Transcript of interview with Shelley Berkley by Barbara Tabach, February 13, 2015

AN INTERVIEW WITH SHELLEY BERKLEY 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, Stefani Evans 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 Former United States Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley represented Nevada?s 1st Congressional District from 1999 to 2013, an area that includes most of Las Vegas. During her seven terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the district benefited from millions of dollars of federal funding for education, transportation, and other projects. She also successfully fought against storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Shelley Berkley was born Rochelle Levine in New York City in 1951 and moved to Las Vegas during junior high in 1963. She practiced law in Las Vegas and served in the Nevada Assembly for two years. She was also a member and vice chair of the Nevada University and Community College System Board of Regents. Berkley attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where she served as student body president and graduated with honors in 1972 with a B.A. in political science. After obtaining her J.D. in 1976 from the University of San Diego, she returned to Las Vegas to practice law. From 1976 to 1979 Berkley was Deputy Director of the Nevada State Department of Commerce. She provided legal counsel to several casinos at various points in her career, served as national director of the American Hotel-Motel Association, and founded the Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys and the Senior Law Project. In 1977 she married Frederic Berkley and had two children, Max and Sam. She remarried in 1999 to Dr. Lawrence Lehrner of Las Vegas, who also had two children from a previous marriage. Before being elected to Congress, Berkley served on the board of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. She continued her vocal support of Israel in Congress and was heavily involved in all matters related to the Middle East. She was a member of several committees, including: Foreign Affairs, Veterans Affairs, Ways and Means, Small Business, and Transportation. Building a new Veterans Administration medical complex in Southern Nevada and sponsoring many pieces of healthcare legislation are also among her accomplishments as a U.S. Representative. In 2013, she was appointed CEO and Senior Provost of the Touro College and University System?s Western Division. In this interview, Berkley shares her family history, from her great-grandparents? immigration to the United States to her immediate family?s own migration from New York to Las Vegas. She reflects upon her childhood experience in Las Vegas, including her varied leadership positions with Jewish organizations as well as at school, from junior high school through college. Berkley also talks about her involvement as an adult within the Jewish community and more broadly as a public servant, in all levels of government. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Shelley Berkley on February 13, 2015 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv Talks about family history; their immigration from Greece and Russia to New York City; her calling to public service, and strong Jewish identity. Discusses how her parents met; moving from New York City to Catskills for father?s work; then moving to Las Vegas, where father eventually became the ma?tre d? of the Copa Room????????????????..????....1-6 Describes acclimating to life in Las Vegas as a young adult; becoming very involved in school, extra-curricular activities; attending Fremont Junior High School, then Valley High School. More about father?s career; mother?s involvement with Jewish community, and fostering her and sisters own commitment. Reflects upon life in city in 1960s and 70s, and its growth over the years; being active in high school student government???????????????.?????..7-11 Discusses experience as UNLV student; joining Delta Zeta sorority. Comments on anti-Semitism, both in Las Vegas as well as New York. Mentions involvement with B?nai B?rith. Talks about Jewish Federation; joining board post-law school; involvement with AIPAC, ADL, and role of each organization. Comments on current U.S.-Israel relations. Remembers planning ADL annual dinners with Art Marshall; other ADL programming???????????.????..12-18 Mentions more Jewish organizations involved with, including National Association of Christians and Jews, Jewish Family Service Agency, Jewish National Fund. Describes role of J Street on Capitol Hill. Lists various Jewish leaders influential in Las Vegas? development as a city, including Art Marshall, Jerry Mack, Hank Greenspun, Irwin Molasky????????...19-21 Reflects on political career, starting as a high school senior working on Nevada State Assembly campaigns, including Harry Reid?s; working for Mike O?Callaghan?s governorship campaign, being appointed to work for State Commerce Department post-election. Later serves as in-house counsel for Southwest Gas Corporation. Discusses running for political office, in state assembly, state legislature; serving as president at Channel 10, Las Vegas PBS, Board of Regents?...22-27 Index........................................................................................................................................28-29 vi 1 This is Barbara Tabach. Today is February the thirteenth. I'm sitting with Shelley Berkley in her office at Touro University. There are various ways that we can go talking about your history, about your future and all those things. I don't usually ask the question this way, but I'm curious. If you were to write a memoir today of your life, where would you start your story? That is an interesting question and I think I would start where I always start, with my grandparents coming to this country. My mother's side of the family is from Salonica, Greece; my father's side is from the Russia?Poland border. My mother's side of the family, prior to World War II, lived in Salonica, Greece. Half of the population of Salonica was Jewish; there were about eighty thousand Jews there. By the time the Nazis finished with us, there were less than a thousand Jews left. I am not presumptuous enough to think that my family would have been among the thousand chosen to live. On my father's side of the family, from the Russia?Poland border, an entire culture and civilization that had existed in that part of the world for a millennium was exterminated during the course of World War II. Both sides of my family were already in the United States in New York?s Lower East Side prior to World War II. My great?grandparents came with their six children; my grandmother was one of the six children. They couldn't speak English. They had no money. They had limited skills. The only thing they had when they came to this country was a dream and that dream was that their children and their children's children would have a better life here in the United States than they had where they came from. I often think of myself as my grandparents' American dream, but I am quite certain that in their wildest dreams they never could have imagined that they'd have a granddaughter who was a member of 2 the United States Congress. This is a remarkable country. I always wanted to be in public service, to be in elected office for two reasons. One is to pay forward, give something back to this country for having taken my family in; and not only giving us a chance to survive, which we did, but to thrive, which we certainly have. The other reason is that I grew up hearing stories about what life was like where they came from and being an active member of all the Jewish youth groups, learning about the Holocaust and recognizing the horror of it; for me public service was a way of insuring that what happened to our people two generations ago could never happen again; that I would be in a position to make sure it didn't happen again. Public service was a calling that I needed to fulfill. It was very important for me to do that. Given the fact that my Jewishness is the very essence of who I am, when I take a step back and I think about it, being Jewish determined my values, my friends, my interests, my passions, my husband, the way I raised my children. It is the essence of who I am, and so I take it very seriously. I am very happy that I am Jewish and I feel a sense of responsibility to be a very vocal part of my people. For generations, for hundreds, if not thousands of years, Jews thought that if we stayed in the background and we were quiet, nobody would see where we were and would leave us alone. Our history demonstrates that it doesn't matter how quiet we are or how innocuous we are, we are found and often harmed. I [decided] that rather than being quiet and self?effacing that I would be very outspoken and wear my Jewishness on my sleeve. There is no doubt in anybody's mind what I am and who I am, and it's important for me to demonstrate that and put that forward. I don't want any misunderstandings of where I'm coming from and why. For 5,775 years we have survived against insurmountable odds. Now, there aren't very many of us left. When I realize that there are more Hispanics in the state of California than there are Jews in the world, it makes me realize how precarious our situation is. I feel as though I am just the latest cog in a 3 wheel that has existed for 5,775 years, and it's important for me to make sure that I do my best to insure that there's Right. That's part of the legacy building and understanding the heritage and the culture. So when you look at your grandparents' history or your great?grandparents' history...they got to New York. Do you know approximately what year? Yes. I have gone to Ancestry.com and done a little research. They got here in the middle of the Balkan Wars, so they came to this country in the early nineteen teens. They had six hundred dollars when they arrived, and I guess that wasn't such a small amount of money in those days. They were not paupers; they came with resources. What did they do? My great?grandfather was a stevedore, a teamster; that's why they lived in Salonica, which is a port city. During the Spanish Inquisition, 1490s, they had to flee Spain. They weren't going to convert. They had to get out in a hurry and they immigrated to Greece, which was a part of the Ottoman Empire. In those years the Ottoman Empire, the Turks, were very welcoming; the Muslims were very welcoming of Jews. They knew we were an industrious people, a hard?working people and a successful people, and they wanted us to populate their empire, which we did. My great?grandfather was a very, very strong man; he was a teamster. He worked at the ports, like all the Jews. On High Holidays the ports shut down. On the Shabbat, the ports shut down. We were very much a part of the economy. He was a working man. He came here with my great?grandmother, Sarah, and their six children. My grandmother is the 4 second born of their family. They had two more children here in the United States. My uncle Saul was the oldest. My grandma Rachel was the second. My grandparents lied, for lack of a better word, about how old my grandmother was. She was actually eight years old when they arrived, but they said she was thirteen because in those days you wanted your children working, and so they added five years to her age so she could go to work in a couple of years. That's how the family sustained itself in those days; everybody worked. So then, the next generation stayed in New York. My mother was born on the Lower East Side of New York, as was I. It was a very challenging life. My grandfather committed suicide during the Depression, left his twenty?nine?year?old wife with two children. I believe my mother was nine at the time and my uncle was six. My grandmother had to make her way in the world with the two kids. She never remarried. She was a seamstress. She went to the factories in the Lower East Side and she sewed. They worked twelve?, fourteen?hour shifts because that's what you did. She managed to raise two children. My mother has passed on; my uncle is still alive. On my father's side of the family, my grandmother also had a very, very hard life. Again, she was from the Russia?Poland border. She had two young sons. Her first husband...It was during Czarist Russia, a conscription [period] particularly with the Jewish peasants. When the Czar's troops came to get you to fight, that was a twenty?five?year conscription; you never returned. So since he had two young boys and a wife?he wasn't my grandfather, but my grandmother's first husband?he hid in the barn. He froze to death. Oh, my goodness. They found him the next morning; he was dead. He left my grandmother with two young boys. One of 5 them died of starvation and the other one, my Uncle Natie, immigrated to the United States with my grandmother. He was so young at the time that her passport has my uncle sitting on her lap; he did not have his own passport. She also ended up on the Lower East Side in New York. She was also a seamstress. Her brother had immigrated to the United States a few years earlier and sent for her; that's how she got here. A number of years later she married my grandfather, combined the families, my uncle Natie and his five. They had my father. When my father was six months old, my grandfather William Levine died; her had a heart attack at thirty?nine. Again, there was another grandmother that not only had her two children?my father six months old and my uncle?but her dead husband's five children and she raised them. My parents met when they were in their teens. My father was very handsome. My father has a ninth?grade education. As soon as he could, he dropped out of school to help support his family. My mother graduated high school. Between the two of them, it didn't matter if their children, my sister and I, were pretty or if we were popular. I'd like to think we were both. What mattered is that we got good grades so we could make something out of ourselves. Education in our family was the end all, be all of everything. I thought my mother was so terribly mean. When I came home from school, I couldn't go out to play with the other kids; I had to do my homework; she made sure. I always would joke that she made sure I had breakfast in the morning even when I wasn't hungry and made sure?again, we were living in New York?I was very bundled up when I went out to play. I just thought she was the meanest human being on the planet. I'm the person I am today because my mother was who she was. My father was a waiter when I was growing up. When they married they moved in with my grandmother on the Lower East Side of New York, 42 Rivington Street. My Uncle Al was there; he was 6 in his teens. My grandmother was still working. Ten months later I came along. When I was two they moved up to the Catskills. It's a very Jewish migration story. There are no great surprises and it's a story that can be told by millions of people my age. So I don't find my family story particularly unique; it is just unique to me. We moved up to the Catskills. My dad worked as a waiter at the Concord Hotel, the Jewish Alps, the Catskills. When I was twelve, which was in the early sixties, the economy was not good. My father was having a very hard time making a living. One night he put my sister Wendy and I, and the dog, in the backseat of our car; my parents were in the front seat. Everything we owned was in a U?Haul hooked up to the back bumper. We drove across country, in the middle of the summer, no air- conditioning in the car. My dad had a letter of introduction to get a job as a waiter in Southern California. We drove the old Route 66. We got to Hoover Dam. There were signs that said, ?Las Vegas 30 miles.? Since it was the middle of the summer, my sister and I didn't have to be in school. My mother was a stay?at?home mom. My dad didn?t have a job; he had the promise of a job. Dog...no plans as far as we know. My parents seemed so old to me; they were thirty?three and thirty?six at the time. They wanted to see Las Vegas. We never knew if we'd be coming back East again. It had been a hellacious trip west so we decided to come to Vegas for the night. That was fifty?one years ago. We haven't left. One of these days we're going to unpack the U?Haul because I think we're staying. We made a life for ourselves. They got an apartment for a month just to see if they would like Las Vegas. Again, it was the summertime. My dad went down to the Culinary Union. They sent him out to the old Sands Hotel where he started as a waiter. By the time the Sands was imploded, my father was the longest serving employee and he'd been the ma?tre d' of the Copa Room for many, many years. 7 I always say the first thing my dad did was go and get a job; the first thing my mother did was join the temple. She knew it was very important to be a part of something and find our people. Temple Beth Sholom was the only synagogue in town in those days, so we joined Temple Beth Sholom. I know they gave my parents a reduced rate for dues because they didn't have any money. We made a life for ourselves in the middle of the desert. After we were here for the month, we moved to a different apartment in a better part of town so that my sister and I would go to a better school. So the first apartment, where was that located? It was behind Fremont Street. Then we moved over to Maryland Parkway and Desert Inn in the Boulevard Park Apartments right behind Sunrise Hospital; that was before the Boulevard Mall existed. There was nothing but desert across the street on the Desert Inn. Since my dad was working at the Sands, it wasn't too hard for him to get there. But, after a couple of months, our car was repossessed. We didn't have any transportation. We were really broke. What did you think about that as a young girl? Do you remember what you felt at that moment? I don't know and I guess thanks to my mother, I never felt...I always felt special, never felt inferior. I don't remember feeling shame or embarrassment. I felt inconvenienced terribly. Tell me about even coming to Vegas. Oh, I cried. I was absolutely heartbroken. I left my lifelong friends from the Catskill Mountains. In the Catskills, all these little towns, there was just one central high school. So you know everybody from kindergarten on, and leaving my friends was just horrible. I spent the whole summer in the apartment, because it was so hot outside?I came from the Catskills, it was green and there was a nice little breeze. This was hell, absolute hell. I thought my parents took me to hell. Then I started school. I'd say the difference in the caliber of education from the New York public school system to the Nevada public school system was dramatic. I found that I was 8 probably the smartest person in the class, not that I have any innate genius or anything. Quite to the contrary, I worked very hard in school to do well. But the year before we moved to Las Vegas I was in an accelerated class in New York, so I took seventh and eighth grade together. Here I was repeating the eighth grade. It didn't take a genius to do well, so I was able to get involved in a lot of extracurricular activities. Once I started school at the end of August, I never looked back. What school did you attend first? I attended John C. Fremont Junior High School. It was old when I was there and that's over fifty years ago. I was part of the first graduating class at Valley High School in 1968. John C. Fremont was a feeder into Las Vegas High School. In 1964, when I started high school, Valley was brand?new. So the big decision was, are you going to Vegas High or going to Valley High? Because of where we lived, I went to Valley High School. Again, I was very active in high school, active with the cheerleaders. I wasn't a cheerleader, but I was the cheerleaders' manager. I was the student body secretary. I had a wonderful high school career. After we established ourselves in Las Vegas it was a wonderful place to grow up. I was very lucky. I started school and made friends. It was great. My father, of course, went to work and it was great for him. I think it was harder for my mother to adjust. She was a stay?at?home mom and she was in an apartment; it was a little lonesome and challenging for her. It wasn't until a few years later when she went Back East that she realized Las Vegas was home. Before she went back for the visit?somebody must have passed away or something, so my mom went back to New York?I think before that Las Vegas wasn?t exactly home for her. But when she came back... She was no longer a visitor, passing through. Yes, we had roots. A few years later we bought our first home. 9 Where was that at? It was a couple of blocks from Valley High School. Initially I walked to school. Then when I got a used Rambler my senior year, I drove, even though it was probably easier to walk. But I had a car; I was going to drive. We lived right off Eastern Avenue. In those days Eastern was a two?lane street, one going north and one going south. It's not the large arterial that it is now. We lived right off Eastern Avenue, a couple of blocks from Valley High School. I became very, very involved in school at Valley. But more than that I was very, very active at Beth Sholom, in the Jewish youth groups, and I think that's what defined my existence. And what year did your family arrive here? It was 1963 because I was in junior high school. Your father's career, was it easy for him because he had this good experience in the Catskills? It's easy for men. Look, he went to work. It was fine. It was great. I always say on a waiter's salary, my father made enough money to put a roof over our head, food on the table, clothes on our back and two daughters through college and me through law school. Not so bad on a waiter's salary. No. He did very, very well. He's still alive. He's going to be ninety in two weeks. He's someone you should interview. Absolutely. He has a very interesting life. What is your dad's name? George Levine. And your mom's name? Estelle Levine. 10 Your mom, you said earlier, she got involved with the synagogue at the time? Yes, not overly. My mother was a stay?at?home mom. Her job was us and she took it very seriously. She was involved in City of Hope, in Sisterhood, but she wasn't one of the mainstays at the temple. We all knew who they were; they were like all surrogate mothers. My mother was not one of those. But it was very important for her that we were at the synagogue, that we belonged, and that I was active in the Jewish youth groups. Was that a family tradition that was established in your youth, the importance of the temple? For my sister and I, not necessarily my parents. My parents were not active in the synagogue at all. My father worked nights, slept during the days, and he was a gambler. So he was not very active at all. He would go on High Holidays for Yizkor. My mother did a little Hadassah, the traditional things, a little City of Hope, a little Sisterhood, but it wasn't her life. But it was very important to her life that it was my life. Why do you think parents do that? I don't know. I would say that my mother lived her life through my sister and I. Our success was her success; that's how she defined herself. If we got all A's on our report card, it was on the refrigerator with a magnet where she made sure everybody that came to visit would see it. She was very, very proud of us, but also very demanding. Throughout my life, even when I was an adult and holding public office, my mother was my biggest supporter and my biggest critic. That contributed to my success, without a doubt. What was Vegas like in those days? I'm sure in your whole life people want to know what it was like in Las Vegas. Vegas was a very small town. There were less than a hundred thousand people when we drove in. It didn't take long to get to know everybody that you needed to know or wanted to know. There wasn't a movie you went to or an activity you were at where you didn't know somebody. 11 Decatur was the last street on the west side. I had a high school boyfriend, also very active in the Jewish community, active in the Jewish youth groups at Beth Sholom?again, only synagogue in those days, so that's where we congregated?but his family bought a house on Jones. Oh, my god, that was like the middle of nowhere. There was nothing past Jones. I lived off Eastern, which was the last street on the east side. It was like living in a different state. To give you some idea of parameters of distance at the time, the Clark County Education Department building was built off Eastern on Flamingo Road. It's still there; the Ed Shed they call it. That was so far out of town that people couldn't figure out why in G-d's name they would build that building so far out of town where nobody could get to it. That gives you some idea of the smallness of the town. In 1968, for Valley High School Homecoming?and I was very active in student government, so homecoming was very much a part of what I was involved in?we did our bonfire on Flamingo and McLeod, which is now the middle of town. Back then it was so remote that we could have our homecoming bonfire there. That's amazing, isn't it? Totally amazing. I often say I didn't grow up in Las Vegas; I grew up with Las Vegas. That's a good way to put it. And there are not a lot of people that can say that. No. I think it's a pretty accurate description of my life. It was very compatible with the growth and success of Las Vegas. How many people were in your graduating class? At Valley High School, about four hundred. Just a natural class. Oh, absolutely. 12 The idea of being a leader in high school, being active, where did that come from? Again, I think it was always my commitment to public service. You could be a leader or a follower. I chose to be a leader and I worked very, very hard. Nothing came to me easily. I don't have innate talents. I worked hard at creating my talents. As I said, I'm not a brilliant person, but I got very, very good grades. I worked very, very hard at it. Hearing my mother's voice in my head, I had to do well in high school so I could go to college?the first person in my family to go to college. It was important for me. Now, my grades were good, but we didn't have any money. I probably could have gotten some scholarships to go out of state, but I started at NSU, which is now UNLV. There were about four thousand students there. We were all from the community. I knew most everybody because I was active in student government in high school. There were six high schools in Las Vegas in those days. So when I started college, I started college with lots of people that I had known that went to various high school in the Las Vegas valley. Most of us had parents who were working on the Strip. We were first?time college?goers. It was an interesting community then, educationally, because of that. Yes. I really hadn't thought about it in that perspective. It was a big deal to go to college. For me UNLV might as well have been Harvard. It expanded my horizons. It gave me the opportunity to stretch my wings. There wasn't any part of student life that I wasn't involved in at UNLV. I was a very big fish in a very little pond. If we had stayed back in New York, I would have been one of millions of smart Jewish girls that were going to Brandeis or Barnard or some other good school. Here, I went to UNLV and it made my life what it is today. I was involved in student government. I was the student body president and the school mascot. I was involved in all the 13 Jewish activities. I was involved in a sorority, Delta Zeta. Now, why was Shelley a Delta Zeta? I'm going to tell you why. I was part of the tenth graduating class at UNLV. This was not a school with a long tradition. I started and, of course, it was rush week. I heard a story that before you become a full?fledged sorority, you have to pledge a sorority nationally. It was my understanding that a group of girls got together and pledged Chi Omega. They wanted to be part of the Chi Omega national sorority. One of the local girls was Jewish. Chi Omega, in those days, did not take Jewish girls. The pledge class, the fledgling sorority here, decided to unpledge Chi Omega because of this one Jewish girl; they wanted her to be a part of their sorority. They ultimately pledged and went Delta Zeta. When I heard that there was never a question of what sorority I was going to join. I became a Delta Zeta because the Delta Zetas let this Jewish girl in. Wow. That's a good story. Yes, and it has the added benefit of being true. [Laughing] Yes, a good true story. That's interesting because one of the things I hear through these interviews is that most people didn't feel that there was anti?Semitism experienced here, at least in that early history. What would you say? I'm very cognizant of the existence of anti-Semitism but I have never personally felt it in Las Vegas. But you felt it elsewhere? Perhaps in our nation's capital a little bit more when I got older. But growing up in the Catskills, I didn't know anyone that wasn't Jewish. The Lower East Side...I thought the whole world was Jewish and that Christians were some sort of small sect. Then, when we moved here, I just became involved in our community. It was the center of my life and I always felt very comfortable in my Jewishness. I never felt like an outsider. 14 We'll kind of go back and forth chronologically, but talk about?life stories?the synagogue?s youth organization, what kind of education you received. Did you have a bat mitzvah? I was not bat mitzvahed, but I was confirmed. I'm sixty?four. Back when I was of bat mitzvah age, there really weren't any. So I was in the confirmation class at Beth Sholom, but I think more than that it was the Jewish youth groups that kept me very connected. My best friends in high school were all active in Las Vegas B'nai B'rith Girls. In those days, there was one B'nai B'rith Girls' chapter. My high school boyfriend was in AZA. We met every Wednesday night at the temple in the Ruby Kolod Youth Center. I was not as involved in United Synagogue Youth (USY), although I attended their functions. I was president of Las Vegas B'nai B'rith Girls. I learned a lot about organization and leadership through those early years at the synagogue. I say this also without fear of contradiction. There is nothing I have done in my life?and I was active in student government in high school and I was student body president of UNLV and then went on to public office in the Nevada State Assembly and on the Board of Regents and then, of course, in the United States Congress?there is nothing that I did in a leadership role that I didn't do as president of Las Vegas B'nai B'rith Girls. All of my leadership skills were honed in my teens thanks to Beth Sholom and B'nai B'rith Girls. Did you put your children into that same rigor of those kinds of organizations? Did you carry that tradition on? I did. I have two sons, Max and Sam. Max is thirty?two; Sam is