Transcript of interview with Elaine Galatz by Barbara Tabach, April 22, 2015

AN INTERVIEW WITH ELAINE GALATZ An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach The Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas i ?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 ii 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 Community Digital Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iii PREFACE Elaine Galatz was raised on a farm outside Madison, Wisconsin. Her father was a Russian immigrant father and her mother a young American born bride. Her father died when she was a teenager and her mother remarried a man who enjoyed gambling and that would lead her to first encounter with Las Vegas. Las Vegas would coincidentally become the center of her life when she and her husband of 51 years, Neil Galatz moved here in 1961. Elaine taught school briefly and worked in Neil's successful law firm for a number of years. They also shared in the growth of Las Vegas within the Jewish community. Elaine served as Jewish Federation president, the second woman to hold that office. Among the shared family activities was their love of Morgan horses and iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Elaine Galatz April 22, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface iv Ancestral background is discussed: Russian/Polish background; mother was born in Milwaukee. Elaine talks about growing up in non-Jewish neighborhood of Madison, Wisconsin; was not religiously observant; first anti-Semitic experience was in boarding school. Father had encouraged her to join Hillel when she went to college; attended University of Wisconsin. 1 - 3 Tells the story of first meeting Neil Galatz in 1959 while vacationing with parents in Las Vegas; at the time Neil was a lawyer with District Attorney's office; then running into him again while vacationing with a girlfriend; they would not start dating until a year later and married in 1961 when the true love story began 4 - 9 Provides Neil's background: born in New York; Romania ancestry; Neil wanted to move west after he graduated from Columbia and moved to Vegas in 1959 and worked for David Goldwater and then the District Attorney's Office after passed the bar. Recalls their first apartment at Park Arms 9 - 12 Talks about her first teaching experience; second grade; then goes to work for Neil's law office when he went out on his own. Built a house in Scotch 80s in 1966; next door neighbors were Edythe and Lloyd Katz. Among the first couples on the Jewish Federation Board; talks about United Jewish Appeal; involvement with B'nai B'rith and Las Vegas being a small Jewish community at the time; mentions who the leaders were; becoming Federation president after Dorothy Eisenberg 12 - 15 Describes city growth leading to increased number of synagogues; Elliot Karp the CEO of Jewish Federation; Jewish Community Center; recalls involving women in the Federation historically. Talks about raising her children in Las Vegas; division of sides of town regarding Jewish residents 15 - 20 Talks about her husband Neil's career; his love of law and hardworking ethic; his hobbies; his physical presence. Mentions important cases: MGM and Hilton fires, PEPCON explosion, personal injury cases 21 - 24 v Friendship and fund raising for/with Senator Harry and Landra Reid; Sen. Reid delivered eulogy at Neil's funeral; and many others they know from Jewish community and politics. Reflects on how Las Vegas has changed over the years 25 - 26 Describes how her interest in horses began while growing up on farm in Wisconsin; teaches her daughters to ride when they were ages 5 and 7 and reignites her personal riding interest. This eventually led to purchase of Morgan horses and competitive riding; talks about how the horses became a family activity and investing in horse property in the early 1980s. Other than Jewish Federation, her leadership has been in the world of championship horse shows 27 - 33 Index 34 - 35 Appendix: Family photos, clippings from Saddle Horse, Neil Galatz obituary 36 - 48 vi vil Today is April 22nd, 2015. This is Barbara Tabach and I'm sitting at the kitchen table with Elaine Galatz at her lovely home here. I like to start each oral history for this Jewish heritage project is to tell me what you know of your Jewish ancestry. My father [Louis Bricker] was from Russia. He came here as a teenager with his family. His parents were millers, apparently very wealthy. When the time was...They flew; they got out just as quickly as they could and they left with nothing. They came to this country with nothing in their hands, just what they could put in their pockets... They took a boat. No. They ran from the Cossacks.. .They lost one brother who didn't make it; he was killed in the streets as they were trying to get out of there. My mother's family...my mother [Ruth Abramson Bricker] was born here in the United States, but her family came...depending on where the borders were at that time; some say it was Russia, some say it was Poland. I think they thought more that it was Poland. But I've looked at birth certificates and sometimes it varies depending on what you look at. They went to Milwaukee. She was born and raised in Milwaukee with five sisters and twin brothers. She was the only one?no, there were two of them. Two of the sisters went on to school, college. She went to nursing school and her baby sister, who was my husband's age, went to med tech, became a med tech, and is still living in Wisconsin; the rest of them are gone. My father's [Louis Bricker] family, to the best of my knowledge, is all gone. They're all gone. What kind of Jewish upbringing did you have? Where were you raised? I was raised in Milwaukee and had very little Jewish upbringing. Actually, I was raised in Madison. I was born in Milwaukee; I grew up in Madison. I went to Sunday school, but there 1 were no Jewish children in the elementary schools that I went to. My family was not observant and I really didn't know what being Jewish was all about. I've heard that before. That's interesting. My first encounter with anti-Semitism was at this boarding school that I went to and I didn't know what it was. I knew that something wasn't right, but I didn't realize what was wrong and that it was anti-Semitism until several years later. What happened? The girls were not nice. There was always something different about me. They weren't happy with my achievements and successes. There was an attitude of "they were better than I was," and I didn't know why and I thought maybe it had something to do my family; that maybe my family wasn't as wealthy as theirs were. I didn't know. I had no idea. One girl in particular whose father was Jewish?her mother was not?and she is the one that I found out later that instigated all of this, which even seemed more puzzling to me in retrospect. But it left kind of a bitter taste in my mouth. But my dad had always said, "When you go to college, you'll go to Hillel and you'll find out. You will become more familiar with Jewish activities and Judaism." And I did. I pledged a Jewish sorority and socialized primarily with Jewish people, kids. How interesting that is. So you really came to your Jewish identity in college. In college, yes. And Hillel...tell me about Hillel. It was a place where we met. Interestingly enough, it was not a huge?right now they have a beautiful Hillel center at the University of Wisconsin. Then it was a building and it was where people came to get together. I lived in a dormitory and I think that probably maybe 60 to 70 percent of the girls that lived in the dorm were Jewish girls; the same with several of the houses. 2 Then there were two Jewish sororities and I pledged one. Which one? SDT, Sigma Delta Tau just to...it was a wonderful way to make friends and to meet people. And so you went to the University of Wisconsin. Yes. And you were studying what? Well, I hadn't wanted to go to the University of Wisconsin. I had wanted to go to Vassar, Smith or Wellesley. And I lost my dad right after I went away to school. I was an only child and my mother asked me if I would please stay closer to home because she knew that once I was gone, I was gone; I wasn't going to turn around and come back home. What do you do? The University of Wisconsin is not a bad place to be. So I was really quite happy to be there and it was not a sacrifice for me at all. And it was nice having my mom?she was in Milwaukee at that time and it was nice having her convenient and close and I think really helped establish our relationship. Plus we were close to the aunts and uncles and at that time there was a family value. Today we're all spread out everywhere. What did you study? I studied English. I had planned on going to law school. I had a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in English. My senior year I took electives in law school, had fully intended to go to law school, and I met Neil Galatz, and that ended my law school career. We got married where he was living in Arizona at the time. I went back to school at the University of Arizona and Arizona State for graduate studies and got my teaching certificate and became an elementary schoolteacher. Talk about meeting Neil. 3 That was my first job. Hired over the telephone. Opened up J.E. Manch Elementary, which was the air force officers' children's school, right next to the base. And this is in Arizona? No, right here. Right here in Las Vegas, okay. I got confused for a minute. We moved back here. He left for a short time and then we came back here. I never had an interview, never had a personal interview. I was hired over the telephone and showed up for work. That must have been common that people were hired over the phone? I guess because I thought that they would want to talk to me or see me or meet me. I mean I could have been whatever. No, I had a job. I had a contract and I went to work. Had you visited here before? Yes. Okay. So let's talk about your relationship with Neil. Talk about meeting him and then get me eventually to Vegas. Fill in the gaps there. Do you really want to hear this whole story? Oh, you bet. [Laughing] It's pretty interesting. I was in my second year of college, third year of college, and we were on our way?my mother, my stepfather and I were on our way to Pasadena for a Rose Bowl game. The University of Wisconsin was playing in the Rose Bowl. And my stepfather was a gambler. He loved?he couldn't stay away from the tables. So when we got here, we stayed at what was then the Thunderbird Hotel. I was too young to partake in, and I could care less about gambling, anyway. All I wanted to do was go to Pasadena, go to the football game and be with my friends, 4 and the casino wanted to keep my stepfather there. And so the casino manager, whose picture, by the way, is in our scrapbook, a fellow by the name of George Rosen, called Neil, who was then in the District Attorney's Office, at midnight and asked him to come over and meet this girl. He wanted Neil to meet me. And he said, no, he'd been partying. And then he got on the phone with me and he said he would come over tomorrow because he was just too tired and he had been out partying with some friends, actually at a sheriff's deputy's home for dinner. So he did; he came over the next day and we met. He took me what we called then howdy and shaking. He had a lot of receptions to go to and stop in at people's homes and say hello. I was frankly bored to tears. But my mother...my mother took one look at Neil Galatz and she was madly in love with him. She thought that he was the best thing since chocolate milk. She adored him. She could not believe it. So when I finally got home, she said, "Well, what did you think?" And I said, "Not much." And she was so disappointed. She was so disappointed. He was polite and he was courteous and he took me out again. Again, she said, "Well, what did you think? What did you think?" And I said, "Mom, just forget it. I don't really like him that much. He's a nice guy, but so what?" And we never did get to the Rose Bowl game. I mean it worked; they kept my stepfather at the crap table, which I guess is what they intended to do. And Wisconsin lost anyway, so it didn't make too much of a difference. What year was this? Oh, I'm thinking it had to be '59. Then the following...let's see. This was at Christmastime. The following summer one of my sorority sisters and I...she was given a trip, actually, to Europe for a 5 graduation present. She wanted to know if I would go with her and I couldn't. So we decided that what we would do is we would take a month-long trip throughout the western United States and we did. We left Madison. We went to Milwaukee and we went to the Badlands, the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, down through Carson City, over to San Francisco, the Bay Area, down the coast of California and, of course, when we got that far, we came back through Las Vegas. Again, my stepfather had arranged to make sure that we could see the shows we wanted to and that sort of thing. She and I are sitting at the pool one day. In those days the hotels encouraged residents to use their pools because not many people had swimming pools in their backyard. He was sitting in the sun because he was a sun worshiper in those days, reading some papers because he was always studying something. And I said to my friend, "That's Neil Galatz. That's the fellow that I told you about that I went out with." And she said, "Well, go over and say hello." And I said, "Nah, what for?" And she just wouldn't quit. She'd just..."Go say hello; go say hello." So I did. I knew he wouldn't remember me. I absolutely knew he would not remember me. So I went up to him and I said, "Neil, Neil Galatz? I'm Elaine Bricker. I met you when I was here last year and we went out..." And I tried to fill him in on the whole thing so that I wouldn't embarrass him because I knew he wouldn't know who I was or remember me. And he looked up and he said, "Oh, yes." He didn't remember. So we chatted for a little bit and he asked me if I would like to go water skiing the next morning. I said, "I would love to." I had never been on water skis in my life. So we went to Lake Mead with a cousin of his and a nephew of his and we stopped at the Showboat and had a forty-nine-cent breakfast and then trucked on out to Lake Mead. I somehow did get up on water skis. 6 We got back. He dropped me off at the hotel and my friend was there. She was all excited. "Well, when are you going out again?" And I said, "I'm not." And she said, "He didn't ask you out again?" And I said, "No, he didn't." Well, she thought that was just terrible. How could he be so rude and thoughtless? And I said, "Look, we really didn't like each other. There was no reason for him to ask me out again and he didn't and let's just pass on this, okay?" Now it's a year later. I went to New York over the Christmas holidays with a sorority sister of mine. And when I got back to school, I had my mail there and I picked up a card, which is in the scrapbook, by the way. It says, "Hi. No more cops and robbers. New town, new job. Do you ever get out this way?" And it was signed "Neil." He had left the DA's Office. He had gotten involved with a couple of kind of nasty cases. Instead of just taking a break?he was prosecuting these cases and had sheriffs deputies guarding him. So when it was over, he just packed his bags and moved to Tucson, Arizona, which is where he intended to go when he left New York, but he ended up here. Quite honestly, he was looking for referral business because my stepfather was an attorney. He couldn't care less about me; he was looking for referrals, any lawyer that he could think of. I called my mom to let her know that I was back home; that I was safe. I read her the card and she said, "Well, when are you going?" And I said, "What do you mean when am I going?" And she said, "Well, when are you going?" And I said, "What about spring break?" And she said, "That sounds good." So I called a friend of mine?or dropped her a note because you didn't call quite the way you call today, and said, "Teri, I'm coming to visit you and Bill over my spring break" - because she had asked me. She lived in Phoenix. And I wrote Neil a letter and I said, "It just so happens 7 that I'm spending my spring break in Phoenix. Is Phoenix very far from Tucson? Perhaps we can get together." And I got a note back from him. I had already checked it with Triple A; I knew it was a hundred and twenty-five miles. [Laughing] But I got a nice note back from him. He said that that sounded good and to give him the dates and when I got there call him and he'll come to Phoenix and we'll work something out. Okay. Well, I did get to Phoenix and my friends had a brand-new baby and a little tiny cracker box house and the baby cried all the time it seemed like and they had fixed me up with every eligible bachelor in Phoenix that she could find. And I was miserable, just miserable. Neil called and he said, "Elaine, I've had valley fever. Is there any way you could come down here? I really don't want to make the trip." And I said, "Not a problem; I'll be there." [Laughing] He caught me at just the right time. So I don't know I flew, but I got on an airplane and flew to Tucson. Didn't tell my mother. Didn't tell Teri, my friend, where I was going. Didn't tell anyone where I was going. And I'm on this airplane and I'm thinking: You are a senior in college. You are an educated woman and this is one of the dumbest things that you have ever done in your life. What happens if you don't recognize him? What happens if he's not there ? What are you going to do, get in a cab and say, "Take me to a hotel; take me to a motel?" You're really stupid. And I am just really getting nervous about this. I get to Tucson and I got off the airplane and I thought, oh, God, where is he? Where is he? All of a sudden, there he was and he had...to me it looked like it was this big, silver buckle and his cowboy boots and his jeans. And I mean to tell you we took one look at each other and he said, "My God, little girl, you've grown up." The light bulbs flashed and we both knew in that instant that we were going to get married. That was in April. He came to visit me in May, 8 proposed to me on May 14th, Mother's Day, and we were married August 20th. And what year was that? Sixty-one [1961]. What a beautiful story. Fifty-one years. Wow. We never had a date, really. We just had seen each other ten days over the years. Just near misses. And another interesting thing, too...in those days you didn't pick up the telephone and call because long distance was very expensive and there was no computer, there was no E-mail. So we wrote letters to each other and I have all of the letters. I found out after he passed that in a box in the closet were all of the letters that I had written to him. He had saved them as well. So we have the letters. What a love story. Yes. We each had the letters. So I'm going to ask just so we can kind of feather in Neil's background since we're talking about your histories and get you all together here at the same time. so Neil, where was he born? He was born in New York. In the city? Yes. Talk about his background and what you know. Let's see. His father?well, his parents were married when my mother-in-law was fourteen. His 9 grandmother lied about her age and said that she was sixteen; otherwise, she couldn't have gotten married. My father-in-law was nineteen. The reason...his grandmother adored Grandpa Julie, my father-in-law. She just approved of this marrying off her daughter at fourteen. I often looked at my girls when they were fourteen and I thought, there's no way that they could've gotten married. There's no way. I mean they just would not have been ready for this. A year later she gave birth to Neil and she had no idea what she was doing. She almost had him in the toilet because she had no...She didn't know. She had no knowledge of where babies came?well, she knew obviously where they came from, but giving birth and this whole...It was pretty bizarre. But they were both born in this country although the grandparents all came from Romania. As a matter of fact, that tapestry, Neil's grandmother made when she lived in the old country. Oh. Beautiful. There were draperies and side curtains that went with it, which I still have. My father-in-law went into business with Neil's mother's father and they were in the millinery business, hat business. My father-in-law became an electrician and did all the Christmas lighting on Park Avenue, Park and Fifth. That's special. And installed air conditioners. And wanted Neil to stay in New York and go into the business with him and Neil did not want to stay in New York. He loved the mountains and the space. He was a "go west" young man. After he graduated from Columbia University, he went to work for a law firm in New York called Kasner and Sunshine. One day, going up the elevator in his gray flannel suit and his briefcase, he walked into the senior partner's office and he said, "I'm really sorry; I've got to leave. I've had a relative die in California and I have to go out there and help them settle up the affairs." He cleaned out his desk and went down the elevator and that was it. 10 And went to the library and researched the cities of the Southwest and decided that he wanted to move to Tucson, Arizona, and he went with his younger brother. They packed a van and some tools in case they had to become electricians. My father-in-law told him, "I was in Las Vegas many years ago." Because his dad was in the service. And he said, "Go to Las Vegas. I always liked it. And see what you think about it." Well, they came and they stayed. They loved it. That's how he got here. So about year did he arrive in Las vegas? Fifty-eight or '59. what was his employment history? He went into David Goldwater's office?no. It wasn't David Goldwater. I'll think of it in a minute. Posin; Murray was his first name. He asked if he needed anyone. I think it was Dave Zenoff, actually. It wasn't Murray Posin. It was Dave Zenoff, who later became a Supreme Court justice, who said, "I don't have anything available, but go talk to David Goldwater. And If you have to pay David Goldwater to work for him, you do that." And so Neil went to David Goldwater's office. He was going someplace to file a writ, something that if he had to do in New York he would have waited for weeks to do. And he just walked down the street, walked to the courthouse and got it done. He started working for David Goldwater for thirty-five dollars a week. That's how he got started here. Then he worked for David until he passed the bar and then he went into the District Attorney's Office. When he passed the bar, talking about that photograph, do you remember any of the other people? Oh, I would remember them all, but I'd have to look at the picture. Look at the photo. 11 Right. Yeah, they were all familiar names. I think Jim Brennan?we could look at the picture and I could recognize all of them. So when you first moved here as a couple, as a married couple, where did you live? We came back here and we looked around at apartments and there were two really nice buildings. There was the Park Arms at 511 East Sahara and then down the street there were the Palms. I said, "Oh, please, can"?because we looked at some that were really older, ugly. I said, "Oh, please. I've got a job. We can do this." We moved into the Park Arms Apartments. It was a hundred and sixty-five dollars a month for two bedrooms and they had a washer and drier and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. [Laughing] The simple things of life. I thought, this is so good. We paid our first and last month's rent, the utility deposit, and we had fourteen dollars left. So we went to the Sahara and had dinner. We went to the buffet at the Sahara. That was it; we had zero. Zero. But we both had a job; he went to the DA's Office and I drove out to the school. Talk about your first teaching experience. I loved it. I loved the kids. The kids were great. I had some of the kids...their fathers were with the Thunderbirds. I taught second grade, a beautiful age. They love their teacher. They were so willing to learn. Terrific, they were a terrific age, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wasn't crazy about having to work for someone telling me what I could do and what I couldn't do, but the kids were awesome. I met some wonderful people that I still keep in touch with and know where they are that I met out there. I worked for two years full time and then I substituted. I picked some schools that were close to the Park Arms and subbed for two years. Then Neil branched out on his own, opened up his own office. And I worked for him, 12 did his bookkeeping and then answered his telephone and had a baby. We built a house in '66 in Scotch 80s. We broke ground the day that our older daughter was born. Oh, wow. That's a nice neighborhood still. We lived almost next door to Edythe and Lloyd Katz. oh, really? okay. Uh-huh, just right around Park Circle. oh, there's so many ways to go with this. They were some of the first people that we met. They were some of the first people that got both of us?because it was Lloyd and Edythe and the Weinbergers and the Galatzes that were some of the first couples to serve on the Jewish Federation board. It was Las Vegas Combined Jewish Appeal in those days. Well, since you've gone that route, let's talk about that. I'm trying to put together the history of the Jewish Federation and its various renditions before it became that. So what year did the United Jewish Appeal approximately start, do you think? You mean the Combined Jewish Appeal? okay. Yes the Combined Jewish Appeal. Well, it was in existence. Again, that would all be documented in the articles because there are invitations to various functions and programs from various functions with a list of people in there like you can't believe that are part of the history of the Jewish community of Las Vegas. I mean those are the names. I've got all the programs and the invitations are in those books. We didn't have a series of dinners to go to; we had one big dinner to go to and that was the major fundraising. We were all there. All of us were there. It was really pretty easy. We were all there. I think Israel bonds were the only one that had their separate fundraiser. But I think ADL 13 and all of them were all part of Combined Jewish Appeal. Again, the articles when we became federated that's all documented in those scrapbooks. So talk about did you seek out Jewish community when you first moved here, like the Katzes that you mentioned as neighbors? Well, Neil had been involved with B'nai B'rith before Elaine, and, again, that's all documented in the scrapbooks. And so we sought out people that he had been friendly with through those groups. George and Eileen Brookman were friends of ours. Lloyd and Edythe, of course, were neighbors. It was a very small town and a very small community. There was only one synagogue and that's where we all were. Even though Neil and I were not religious people, it was a place where we all met and that's what we did. So I was probably more Jewish at that point in my life than ever, without even giving it any thought; it was just what we did. So who were some of the other members that you can remember? Oh, my gosh. The Molaskys were a part of it. The Greenspuns were a part of it. Susan Frey...the Freys before she became Molasky. All the doctors, all the Jewish physicians in town, all the Jewish attorneys in town, all the accountants, Danny Goldfarb. That's where we all knew each other; that's where we were. And I probably did not get as involved with women's organizations at that time because I was raising two children and I was also doing the office work for Neil. The sense of Jewish community at that time, was it more social like you're describing than...? I think so. Well, now it's so fragmented. I was at a meeting last night and we were talking about the people that were affiliated versus the people that were not affiliated and I heard some numbers that I found quite staggering, actually. With all the synagogues that we have here in 14 town, I believe that they said that only 20 percent of the Jewish population here in town is affiliated with a synagogue and the rest have not. I am one of those that have not. As active as I have been in Jewish organizations, in Jewish activities, the only time that I was?well, we were members of Beth Sholom for many years back then. Then as the town started fragmenting, we didn't. But I felt that it was inappropriate for a president of Jewish Federation not to be affiliated with a synagogue. So I said, "Neil, we've got to do this." But we were never active. So he became president of the?or you became president? I did. You became president, okay. What years were you president? I think '86 through '88. I followed Dorothy Eisenberg. Okay. All right. I'm getting the picture now. And talk about things that happened. What is it like? That's such a responsibility. Your eyes are bugging. Oh, boy. I mean I can't imagine even wanting to say yes to that. I've got to be honest. It's huge. It's huge. And one of the reasons when they called me to become involved again, I mean it was?the town was growing so fast in those days and new synagogues were opening up and Beth Sholom was building a new facility and Ner Tamid was building a new facility and everyone was crying for money. People moved; they split. Trying to maintain a sense of togetherness was very, very difficult because it wasn't a friendly...it was kind of like "your side, my side" sort of an inner conflict that people had. It was tough. It was tough. Actually, Neil kind of backed down when I was the president. He didn't want to interfere or think that it was his job and not mine. But when I was no longer president, he gradually became more involved again and was involved until he passed, really, with Elliot [Karp]. He 15 and Elliot had many wonderful conversations about the direction of the Federation. When Elliot called me to become involved again, quite honestly, I loved the way the board was constituted. I loved that it was young and vibrant and filled with people that I did not know and that I wanted to know and that I felt I could contribute something to the board at that time, as well as getting to know people. I'm out here by myself. I'm alone. Neil and I had always been glued to each other at the hip and we did everything together. I had not ventured out on my own. This was a way of doing it with people that I was comfortable with. Elliot explained to me that he just wanted me there to show a continuity, too, that those of us when we're finished aren't finished; that we still maintain an interest. I must say I have really enjoyed the participation. I have liked it a lot. So how do you specifically participate now? I