INTERVIEW WITH SANFORD GOLDSTON
This is December 16, 1997. We’re at the Wallick Company offices at 6880 Tussing Road in Columbus and we’re interviewing Sandy Goldston. I’m Naomi Schottenstein. I’m an interviewer with the Columbus (Jewish) Historical Society. Sandy, give me your address where you live now.
Goldston: 1335 Poppy Hills Drive. That’s in Blacklick.
Interviewer: Okay. And who is your wife?
Goldston: Bonnie.
Interviewer: Bonnie?
Goldston: Right.
Interviewer: Let’s start way back with your parents and grandparents, Sandy. Do you
have any memories of your grandparents?
Goldston: Oh many, many memories of my grandparents. My father’s mother I don’t remember at all. She died when my father was 14. My . . . .
Interviewer: Where was that? Where was she living at that time?
Goldston: She died here in Columbus. She’s buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery.
Interviewer: And her name?
Goldston: Bertie, Bertie Goldston.
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldston: My grandfather’s name was Sol Goldston. He was a traveling salesman. Came to Columbus with his family from Meadville, Pennsylvania. He had, oh he was born in England and my father was a first-generation American in the family. My father had one, two, three brothers and two, well four brothers and two sisters. There’s only one sister still living. She lives in California.
Interviewer: Who are your, well let’s finish with your grandparents . . . .
Goldston: Sure.
Interviewer: and then we’ll go into that. Okay, those were, you just told me about your grandparents on your father’s side.
Goldston: My mother’s parents were, both came here from Russia. Rachel and Sam Izeman. My grandfather Sam Izeman had a shoe repair store on East Main Street from 1913 until about 1960. My grandmother stayed home and raised her children and never worked in any respect. And my grand- parents had, beside my mother, there were three sons and one daughter. Two sons and a daughter are still living here in Columbus.
Interviewer: Who were your grandmother’s children? Give me the names of them.
Goldston: There was Harry, Ben and Sol Izeman. And my mother was Eva Izeman and Sonia Izeman.
Interviewer: Uh huh. And some of those siblings still live in Columbus, don’t they?
Goldston: They all, Sol and his wife Bobbie live here in Columbus. Ben and Ethel live here in Columbus. Sonia and her second husband Phil . . . .
Interviewer: Hoffman?
Goldston: Hoffman, yes. Got one of those senior moments. Can never remember names. Phil Hoffman lives here in Columbus.
Interviewer: Okay. Now your grandfather’s siblings, who were they?
Goldston: My grand--, my father’s father?
Interviewer: Your father’s father, yeah.
Goldston: They were Carl, Victor and Claude Goldston which are deceased. Catherine Goldston who lives now in, Catherine Telleman who lives now in California and May Harris who is deceased.
Interviewer: Do you have any fond memories of your grandparents, let’s say like your grandmother with holidays, synagogues, or their work, anything connected with their background that you would . . . .
Goldston: Oh yes. We used to spend lots of time in my grandfather’s shoe repair store watching him work machines and learning how to work the machines and as I grew up I used to, have to, run the cash register for him and then those kind of things. My grandmother was, when I grew up as a kid, I thought my grandmother was the best cook in the world. I mean, she was better than my mother ’cause she made me what I wanted.
Interviewer: Uh huh. (laughter) She had the privilege of spoiling you a little bit.
Goldston: Yeah and she was a true Jewish grandmother. There were no such things as recipes, it was a shickel of this and that and everything that you could think of, a pinch of this, a pinch of that.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Sure. What about your cousins? Did you congregate together at your grandparents’ home?
Goldston: No, not with my cousins. Funny relationship. My uncle is like my brother. My uncle was born two years after my mother and father got married and he’s only three years older than I am. So we grew up as really brothers and I was the oldest of the cousins and, now I’ll give you an example. The youngest cousin is 35 years younger than I am as far as first cousins are concerned.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: So we never really had a lot of cousins around as much as I grew up with my aunts and uncles.
Interviewer: So there was a wide range there but you had a close relationship with your uncles and . . . .
Goldston: Aunts, yes.
Interviewer: the aunts? What about your siblings, your brothers and sisters?
Goldston: I had one brother, one sister. Bernie who died a few years ago and . . . .
Interviewer: Was Bernie married?
Goldston: Yes. Bernie, Bernie and I married sisters in fact. So we have interrelated cousins . . . .
Interviewer: Well that’s another family tie.
Goldston: Yes, right.
Interviewer: And what was his wife’s name?
Goldston: Nancy. Nancy Goldston.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And that was Bonnie’s sister and we, they, they had three children, two boys and a girl, Mark and Chuck and Robin. And they all live, all living in Detroit.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And my children are Steve and Sherrill, Steve, and both of them here in town. Steve’s single, Sherrill’s married. No grandchildren yet.
Interviewer: Yeah. Who is Sherrill’s husband?
Goldston: Todd Dailey.
Interviewer: Uh huh. And when did they get married?
Goldston: Uh, be three years now.
Interviewer: Okay. Let’s see, did you have any sisters? We were talking about your brother.
Goldston: I had a sister, Carolyn, her name’s Carolyn Huiss, H-U-I-S-S. Lives here in Columbus. And that was one of those situations much like I grew up as a brother to my uncle. My sister was 14 years younger than me and we were never really grew up together or were very close. I was almost out of the house before she was around.
Interviewer: Yeah. Does she have children?
Goldston: She has one boy Joel . . . .
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: who’s up at the university as an engineer. I think he’s working on his Master’s Degree at this point, or his Ph. D.
Interviewer: You mentioned your aunts and uncles. What about their children? Can you give me a little bit of background on their children?
Goldston: Well let’s start with, Harry had no children. Didn’t get, never got married and never had any children. Ben and Ethel had two girls and a boy. Bonnie lives in Granville. The, well let’s see, who else is around? Jan lives in State College, Pennsylvania and their son lives here in Columbus. He is not married and doesn’t have any children that I know of.
Interviewer: Okay. Thanks for adding that. (laughter) In today’s world we have to . . . . .
Goldston: That’s right.
Interviewer: clarify that. Okay. And what about your . . . .
Goldston: Sonia has, had two girls and two boys, Bev who married a guy by the name of Alfred. They live in Israel and on the Moshav. Debbie whose married and lives here in Columbus with two children. Then there’s Michael and David, both of which live in Columbus. Mike has a daughter and David has two daughters and a son, all living here in Columbus.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Let’s see. Does that pretty much cover . . . .
Goldston: Pretty much covers everybody.
Interviewer: Now your parents are both deceased and I’m not sure that we have in the record here when they passed away.
Goldston: My father died in 1961 and my mother died in, time has a way of running around here, about 1985.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Do you, how did they die? Were they ill? Had they been . . . .
Goldston: My father died of heart disease at about 1961. He would have been about 53 years of age and my mother was 80, almost 80 years old when she passed away.
Interviewer: Tell us a little bit about your background, what schools you went to and . . . .
Goldston: I went to Livingston Avenue Elementary School and went to Roosevelt Junior High. Went to South High School.
Interviewer: That was pretty much a set plan I think at that age or at that era.
Goldston: If you, if you lived in our community, yes that’s pretty well how it was until some of them, some of the community started moving out east and getting a little bit away. Livingston and, well a lot of them went to Fulton Street Elementary School too. Back in those days, they were still down there and Junior High, there were some that went to Franklin and, but most of them went to Roosevelt. Unless you lived in Bexley, those were the schools you went to.
Interviewer: Do you have any fond memories of your elementary and junior high and high school, your . . . .
Goldston: Oh sure. Just as kids’ memories and stuff. Yeah and I enjoyed school and I enjoyed the kids I grew up with. You know, as growing up, you always have kids that you’re very close with and there were three of us that were called "the three musketeers" and . . . .
Interviewer: Who were the three musketeers?
Goldston: Jerry Delman, Stuart Seligson and myself. In fact, Stuart Seligson and I were born on the same day.
Interviewer: Oh that’s . . . .
Goldston: But.
Interviewer: real close relationship.
Goldston: Yeah. In fact there were three of us in Columbus all born on the same day. There’s a third one, Benton Block is born on the same day.
Interviewer: Oh, yeah I know Benton.
Goldston: So we kid each other about who’s the oldest but nobody knows.
Interviewer: (laughs) Only your mothers can tell.
Goldston: They don’t know.
Interviewer: And they don’t even know. No, they wouldn’t know. Well that’s good. What about college? Do you have college training at all?
Goldston: Oh yeah. I went to Ohio State and graduated in ’57. I was a TEP at Ohio State and I enjoyed my time there. Worked, I was the typical, I was the tail-end of it, but I was the typical Jewish boy growing up in Columbus. My first job was at Gilbert’s Shoe Store as a cash boy.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: My second job was selling shoes at Schiff’s and, I mean, you, if you were a Jewish boy growing up in those days, you became a shoe dog and that was the easiest job. That was a good job.
Interviewer: That’s right. What about your neighborhood? Can you tell us anything about, how many different neighborhoods did you live in as a child?
Goldston: Well I was born on Sheldon Avenue in the far south side and probably we were the only Jewish family in the area. My father bought the house because the money he had in the Columbia Savings and Loan at that point in time when they closed up, they didn’t have any money so they gave him a deed to a house. So he ended up with a house and my parents moved into it and that’s where I was born.
Interviewer: Oh.
Goldston: So and then we lived down there until I was about, oh I’d say four, five. And then he bought a double, what we call doubles today, or town houses. Town houses today, doubles in those days, on Thurman Avenue and once more I think there were, the Schneiders and ourselves were probably the only two Jewish families on Thurman Avenue.
Interviewer: Which Schneiders were they?
Goldston: I don’t remember but I remember the name and the family. I . . . . there’s no relatives in town any more that I know of.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And that was about maybe two blocks away from where South High School is. So and I can remember playing down there. I can remember going, as a child, I remember going to what is now Engine House 5 and playing with the firemen and climbing up on the fire engines . . . .
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: and . . . . And then when it got time for me to start elementary school, I think my mother prevailed upon my father to move more into the Jewish neighborhood and we ended up with a house on Columbus Street, a block away from the Schottensteins in effect.
Interviewer: Which Schottensteins were that?
Goldston: (laughs) Your husband.
Interviewer: My husband’s family? Okay.
Goldston: Yes.
Interviewer: Well there were a lot of them so you didn’t need anybody else around cause that was a whole group.
Goldston: No, no. We were on Columbus Street and I went to Livingston Avenue Elementary School and when it became time, I got on the bus and went to the Columbus Hebrew School and that was, back in those days, it was a prize to become the guide for the bus driver, Happy. I don’t even remember Happy’s last name but Happy was the bus driver and I used to be able to be the guide about two days a week telling him which houses to stop at.
Interviewer: Oh, to pick up the kids?
Goldston: To pick up the kids.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Where was the Hebrew School?
Goldston: Across the street from Schonthal Center on Rich Street in the old, in a big old house and I remember when Mr. Metchnik and Mr. Furst . . . .
Interviewer: They were your teachers?
Goldston: They were my teachers, yeah. And then I got rambunctious and didn’t want to go to Hebrew School so my mother went out and got a rabbi to come to the house and teach me and Rabbi Mellman taught me and prepared me for my Bar Mitzvah.
Interviewer: Rabbi Mellman?
Goldston: Yeah.
Interviewer: What was his first name? Do you have any idea? . . . .
Goldston: Carl Mellman’s father.
Interviewer: Oh, okay.
Goldston: Okay. But I don’t remember what his first name was.
Interviewer: What synagogue was he?
Goldston: He wasn’t. He was a, he was like a shochet, a teacher. And back in those days you could hire a rabbi to teach your child at home. You didn’t have to go to Hebrew School. I don’t think there are any of that today and that era. I think that’s gone, long gone.
Interviewer: Uh huh. I might add that, just for the record, that Carl Mellman was married to Sylvia Mellman and they’re divorced and Carl now is remarried and lives in California.
Goldston: California.
Interviewer: Uh huh. But I didn’t realize that his father was a rabbi too.
Goldston: Yeah Rabbi Mellman.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And I remember it distinctly because my brother was about four years younger than me and he was just starting and so I guess my mother figured that she’d get two for the price of one so that he would also start my brother on Hebrew. But every time he came in to give me my Bar Mitzvah training, my brother would run out the back door. He didn’t want any part of it.
Interviewer: He wasn’t too happy about that, huh?
Goldston: No, no.
Interviewer: Were your memories of your Hebrew learning fond, good memories once you got past that Hebrew School stage? Or was that kind of a forced education?
Goldston: Well yeah. I think it varied back and forth. At times it felt like it was forced. At other times it was a lot of fun. We used to, my father was brought up Reform and was not very religious. My mother’s grand- parents, my grandparents from my mother’s side, were fairly religious, were members of Beth Jacob and then later on Ahavas Sholom. I was Bar Mitzvahed at Beth Jacob, not because my father was a member but because my grandfather was a member.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And I remember fondly going to Beth Jacob every Saturday morning and of course the only reason we went was to get the Hershey Bar and a ticket to either the Victor or the Champion Theater.
Interviewer: I can understand that. Well that was an incentive.
Goldston: Yes. Yes.
Interviewer: What do you remember about your Bar Mitzvah?
Goldston: Not an awful lot except it was, I think at that point all I worried about was what kind of presents I was going to get. I think I got about ten pens and three wallets and all the old tried and true . . . .
Interviewer: Standard . . . .
Goldston: standard equipment.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Was there a party? Did your mother send out 8½ X 11 sheets of invitations like we’re getting today?
Goldston: No I don’t . . . .
Interviewer: Probably . . . .
Goldston: I don’t even think that my parents invited anybody. I think it was just open for the congregation in those days. We went to the Little Shul and the Beth Jacob and there it was. We went downstairs in the hall and had a party.
Interviewer: Little simple Kiddush probably?
Voice: . . . . didn’t show up . . . .
Goldston: No, no. Not like it is today. No.
Interviewer: How did your family celebrate holidays?
Goldston: If you’re talking about the Jewish holidays, my mother and my brother and I would always be at my grandparents’ so we’d always celebrate it at my grandparents’ house. Friday night dinners were always at my grand- parents’ house.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And on the holidays we were always there. You know, as kids we always looked forward to Passover. We always looked forward to asking the four questions and thinking we were drinking wine for grape juice and . . . .
Interviewer: It’s fun for the kids. I don’t know about the parents. I can understand that too. Did you have responsibilities and jobs to do at home?
Goldston: Not any real responsibilities that I can remember necessarily. I did little things around the house. I mean I cut the lawn. I did those kind of things, the same thing the kids do today, back in those days. Back in those days when you turned 13 or 14, you had your Bar Mitzvah, you went to work. You went to, you found some kind of part-time job. I, my first part-time job in high school was working at the soda fountain at Ziegler’s Drug Store on Parsons Avenue. I mean I worked there for about four years just stocking shelves, making sales and just working for Harold, who they called "Red". Everybody called him "Red".
Interviewer: Harold Ziegler was that? Uh huh. I don’t know if we got the date of your birth in here any, at all.
Goldston: 1933.
Interviewer: Okay. So my next question probably wouldn’t relate to this, to you.
Goldston: . . . . do I remember the Great Depression?
Interviewer: Right. (laughter)
Goldston: Yes.
Interviewer: It was just a little left over at that point.
Goldston: Yes and no. I’ll tell you what I remember. I remember, my father back in the late 30s when I was just starting to remember things, was an insurance salesman. He had a debit on the west side of Columbus and he went door-to-door collecting 25 cent and 50 cent premiums on what in those days were $500 death-life insurance policies. And I can remember walking with him with a bushel basket because some of the people couldn’t afford to give him the 25 cents or the 50 cents and they would give him coal, they would give him potatoes, and we’d carry them home.
Interviewer: So it was kind of a bartered . . . .
Goldston: Yeah.
Interviewer: situation. Like barter?
Goldston: Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well it worked. Tell me about coal. Tell us about coal.
Goldston: What about coal?
Interviewer: Did you have coal furnaces?
Goldston: Sure we had coal furnaces. Had a coal cellar. Had a fruit and vegetable cellar. And the jars were lined up downstairs in it. The coal came in through the chute and we used to shovel the coal into the furnace and then lo and behold, Janitrol discovered how to put gas inside a furnace and we were home free.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Goldston: We had a stoker for a while. That was an easy way, the stokers.
Interviewer: They were a little messy weren’t they, the coal furnaces?
Goldston: Oh yeah, yeah. But it was a lot of fun as a kid to open the door and slide down the chute.
Interviewer: Yeah well we never did that. You get a little dirty that way don’t you?
Goldston: Who cared?
Interviewer: Who cared?
Goldston: Little boys didn’t care.
Interviewer: All right. For sure.
Voice: Did you have an ice box where they had to come and deliver ice?
Goldston: Yes and my aunt, my father’s youngest sister, my father raised her, my father and mother raised her all the way through junior and senior high school and I can remember her, she used to flirt with the ice man to get extra pieces of ice for us and they’d chip it off and give us a little piece so we could . . . .
Interviewer: That was a treat, huh?
Goldston: Oh yeah, yeah.
Interviewer: Well those were good healthy treats.
Goldston: Yes.
Interviewer: And wonderful memories.
Goldston: No, there’s no fat in the ice.
Interviewer: Huh uh. When I think of how many fruit bars our children devour without even thinking about it, they’re missing out on a lot.
Goldston: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: Those chunks of ice were meaningful. Tell us a little bit about your high school, you know, how you socialized, how your friends, what you did for entertainment.
Goldston: Uh.
Interviewer: Where you met?
Goldston: Never really had very much of that in high school. I had the unfortunate circumstance of getting sick in about my, about, I was in about the tenth grade. I missed most of my high school because of illness and never really had a big social life in high school at all.
Interviewer: At that time weren’t kids pretty much meeting at Schonthal Center?
Goldston: Oh yeah, yeah, that’s what we did. AZA and BBG and everybody else all met there. We used to play basketball out in the back in the carriage house.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: Just, it was THE place to meet, I mean they got, there was either, you either went to Schonthal Center or you went to the new roller skating rink at l8th and Main . . . . you take a choice.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. Were those fond memories though?
Goldston: Sure. Absolutely.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah.
Goldston: We didn’t have near the worries or the cares that are out there today. In fact we even had time to think about things. We didn’t rush from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next.
Interviewer: No schedules and . . . .
Goldston: . . . . when you’ve got a ticket for five cents to the Victor or Champion, you not only sat through the double feature, you sat through the double feature a second time . . . .
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: and nobody ever kicked you out.
Interviewer: That was fun. What about Summer camp? Did you ever go to Summer camp?
Goldston: Only day camp, only the day camp with Schonthal Center. We used to have, I never went away to an overnight camp at all.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: There weren’t too many in those days.
Interviewer: Do you remember anything about political things that were happening during your youth, presidents?
Goldston: Only that I think we were indoctrinated from the time that I could remem- ber anyhow, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the savior of the world. I mean he could do no wrong. He was absolutely the best and the most wonderful politician in the world and if you weren’t a Democrat, you were nuts.
Interviewer: Especially all the Jewish families.
Goldston: Yes, yes, absolutely.
Interviewer: Well looking back, what’s your perspective about that idea?
Goldston: That he was the best? . . . . could do no, well from what came out later on, from what I know today, he was a human being the same as everybody else. But in those days everybody thought he was just fantastic.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah I remember that. So were you ever involved in any athletics?
Goldston: I used to play softball in the old Sunday Morning Leagues and just the neighborhood, in those days there were always these vacant lots in the neighborhoods. We’d go out and play softball on a vacant lot anyplace.
Interviewer: So it was kind of impromptu kind of thing?
Goldston: Oh yeah, yeah. And then they, in the Summertime we’d go over and go swimming at the swimming pool on Nelson Road and that was it. That was all there was to do in the Summertime.
Interviewer: Did you ride your bike?
Goldston: Oh of course, everywhere, everywhere.
Interviewer: And what about the bus? Did you take the bus very much?
Goldston: There weren’t any busses. There were streetcars.
Interviewer: Streetcars, okay. Good old streetcars.
Goldston: We used to, we, we used to take the street car to Roosevelt, every once in a while to Roosevelt Junior High and the streetcar tracks ended at Lockbourne Road and the street car had to turn around. Well the street- cars had electric poles in the back and in the front. They never really turned around. They pulled the one down and they put the other one up. Well as kids, we used to stand around there fighting each other to be the ones who would yank the line down and put the line up so he could go out the other direction.
Interviewer: It was an important function. Had to . . . .
Goldston: That’s right.
Interviewer: get going the other way.
Goldston: That’s right. I mean, it’s, you have to remember that when I was growing up, Lockbourne Road was the end of the city and then suddenly Nelson Road was the end of the city and College Avenue didn’t exist and if you drove out Livingston Avenue you were going to Buckeye Lake. I mean you just kept going. There was nothing.
Interviewer: Like the edge of the world, huh?
Goldston: Right. My mother, may she rest in peace, even in 1985 thought everything beyond College Avenue was "the country". I mean, just forget it.
Interviewer: Did you have a car? Did your family have a car when you were growing up?
Goldston: Except during World War II when they, it was tough to get cars or things. For a couple of years we didn’t have a car I remember during the war. But other than that, we always had an old car of some kind, Willys or Dodge or DeSoto or something like that.
Interviewer: Some dependable vehicle?
Goldston: Oh yes, yeah.
Interviewer: Did your parents both drive?
Goldston: No, my mother never drove.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: My father took my mother out to teach her how to drive and she hit a tree in Livingston Park . . . .
Interviewer: That was the end of that huh?
Goldston: Never drove again.
Interviewer: . . . . end of that.
Goldston: Never . . . .
Interviewer: Short career, huh?
Goldston: Yeah.
Interviewer: Did you ever serve in the military at all?
Goldston: No, no.
Interviewer: No? Okay. Well we’ll just skip that part then. So when you got out of college, what direction did you go as far as jobs?
Goldston: I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a major in Accounting and I was going to be a Jewish engineer as an accountant.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And I wanted to work in public accounting and in 1957 if you wanted to work in public accounting and you were Jewish, you either worked for a small local firm or you went to New York or you went to one of the big cities because there just, there weren’t any, they didn’t hire in those days, like banks. Banks didn’t have anybody either.
Interviewer: You mean in terms of Jewish . . . .
Goldston: Jewish in profe--, in this profession.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And I was offered a job in Detroit or in Honolulu, Hawaii. Don’t ask me how I ever got to Honolulu, Hawaii, but Honolulu was just a little bit too far to go away so I went to Detroit in 1957 and went to work in public accounting and . . . .
Interviewer: What company were you with?
Goldston: Haskins and Sells.
Interviewer: I’ve heard of them.
Goldston: Yeah. And I worked up there oh from ’57 to about ’61 and then got married in ’58, met Bonnie up there and got married in ’58 and then decided that I wasn’t going anywhere with that company at that point and decided I really wanted to come back to Columbus, come back home and so we moved back here in ’61 and I went to work for a local public accounting firm in ’61 and worked for them until ’65 . . . .
Interviewer: What was the name of that company?
Goldston: Arthur Jahn, J-A-H-N, Arthur Jahn and Company and in 1965, a fraternity brother of mine who was an attorney called me and said that he was working for a relative of his who had some accounting problems and would I like to come and talk to him about straightening them out. And I went over and met his relative who turned out to be Jack Wallick.
Interviewer: Who was the person that introduced you?
Goldston: Larry Gordon.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And Larry was from Circleville, Ohio, the Gordons in Circleville. Larry and Terry Gordon were the two kids. I forget the father’s name.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And uh . . . .
Interviewer: So they were related to Jack Wallick?
Goldston: Yeah, they were cousins.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And I met Jack Wallick. I did some accounting for him and everything and walked in one day and told him that his only problem was that he needed somebody to run his office and his answer was, "Good, when do you start?" We went to work for him two weeks later and then the company we worked for went bankrupt three weeks after that.
Interviewer: So Jack was working for another company?
Goldston: Yes, yes.
Interviewer: What was the company that he was with?
Goldston: It was called Kesk, K-E-S-K, out of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And so when we took over all the stuff that that company had been doing in Columbus in September of 1966 and started a new company.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And went from there.
Interviewer: So you pretty much started with Jack from ground . . . .
Goldston: From ground one.
Interviewer: ground one?
Goldston: Ground one.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: I used to kid that I don’t like to make changes. I mean, I used to say that I’d had the same partner for 30-some years and had the same wife for 30-some years. I just like to stay constant.
Interviewer: Well that’s pretty good record. That’s pretty good record. Where was Jack from originally?
Goldston: New Orleans, Louisiana.
Interviewer: Uh huh. So his work brought him here?
Goldston: Yes.
Interviewer: But he had relatives so he had kind of a base?
Goldston: He was related to the Pailet family.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: He was related to the Katz family. They had a lot of relatives here.
Interviewer: Uh huh. And my next question is answered. It says, "Are you still working?" It looks like you’re working.
Goldston: Yes I’m still working.
Interviewer: We’re in your office, so.
Goldston: Yes, I’m still working.
Interviewer: Do you plan to retire?
Goldston: Maybe some day.
Interviewer: But you’re happy being here?
Goldston: I’m happy being here. I’m happy every morning when I get up and come to work.
Interviewer: Well thank goodness you’re still enjoying it and I hope you have many years of enjoyment here.
Goldston: Thank you.
Interviewer: Are you still doing developing and still, tell me a little bit about the business you’re in.
Goldston: We are . . . .
Interviewer: Tell me as much as you want about the business you’re in.
Goldston: We are primarily multi-family apartment developers, contractors, managers. We started in September of 1966. We have probably built as a contractor something like 18-20,000 apartment units. We have built and we manage in our own portfolio somewhere around 10,000 apartment units right now. We have four assisted-living facilities and a nursing home that we operate. We have a company of about 725 to 750 employees and scattered throughout the midwest and in fact out into Arizona. We operate in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Arizona.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Does this give you opportunity to travel to the different places or is there pretty much covered . . . .
Goldston: I love to travel to Arizona in the Wintertime rather, but get out of this cold weather. But . . . .
Interviewer: I can understand.
Goldston: Yes, I don’t do as much traveling as I used to. When Jack was alive, we probably did more traveling because one of us was always here and the other one could travel. When now, when I’m out of the office there’s nobody here so I don’t get too much in the way of travel any more.
Interviewer: Yeah. For the record, we just might put in here when Jack did die.
Goldston: Jack died in May of 1995.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Yeah he was a really important part of this community and I know . . . .
Goldston: Very important part of my life for years and this community.
Interviewer: Yeah. You want to tell us a little bit about what kind of a person he was.
Goldston: What kind of a person? Gosh. A very caring person and a person who devoted an awful lot of time to the community and in community affairs and encouraged everybody around him to do the same thing. He felt very concerned about education and Jewish continuity. Was involved in lots of things. We, being involved in the multi-family housing business and everything else, took it upon ourselves in 1978 to suggest to the Jewish community that they do something about the elderly housing programs that were there and we put together both of the retirement housing or the elderly housing towers that are here in Columbus, both Heritage Tower and the Bexley Tower. I myself have been committed to Heritage House and the elderly geriatric work in Columbus since about 1978 and really have had a hand in or helped build on a volunteer basis with the community just about every building that’s on the campus, the Federation, except for the Center and the Melton Building.
Interviewer: So these actually were constructed by Wallick?
Goldston: No, no.
Interviewer: No?
Goldston: No, no, no. Jack and I never built anything. We always gave our time and our effort to putting it together and it was, we didn’t do it as a business and never made any money or went out to make a dollar. Nor did we say we’d donate a dollar in that respect. We just gave our time and then . . . .
Interviewer: Uh huh. The organization?
Goldston: Yes.
Interviewer: I think this might be an appropriate time for you to tell us a little bit about your participation in the community. You’ve given us some background and . . . .
Goldston: I lay most of my participation in the community to two things and that is that a desire to want to put something into the community for the things that my family got out of it where no one else in my family had ever been in a position to give the time or the money or anything else to the commu- nity. And secondly from the, just from the role model of my partner who was as giving as anybody could ever be.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: And you want to emulate those . . . .
Interviewer: Sure.
Goldston: that you appreciate. And then that’s really been the driving forces behind it. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that my driving force behind Heritage House was my own mother. I mean I wanted to make sure she had a place to stay there.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Well that’s pretty good incentive.
Goldston: Oh yeah.
Voice: Was she there?
Goldston: Oh yes. She was the first, just about the first resident to move into the Tower and she lived at Heritage House at the end. Yeah.
Interviewer: Uh huh. So that’s pretty much, pretty much your community interest, which is a lot. That’s really, I know you’ve made a tremendous mark here in the community and people very much appreciate all that you and Jack have done. Let’s talk a little bit about your spouse.
Goldston: Okay. Bonnie.
Interviewer: Bonnie. Tell us how you met Bonnie and where she was from.
Goldston: Bonnie’s from Detroit, Michigan. I met her when I went up there to work. She, and it goes a round-about way. A girl that I knew from my time at the University here also went to Detroit to take a job. She had a sorority sister whose brother was going out with Bonnie. That’s how I met Bonnie and I took her away from the brother of the sorority sister and married her.
Interviewer: Good for you.
Goldston: It was just that simple.
Interviewer: Got to be aggressive.
Goldston: That’s right.
Interviewer: Good for you. What year did you get married?
Goldston: ’58, 1958.
Interviewer: Okay. And how old were you both when you got married?
Goldston: Uh, you had to ask me that. I was 25. Bonnie would have been 21.
Interviewer: Okay. And where did you live in Columbus when you first came here with . . . .
Goldston: When we came back in 1961, we moved into some apartments on Living- ston Avenue near Courtright Road.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: I remember those. It was $85 a month. I could afford that.
Voice: Rand Avenue?
Goldston: Off of Rand Avenue, yes. Brockway, Brockway, yeah. Most people coming back to Columbus in the 60s lived there one way or the other. We lived there for a while and then we rented a house on Dellwood Avenue which was just a few block away from that, for a while. And then that was about 1964. Then in ’65, when I went with Jack we built some twin singles and town houses at a place called Rustic Ridge which was at Hamilton Road and the new freeway, near I-70. And so we went and rented one of those for a while and then I bought one of our, at that time we were still building single family houses, so I bought one of our model houses in a subdivision called Ravenwood on McNaughten Road. We lived there and then we moved into a condominium that we thought, we said, as all people, "Our kids are moving out, we’re moving to a condo and not worry about anything". And that didn’t quite stay that way because Bonnie got into some illnesses that needed a one-floor home so we went out and bought a new home and moved out of the condo. So we now live out in Blacklick on the golf course so I can walk out the back door and go play.
Interviewer: Well that sounds good.
Goldston: Yep.
Interviewer: And you’re enjoying that area?
Goldston: Enjoying life.
Interviewer: That’s good. That’s good to hear. Did you have a big wedding? You certainly remember the wedding.
Goldston: Yeah, not a great big wedding in today’s terms or anything like that. We were married in a Conservative shul in Detroit. I had our wedding party in the house. My mother-in-law couldn’t afford anything else at the time and so we just had a party for immediate family and friends in the house in the afternoon and left on our honeymoon in the evening. And that was it.
Interviewer: So the chupa was set up and . . . .
Goldston: Oh yeah, yeah.
Interviewer: Who was the rabbi?
Goldston: Oh no. Now the chupa was at the shul.
Interviewer: Oh.
Goldston: We got married in the shul . . . .
Interviewer: Oh okay.
Goldston: and then went back to the house.
Interviewer: Okay.
Goldston: I mean my mother-in-law couldn’t afford to rent the shul so we had to go back to the house.
Interviewer: Yeah. That wasn’t terribly unusual.
Goldston: Not in those days, no, not really. But things weren’t quite as ostentatious as they have become. I know my daughter decided to get married and she started to outline what she wanted. They want altogether different things today.
Interviewer: Yeah. I don’t know that it’s better but . . . .
Goldston: No.
Interviewer: Well I don’t know what they’ll tell the interviewer in 20 years . . . .
Goldston: What comes around goes around. They may be getting back to getting married in the houses. Who knows?
Interviewer: Well I kind of hope so. I kind of hope so. I’m just looking, we’re going to call "time out" here for a minute.
Goldston: Okay.
Interviewer: It’s about your children. Where did they go to school, your kids?
Goldston: My son went to elementary school on, boy I can’t even think of the name of the, on Hamilton Road just off of I-70.
Interviewer: Leawood, Leawood.
Goldston: Leawood Elementary School. My son went to Leawood, he went to Yorktown and he went to Walnut Ridge. And my daughter went to Old Orchard, Yorktown and Walnut Ridge.
Interviewer: Did they go to college?
Goldston: Steve went both to Franklin and to OSU and has a degree, has a Social Worker’s degree from, a Master’s Degree from Ohio State, and is a mental health counselor in Newark, Ohio. Sherrill did not go to college. She went to Beautician’s School and became a beautician, owned her own shop for a while and then went back to school to become a physical therapist and massage therapist and she does massage therapy at a women’s clinic up in, somewhere up northwest.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: Off of Sawmill Road I think.
Interviewer: They have kind of creative backgrounds and doing . . . .
Goldston: They both seem to like what they’re doing. And I don’t think it’s important that anybody, as to what they do. I think it’s important and I always used to say that to them, it’s tough enough to get up in the morning. If you don’t like what you’re doing, you’re not going to do it. So as long as they enjoy it and as long as they make a living, that’s all that really counts.
Interviewer: Yeah. That’s true. They have to enjoy what they’re doing. Do you remember, well as the kids were growing up, their religious upbringing? What synagogues were they involved with?
Goldston: We were members of Tifereth Israel from the time that we came back to Columbus. We were, I should take that back. We originally came back and I joined Beth Jacob and Bonnie was brought up Reformed with very little Jewish background and Beth Jacob was just a little bit too Orthodox for her and then also, with the kids coming of age and so on, we went into, we became members of Tifereth Israel primarily for the education school.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: Steve went to T.I., got his Bar Mitzvah training there, was Bar Mitzvahed there. Sherrill had a learning disability in school and never really went to any kind of Hebrew School training or anything.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Did you take vacations when the children were young?
Goldston: Always. Always took the kids on vacations. Went, my philosophy in . . . . has always been that we always got away for a while somewhere, somehow. We used to take the kids on long trips and remember taking them, we flew out to San Francisco and rented a station wagon and drove all down the California coast and over to Arizona and back up to Las Vegas and just stopping everywhere and anywhere and spent about two and a half weeks just driving.
Interviewer: Uh huh. Well that’s an education too, isn’t it?
Goldston: On yeah. Absolutely. Took them to Boston in the 70s, in 1976 to the hundred year celebration.
Interviewer: Celebration?
Goldston: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: Uh huh. So they’ll have fond memories of their . . . .
Goldston: I hope so.
Interviewer: I hope so. It sounds like they should have. Were there any illnesses that your family has gone through, anything that's held either you or Bonnie down, you know, that you’ve had to deal with?
Goldston: Certainly. I mean, I’m a, I have fought cancer twice and licked it twice. I’ve had two heart attacks and I’m still here kickin’ and working around. And Bonnie’s had her share of problems. She has a disease called sclero- derma which is something that is debilitating to some degree but has no known cause and no known cure and so you learn to put up with it and settle with it.
Interviewer: Well mental attitude certainly is important, isn’t it?
Goldston: Absolutely . . . .
Interviewer: To everything.
Goldston: It is absolutely everything.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. Well it’s good to have you sitting here talking about it and . . . .
Goldston: Well the other thing, if I can embellish on that for just a minute, the other thing that two bouts of cancer and then losing a partner to cancer on top of it has done, has made me very, very active in the general community in cancer. I’m a board member of Ohio Cancer Research Associates. I have raised and I continue to raise as much money as possible for them. I’m a board member of the American Cancer Society and I think it’s a disease that absolutely has come a long way in the 20 years, in the 22 years since I first had it, at being able to cure a lot of things. But there’s still a lot of forms of cancer that can’t be cured and we need to find the solution for it. So I’m, if I’ve got two things that I’ve done, it’s be active in the Jewish community and be active in the general community, at least as far as cancer’s concerned.
Interviewer: Well I’m especially grateful to that. I have a very young daughter-in-law who has just fought a year of cancer rehabilitation and hopefully there’ll continue to be people like Sandy Goldston who will be . . . .
Goldston: Oh there’s . . . .
Interviewer: pushing the ball there.
Goldston: There’s lots of people even better than me out there.
Interviewer: Well we need a lot of yous. Let’s see now, how we’re going to do this. As a young boy, I just wondered if your family traveled very much. Was there any of that?
Goldston: Our, in, when I was growing up as a kid, families were more intent upon traveling to visit relatives than they were in traveling to visit places.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: We made an annual trip to Cleveland and Detroit to visit my father’s family every year. One way or the other we always made sure that sometime during the Summer we piled in the car and we went to Cleveland to visit my aunt and we went to Detroit to visit my uncles and my aunts and in my moth--, ’course my mother’s family was all here so we didn’t have to travel. Except that my mother’s father, well my mother’s mother, pardon me, had a brother and sister-in-law in Pittsburgh so about once every two years, we also made the jaunt to Pittsburgh to visit those relatives.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: Or we’d made the jaunt to Urbana to visit the Krakoffs or we made the jaunt to Dayton to visit somebody else. It was always to go visit friends or relatives.
Interviewer: Those were good, wholesome times.
Goldston: Yeah.
Interviewer: It was so meaningful. You and Bonnie have traveled probably out of this country as well, have you?
Goldston: Very much, yes.
Interviewer: What are some of the trips that you’ve taken out of . . . .
Goldston: About four times to Israel. That’s for a good start. We’ve traveled Europe, we’ve been to Italy and Greece and England and we’ve been to Australia and New Zealand and we’ve been just about every--, we haven’t been down South America. But we’ve been to Alaska, we’ve been to the very tip of Alaska to where they’re drilling the oil and everything else. Traveling 18 hours on a bus on a gravel road to get there. So we’ve done lots of things and gone lots of places. We enjoy cruising. We’ve cruised an awful lot. In probably for six or seven years we went on a cruise every year.
Interviewer: Cruises are quite relaxing. Somebody else takes care of all the details.
Goldston: Now we’re into train rides. Now there’s a new American Orient Express that travels around the west of the United States. We’re going to go on one of their trips this year.
Interviewer: Oh, I haven’t heard about that.
Goldston: Yeah this is . . . .
Interviewer: Will this be the first one . . . .
Goldston: This is the first one that we’ll have gone on. We also went, last year we went down to the Baja and chased whales in a little boat for ten days and just, we do all kind of crazy things.
Interviewer: Relaxing.
Goldston: Yeah.
Interviewer: I know Bonnie was involved in Hadassah
Goldston: Yes.
Interviewer: That’s my connection with Bonnie.
Goldston: Right.
Interviewer: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that.
Goldston: Well you know, as anything else, you encourage your spouse to become active in whatever way you want to become active and Bonnie liked what Hadassah was about and became very active in it. Served as the President of the group for one year. Has been very active through them with the hospitals in Israel. I tell you a funny anecdote. She went to Israel on a tour by herself at the same time that I was going on a Federation trip that took me to Moscow. And the trip that took me to Moscow also took me to Warsaw and Budapest and dropped me off in Israel on Friday and I went to the Wall on Friday night and pulled up and got off a bus and her bus pulled up behind me.
Interviewer: Oh.
Goldston: So you, we went clear across the world to see each other at the Western Wall.
Interviewer: And that wasn’t planned?
Goldston: Was not planned at all. Just happened.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Goldston: Just happened.
Interviewer: Well God was watching over you guys.
Goldston: That’s right.
Interviewer: That’s pleasant. That’s a great, great event. I remember going to a meeting once at your condo when Bonnie had her leg in a cast.
Goldston: Yes.
Interviewer: And you took over and we were all very pleased with your, the way you took care of things. You were really pitching right in there.
Goldston: Well I got even with her later. No. (laughter)
Interviewer: Don’t tell me you broke your leg.
Goldston: No, no, no, no, no. But . . . .
Interviewer: You were very encouraging to her and just kind of took over.
Goldston: Well that’s what spouses are for.
Interviewer: Yeah, that’s great. That’s what, I’ll remember that too. Do you have any impressions about politics in today’s world or any hopes or any advice you can give to the world?
Goldston: Don’t trust politicians. (laughter)
Interviewer: Okay. That’s a good thought.
Goldston: It may be a good thought but it’s not something good to say.
Interviewer: No.
Goldston: It, it, the world just keeps changing and I think if anything I would like to see some way that politicians don’t have to go out and to look at, to worry about the almighty dollar so much and to worry more about what they’re supposed to be taking care of. I think politicians spend more time worry- ing about where the next dollar is coming from and who, what their contributors want than they do worrying about what really is good.
Interviewer: And they have to answer to the world . . . .
Goldston: Yeah.
Interviewer: why they’re collecting where and what and . . . .
Goldston: I agree. I just would love to see a pot of money that’s put together that says, "Here, anybody, you want to be a politician, here it is, you don’t have to listen to anybody except just take this money and go ahead and run."
Interviewer: Just concentrate on the needs?
Goldston: Right.
Interviewer: Uh huh. What about what’s going on in Israel. Do you have any optimism? Do you have any advice for Nethanyahu?
Goldston: Yeah, get out of office. (laughter) I, it is beyond belief that we try to be such a united community that isn’t united any more, that is so far off in its beliefs and everything else . . . .
Interviewer: You mean the Jewish community in general?
Goldston: Jewish community in general, Israel, you know it is so hard to explain to someone who is not Jewish why we celebrate something here in a certain way and then they see a picture in the newspaper of Israel where they don’t celebrate it. It is just so difficult to try to make people understand that the State of Israel isn’t in their terminology a Jewish state any more. It is, it’s, I just think it’s awful that one Jew can stand on one side of the street and throw a rock at another one on the other side of the street. Why? I mean, we’re all . . . .
Interviewer: Yeah. Very complicated, isn’t it?
Goldston: It is very. I wish I were King Solomon and had the answers to things but I don’t.
Interviewer: Well I wish you were too ’cause we need some answers. That’s for sure. We need some uniformity and are you optimistic though about the future?
Goldston: Am I opt---, about Israel?
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Goldston: Well . . . .
Interviewer: About the Jewish community? When I say Israel, I mean about Jews in general and I guess that the core of Judaism, of Jewish life, is Israel.
Goldston: Well it is and it isn’t. You know we are, the question is, is somebody asked me am I an American or am I a Jew or am I an American Jew or what am I. You know, am I an American first and a Jew second? I don’t know. I don’t, am I a Jew first and an American second? And Israeli, same thing, Israeli doesn’t necessarily have to be a Jew. It’s a difficult thing. I think eventually with a lot of heartache and everything else that the problems in Israel will eventually be solved but we’ll go through a lot of aggravation before it’s over and there’ll be a lot of people that will be killed for no reason whatsoever and because there are extrem- ists on both sides. We have some extremists that are just as bad as theirs.
Interviewer: Right.
Goldston: And it, but I tend to think that too many of us here are American first and Jews second any more.
Interviewer: But the reason for Israel is hopefully strong enough that they’ll be able to overcome.
Goldston: I think so. I think they will.
Interviewer: Well that’s a good thought. I think that’s good time to maybe cut off unless you can think of any other thoughts you might have, any more philosophies.
Goldston: No I just, funny thought of philosophy or anything else, I think what you’re doing is excellent. I do believe that the archives should have available to my children’s children’s children an idea of what this commu- nity was like back in the past so that they can understand a little bit about it. I think what little bit of periodicals that have appeared in the form of books and histories and everything else are just fantastic. I think it’s important that we remember what happened before. It, I mean, what will always stick in my mind is the fact that my mother’s mother and father were married and had two children in a little village in Russia called Spikavadernia. And my father, my grandfather, left there and it took him 11 years to bring my grandmother and his two children over. And it’s 11 years of two people living apart and of him sending money and there was a war in-between and everything else. So they, you know how people, some generations from now should understand what they went through for us to have been here today and for us to be here tomorrow.
Interviewer: So I think Sandy that kind of sums up the thoughts that we’ve had too that the past will make the future.
Goldston: Oh absolutely, absolutely.
Interviewer: Well that’s terrific. I’m glad you agree on that. Sandy I want to thank you on behalf of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you and I have my associate here as well, Fahn Tishkoff. She’s a, she’s in training, and hopefully we’ll get her out into the field very soon.
Tishkoff: This is a P.S. to the tape that we’ve just completed. I wanted to give the name of Sandy’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Their original name was Piergoverski, P-I-E-R-G-O-V-E-R-S-K-I. And when they came to this country they told the people at customs that they were coming to be with a relative in Zanesville who sells ice. And so the name Izeman was given to them, that’s I-Z-E-M-A-N. Sandy’s grandfather’s brother was living in Zanesville at the time.
Interviewer: Okay that’s one thing. The other thing is I neglected to say what Bonnie’s maiden name was. She was from Detroit. Her maiden name was Ebstein, E-B-S-T-E-I-N. Her father is deceased. His name was Marty and her mother is still living. Her name is Judy. So this is just a P.S. to the rest of the tape.
* * * *
Transcribed by Honey Abramson
Proofread by Marvin Bonowitz
Edited by Toby Brief
SUMMARY by M.B.: Goldston speaks about his growing up in Columbus. Beginning on page 17, he speaks about Jack Wallick and Wallick’s participation in the building of housing for seniors and Jewish communal buildings. Page 26 describes his interest in cancer research and rehabilitation. Travel destinations are on pages 27-28.
