Ruth Feldman Marcus toasting with daughter Barbara Marcus Felt, niece Helena Feldman Erlich, and granddaughter Laurel Felt | May 21, 2011
Today is my great-grandmother’s Yahrzeit. She died on February 1, 1982, at the approximate age of 90.
In commemoration of Sarah Rich Feldman, mother of my mother’s mother, I am sharing this family history. It tells about the Riches’ turn-of-the-century immigration from the part of Russia that is now the Ukraine, and documents their American tale.
I wrote this piece during my freshman year at Northwestern University. As a prologue, I wrote:
On Wednesday, October 7, 1998, at 10:30 am, I met my grandmother Ruth Feldman Marcus at Clarke’s, a restaurant in Evanston. We brunched and proceeded to talk for about two hours about her life to satisfy an assignment for my anthropology class. However, I asked very few interview-oriented questions; rather, I just enjoyed sitting back and learning about my grandmother’s fascinating life… Following this conversation, Grandma and I went for a walk around downtown Evanston and strolled by Lake Michigan. We continued to talk about the Jewish cultural heritage and my life at college. I showed her the student union and my dorm room. I dearly love my grandma and it was a wonderful visit.
I still dearly love my gramma and just had a wonderful phone visit with her yesterday. Among the things she told me: “Laurel, from Day One you’ve been a delight” and “There are some meshuggeneh drivers out there in southern California.”
This piece was also informed by: a conversation with Gramma, Mom, and Dad on Sunday, March 17, 2013; an interview with my mother, Barbara Marcus Felt, on Sunday, November 8, 1998, which, like my interview with Gramma, I recorded and transcribed in its entirety; and a talk with Raymond Marcus, my grampa, on Tuesday, December 22, 1998, which I did not tape record. If memory serves (?), I felt that adding that layer of formality might make Grampa loath to talk. He died a year and a half ago, though, and we lost him to dementia several years prior; I wish I’d made that tape.
For any of you with the opportunity, record your grandparents. Their stories, and our families’ love, are the riches we inherit.
P.S. I have added to this narrative over the years, incorporating facts gleaned from Grandpa’s eulogies and recent conversations with Gramma. Specifically, I revised in real-time during an after-dinner chat on Sunday, March 17, 2013, and incorporated notes from our formal interview which took place on Wednesday, March 20, 2013.
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In 1906, an ocean-going vessel landed at port in Baltimore and allowed its weary passengers to debark. Among the immigrants clambering ashore were four Ukrainian peasants, a father and his three eldest children. Back in their homeland, Jacob Rich had held a responsible job, carefully selecting trees on a baron’s estate to be felled by lumberjacks. His family had lived comfortably in a modest farmhouse that boasted two rooms and a generous fireplace. Bessie, his wife, cooked their meals over the hearth and often received visits from her town-dwelling parents. Those days, however, were over. Jacob Rich, his 16-year-old daughter Sarah, 15-year-old son Samuel, and 14-year-old son Morris had survived the long passage across the Atlantic, but their struggles were far from over – money still had to be earned, Bessie and the five younger children still had to be sent for. Conditions in Russia had been steadily worsening for Jews. Pogroms instilled fear into the heart of every villager and conscription into the tsar’s army threatened every 16-year-old man. Jacob Rich had made up his mind: his family’s future spelled out A-M-E-R-I-C-A.
The four Riches moved to Chicago and settled near relatives. A deeply religious man, Jacob couldn’t find work in the non-Sabbath observing secular world, where employees were expected to work until after sundown on Friday and all day on Saturday. Instead he operated as the shamas, or servant, at the synagogue. Jacob wrote to Bessie back in Russia saying that he didn’t like America and wanted to go back. Bessie replied that if the kids wanted to come back, that was fine, but if the kids liked America, then it was just too bad for Jacob.
The two boys went to school for a year or two, abandoning their studies around the age of 16. An American social worker wanted Sarah to go to school for at least a year too, but finances couldn’t allow it. Someone had to work. Sarah found employment in a factory rolling tobacco leaves for cigars. The next year, they had scraped together enough money to purchase six ocean passages for their mother and siblings and across the ocean they came. Bessie’s parents remained in the Ukraine and, heart-broken, watched their children depart, never to return. Jacob and Bessie’s ninth and final child, Ethel, was born in Chicago in 1910. Approximately three years later, Sarah married Harry Feldman and gave birth to a son, Maury.
Sarah’s brother Sam married a woman named Ninny. They had a son, Milton, who was a year younger than Maury. Sam and Ninny didn’t get along and were in the process of a divorce. But Sam was crazy about his son and his desire to be near the boy, according to Ruth, is the reason why Sam married and divorced Ninny three times. When Sam and Ninny were split up but Sam had Milton for visitation, Sarah would watch Milton (along with Maury) during the day.
The Feldman’s lived in an apartment building owned by Sarah’s parents, Jacob and Bessie Rich. Ruth remembers, it was located in the middle of the street, at Colon (sp?) Avenue & 14th Street. Sarah’s myriad siblings resided nearby and little distinction was drawn between nuclear and extended family. Because Ethel and Maury were so close in age (four years apart), Sarah cared for them both and the aunt and nephew were raised as brother and sister. Sarah was extremely close with her sister Helen, 10 years her junior but the first girl born after a succession of brothers: Sam, Morris, and Harry. The story goes that when Helen, already mother to three-year-old Ernest, announced her pregnancy with a second child, Sarah thought to herself, “Oh my God, Helen will have a girl and I won’t. If Helen has a girl and I don’t, I’ll never forgive myself.” So Sarah became pregnant as well.
Helen had a daughter named Marcella (Marcy), born April 25. After three excruciating days of labor, Harry and Sarah Feldman’s daughter was born exactly one month after her cousin, on May 25, 1922; they named their baby Ruth. The two girls were close friends throughout their childhoods, despite the differences in their parents’ wealth. Marcy’s paternal grandfather had founded a successful egg candling business. The business flourished and, after the untimely death of his wife, he remarried a “society lady.” This second wife facilitated the Katz family’s entry into a different level of influence. Marcy’s father Isidor (Iz), inherited the business from his father; Marcy consequently, the household was well provisioned.
Ruth’s childhood was more modest than her beloved cousin Marcy’s but more advantaged than her own brother Maury’s had been. Whereas Sarah had been treated as a charity case for Maury’s birth, she was charged as a regular patient for Ruth’s delivery. Harry and Sarah had worked unremittingly during that interim between children, carving out a niche in the Jewish ghetto that they called home. Located on the West Side of Chicago and bounded by Maxwell, Roosevelt, and Halsted streets, the entire community toiled to achieve “the American Dream.”
Looking back, Ruth realized, “We were programmed and we fell for it. Jewish people were so grateful for all they could get in the States and they wanted to be American so bad, sometimes I think they threw away the baby with the bathwater- they became citizens right away… they just wanted to be part of the American culture. Even their Jewishness they tried to modernize,” she explained. “We were so ambitious for our children… You go to the United States and there were so many doors that were open that were not open in Europe.”
Despite her family’s relative poverty, Ruth’s childhood was very happy. Ruth remembers that her aunt Mary Rich married a 16th Street butcher named Morris Lipman, so the family benefited from discounts on meat. Ruth enjoyed playing with her cousin Marcy and, because there were two large apartment buildings in the area as well as a park across the street, Ruth also had lots of playmates and room for running.
“They flooded it [the park] in the winter and we ice-skated on it, they had a swimming pool and all kinds of equipment and I lived directly across the street. And the kids, the parents were all so busy, taking care of their own lives and… there was a million kids all the time, and nobody went to each other’s houses because the kids didn’t have their own rooms as such, and kids didn’t have toys,” explained Ruth. “So you were always outside! And there was always somebody to play with… It was a carefree time, although times were very difficult,” she concluded.
Indeed, against the backdrop of the Depression, resources were scarce. Before the economy’s collapse, Harry and Sarah had managed to gather enough money to buy the apartment building on 14th and Killdeer in which they resided. When the stock market crashed in 1929 and hundreds of banks subsequently closed, the young couple lost their small fortune; as a result, their building went into foreclosure. The significant aspect of this difficult period, though, was its universality: “We didn’t know that we were living in a Jewish ghetto because your world is small… Everybody was in the same boat.”
Although Ruth’s father Harry had a very fine mind — for example, he boasted an extensive knowledge of Hebrew, possessed great mathematical aptitude, and was passionate about music — he earned his living from his hands, not his head. (Perhaps you could say, from other people’s heads?) Harry worked as a barber in the far-off South Water Street Market. Leaving every morning at seven o’clock and returning at eight in the evening, Harry slaved to earn his living. “He never had dinner with us, he always had dinner separately, my mother would keep the food warm,” Ruth remembered. On Sundays, Harry would spend time at a real estate company, occasionally selling property and raking in a modest commission; he was always on the lookout for affordable realty.
When Ruth was in eighth grade, a small restaurant in the South Water Street Market went up for sale. Sarah, an excellent cook and eager to make money, determined to buy the $600 diner. Jacob helped to supply her with the cash needed to make the purchase; Sarah paid him back shortly thereafter, with interest — “This is how you did things,” Ruth pronounced. Ethel happened to be out of a job at that time and so Sarah hired her as the waitress. Rising at five a.m., opening shop at six, operating the business until three o’clock and then still responsible for cleaning and shopping, Sarah wouldn’t return home on the streetcar until five o’clock every evening. Ruth spent many hours alone each day, deprived of the company of her hard-working parents or her independent older brother.
Due to economic necessity, Ruth was obliged to care for herself even in sickness. She was 13 years old and the year was 1935– the heart of the Depression. Medical professionals used to give schoolchildren different vaccinations during class-time. All of the kids would line up and the doctor would go through and administer a series of three shots. After one of these episodes, Ruth developed a terrible infection in her arm. “You had to be dying to go to a doctor,” Ruth declared, so her infection was cared for inadequately and eventually her entire arm swelled. A fever followed and because Sarah had to run the restaurant, Ruth was left to convalesce alone. The infection luckily opened up by itself and Sarah bandaged Ruth’s arm with a handkerchief. They purchased some medicine at the drugstore across the street and the arm continued to drain until it reached a healthy state.
However, Ruth wasn’t in the clear yet. During spring vacation of that same year, she developed a sore throat. Ruth’s Aunt Helen would come to visit, feeding her chicken soup and keeping Ruth company, but ultimately Aunt Helen had to leave and tend to her own household. After a week of zero improvement, despite the expense and taboo against it, Sarah called a doctor. He said that he didn’t see anything wrong and claimed that Ruth was merely suffering from a cold.
After a second week of illness, he recommended an ENT have a look at the young patient. A specialist arrived and examined Ruth, who was lying prone in Sarah’s bedroom. “God knows how my mom had to feel,” Ruth remarked. Diagnosing an abscess under her tonsil, the ENT proceeded to perform the necessary surgery to burst it. “In the house!” Ruth exclaimed. “The blood and the… these are things, I mean, they sound so primitive, right?” He brought over a couple of lamps and instructed Sarah to hold Ruth’s arms. Since the abscess was “ripe already,” Ruth recuperated thereafter.
These two maladies posed a serious strain to the Feldman household, physically, emotionally, and financially. Sarah was powerless to care for her sick child and would rush home every evening to nurse her. As a loving mother, worries and frets probably occupied her thoughts during the daytime. The actual costs of medicine and doctors’ visits were also substantial. As is the case in many contemporary American households, a single illness can devastate a family’s finances.
Sarah’s mother Bessie passed away when Ruth was a child (although Ruth can’t remember exactly when); if Bessie’s passing had occurred prior to Ruth’s illness, this might additionally explain why Sarah was so anxious to protect her daughter’s health. Ruth recalls that Bessie was diabetic and Bessie’s daughter, Ruth’s aunt Ethel, had to administer the insulin shots. On Yom Kippur, a day when Jewish tradition instructs healthy adults to fast (but sick adults to eat), Bessie refused her insulin shots. She died two days later.
When they weren’t battling germs or poor health, the Feldman women would put their noses to the grindstone seven days a week. Weekends consisted of laundry and house cleaning, in addition to working in the diner until two o’clock on Saturdays. After nine months of this regimen, Sarah herself became quite ill from sheer exhaustion and sold the business. “She was so determined that she just wore herself out,” Ruth summarized.
Two years later, when Ruth was 15, Harry discovered a delicatessen on the market. Sarah, along with Maury who was newly married and jobless despite a degree in accounting, bought the place (at Crawford & Harrison (or was it 5th?)) and ran it together for the next five years. Ruth worked in the family deli on Saturday’s and everyday after school. There she eventually met her future husband, Raymond Marcus. Ray’s family lived next door to the deli and would visit often, sitting and talking and socializing with the regulars. Ruth described the deli as the Jews’ equivalent to a tavern.
Ruth’s high school experience was non-traditional. Although the teens in her neighborhood went to nearby Marshall High School, Ruth took several streetcars to attend Austin High School. She and her cousin Marcy had decided that they wanted to be classmates and Austin, located in Marcy’s (wealthier) neighborhood, was a newer and more prestigious school. Disappointingly, Marcy’s family moved away after the girls’ freshman year, leaving Ruth with a long commute and somewhat foreign group of classmates. Geographic diversity was not the only unique feature of Ruth’s high school career. She was also a member of the class of 1939-and-a-half. This “and-a-half” appellation reflects the day’s solution to overcrowding. With too many students and too few funds to build more schools, existing institutions would operate year-round and serve two populations of learners. Ruth’s school year began in February (and ended in August?).
During high school, Ruth took a typing and shorthand class. Her prescient teacher, Miss O’Loughlin, knew that the Depression’s economy would require her students to work — even those, like Ruth, who planned to go to college. Because office work paid much more than unskilled labor, Miss O’Loughlin was providing her students a route out of destitution, perhaps even saving their families. Ruth was so gifted at typing that, by the end of the year, Miss O’Loughlin recommended Ruth for a one-month job at the school for which she earned $30.
Due to her lack of handiness, Ruth marvels at her typing proficiency. She remembers how difficult it would be to make corrections to her documents, especially if she was making simultaneous copies, which required a top sheet of paper, a carbon behind it, a white sheet of paper behind that, another sheet of carbon behind that, and finally a third white sheet of paper. In the case of a typo, you would have to put a white sheet of Correct Type in front of the flawed piece of paper and then hit a key, which would transfer white correction fluid onto the error, thus erasing it. This had to be done individually for each copy, which was a very tedious process. Years later the Underwood typewriter, with a built-in erasing function, came onto the market. In addition to this convenience, its touch was also much different — it didn’t require as much forceful banging on the keys.
Upon graduating in the top 10 of her high school class, Ruth decided to get out from behind the deli counter. She was in love with learning and had wanted to go to the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana to study teaching or library science but had settled on Herzel Junior College, an institution not far from her home. Ruth had received a government grant with which to study English, Shorthand, and various other subjects. Her higher education was cut short, though, when Sarah slipped on an icy sidewalk following a late snowstorm and broke her wrist. Ruth consequently quit school so that she could fill in for her mother at the delicatessen. She attended night school once a week, taking classes such as Public Speaking, but that didn’t last long.
Once Sarah recovered, Ruth contemplated returning to school; however, just then her Aunt Molly had arranged for Ruth to be offered a job as a secretary at Sears to two young men, Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Ulmer. They must have been in their early 30’s, Ruth remembers. Mr. Calhoun had two or three children, and Mr. Ulmer was married but his wife couldn’t get pregnant. “And I was a kid, what do I know from such things, you know? The seriousness or whatever,” reflects Ruth. Ruth was offered $16 per week, an abnormally high wage at that time — her friends were making $11 or $12 per week. Ruth remembers running to the phone, her hands shaking, and repeating to her mother, “Sixteen dollars, sixteen dollars, sixteen dollars!” The government had recently forced Sarah and Maury to sell the deli, at a price significantly below market value, in order to construct the Congress Street Expressway, currently known as the Eisenhower Expressway. So Ruth offered her mother $8 per week, half of her salary; unbeknownst to Ruth, though, Sarah merely kept this money for safekeeping. Commented Ruth, “I didn’t realize she was saving it for me.”
During the war, Sarah also worked for Sears, but as “unskilled labor”; unable to read English, Sarah filed papers in a large warehouse according to a numerical system. Sarah took in a boarder as an additional source of income as well.
Ruth’s aunt (who always felt more like a cousin to Ruth since she was only 12 years Ruth’s senior) Ethel Rich also worked outside the home. Ethel was a thin, busty, American-born blonde who loved wearing high heels and defying expectations. The smart, street-wise Ethel moved out to California and became a steelbroker — unheard of for a woman! — and experienced great success. She was known for talking tough with tradesmen and businessmen and never giving an inch. Early in her life, Ethel had fallen in love with a non-Jewish man named Jimmy. Despite their mutual affection, Ethel refused to marry Jimmy because she knew that marrying outside the Jewish faith would break her parents’ hearts. The lovers parted and Ethel never married. Ruth laughingly recalls Ethel saying, “That’ll be the day when I wash some man’s socks!”
Ruth only worked for Sears for three years before transferring to Turner Manufacturing Company, a fixture and lamp manufacturer on the West Side. Ruth didn’t realize when she visited Turner that a job opportunity would present itself. She had no intention of leaving her position at Sears, but the head of Turner, who determined that she could well serve his company, offered her $25. When Ruth informed Sears that she was leaving, they offered her a raise of $25 per week, but Ruth had given her word to Turner and she left. Said Ruth, Turner “was a Jewish firm and it made such a difference.” At Sears, “there was anti-Semitism there, overt.” Still, the bureaucratic Sears had well-defined hours and everyone left at five o’clock. At the upstart Turner, Ruth didn’t go home until the job was done and so she wound up working far more.
Ruth stayed on at Turner for another three years before quitting due to the incipient arrival of her husband Raymond from overseas. Turner offered to double her pay if she stayed on after the war; she had been receiving $25 per week and they offered her $45 or $50 once the freeze on salaries was lifted. Ruth was resolute, however; “I told them three months in advance, I was being honorable, they thought I had rocks in my head… And then when Grandpa came home, you know, it was a family business, and he was starting at $25 dollars a week! I should have stayed!” Ruth laughed. But, “in those days, women didn’t work.” Advertisers were pumping out propaganda that stigmatized employment for proper housewives. Besides, Ruth had serious work to do.
On September 30, 1943, the second day of Rosh Hashanah and the third to last day of Ray’s 15-day furlough, the couple had decided that they couldn’t wait any longer to be wed; a judge married them that afternoon at City Hall. Ruth’s grandfather, Jacob Rich, was quite disturbed by this irreligious ceremony and contacted some friends of his within the Jewish community. Ruth Feldman and Raymond Marcus were married a second time, a day later, in the kitchen of a rabbi who lived on Chicago’s West Side. Because the two had never lived together before Ray was shipped overseas, it was up to Ruth when the war ended to find an apartment in a city rife with young couples and devoid of new construction. According to Ruth, “…you couldn’t get an apartment for love or money.”
Ruth prevailed because her girlfriend, Miriam Rubin, had an uncle, Harry, who owned an apartment building on the North Side. Miriam was supposed to get an apartment in that building but her husband Harold was delayed in his discharge from the Navy. So Miriam offered the apartment to Ruth. As he did with his own kin, Harry allowed Ruth to rent the apartment without greasing his palm with some extra cash. This generosity was extreme and unusual since the limited supply of apartments enabled landlords to collect up to $500 in kickbacks. As each of his nieces and nephews came home and/or came of age, Harry offered them an apartment in his 13-apartment building, 4302 W. 14th Street. So a great community of young people and developed, including Myra Liss, Miriam Rubin and others.
Their apartment consisted of two-and-a-half rooms: a small kitchen (with a half stove and four burners), a dinette, a living room, a bathroom — and no closets! Ruth’s mother-in-law Gussie had expected Ruth and Ray to move in with her husband Oscar and herself. Ruth regarded this as a less preferable option than establishing her own household and so she accepted the closet-less apartment with gratitude.
Ruth made the most of their modest space. An in-a-door bed with uneven legs was situated in the living room. Ruth took out the bed, used the in-a-door bed’s shallow recess as a closet (which crumpled the inside sleeve of every shirt they hung in it), and built her own bed. She got a boxspring and a mattress, put it on four legs, covered it so as to look like a couch, and shoved it in the corner of the living room. That’s where Ruth and Ray slept.
Raymond Marcus was also heir to a wealth of rich family history. Benjamin and Bessie Marcus were the originators of a family tree spanning six generations; for over 50 years, their progeny have gathered periodically to celebrate the Marcus Family Club. Benjamin was a devoutly Orthodox Jew who spoke only Hebrew and Yiddish and davened, or prayed, three times per day. He worked as a cobbler in Russia, handcrafting shoes and boots. His wife Bessie was also born in Russia between 1860 and 1870, and wed Benjamin in 1885. Dyeing wool for neighboring peasants was Bessie’s trade, a shrewd method for supplementing the household’s modest income. Since Bessie had given birth to five children, extra income was always welcome.
The Marcus’s reasons for immigration were the same as the Rich family’s. During the Russo-Japanese War, conditions for an average Russian soldier were bad; conditions for a Russian Jewish soldier, though, were even worse. With pogroms and rampant discrimination constantly plaguing his peace of mind, Benjamin immigrated to America in 1904 or 1905. Accompanied by his 15-year-old son Sol, the men settled in Chicago where Bessie’s brother owned a shoe store.
In 1907, Bessie joined her husband and son in Chicago, bringing 18-year-old Becky, 11-year-old Oscar, seven-year-old Irving, and five-year-old Esther. Because Benjamin was employed as a saddle-maker, the family was able to live above his workplace –- a stable. Their residence lasted through the winter but by the time summer arrived, they vacated their quarters. The stench of the manure and the irritation of the flies, coupled with Benjamin’s refusal to violate the Sabbath by working on Saturdays, forced them to leave. He was later employed as a boot-maker in a small shop and bought the business after its owner passed away. Bessie probably did not labor outside the home while her children were young, but she eventually worked for Hart, Shaffner, and Marx in Chicago. Benjamin passed away in 1897, Bessie in 1942.
Oscar, who was Benjamin and Bessie’s second-oldest son, married Gussie Levin in Chicago; the year was 1916. The couple had four boys: Arthur (Art), 1917-1988; Raymond (Ray), 1921-2010; Leonard, 1926-1926; and Bernard (Buster), b. 1927. Oscar and his oldest son, Art, were salesmen for Sheffield Bronze Paint Company. As the organization’s “Midwestern men,” Oscar and Art traveled long distances by car (a novelty in those days) and sold paint door-to-door.
Ray needed to allocate very little time to studying during his high school days at Crane — the vocational institution was hardly an intellectual challenge. For fun, he participated in a singing group with his friends Jack London, Lester, and Harold. He graduated in February of 1939. According to his 1939 high school yearbook, Science and Craft:
“Ray” is the apprentice pharmacist whose ambition is to marry “a gal jus’ like the one Dad did.” Chums: London, Davis. Activities: Chem Club, Glee Club, Operetta Chorus, Courts, Intramural Basketball, Volleyball, Free throw, S. & C. Rep. of Activities
Following graduation, Ray studied at Wright Junior College and completed one full year.
It was a Friday night in the spring of 1940 that Ray’s life changed forever. Art had just suffered from an attack of appendicitis and the family was gathered at Art’s bedside. Sheffield Bronze had recently awarded Art and Oscar with new territories to cover, simultaneously a financial boon and a temporal burden. With the receipt of new states, the Marcus’s were entitled to commissions from all of the forthcoming mail-orders, even if they had played no role in influencing those purchases; however, they were also obliged to extend their routes. The father and son feared that the management would revoke the new territory due to Art’s incapacity, and worried aloud about what they would do. Slowly, their gazes turned to Ray and before he knew it, the keys, merchandise, and maps were in his possession.
It was years later that the Marcus’s realized Sheffield Bronze’s sheer joy to have any men at all covering the far-flung Midwestern states. They probably wouldn’t have taken the territories away, Ray conceded, but “hindsight is always 20/20.” And so, he surmised, “that was the end of my education -– the beginning of my education.” Monday morning, Raymond Marcus, aged 20, was on the road and traveling for a month at a time.
Oscar gave him $25 a week for food, hotels, and gas. At that time, dinner was priced at 35 cents, consisting of either roast beef or roast pork, mashed potatoes with brown gravy, white bread, and green beans. Since Ray was Jewish, he always opted for the kosher roast beef; it wasn’t until he was served pork in the army that he realized “the other ain’t so bad.”
Hotels were a $1.00 per night. Ray described his lodgings as “fleabags,” small, seedy rooms with communal bathrooms in the hall. During the weekends, he indulged a bit and doled out $1.50 per night for a room with a bathtub. Thus, he was able to bathe twice a week.
Gas was the hardest commodity to procure in the war. Art had a friend who would sell the family gas through a system that involved black-market food stamps. The general rule was, If you could get places, there was always business waiting for you. This was true despite the fact that aluminum paint was only sold to individuals who had government approval, i.e., people with industrial or rural uses.
Along with peddling paint for Sheffield Bronze, the Marcus’s also cultivated a little business of their own. A cousin manufactured paintbrushes in New York and was eager for salesmen to vend his product. Therefore, he would ship boxes of brushes to the Marcus’s home in Chicago and the men would slip a paintbrush in their pocket whenever they were attempting to sell paint; after a deal had been closed, they would offer the customer a low price for the brush. Because there was no overhead in this operation (they did not need to rent a storehouse or hire outside help), the Marcus’s were able to undersell their competitors and turn an attractive profit. Eventually, it became so difficult for the average consumer to buy paint during the war because of the aforementioned government restrictions that the Marcus men wound up selling more brushes than paint!
Oscar bought Ray his own Business Coupe, a two-door, two-seat car, when Art came back to the business. Because they now had a team of three salesmen, the Marcus territory expanded even further to encompass North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and other Plains States. In his military discharge, Ray described his wholesale salesman job thusly:
“Worked as a wholesale salesman for Sheffield Bronze Power Co. of Cleveland, Ohio for two years from 1940 to 1942. Kept record of sales, collected cash for same and took specifications for industrial firms for paints manufactured to order. Kept complete record of traveling account for office records. Drove own car and covered about 35,000-40,000 miles per year.”
Ray’s days of selling were interrupted by World War II. In 1942, Ray’s age group was the first batch of 21-year-olds to be drafted; within this group, his draft number was 13. Ray initially enjoyed his life in the army much more than his life as a salesman. Being alone on the road was a very lonely and somewhat boring occupation for a young man. As a soldier, Ray was interacting with people his own age. Also, as Ruth explained, everyone was very patriotic in those days and “the worst thing” for an eligible man was to be declared 4-F, unfit for service.
Luckily(?), Ray escaped that fate. He had been eating carrots by the pound in a desperate effort to improve his vision, knowing full well that his eyesight was probably poor enough to deny him admittance into the service; the military, however, never administered an eye-exam. Consequently, he was accepted into active duty and served his country for three years. When Ray applied for Officer Candidate School (O.C.S.), a doctor finally took a look at his vision. The doctor recognized the magnitude of correction in Ray’s eyeglasses and asked him if he really wanted to go through with this application procedure. Ray replied that it [O.C.S.] was a heck of a lot better than what he was doing and so the doctor (who happened to be Jewish) signed Ray’s physical. However, despite this approval and repeated recommendations, Ray was never accepted into the officers’ training program. Anti-Semitism is the probable cause for such treatment.
*Instead of the officer route, Ray worked in a unit that repaired military vehicles. He drove a truck stocked with machine parts, which he cleverly named “Ruthless.” To explain his military occupation, Ray wrote:
“Clerk, Parts, Automotive:
Received, stored and issued automotive equipment accessories, spare parts and tools. Received incoming parts and prepared stock record card. Stored parts in proper bins in such manner as to facilitate easy taking of inventory. Issued and distributed parts to personnel in accordance with written memorandum. Had working knowledge of parts including description, nomenclature and interchangeability of parts.”
While Ray lamented the perfunctory to abysmal education he had received in high school — those were Depression times and since teachers were “paid” by I.O.U.’s, they hardly taught and never assigned homework (which would have required them to spend extra time grading) — Ray’s high school experience might have saved his life. The vocational theme of Crane equipped Ray with vital and highly specific mechanical skills. His lonely days driving across the Midwest as a traveling salesman also gave him unique experience behind the wheel and probably demanded that he tinker with his own vehicle, or else be stranded in the middle of nowhere.
At one point during his years of active duty, Ray was maimed — but not in the conventional way. The story goes, a heavy, industrial battery fell out of the back of Ray’s truck and landed square on his foot, crushing several of the bones. As Ray convalesced in the infirmary, an officer who was striding through the ward, passing out Purple Hearts to the wounded soldiers, came upon him. He offered Ray this badge of honor but Ray refused it, feeling that he didn’t deserve such a medal since his injury wasn’t received during combat.
Ray was present for D-Day + 1, and only when prodded would he recount grimly the scene that he had witnessed. He defied his superior’s orders that day, refusing to deliver parts to tanks further inland by driving over the bodies that studded the beach, defiling the sanctity of the dead and torturing the living. There is no question that Ray suffered during World War II. But Ray came home.*
At the time of their marriage, just before Ray was shipped overseas, Ruth was 21 years old and Ray was 22. Their wedding occurred approximately six months after Art’s and Shirley’s. The two newlywed brothers were immediately sent to Europe and Shirley became pregnant with her first son, Kenneth (Roger was born a few years later in 1946). Her parents, who ran a small corner-grocery store, consequently gave their apartment to Shirley and moved in behind the business. Ruth’s married life didn’t change as materially; she continued to work and to live with her family, and was therefore faced with the aforementioned housing crisis upon Ray’s return.
Meanwhile, Oscar continued to sell his cousin’s paintbrushes out of the basement of his home. After the war, when all of the boys thankfully returned from overseas, Oscar decided to “go legit.” Bernie, affectionately referred to as Buster, was the third and youngest son in the family. Despite serving in the Navy and receiving his degree in business from the University of Illinois, Buster didn’t seriously take part in the Marcus Brush Company, for being the “baby brother” discredited his opinions in Art’s eyes.
Although Art genuinely enjoyed traveling and excelled as a salesman (“he liked to kibbitz,” Ruth explained), Shirley wouldn’t allow Art to spend extended periods of time away from their young family; consequently, Art worked behind the desk and Ray settled behind the wheel. Ruth didn’t much like her husband traveling either, but once again, they were in a situation in which they had to sacrifice for the greater good of the family.
The Marcus’s pooled their money and bought and fixed up a beautiful building located at 2823 S. Michigan Ave. This structure was close to the housing projects and a rumor was circulating that the city government was going to sprawl out and confiscate their land. City Hall assured the Marcus’s that this wouldn’t happen but five years later, the government “condemned” the building and bought it from the Marcus’s, denying profit on the sale. The city of Chicago continued to use that building as an office for a number of years after its “condemnation.”
There were several victims of this political machination. Joe Salzer was a candy-manufacturer and worked in that building just three doors down for the Marcus’s base of operations. Although, according to Ray, Salzer’s product wasn’t exactly gourmet (“Joe’s biggest client was Winn-Dixie,” Ray related), he wished to stay in the business and approached the Marcus’s with an offer. Salzer was seeking to buy a building at 444 W. 23rd Street but didn’t have enough money. The Marcus’s helped him to purchase it by fronting $20,000 and were granted office space and a very low lease for 10 years’ time. The two entities supported each other and maintained a very good working relationship while they worked side-by-side. Coincidentally, Salzer’s son became a dentist and his practice is located in the same building, in fact across the hall, from that of Ray’s dentist son-in-law, Dr. Rick Felt.
Perhaps buying buildings was in the air. Concurrently, Harry longed to share ownership of an apartment complex along with his wealthy brother-in-law Irving, Helen’s husband; however, Harry was short $10,000. From her years of labor and frugality, much to Harry’s surprise, Sarah was able to furnish him with most of the deficit. Ruth chuckled, “…my father almost fainted when my mother said that she had umpteen and umpteen thousands of dollars. He couldn’t believe it. All the money she made working, she saved. All those years.” The rest of the money Ruth and Ray borrowed from the bank on the Feldman’s behalf, and Sarah promptly repaid them within a year. The rent checks from the apartments provided Harry and Sarah with a steady income and enabled Sarah, after Harry’s death in 1959, to live as an independent woman of means.
After Maury’s tragically premature heart failure in 1961, Sarah summered in Skokie with the Marcus’s and wintered on the beaches in Florida. Ruth and Ray’s two children, Barbara Lynn, born March 23, 1948, and Richard Jay, born four years later on January 21, 1952, remember fondly the days when they all lived together.
Barbara was born when Ruth and Ray still lived in that little two-and-a-half bedroom apartment on the North Side. Ruth got a crib and set it up behind a screen in the dinette — that was Barbara’s “room.” On hot summer nights, the three would head down to the beach and, along with many many other families, sleep on a blanket on the sand.
When Barbara was five years old, Ruth took her for a pre-kindergarten eye exam. They told Ruth that Barbara could barely see. “I couldn’t believe it, I went from one doctor to the other doctor. You know, a kid at five already, to need glasses…” Barbara was self-conscious when she began school, the only five-year-old with eyeglasses. When he was eight, Dickie had to wear glasses too. The first generation of contacts were introduced when Barbara was in high school. They were so thick, it was impossible for Barbara to tolerate them. She tried so hard, though. Ruth believes that the kids’ eyesight was even worse than their father Ray’s, worse than her brother Maury’s. Ruth remembers that her father, Harry, refused to wear glasses, despite his poor vision, because he couldn’t stand the feel of them. Either Harry was near-sighted or incredibly lucky, because he used to cut men’s hair with sharp shears and shave them with a straight blade.
A favorite family tale harks back to Sarah’s days in Russia. The clan was celebrating Pesach, or Passover, a holiday commemorating Jews’ freedom from slavery in Egypt. Several customs are observed for this occasion; the seder, the holiday meal and its associated rites, follows a specific order (the word seder means “order”) and special foods are prepared and consumed to retell the liberation story. A glass of wine must be poured for the prophet Elijah and, at a certain point in the service, the door should be opened to allow him to enter. One year, a member of the Rich family rose from the table, threw open the door to the farmhouse, and… heard footsteps! The assemblage stared wide-eyed at each other, unable to believe their ears. Slowly the footsteps grew louder and louder, closer and closer. Each waited on tenterhooks, scarcely daring to breathe. And then suddenly…
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The cow, with his head in the door, looked around to see how the other half lived.
Another cherished story also involves a case of mistaken identity. Although Sarah spoke English, she was most comfortable conversing in Yiddish, her native tongue. On one particular occasion, Barbara was at a friend’s house and placed a call to her mother. Sarah, however, answered the phone, and so Barbara began, “Hi, Grandma, this is Barbara.” To this Sarah promptly replied, “Barbara no home!” and slammed down the phone.
Barbara attended Niles East High School and enrolled as a freshman at Northwestern University in 1966. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in English, Barbara won a scholarship to study social work at the University of Chicago. Her brother Dick also attended college, graduating from the University of Illinois as an American Studies major in 1974 before proceeding to law school at Loyola University Chicago.
Ruth also resolved to attain higher education. Kendall College, a junior college in Evanston, was her first stop; however, the administrators discouraged her plans to become a teacher and suggested that she would be out of place among their youthful student body. So, she applied to Chicago’s Roosevelt University. Doubtful of her academic abilities and preoccupied with continuing to keep house and look after her family, Ruth registered for Piano and Art Appreciation. Despite “ace-ing” the Piano final, she realized that she wasn’t “a natural” and set her sights on earning money.
Ruth took a refresher course in Shorthand and was employed as a temp. Quite by chance, Ruth was placed again in the offices of Sears and was hired away as a part-time secretary under a female executive. Following a nine-year stint, Ruth transferred to Northbrook and worked full-time as the secretary for the Manager and Assistant Manager of Sears’s newest store. Retirement ensued in 1979 when her mother became seriously ill. Upon Sarah’s passing, she left behind a substantial estate considering that it had been built “from pennies.”
The physical circumstances concerning Sarah’s death were quite dramatic. On January 31, 1982, Sarah announced that Harry was coming for her. Because she was quite advanced in age, Ruth merely interpreted her mother’s statement as an indication of senility; however, Sarah was adamant. She had to say goodbye.
At that time, Barbara and Dick were both married and living nearby. Barbara had wed Richard Felt, also a Skokie native, on August 3, 1971. Their son, Benjamin Maury, was born on July 2, 1976, days after Dick’s marriage to Susan Milner on June 27, 1976. Laurel Jeanne, born March 25, 1980, was almost two years old when Sarah bade her family farewell.
Barbara remembered, “…the day before she [Sarah] died, she insisted that Grandma Ruth drive her to our house out in Glenview to say goodbye to me, and Grandma Ruth didn’t quite get what ‘goodbye’ meant, but said okay, because she was so insistent that she was coming– she had ‘to go to Barbara.’ And she came and we all sat around the kitchen table and talked and fooled around and generally had a very nice time…
“I think that was the occasion also that I was in the height of my macrobiotic-ness,” continued Barbara. The macrobiotic diet is a Japanese regimen that, among other things, teaches its followers about the stability of different materials. As a result, Barbara “had stored both sugar and salt in glass containers because plastic gives off bad karma, ” or at least, Barbara amended, “bad vibes.” When Sarah paid her last visit to Barbara’s home, she requested sugar in her coffee. Sarah would usually place a sugar cube between her two front teeth and drink the sweetened coffee in that old-fashioned manner. However, Barbara didn’t have any sugarcubes, so she could only offer her grandmother sugar–- or what she thought was sugar– by the spoonful.
No one in the household used sugar often, so it was quite easy to confuse which glass container held which condiment. “…I kept on putting in teaspoons of salt!” Barbara laughed. “And she kept making faces at me and I just put in another one until she finally indicated we had better stop and we all really had a good laugh…
“She was very insistent when it came time to say goodbye that she was saying ‘goodbye,’” said Barbara slowly, “but she was also walking out the door, so we didn’t take it too seriously.” That night, Sarah continued to warn Ruth that Harry was coming for her; in fact, Barbara revealed, “…my mom said that she had gone that night, room to room, looking for him.” Long after the family had gone to sleep, Sarah awakened and rose from her bed. Previously, she had wandered away a couple of times during the day and was eventually found roaming the neighborhood alone; as a result, Ruth always double-bolted the door. “Without her glasses on, but she never went anywhere without her glasses, because you know, us glasses-wearers,” reminded Barbara, “and without her teeth, and she never went– she never let anybody see her without her teeth… she walked out of the house, undoing all of the locks…”
The police reconstructed the subsequent series of events. In the dead of morning, February 1, 1982, Sarah Feldman stepped out onto the snow-covered lawn. She moved forward a few paces, suffered a massive heart attack, and immediately expired, dead before she reached the ground. A neighbor discovered Sarah’s body a few hours later.
“…I got a call from my mom that Grandma Sarah was gone. And Grandma couldn’t say ‘died,’ she kept saying ‘gone,’ and I kept saying, ‘Then call the police,’ and she kept saying, ‘But she’s gone,’ and I said, ‘I understand, you need to call the police,’ and then she finally said, ‘Barbara, she’s gone,’ and I said, ‘Oh, she’s dead, I’ll be right there.’ And, what happened was,” Barbara narrated, “in the middle of the night, Harry must have come for her… We think that Harry really came for her and she didn’t need her glasses or her teeth.”
Despite Sarah’s warnings, her passing still “…took us by surprise, because we kinda felt that if she’d made it by February, she had come through the winter, and it didn’t seem fair to die just as spring was coming.”
Barbara and Rick’s second daughter, born August 17, 1984, was named Sarah Marna in honor of her great-grandmother. Dick and Sue’s first child, Leanne Sarah, born September 21, 1983, was also named in memory of Sarah Feldman. Their son, Joseph Gordon, entered the world on December 5, 1987.
Even without namesakes, however, Sarah’s memory was kept alive. On March 19, 1986, Barbara had a dream in which several of her deceased relatives communicated with her from beyond the grave. A sinus infection coupled with a small malformation in Barbara’s eye was causing a lot of pressure in her skull; however, doctors had not yet diagnosed those symptoms. She had an angiogram on St. Patrick’s Day “and we thought, for a couple of days, that it could be a brain tumor or a brain aneurysm.” Then, Barbara related, “I had a dream that my Grandma Sarah, my Uncle Maury, and my Grandma Gussie all came and stood at the foot of the bed and said, ‘Don’t worry, not yet.’”
Sarah’s youngest sister Ethel also received ghostly visits before she passed away in 1996. “She had wanted to make the year 2000 so bad,” Ruth sighed. “It was the last thing in any of our minds that she’d get sick, she was healthy all her life.” But Ethel also had been a smoker all her life and lung cancer gradually metastasized and crept into her brain. Weeks before her death, several matters were unresolved with Ethel’s estate and her mind was ill at ease. A nighttime nurse was employed to take care of her and reported Ethel’s restless nights. She used to cry out in her sleep, “No, Sarah, I’m not ready yet!” One day, she also called the Felt house and asked Barbara if one of the kids would name a baby after her. Speechless, Barbara didn’t know how to reply and felt that she couldn’t speak on her young daughters’ behalf. But Laurel, who was sitting beside Barbara, thought of her paternal grandmother Eleanor, whose name also started with E, and replied, “Of course! Tell her yes.” And so Barbara passed along the message that childless Ethel’s name and memory would live on. With this settled, and Ethel’s affairs finally put in order, she promptly announced that Sarah and Maury were coming for her. Ethel dozed peacefully through that night and failed to wake the next morning.
Just a few months ago, Ruth dreamed that she had a conversation with her mother. Sarah appeared to her just as Ruth had remembered Sarah looking during the later years, right before the illness that finally claimed her life. Ruth thought that perhaps Sarah was coming to take her to “the other side,” but the two women merely sat and chatted.
Today [that is, 1998], Ruth and Ray live in Hollywood, Florida, during the winter months and spend the rest of the year in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. They are active at the Jewish Community Center (JCC), share golf as a common hobby, and visit with their children and grandchildren quite often. Since they all live in northern suburbs of Chicago, Barbara and Rick Felt in Glenview and Dick and Sue in Buffalo Grove, getting together for family dinners is something that the group enjoys doing regularly. Ruth and Ray are also extremely close with Maury’s children and grandchildren. Maury and his wife Rose had two daughters, Helena and Freddi. Helena and her husband Michael currently live in California, as do their three children, Michelle, Hillary, and Joshua. Michelle and her husband Brian are the proud parents of two-year-old Tyler, while Josh and his wife Penny and Hillary and her husband Billy are all four newlyweds.
“Family first” was Sarah’s, Ruth’s, and indeed this entire clan’s, dominant ideology. The story of their lives was predicated on the notion that there’s no sacrifice too great to make for one’s family, particularly for one’s children. Ruth attributed this depth of commitment to the group’s foreign background, noting that immigrant families tend to be close-knit, providing their members with the much-needed security and comfort absent in a foreign environment. She also believed that the value was learned from the Jewish religion, citing the self-sacrificing nature of a praiseworthy Jewish mother. Regardless of the source, however, this family deserves credit for embracing the doctrine so completely and nurturing it through years of assimilation.
From generation to generation, parents lavished love upon their offspring, and the children in turn honored their parents. The need to protect their children inspired Jacob and Bessie to set out for America. Bessie’s parents mourned her absence. Desire to provide opportunity for Maury and Ruth fueled Sarah and Harry’s years of industry. Loyalty promoted Ruth and Ray to abandon their plans for higher education and work for their family’s businesses. Following her mother’s example, Ruth said, “When I got married, whatever I had, I wanted my kids to have more.” During Barbara and Dick’s years in college, they refused to take adequate allowances from their parents and instead worked as undergraduates.
These strong feelings of familial attachment were perpetuated as the children chose mates who shared their love for kin. Rick’s devotion to his parents, Eleanor Harris Felt and Justin Felt, was one of the qualities that drew Barbara to him, and this affection was displayed when he brought his mother to live with them during her last five months of life, after the sudden and unexpected passing of Rick’s father. Sue also dearly loves her parents, Charles and Mayta Milner, residents of nearby Lincolnwood, Illinois, and they in turn dote on all of the grandchildren.
Said Barbara, regarding the importance of family, “It’s key, it’s everything. It’s really all that really matters and it keeps getting… it gets confused, and then it gets clearer again… You know, when you think about working, or what you did with your life, work, yourself…” The influence of her family’s values played a role in Barbara’s decision to put her career on hold for 15 years during her children’s youth. While she adores her three kids and cherishes the time that she spent at home with them, Barbara simultaneously wishes that she could have found a way somehow to progress professionally. Ruth testified, “Your mom [Barbara] could do anything, I keep trying to convince her– also Dick. If she put her mind to it, there isn’t much she couldn’t do…
“Our whole family was gentle, and the kids are the apple of your eye. My mom always put the kids first,” Ruth averred. Indeed, Sarah used to tell Ruth, “You get all of your pleasure from your children.” But living for one’s children, through one’s children, and looking to them for one’s solitary source of joy is as harmful as it is helpful. Absolute self-sacrifice can both endanger children’s mental health and stunt a parent’s individual development.
Barbara concluded, though, that most doubts and problems get “…unknotted again when you’re with these people… Work really isn’t important. We keep saying they oughtta pass a law that you can’t move more than a certain number of miles away because I think it would be so nice if Helena was around, you know, someday when my parents aren’t around, someone who remembers them. You just want to be with the other parts of your family that you really just all are connected to. Cousins, I think, you all have the same kind of genetic input and it’s just special. So, it’s too bad that things keep getting further and further, farther and farther lumped.”
In her own children’s case, however, the benefit of growing up alongside cousins was granted. Young Sarah and Leanne are best friends and plan to be bunkmates for their second summer at Camp Chi, the same overnight camp that their parents attended. In fact, before becoming Sue’s sister-in-law, Barbara was Sue’s counselor one summer! Joe often tags along with the two girls, and occasionally Laurel joins in the fun and organizes games for all of them to play. Benjy and Joe, although separated in age by 12 years, still like to spend time together doing “boy stuff.”
Barbara’s vocation is social work and she currently works full-time, counseling families with young children, educating nursery school instructors, and teaching parenting classes. She believes that the way she was raised, observing her mother’s selflessness, benefiting from her love, probably prompted her to work with families. Growing up in that manner, explained Barbara, “you’re aware of relationships and people. And I also think my brother and I are pretty non-competitive,” she continued, “more compassionate and empathetic rather than out for ourselves, and more than selfish, more selfless.” This qualification then “…pulls you into an area of work that expresses that connected-ness rather than non-connected-ness.”
Feminism has also played a significant role in the formation of this clan “because most of the people that impact on child-development are females,” stated Barbara. “All was matriarchal at home in that all the men were always out and gone and it was always the women who guided the family…” Both Sarah and Ruth displayed their competence domestically and professionally, raising their children, tending to their housework, and earning wages in the job market. These achievements would have been impossible if they had defined themselves as members of “the weaker sex” and devalued their intrinsic potential as human beings. It can be argued that the relative success of this lineage relied heavily on the contributions of its women. According to Barbara, “the importance of women and female relationships” was crucial.
But, Ruth confided, “The thing that I’m most proud about– I’m first generation, your mom’s second generation, you kids are already third generation. For me, it’s like you came over on the Mayflower! Our family has been here 100 years already.” More significant than the family’s physical subsistence in this country, though, more inspiring than its ascendancy from rags to riches, more remarkable than its transformation from a handful of unskilled laborers to a group of educated professionals, is the survival of its moral fabric– the preservation of familial love throughout the decades.
P.S. At the end of our visit on March 17, 2013, Gramma came back into the kitchen (instead of getting her coat, as she had intended) to tell me something.
RUTH: I couldn’t do this without your mother; she’s always there for me. And your father is always right there too.
BARBARA: That’s what we do.
RUTH: And that’s FOR TRUE! I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, guys: I’m just going to hang around.
BARBARA: See, she’s not going to leave me alone, even when Laurel retreats to California.
RUTH: And has about a dozen kids.
BARBARA: She’d better, we’re counting on it.
RUTH: Your daddy’s got his tongue hanging out, waiting for little kids. “Mit kennish oyz glochen de velt.” — You can’t even out the world. (reflecting on her Yiddish) I’m getting closer to my family, they’re all waiting for me.
BARBARA: There’s no hurry.
RUTH: And don’t ask me where I’m talking Yiddish in my old age. Like I said, they’re all up there laughing at me!
*Text added by Laurel Felt from recollection, February 2, 2012
- Transcripts from interviews with Ruth Feldman Marcus, Barbara Marcus Felt, and notes from a talk with Raymond Marcus
- Eulogies of Raymond Marcus
- An essay about Raymond Marcus, written by my then 14-year-old brother
- WWII accounts of Raymond Marcus, Arthur Marcus, Bernard Marcus, and Charles Milner
- The 90th birthday of Ruth Feldman Marcus + Hanukkah celebrations
- Stories about my paternal grandparents
- Saying goodbye
- Transitioning
- Tolerating ambiguity
- Slip Slidin’ Away
