborhoods. My father did...at that time you couldn't get stuff and he was able to get the right furniture and the right things. It was in a black neighborhood, really deep that they weren't really heavy educated. And so you learn as you grow up about that situation, also. What do you mean? Explain that to me. Well, a lot of people could not...they didn't know how to read. They didn't know how to speak. They didn't know a lot of stuff. Speak properly. I'll tell you a little story. I was down there on a Saturday and a gentleman walked in. Now, I'm going to use some slang, how I remember that they talked. A gentleman came in and he goes up to my father and says, ?Mr. Charlet, I's got to have a benolium, but I's only got five dollars.? My father went and put his arm around him. In the back of the store there must have been fifty rolled up Armstrong nine by twelve linoleums. And the sign that went all the way across the store, it said, ?Armstrong linoleums, $4.95.? Afterwards when the man?the man told me, he says, ?Give me five dollars.? He put it over his shoulder and walked out the store. And I went up to my father. I was maybe seven, eight years old. I said, ?Dad, that sign says, 'Armstrong, $4.95.'? He said, ?He couldn't read.? Like I say, my father was very honest because the man couldn't read and he probably really could have taken him for more money and that kind of stuff. His father was kind. His father was a very kind man, helped out a lot of people. 4 Yes. So I learned of that culture, which you don't really learn unless you're in that environment type of thing. I used to go down there every Saturday or after?well, not after school because it was too far away. But Saturdays I used to be down there working with him. That's great. How did your dad get into the furniture business, do you know? His father was a furniture builder and craftsman. Dad just sort of picked up on it. He was an entrepreneur that went into his own business, and he and my mother worked very hard to make it very successful. Very cool. And how about your family background? My family...I have two brothers. My mother really didn't work that much. She worked at a department store for a short time. My father was an assemblyman. He worked at Husband Refrigerator Company, assembling things. My grandmother lived with us. Basically, my grandmother really is the one who raised us. She was everything to me. She was a wonderful, wonderful woman. To this day, I miss her. It's been a long time. We didn't have a lot of money, but we never knew that as kids. It was a very loving, fun home. Where was your grandmother from? She was from Russia. As was mine. Both of our families came... So both families are from Russian ancestry. Right. What do you know about Russian history in your families? I don't know a heck of a lot. All I know is that my grandmother in my family came from (Shimsk) and her family came from Minsk. They were little cities or little towns, whatever, like they show on Fiddler on the Roof. It 5 was that type of thing. My mother came over; she was four years old. Everybody in my family went to Springfield, Illinois. Then some of them drifted down to St. Louis. Now, my grandfather, my mother's father, was born in Philadelphia. He was American. I don't know how my grandma met him because I was like two years old when he died. That's interesting. So you get married. You're teenagers. And how long did you live in the St. Louis area before you moved, or what did you do? Seven years? Yes, seven years because I was twenty-eight when we moved here to Las Vegas. So she was twenty-six. We lived married in St. Louis seven years; that was it. And then we've lived here forty-six. We moved here the day after our son's second birthday. That's how I always remember. Which one of you wants to tell me first the story of moving to Las Vegas? How did you decide this is where you were going? Well, my brother, who I'll tell you a little bit more about later, came out here and opened up a discount store in town, in the north end of town. It was called the Golden West Shopping Center. It was a discount center like the Kmarts and the Wal-Marts; that type of thing. Then two years later, in '68, they bought the Wonder World store. There was one on Decatur. In two years, it went to four stores and we got the four corners of the town. They were all hundred thousand square foot. He asked me to come up here and help him in the business. So made the big decision and moved up here. Wow, that's amazing, a hundred thousand square foot stores. That's what the Wal-Marts and all those are. Yes, but back then that seems like? 6 Right. Exactly. ?really huge. What was the population at the time when you moved here? About two hundred and fifty thousand. Yes, in Clark County. Very small. In Clark County. I hated it here when we first moved here. But it grows on you. What did you hate about it? That I was alone. I had so many friends in St. Louis and I had nobody here. But I got active in Beth Sholom Sisterhood and started doing plays and started doing stuff with them. Got active in Judy Bayley auxiliary for the Cancer Society and did stuff for that. So I started to make friends, which was much, much easier. But I used to put my kids in the car and we would drive around to see things because we didn't have anything to do during the day. That's how I learned to get around in this town. If you're way out north, just look for the hotels and that will take you right back to the Strip and I knew how to get home. Where did you first live? When we first moved here, we lived on Koval, off of Twain and Koval; that area. Yes, we had an apartment; that wasn't too long. And then we bought a house on? Sahara and Arville; that area. Then we moved to Sam's Point Circle, which is off of Harmon between Pecos and Eastern. Yes, between Trop and Flamingo; in that area, and Eastern. We lived there for twenty-seven years and then moved over here. In this town, it takes you at least a year and a half to two years to make friends, or it did at that time. You had to be a member of the temple and Beth Sholom was the only temple at that time. So if you were involved in that. And to do things...at that time the nucleus was very small that ran things. So once you got to make friends. This is a melting pot city 7 because you get them from North Carolina, Texas, New York. There's a lot of different things. If you're born and raised wherever, everybody thinks the same or does the same thing. You can be rich, poor, dumb, smart. It's the same attitude. Well, when you move here you have a mixture. So it takes a little while to make some friends. This is true. I mean it was a small town. But what I disliked was...I'll give you an example. I went to the grocery store, which was attached to Wonder World at the time. I needed a brisket. I went up to the butcher and said, ?Do you have any briskets cut?? He said, ?No.? He said, ?We don't have any fresh ones. We probably won't even have any until a couple of days from now.? Oh, okay, I'll try looking somewhere else. He says, ?But you know what? I can hold one for you.? I said, ?Okay.? He said, ?What's your name?? I said, ?Kaufman.? He said, ?Kaufman from next door?? I said, ?Yeah.? He goes, ?Wait a minute; I'll cut one for you.? And I got so mad. It was like if I was Joe Schmo from the street, I couldn't get a brisket; but because my name is Kaufman, you're going to give me a brisket? That made me so angry. And I encountered that several times. It's like you treat everybody the same way, not just because you have a name that they recognize. I just didn't like that. That's one of the things I disliked about here. When you moved here, how many kids do you have? Two. And you just have the two kids? Yes. So they were both born someplace else. My daughter was not quite five, and Andy was just two years old. So they didn't have any comparison. No. 8 And what was it like to raise kids here? The school district was very good. It was very good when our kids were growing up. When they were in elementary school, we were very active in the PTA. So it was good. It was very good. We had no complaints. Yes, we had no complaints about the school district. Again, the town was small. What we missed, I think, is like sports, big league sports that you had to go someplace else, just a lot of theater if you went there. They had it in St. Louis; didn't have it here for a long time. Again, the town was small. It was a small town. They had everything to do if you want movies and bowling alley and stuff like that, but it was just small. It was not as huge. Although there were so many advantages. If you wanted to go see shows, you could go see all the live entertainment that was around. You could go out to dinner any time. Still can. In the middle of the night if you wake up, oh, I'm hungry, you can get in your car and go get something to eat. They're open here. So there are some advantages. The weather, I love the weather. That two or three weeks? It's not two or three weeks. ?that you get too hot, it's? When it's in the hundreds, it's hot. It is hot. See, but in St. Louis when you're ninety and humidity is ninety, it's a killer. It's unbearable. I have to agree. The humidity is a deal breaker. Yes. So your kids, did they stay here? Did they continue to? No. Both kids graduated here. My daughter graduated from Emerson College in Boston. First she went to Brandeis. 9 Yes, she went to Brandeis and then she went to USC for film school. It was the premier school, USC, and it wasn't really what she wanted. It was more of making a film and she wanted to do the writing and directing type of thing. So she came back here and then went back for interviews with Brown and Yale? Tufts. Or Tufts, rather. They both told her, ?Have you thought about Emerson?? She went to Emerson and graduated from Emerson. Then she moved from there to Chicago. She had her own theatrical newspaper that she developed. Then as newspapers go under...she had that happen. Now she is currently back here in Las Vegas with us and our two granddaughters, and she is the executive director of Midbar Kodesh Temple now. Oh, okay. And her name is? Carrie Kaufman. Alright. All this comes full circle, doesn't it? How nice to have family back here. It's very nice. And our son lives here now. Okay. Tell me about him, too. He graduated from ASU. He moved around a lot. He sold motorcycles. He lived in Florida. He lived in Chicago. Well, actually before he sold motorcycles he worked for his then father-in-law in Chicago, which didn't work out at all. We had a car rental agency. So he and his wife came here and they worked in the business with us. That was good. Then when we sold the business that's when he started going into selling motorcycles. That's when he went to Florida and then he went to Chicago. Then he went to California and then he came here. And I love having both my kids here. It's the best thing in the world. I'm jealous of that. 10 I know. But it took a long time. My daughter was in and loved Chicago. She really did. Yes, she did. She loved it. She would rather we had moved there, but she couldn't get a job there. It was just really tough. That's interesting, though. As I say, she had this paper and it was the largest theatrical paper. She did spots where actors could check and see where auditions were at and stuff like that. Other media took over and the paper just went. It all changes, doesn't it? It does. So she came back here and the temple needed somebody. So right now she's director of the temple. She was at the right place at the right time. That's great. Let's talk about your work experience. You move here and your brother has already established the business. Yes, he was here. How long had he lived here before you all came? A couple of years. He moved here in '66. Okay, so a couple of years. How did he get started in owning a retail store? He worked over in St. Louis in Collinsville, which is on the other side of the river. There was a guy who opened up called USA Stores, which were the same things. He was the manager over there. Then a fellow out of New York by the name of Paul Channon, who owns the Channon 11 Building, he owned a piece of property out here and they were going to do some stuff. They got together. So Herb moved out here and they got the stores going. I came up here to help him and was the executive for running all four stores with him. Great. What's a typical day for running a Wonder World store? What was that like? Our store was a little unusual. The management of running it is to make sure everything is running?taking care of the customers, making sure that everything is going okay, make sure that your employees are doing well in the office, day-by-day things that were just mainly taking care of customers and making sure that it's open on time and take care of any complaints and stuff like that. You have a staff. It's just like running any other business, just maybe a little larger scale. How many employees would have in a typical store? About a hundred and fifty in each store. Wow. What were your hours? We opened up at nine and closed at nine, Monday through Sunday. Seven days a week, nine to nine. They closed four days a year. Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. That was unusual because a lot of the?well, not at that time. At that time, the stores were closed. Then as it got later, in the nineties, Penney's started opening on New Year's. Most of them closed on Christmas and they still do. But New Year's they would open and Thanksgiving they were closed. Those two, most of the stores. Then they started opening on Easter. But we were out of the business by that time. What year did you sell the businesses, then? Eighty-two. The growth of the valley spurred on. So you had four locations. Can you tell me where the 12 four locations were? Yes. The first one was on Decatur and Vegas Drive; the second one was on Maryland Parkway and Twain; the third one was on West Sahara; and the fourth one was on Eastern and Owens. So we had the four corners of the town at that time. Now, of course, everything is grown out. Summerlin going that way, Anthem, North Las Vegas has grown, Henderson. So, everything. But at the time those four locations were enough to cover it. I know you said it was discount and like a Kmart. What would most people come there for? What was the attraction? Well, it had everything. It didn't matter. Drugs. The pharmacy was there. The pharmacy. Of course, we had the culinary contract for pharmacy. So all the culinary used to come in and get all their prescriptions. The other section in there was housewares, hardware; that was all one section. We had a lady's department, men's department, liquor department, sporting goods, shoes, automotive. So they were all different departments. Who did the buying for all these different departments? They were all leased. They were all leased departments; that's why it was unusual. In other words?at that time they were doing this all over?the shoe department was Berlin Shoes out of St. Louis. The lady's department was out of California. The automotive was out of California. Big 5 Sporting Goods was out of California. So all of these departments were leased. Then we were the management of the departments. They had to do what we had said. We did all the advertising for them. So nobody really knew. They only knew about Wonder World; they didn't know how it was set up. If there was a dispute with a company?in other words, somebody brought something back to the 13 shoe department?if we made the decision that you will give credit or whatever, then they had to do it. We ran the company. We ran the stores. But they had no problems. And you did all the hiring and firing of the employees? No, they did. They did their own. Our people were the janitors or the security. We were the first one to put closed-circuit television in all the stores for shoplifting. We had an office that cashed checks and stuff like that and executive offices. So that was ours. But you're still governing all the people in the store. Got it. Interesting. It was an interesting concept. But then Kmarts came in; they were the first ones to come in. And then these things sort of went away. Target was another one out of Dayton, Ohio, Dayton stores; they came in. Then the Wal-Mart started and got bigger. Go from there. Yes, retail changed a lot. Yes, it sure did. But our stores were?if you go back and talk to people in the late sixties, seventies, early eighties type thing when we had it, everybody that was here at that time knew Wonder World. We were involved in everything. All the general managers were on either city committees, state committees. They were involved in something with charity, whatever. Everybody made sure. So they all knew Wonder World. If there was a PTA, if there was a church that was having a function, we would make sure that there was a gift there donated by Wonder World. Naomi Cherry, who is Michael Cherry's mother, was the PR person. Okay. He did tell me this, yes. She moved here in '68, the same time we did. In fact, Bernie and Naomi drove here together. You were all from St. Louis. 14 Yes. Michael is from St. Louis, also. In fact, Naomi Cherry worked with my brother in Collinsville at USA and then he dragged her out. I was at Michael's graduation party when he graduated law school. Oh, how wonderful is that? And he and my brother are best friends. They walk every Saturday. They're very close. That's very cool. You'll find connections all over the Jewish community here. It really is. In fact, Michael Cherry, when he moved up here and he was waiting to take his bar exam, was my night assistant at Wonder World. What did that mean to be your night assistant? He worked at night. He was the night manager type of thing. He would do his studying while he was on duty. He could do that, too. So it worked out very well. Who are some other notable people that worked for you besides Mike Cherry? Ron Lurie. Oh, really? Ron Lurie was one of the general managers, yes. And the sheriff, what's his name? Randy... Randy Oaks. Randy Oaks, he was a sheriff at?well, no, he wasn't sheriff; he ran for sheriff. He was a police officer. He ran for sheriff. Barry Eisen was one of the general managers, also. Now, Barry has been here longer than us. Barry is also my cousin. But he's been here longer than us because he was in the air force and then they stayed here. All three of his kids were born here. I'll have to remember that. 15 Have you talked to Barry Eisen? No. Barry and Beth Eisen. Barry and Beth. Well, we'll give you their name. Yes, Barry probably remembers a lot. Barry, again, came and he was at the first store. And I can give you his phone number, too. Okay, I'll get that from your later. Barry and Beth Eisen, they have been here. He also was a past president at Temple Beth Sholom. His son is Dr. Andy Eisen. I'm trying to get together with Andy. That's his only son. He's our godson. All right. Got it. See, it all comes together, doesn't it? It does. I'm waiting until after the elections are done to get together with him. Yes, that's a great idea. What about the retail world in general in Las Vegas from late 1960 and the twenty years that you had your stores, how would you describe what happened here during that period of time? On the retail end, it was a very active place for retail, not high end because anything high end you had to go to L.A. or San Francisco. There was nothing high end until the Fashion Show opened. No, no. But the Boulevard opened up across the street. Yes, the Boulevard opened up and that had Macy's and Dillard's and that was in '68, but nothing really high-end type stores. 16 So when those stores opened that started elevating the? The area for shopping. ?the options. Then in the '69-70 type thing there was a recession here, so things really got down a little bit. But then they picked up. There was more building. They overbuilt on homes like they did twice now. But then the hotels, there were more hotels that started. Caesars Palace went up. Circus Circus went up. So they started getting some more things to bring in. Retail here...it was funny. They used to have junkets from Mexico every other week. And when they would come in, our luggage count went way high and notions went way high. They would come in, buy another piece of luggage, and just load it with everything to take back to Mexico. Lots of stuff. They still do that, though. They do it. They go to the Belz Mall and they buy a piece of luggage and they just shop like crazy. They just have to pay extra now for when they ship it back home. I guess they take it as a piece of luggage with them when they go back home. But yes, go in the Belz Mall and you'll see them walking around. It's good for the economy. Yes, it's great for the economy. Then they started getting some more. But the retail, it was very active. Again, it started basically '68, '69, '70, '71?that they had more stores and building the Meadows, which was right across from the Maryland Parkway store. No, the Boulevard. I mean the Boulevard. That opened. In fact, we opened up one week before Penney's. We were at four o'clock in the morning still stocking. We had no lights until four thirty in the morning so we could open up one week ahead of time. Boulevard was already open with Macy's, but not 17 Penney's. Then we got in on their grand opening. And then over on the other side of town after that, after the Boulevard?which is it, the Meadows? Yes. Yes, the Meadows opened. So those were the two biggest ones. Then way later the Galleria opened. No. The Fashion Show, then the Galleria. The Fashion Show was the first one to really have high end; that really brought the high end. Right. Of course, the Fashion Show. But also, if you want really high end, you would go to Caesars Palace and go to the shops at the Forum. And then since then some of the hotels have built shopping centers with very high-end things, shopping places to go. The options have just gone through the roof for sure. Oh, really, yes. Well, retail was good. A lot of people that came in town would go to all the stores. Marshall Rousso was even at the airport, but they had their clothing stores and they did very well. They had sort of the higher end; that type of thing at the time. What other kinds of things did you do to promote yourself? You said you tried to get your store open before JCPenney. What other kind of promotional memories do you have? The Friday after Thanksgiving, we used to with the fire department have Santa come in on a fire truck and throw Ping-Pong balls that some were marked. Santa would go out there and then he'd have all these Ping-Pong balls and throw them out into the crowd. I'm talking about a crowd of anywhere from six hundred to a thousand people that would come to the parking lots. Oh, my goodness. Everybody would just come to the parking lots. The kids loved it. 18 That was good. They loved it and to go in. So Wonder World was noted for that, as other stores. But we were the only ones that really did stuff like that. We would also on the retail end promote and have picnics and barbeques for seniors. So again, we gave back to the community. A lot of the stuff was giving back to the community. How did you advertise those events like that? That was Naomi's... Yes, she did that. Yes. What did Naomi do? What did she do for you? She was the advertising, PR girl. She was very well connected. People would come to her or Herb for saying, ?Hey, this is what we want to do for the...we want to do this. Would you help?? And if it was something that we