Interview with Eugene Dubow, November 1, 2013

FERNHEIMER: Great. Good morning. My name is Janice Fernheimer. I am an Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies here at the University of Kentucky, and the Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Jewish Studies, and it is my great honor and pleasure to have the morning to interview Mr. Gene DuBow. Um, as we get started this morning, I'm just gonna ask you to tell me a little bit about yourself, Gene.

DUBOW: Well, uh, as one who's lived my life, I'm not so sure it's so terribly interesting, but I will be glad to tell you about me. I'm--(laughter)--I grew up in--I grew up in the Bronx, uh, New York, in pretty much of a Jewish cocoon, a Jewish neighborhood, uh, uh, in the mid-Bronx. Um, my mother and father, uh--my father was born in Russia, but he was pretty Americanized. My mother was actually born in the United States, which was unusual for that neighborhood. Of course, we had so many people who were born on the other si-- what was called the other side, on the other side, in those days. And, of course, I was born, uh, on June the 3rd, 1932. I tell young people that, uh, I was born during the presidency of Herbert Hoover. They can barely believe that. (laughter) Uh, and, uh, since I had a lot to do with Germany in--later in my career, uh, I was 00:02:00born before Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. So, uh, I'm an antique. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm ancient. ----------(??) I grew up in--I grew up in the Bronx. Uh, went to the, uh, local, uh, public schools. Uh, as a matter of fact, I was in one public school in the third grade, uh, when The War--The War--World War II broke out, and they took me from one school and put me in another because the New York City, uh, Board of Education decided that it would be safe in case there were air raids--

FERNHEIMER: --wow.

DUBOW: --uh, to, uh, be able to get kids to go home, uh, if they lived in, uh, in a prescribed area. I don't know what they were expecting, uh, to happen at home. If the bombs were gonna fall on the school, they certainly would fall on the home. But at any rate, they took me and put me in this, uh, in this other school, in PS28, and I went there. Uh, uh, I went to a junior high school which 00:03:00was, uh, directly across the street from me, and, uh, then, uh, I went to an all-boys high school, uh, DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, and I think back on that these days, and I still have a very, very close friend, and, uh, uh, lives in Seattle. And I said, "What was wrong with us where we went to an all-boys high school? (laughter) We could've gone to a mixed high school." He said, "Well, you know, we, we, we were men. We didn't like girls." (laughs) So you make, you make certain choices in your life, and that--I think that was a--that was a rather poor choice. (laughter) And, uh, uh, in any rate, I, I managed to, uh, to get through high school. I wa-- was not a great student. I was okay, but I was-- I wasn't a great student. And then came time for college. The accept-- the accepted thing in our family, and, frankly, in our society, was that when you finished high school you went to college. Uh, you didn't go 00:04:00and, uh, you know, and get a job or learn a trade or--I mean, you went to college. So I decided, uh, for myself, um, uh, that I would like to go out of town to college. Normally, in our neighborhood, as my brother did, went to New York University, if you had a little money--and we had a little money, uh, uh, you went to NYU. If you had no money, uh, which there were many people there who had really no money, and, uh, uh, went to, uh, uh, City College of New York, CCNY. If you were a genius of some kind and got a scholarship to Harvard or Yale, that would--that was something else. Now, this was, this was 1949. This was four years--

FERNHEIMER: --oh.

DUBOW: --after, after World War II. There were still a lot of veterans--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --coming back from the service under the GI Bill--

FERNHEIMER: --um-hm.

DUBOW: --who were going to college, so it wasn't so easy to get into, uh, to a 00:05:00college. For me, it, it, it was even a little bit more difficult because I graduated a half year. I graduated in January of 1950, and then came the question of where to go to college. Well, uh, we didn't have any advisors. This was an all-boys, big, big school. I think there were two or three thousand students--

FERNHEIMER: --wow.

DUBOW: --in it.

FERNHEIMER: How many were in your graduating class?

DUBOW: Excuse me? What?

FERNHEIMER: How many were in your graduating class in high school?

DUBOW: Oh, I don't know, several hundred, four or five hundred. Uh, it seemed to me, uh, not terribly much smaller than the University of Kentucky was at that time, but I'll get to, I'll get to that in a moment, uh, or two. Uh, so, uh, the only, uh, help we got was the, the high school had, uh, catalogues from various and sundry colleges. And I didn't--I was seventeen. Uh, I didn't know much about colleges, except I had--except I--the expectation was on my family 00:06:00that I would go to college. And so I started, uh, looking, and, of course, the only colleges I knew were those colleges that had good basketball teams, because in those teams basketball, uh, in the New York area particularly, was a Jewish sport.

FERNHEIMER: Really?

DUBOW: Yes. Uh, m-m-many of the really good college players, uh, uh, were Jewish. Uh, in those days CCNY, NYU, Brooklyn College, all--uh, uh, Long Island University--all had very, very good, nationally prominent basketball teams. They all later got--uh, most of them got caught up in a scandal and they didn't have such great, uh, teams after that. And also, uh, after that, the, the, the Jewish population became more professionalized, and so people weren't so interested in going and becoming professional athletes, so forth. At any rate, they were, uh, uh--I knew the good basketball teams, and, of course, I knew the 00:07:00University of Kentucky. Uh, but I applied to, to various places, uh, uh, and I got accepted, actually, at the University of Alabama. Now, they didn't have a very good basketball team, but I knew them because they had a good football team. Uh, but they, they accepted me, uh, uh, dur-- on the quarter system, so I would've had to hang around until March in order to go. But, uh, I thought, well, if that's what I have to do, I have to do. My family--it was okay with my family. And then I got a telegraph. Actually--(laughs)--I mean, this sounds ancient, but a guy came with a telegram saying I was accepted at the University of Kentucky, and could I be there in I think it was about ten days. My father, uh, was a manufacturer, and he was a salesman and a manufacturer of ladies' hats. Of course, women don't wear hats very much anymore, but in those days 00:08:00women, women wore hats.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: These little frilly hats and stuff. And he sold, uh, to accounts all over the country, and he sold to a small department store in Lexington, Kentucky called Wolf Wild (??). He called her on the phone--and, by the way, getting a, a long-distance call in those days, that was a, that was a major event.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: You had to go to the operator, the operator called other operators, and, and it took a long time, and then you finally, finally, uh, go through. By the way, uh, later in my life, uh, I had a lot to do, uh, in East Germany, and it reminded me, as I think about it now, that the s-- the phone system was very much like the East German phone system. (laughter) In any case, uh, he called her on the phone. I don't remember her name, but, uh--and she said, "Oh, ----------(??)-------- love it in Lexington, Kentucky." (laughter) About ten days later, I was on a train on my way to Lexington, Kentucky. Now, in those 00:09:00days they, they did have airplanes. Uh, there were airplanes, but air travel was very expensive.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, and so people m-m-m-- uh, traveled b-- traveled by train. So I went--I took the New York Central from Grand Central Station west to Cincinnati. I transferred at Cincinnati to the Southern, uh, which stopped in, in Lexington. It was the first time I had ever experienced segregation.

FERNHEIMER: Wow.

DUBOW: Uh, the train was segregated.

FERNHEIMER: Tell me a little bit more about that. Describe what it was like.

DUBOW: Well, it was a little bit shocking to me, uh, because, uh, a-at DeWitt Clinton High School we had, we had blacks, we had whites. I mean, it wasn't totally integrated, but it was pretty integrated. Uh, there weren't all that many blacks living in the Bronx then. Uh, so that was a little bit of a sh-- little bit of a shock to me. But I must say, honestly, that once I--until I saw 00:10:00it--I mean, I, I knew that there was segregation in the South. I, I somehow didn't realize Kentucky was really in the South.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, by the way, Kentucky hadn't figured out that it was really in the South or not, uh, during the Civil War. You read American history, you'll know that th-there was--they're a little bit be-- what I would call betwixt and between.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, but, but there was, there was segregation here. So it was an accepted fact that there was segregation. Uh, sure, there were people who were trying to do away with it, but by and large, p-particularly in Jewish community, we weren't so involved in that at that time. Became very involved in it later, but not, not at that time. Uh, Jews were, at that time, in New York and elsewhere, were trying to make it in American society.

FERNHEIMER: Mm.

DUBOW: Uh, uh, their soldiers, uh, who had been in the American Army were coming back under the GI Bill, getting their training, wanting to become doctors, lawyers, accountants--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --and all of, all of those kinds of, uh, things. And so we weren't so 00:11:00keyed, uh, on, on, uh, matters of segregation. So I took the train, uh, south, and I got off--at that time there was the, uh, Southern Railroad. Uh, I don't remember exactly the name of the street, but it was near Scott Street. Uh, uh, and, uh, I came with a trunk, with a good-sized trunk. Uh, and the, the station master said, "Well, leave the trunk, you can come back for it," and pointed me in the direction of the university, and I walked. Uh--

FERNHEIMER: --how long was the walk?

DUBOW: (laughs) It was a, it was a, it was a, it was a good walk. Uh, I was, uh, I was tired after eight-- the tr-- the train trip had taken eighteen hours! Eighteen hours! Uh--

FERNHEIMER: --I can't even imagine that.

DUBOW: Right. I mean, it was an overnight train trip. I didn't sleep on the train. And it's the first time I had ever been away, really away from New York.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, uh, I had when I was thirteen. I worked on a farm in upstate New 00:12:00York for, for about a month. But this was the first time I was really west of, west of the Hudson River. And keep in mind I was seventeen. (laughs)

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, so I s-- I came, and there was the administration building, and there it is. Uh, uh, I, I went, and I told 'em who I was. Oh yes, they're expecting me, and so forth. They gave me a, a room in Bowman, in Bowman Hall. There's a quadrangle of--I don't think they use for dorms anymore, but there was a quadrangle of buildings, uh, and they were, they were all dorms, and gave me a room number. Uh, of course, it was break, uh, in-- it was midyear break at school.

FERNHEIMER: Right.

DUBOW: Uh, so my two roommates were not, uh, were not there. And I went back to the r-railroad station, and I don't quite remember that--but I certainly didn't carry the trunk on my back, that's for sure. Had all my belongings in it. And I must've taken a taxicab, got me to Bowman Hall, and somehow I got 00:13:00there, and so forth. And for the next few days there were social tees (??), and meeting with girls, uh, uh--(laughter)--and I remember, uh, once, uh, the dean of women was Sarah B. Holmes. Now there's Holmes Hall.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: She's a lovely, wonderful woman. I remember her very, very well. I eventually took a course with her. Uh, uh, and she introduced me to people. And there were all these people from Kentucky who I couldn't understand. (laughter) Now, uh, again, they had this, this accent--you know, it's not a Southern accent. Uh, it's a--it's what I would call a mountain twang. Uh, it, it's ver-- it's very different than--the people in Kentucky than people in Alabama and Louisiana and so forth. Uh, but I couldn't understand them, and they, and they couldn't understand me very well. Uh, I mean, I--we all spoke English, but different versions, uh, thereof. And I--there was a little bit of 00:14:00what I would call culture shock.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Can you--take me back. I--I'm trying to imagine in my mind--I just moved to Kentucky four years ago, but paint me a picture of what it was like to get off that train, and, and to find yourself in the middle of Kentucky, first time west of the Hudson, as you kind of walked up the--I guess there was a hill, or at least a--it sounds like it was a long trek from the train station to the campus.

DUBOW: Well, it was a trek. Uh, I don't quite remember what I was thinking, but probably I was thinking about how do I get back on the train to go home. (laughter) Uh, uh, this is very--it was--it, it was very foreign, very, very foreign to me. Um, so, uh, after three or four days the school was beginning. You had to register for courses. You had to go somewhere. The, the, the memorial coliseum was not yet built. Uh, so you had to go somewhere--can't remember where--maybe in the alumni gym to sign up for courses. You would sign 00:15:00up for, for courses. They would put you on a list, and, uh--

FERNHEIMER: What was that process like? You know, they do everything online now.

DUBOW: It was, it was--well, well you knew you had to take English and, and, and, uh, and, and a few other beginning subjects. I knew that. And then you went, and they had a list of students, and they put your name down, and if there were too many students they'd say, "Sorry, that's closed. You have to take something else." Uh, by the way, I eventually took, t-took Eng-- they, they put me in a beginning English class. Of course, I'd had a reasonably New York City education. Uh, and there was this big--and, and my--a-an, an, an uncle, an aunt of mine had given me, as a going away present, a brand new fountain pen and pencil set.

FERNHEIMER: Wow.

DUBOW: That was--well, that was considered a, a pretty good present. So I brought that with me. And in this English class I sat down, and I s-started to write, uh, a theme. There was this big guy sitting next to me, big, strapping 00:16:00guy. And he, he said, "Can I borrow your eraser?" He had written about three words, and then erased--(laughs)--and he started over again. Meanwhile, this, this went on, and I think he, he era-- used up the whole eraser. And it turned out that he was an Am-- uh, an All-American football player eventually. His name is Frank Fuller. He played, he played professional football eventually for the Washington Redskins. He was a great football player.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah, Redskins.

DUBOW: But I have the feeling he wasn't a great writer of themes. (laughter) Uh, and, by the way, if you didn't, if you didn't pass, they put you in a, in a class called--now we call it remedial English; in those cases it was called English D, for dummy English--(laughs)--people who, uh, were not--couldn't really write. I don't know. He came--he actually came from Pennsylvania, I think, so-- Anyway, I, anyway, I, I was signing up for classes, and my roommates appeared on the scene finally. Uh, Bob Tabscott (??) from Owensboro, 00:17:00Kentucky, and Dan Jernigan (??) from Somerset, Kentucky.

FERNHEIMER: What was it like when you all first met?

DUBOW: Well, they, they were ni-- they were quite nice. Uh, uh, they, they--I think they were, they were interested in the fact that I was from, from New York. Neither one of them had ever been. I don't, I don't even know if they'd ever been out of, out of Kentucky before. Uh, they, they, they were quite nice, uh, uh, uh, uh, both of them. And, um, I was a little bit--uh, you know, I told 'em who I was. Uh, we didn't talk too much about being Jewish. I mean, now, they knew--they knew I was Jewish. I told 'em that. And that was, that was one of the things you really didn't discuss much in those days. Now, now, you know, now being Jewish is a, is a big positive. In those days, there was still a lot of anti-Semitism, enormous amount of anti-Semitism in the United States, and so you didn't talk too much about it. And besides, I was seventeen, away from home, and so-- But then they sort of knew who I--and they, they would--except 00:18:00they got up at four or five o'clock in the morning and played hillbilly music, uh, early in the morning, WVLK from Versailles, Kentucky, uh, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and the Foggy Mountain Boys. (laughter) I'm thinking, this, thi-this is, is not good for my health, my sleep. Uh, in any case, I, I, I survived, and they, they, they really turned out to be quite nice.

FERNHEIMER: How many years did you live in the dorms?

DUBOW: Well, ----------(??) I'll get to that. Just--

FERNHEIMER: --okay.

DUBOW: --just, uh, uh, uh, just the first six months, actually.

FERNHEIMER: Okay.

DUBOW: And I didn't live with them all the time. What happened was Tabscott, who, who, who was--I see it's--and we were eating at the, at the, uh, university cafeteria--

FERNHEIMER: --what, what was--

DUBOW: --at the commons.

FERNHEIMER: --the food like?

DUBOW: Well, you--what was the food like? (laughs) Well, let me say that it wasn't the Waldorf Astoria. It was-- (laughter) It was not the Waldorf Astoria. I mean, it was, uh, the kind of food, uh--I hadn't been in the Army, but I would imagine it was that kind of f-- that kind of food. Uh, and there 00:19:00was a lot of things--there was gravy on everything. There was this, like, heavy brown gravy on everything, and, and they had these big sugar donuts, uh, no bag-- we didn't eat bagels, no lox and bagels--(laughter)--uh, at all, uh--

FERNHEIMER: So that was part of the culture shock, huh?

DUBOW: Exactly, that was part of the culture shock. Anyway, Tabscott--uh, Bob was--he was, he was very nice, and he said to me one day instead of going to the, to the university--I think it was called a commons in those days--he wanted to take me to a greasy spoon, uh, right across--right a-- right across Limestone Street, on the other side of Limestone Street, and introduced me to a guy named Sid Halpern from Brooklyn. Ah, so all of a sudden I know there's, uh, at least one other Jewish guy in--at, at the university. And I got to know him a little bit, and we talked. And, and then I got to know some other people. Uh, I particularly became friendly, uh, with a fella named Gerald Bass. Gerald Bass 00:20:00is, uh, now deceased, uh, died a few years ago. He, uh--

FERNHEIMER: --I'm sorry.

DUBOW: And he b-- he really taught me a lot, uh, taught me about things called a fraternity. I didn't even know what a fraternity was, a fraternity. He said that's where--there's--there is one Jewish fraternity called ZPT, okay? Uh, he says that's where all--where, where the guys hung out. And, and, by the way, I met another Jewish guy named Murrell Small--uh, didn't have a very a Jewish name--M-u-r-r-e-l-l, Murrell Small, uh, from Louisville, uh, and I eventually left Tabscott and, and, uh, and Jernigan and moved in with Murrell, and, and a fella named--oh--John-- He was a, an older man. He was finishing his PhD in education. Isn't that funny? Uh, maybe I'll remember his name, but I can't at the moment.

FERNHEIMER: It'll come.

DUBOW: Uh, uh, and, uh, he eventually became a superintendent of schools for 00:21:00one of the counties, uh, over in, over in Eastern Kentucky. John Boyd. Uh, uh, uh-- And he wasn't there much. He would come on Mondays and take a course and then he was gone, so Murrell and I really had the--we had this big room pretty much to ourselves. And I stayed there, uh, o-only, uh, only during the first, uh, semester. So I got to know people--

FERNHEIMER: --was, was Doug Jewish, also? Or was--

DUBOW: --I'm s--

FERNHEIMER: --was Doug Jewish also, or was it just Murrell?

DUBOW: Yeah, Murrell was, was Jewish. Uh, in fact, he took me home with him a couple of times. His father was, uh, uh, in the, in the shoe business. It seems like a lot of people in Louisville were in the shoe business. I also met--uh, in those days the universities, um, uh, uh, uh, s-- uh, school of, uh, uh--what, what did they, what did they call it? The--it's where they trained druggists.

FERNHEIMER: Oh.

DUBOW: Uh, uh--

FERNHEIMER: --pharmacy school?

DUBOW: Yeah, pharmacy school, thank you. Uh, that's what happens when you get old: you, you, you--some, some names you can't remember. But anyway, yeah, the 00:22:00pharmacy school was actually in Louisville.

FERNHEIMER: Oh, okay.

DUBOW: So, so, uh--and that was considered a very good profession for Jewish kids, those that didn't want to be a doctor, or wanted to become a doctor and couldn't become a doctor went to pharmacy school. So they--but they had to come up to Lexington for a year, uh, before they could go to-- So, so there was a fella named Jerry Meade (??) and Hershey Weinberg (??), and so I got to know quite a few of the people in the dorms. Uh, and, uh, Jerry, Jerry Bass, he's--he was a character. Uh, everybody called him Boss Bass. Uh, he was, he was a, he was a real politician. Uh, he--

FERNHEIMER: --why was that? Just because of his personality?

DUBOW: Yeah, yeah, it was his per-- personality. Yeah, he be-- he eventually became a very, very successful stock broker in Houston, Texas, and, unfortunately, died a few years ago. Uh, any case, he, he introduced me to a lot of, to a lot of people, and he and I became, uh, good fr-- actually lifelong friends, uh, over many--over many, many, uh, uh, years. So, um--(clears 00:23:00throat)--so I got to know people. Uh, and, uh, uh, Jerry also spoke with this kind of mountain twang, even though he was from Louisville. And, and I, and I, and I learned that you shouldn't say Louisville, that you had to somehow swallow it in the back of your throat--(laughs)--and say Louisville. And, uh, he was from Louisville, and, and, uh, he was very, very smart guy, by the way, very, very smart guy. So, uh--

FERNHEIMER: --and he's the--

DUBOW: --he always would say to me, "Say battleship." He said, "I like the way you say battleship, battleship." (laughter)

FERNHEIMER: So is he the one who introduced you to ZBT, Jerry?

DUBOW: Yeah, he introduced me to, to, to ZBT. Now, that's another thing you should know--I don't think it's well known--uh, that in those days not only was there racial segregation, there was religious segregation, that the--almost all 00:24:00the fraternities and sororities, when you joined, you had a sign a, like a pledge, saying you believed in Jesus Christ, and you were Christian, and so forth. And so we, we had--actually, when I got into the fraternity, I had two rushes a year. We had--we found out--by the way, in those days you were asked to, to say what your religion was. I mean, I think most, most people who were Jewish wrote down Jewish.

FERNHEIMER: When you entered school?

DUBOW: But you don't--I, I, I don't think you had to, and I'm sure there were some h-hidden Jews, uh, on the campus, uh--

FERNHEIMER: How big was the Jewish population, you think, or--?

DUBOW: Never more than fifty in my, my opinion. There were never more than fifty. There were twenty-five, thirty, maybe forty, forty guys, and ten, twelve girls. There were very few, uh, uh, Jewish women, uh, at UK. And by the way, just let me digress for a moment--

FERNHEIMER: --sure.

DUBOW: --as to who, as to who they were.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, there were a few from New York. A couple of them, three that I--uh, 00:25:00two that I know, actually thought they could come to Lexington and be on the basketball team. (laughter) Now, you have to understand, communication in those days is not what it is today. There was no television. Uh, um, uh, there--of course, there were newspapers. Um, you know, there were no, there were no computers. There was no email, uh, and no websites or anything like that. And these guys, uh, uh, two guys, Bob Fremen (??) and, and Lenny Zuckerman, both thought they could, they could be basketball players at the University of Kentucky. Well, of course, they found out very quickly that, that UK had practically a, a--I mean, they were--uh, uh, a professional team--(coughs)--in those days. So they--but they, they stayed on. So we had, we had a few guys from New York, and a few, few guys like me who just drifted in there one, one way or the other. We had a, a substantial number of guys from, from Louisville. Now, most of the Jewish kids in Louisville went up to the Big Ten, to Indiana 00:26:00and, and, and up that way. Uh, and, and then we--and then we got s-some. Uh, um, I'm not, I'm not sure that they--I'm not sure that they weren't the ones that could make it in the big ten. Uh, uh, the, the, the quality of the schooling there was much higher than, than in Lexington in those days. Uh, but anyway, we got some of those. And we got the townies. Uh, we got Earl Levy and, and, uh, Ivan Goldfarb and Alan Bloomfield. I mean, there were, there were quite a few townies. And even--

FERNHEIMER: --and by "townies" you mean folks who grew up here in Lexington.

DUBOW: Yeah, right. Uh, e-- uh, uh, the Lexingtonians. But even in their high school, they--I mean, they sort of--some of them sort of hung around the fraternity house. Fraternity house was open.

FERNHEIMER: Where was it?

DUBOW: One thirteen State Street. Uh, that was a--you know, you've seen Animal House. It wasn't quite Animal House, but it was a strange--(laughter)--it was a 00:27:00strange place. But, but let me, uh--and the f-- the fourth group of people were, in some ways, the most interesting group of people. They were the sons and daughters of the owners of small businesses in the small towns in Kentucky, the little shtetls of, like, Harlan and, and Hazard and Williamsburg and all--and, and they were really a, a different cut, uh, of people, very different.

FERNHEIMER: What do you mean by that? How were they different?

DUBOW: Well, they weren't big city--they weren't big city New York Jews. But you know something? We were all Jews, and that was, that was, that was certainly an equalizer. I mean, we kidded with each other and had fun, and we all got t-to know each other, and really got to love each other a lot over the years. I mean, I, I know--and of course now at--uh, now, uh, uh, a lot of them are, are gone already and dead. But I, I pretty much know where everybody was and is, and what they did in, in their lives. And we've had reunions over, over 00:28:00the years. This group of, of Jewish students here, uh, from about 1948 or 9 until about 1955 really fee-- felt a, a, uh, uh, a strong bond with one another, uh, I guess some more than others, uh, but I certainly felt and feel a strong bond. I mean, for me, uh, uh, coming to the University of Kentucky was one of the defining experiences of my life. You know, everybody has two or three, sometimes more, sometimes less, defining experiences, things that, that really creep into your personality, creep into your life, clee-- creep into your head, uh, and they def-- they define your life. Uh, and the University of Kentucky was one of those, for two, two reasons, basically. Number one, it's Kentucky, 00:29:00and, uh, I mean, I, I, I identify with that, strongly. Now, I am eighty-one years old. I look at the UK, uh, website every day. (laughs) I try to watch every game. I, I, I look at the Herald Leader on, on the intern-- I live in New York, as you know. I live--uh, I, I look at the website of the, of the Herald Leader and, and read John Clay ev-- every day, practically. So, uh, and sometimes--and, of course, many of the games are on television now--sometimes when there are tight games, I really--I can't stand the strain. I mean, sometimes I turn 'em off because the strain is too much for me. The anxiety is too much for me. That's how it is--(laughs)--engrained into my life. I have all my Kentucky shirts, my hats. I have, I have all, all, all of that. I wear them, uh, proudly, uh, where-- wherever I, wherever I go. I f-- I have the feeling that some people at home think I'm nuts, uh, but--

FERNHEIMER: --the Wildcats have that kind of reputation.

DUBOW: Yeah, right, but, but it's okay. Uh, I mean, you are what you are in 00:30:00this world. I found that out. So, so that was--that was one of the elements that made it into a defining experience. The second element was coming from the Bronx, and from the--what I call the Jewish cocoon, into a place where Jews are really in a minority--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --uh, and learning to live i-in a, in a generalized society that's not Jewish had a great, great impact on me. Uh, another thing I found out--not so much of a defining experience, but interesting to me as I went on in my life--that while Kentucky was Southern, and still Southern, and still very conservative in its, uh, in its politics, even though I can't figure out why, to be honest about it, uh--fine, everybody's entitled to believe what they want to believe, but it's a poor state, uh, and the conservative element politically in 00:31:00this, in this country is not helpful to people who are, who are really poor. And I found that there were such a thing as poor whites. I mean, in, in New York we always knew that poor blacks and everybody of color was, was--you know, a lot of them were, were, were poor. But in this state there are poor whites, and that, that gave me great insight that I think not many people from my, my surrounding really, really have. I mean, there were a lot of people I went to, went to university with-- By the way, in those days the university, I think, had to accept anybody with a coll-- with a high school degree from a, from a reputable Kentucky high school, h-had to accept them in the university. I don't know--I don't think that's the case anymore. I think it's getting harder. By the way, back in the--again, to set the scene, back in those days there were about seventy-five hundred students. It was a s-- it was what we would now call a small school.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, didn't seem so small to me, uh, uh, at the time. It seemed rather, 00:32:00rather large. But now there's twenty-seven to twenty-eight thousand students in the school, and, and like Lexington--when I come to Lexington, I can't even find my way around anymore. I do know Limestone Street. I do Rose and Limestone Street--I do, I do know that. But it--but everything is--everything that was there is ripped down to these gigantic buildings all over. Uh, when I c-- when I came the first year, 1950, the basketball--after all, this was a national bas-- they had, they had won the national championship, uh, the year before I came to school, '48, '49--was in the alumni gym. There was a little teeny-weeny gym of a few thousand people. That was it. Uh, and played all their games there. And--

FERNHEIMER: --not like Rupp Arena.

DUBOW: (laughs) And then, uh, I think it was my first year, '51, uh, they, they built a mem-- they built and opened the Memorial Coliseum, and that's--and then the games shifted to the Memorial, uh, Coliseum. Incidentally, uh, I remember, 00:33:00uh, dramatically the first time a black player came to play at Memorial Coliseum, not on the UK--the UK didn't integrate until quite a few years after, after the--into the--well into the '60s, I think. Uh--

FERNHEIMER: --when was that?

DUBOW: Um, this was probably '51. His name was Sully Walker. I remember that. Played for St. Johns University, from New York. And, uh, and he, and he played at the, at the Memorial Coliseum. There was some hooting and, and stuff, uh, from, from the, from the students, but by and large, uh, it, it, uh, it was accepted. By the way, I've always thought--uh, I think I'm right about this--um, that the university was very wise in the way it integrated itself. It really started in my day, as early as 1951. In 1951 Dr. Vandenbosch, uh, Amry 00:34:00Vandenbosch, who was the head of the political science department, invited the most prestigious black person in the United States, Dr. Ralph Bunche--he was, I think, at that time the American Ambassador to the United Nations, and he had, he had been the negotiator between the Arabs and the Israelis, the settlement of their, their, their first settlement in 1948, when they became a country. So he was a tremendously prestigious guy, and Vandenbosch had him come and give a lecture, uh, um, uh, at UK. That was the first time they'd ever had a black, a black speaker there.

FERNHEIMER: And that was the same year, in 1951? Or was--

DUBOW: --nineteen--I think it was 1951, right. Now, let me talk about that a little bit. So we, we--a-and then it was reported that there was a, uh, uh, a single black graduate student. I never saw him. I didn't know who he was. But people said, "Oh, we have a black--we have a black graduate student who, who 00:35:00comes here." So, uh, so as early as 1951--so there was, there was black then. This, this I, this I get from conversation, and I'm not a hundred percent sure of my facts, but I think I'm right. Uh, when the time came to integrate, uh, um, the first blacks were--townies were, were from Lexington, so they didn't live in the dorms. And then people got used to seeing black faces in the classrooms, and it was only after that was done that they had blacks coming into the, into the dormitories. So they, they, they integrated, I think, in a very sensible, non-confrontational, uh, way, and, uh, I assume the university now is--I mean, from what I read about it--is totally, is totally integrated. I wish they had more black students, which they don't, but, uh, it, it is, uh, it is totally, totally, uh, uh, integrated, which, which, of course, it should be. 00:36:00Now, getting back on that same subject--

FERNHEIMER: --can I ask one follow-up question before we go back? How many years elapsed between, uh, the students entering and, and being allowed into the dorms, uh, African American students, um--?

DUBOW: Uh, I think it's probably fifteen years, uh, maybe longer. Uh, I think it was well into the '60s, uh, uh, before the, before the school really became integrated. But there was movement, uh, even before that. Um, when I arrived, uh, there was--there were two synagogues: there's a reform and a, and a conservative, which I think there's still--

FERNHEIMER: --still are.

DUBOW: --it's still, still, still the same. It hasn't changed. And by the way, I understand that the, that the, that the Jewish population hasn't changed much, either. There are about two thousand Jews in, in, in, in Lexington, two, maybe a little bit more than that, uh, but not many more than that. The, uh, the reform rabbi was a rabbi, Sidney Balan (??), very nice, uh, uh, nice, nice 00:37:00man. And then he, uh, uh, uh--Lexington, it ref-- the reform movement was a s-- was a stepping stone place. Uh, rabbis came here, they were here for a few years, and then they went to a bigger congregation. Of course, there were no women yet, uh, uh--

FERNHEIMER: --not till later.

DUBOW: N-now, now the, now the vast majority of women in both the conservative and the reform movement in, in the seminaries are women.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, uh, it's about time. Uh, any case, so, uh, Rabbi Maurice Davis appeared on the scene, as the rabbi, uh, uh, at the, uh, reform temple. He, by the way, in later life became--he went to Indianapolis--he became a real great leader, uh, in integration. That was his thing. He started, uh, uh, an organization called SEEK, Seeking Equal Education in Kentucky.

FERNHEIMER: Huh.

DUBOW: And he arranged to have the first meeting with blacks from--I, I guess from Kentucky State University, uh, which was the all-black university. And we had that meeting, uh, uh, at the student union building. I'm not sure everybody was so happy about it, but it was--there it was.

FERNHEIMER: What year was that?

DUBOW: Well, uh, it must've been '52, or maybe it was early '53. Uh, uh, of course, I, I came in January of '50, and I gra-- and I graduated in three and a half years, and I left in June of '53. So it was, it was--uh, maybe it was probably '52. And so there, there was beginning to be movement in Lexington on--in the whole business of, uh, integration. Again, it wasn't really so much a Jewish thing, uh, so I didn't really get into it very much. Uh, it wasn't until later in my life that I got very into it, uh, uh, but I certainly was at 00:39:00the meeting, and I was close to Rabbi Davis. Uh, that's really--that's really strange. Rabbi Davis took me to Cincinnati, up to Hebrew Union College, and he said he thought I should become a rabbi. I said, "That's the last thing in the whole world I ever want to be is a rabbi." I wanted to be a lawyer in those days. So I'll be--I'll, I'll skip ahead a little bit. Uh, so I came--I came home, uh, after graduation. I went to law school for a year. It was a horrible, horrible year. I went to St. Johns Law School in New York. Horr-- I was not cut out to be a lawyer. I s-- quit after a year. I couldn't stand it. The only reason I went is because my brother was a lawyer, and I thought that was a good thing to do. And I wound up being in--a social worker in the Welfare Department in New York, and then eight years as a New York State parole officer. Uh, um, I was a pistol-packing, gun-toting parole officer for eight years. It was kind of fun, until I, uh--after I got married, then it wasn't so much fun 00:40:00anymore. And it was at that point--uh, I got sick of arresting parole violators. Uh, you know, I'd been doing it for a long time. Then I got married to Tish, to my, my, my non-Jewish wife. Uh, we're still married, fifty-two years later. Uh, and, uh, we both got very involved in the Civil Rights struggle. We married in '61, and we, uh, we were both involved locally. Uh, we both went down to the Selma march in Alabama. We drove, we drove down, uh, to the Selma march when it, when it got, uh, uh, a day out of Montgomery, and we, we marched into Montgomery with Dr. King. I actually have a picture of him I took there. Uh--

FERNHEIMER: --what was that like?

DUBOW: --so I got, got interested in--I got very interested in, in it, uh, then. And then I real--I decided I really wanted to get out of being a parole 00:41:00officer. (laughs) And, and, uh--even though part of being a parole officer was being a social worker, too, though I enjoyed that part of it. Uh--

FERNHEIMER: --can I, can I stop you there for a minute to go back and describe for me what it was like to, to march in Selma?

DUBOW: Uh, well, we left--Tish and I--uh, first of all, I let them know in the division of parole that I was going, going to the march. They were not hap-- told 'em I was a peace officer. They said, "Well, you, you have to leave your gun. Don't take your gun." So I gave them--I--they looked it away in a safe. I gave them my gun. Uh, and, uh, Tish was teaching, uh, uh, at a Catholic college over in, in Westchester, um, uh, Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. She was, uh, uh, teaching physical education and dance. Uh, by the way, I want to say a word about my wife. She's a woman of, uh, considerable achievement.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Uh, she started out as a, uh, uh, teacher of, uh, dance, uh, uh, modern 00:42:00dance. Uh, we then had two children. We have two daughters. Uh, she got interested--she was always good in mathematics. She got interested in, uh, doing people's taxes. She went back to school, beca-- got an, an MA in taxation and became a CPA when she was fifty. Became a CPA.

FERNHEIMER: That's pretty impressive.

DUBOW: Right. Then--oh, it's not over yet. (laughs) And then she did that, uh, and then she, um, uh, came sort of, uh, uh, not quite to the end of her career--she got involved in civic matters. She was on the zoning board, and other boards, and president of a local, uh, uh, local organization called Friends of the Nyacks--we live in Nyack, New York, on the Hudson River. And then she became a member of the Village Board, then the Deputy Mayor, and then for seven years was the Mayor. (laughs) And she only stepped down from that 00:43:00earlier, earlier this year. Uh, she's still on the Board, but she--

FERNHEIMER: --wow.

DUBOW: --uh, is no longer the mayor. So she has, uh--that's, that's quite a, quite a career in, in her own right.

FERNHEIMER: Yes, very successful.

DUBOW: And I think probably the most difficult thing for her was being married to me. (laughter) Well, I'm no, no bargain. Anyway, back, back-- Where was I?

FERNHEIMER: Selma.

DUBOW: Huh?

FERNHEIMER: Selma, Alabama.

DUBOW: At Selma, Alabama, right.

FERNHEIMER: Right before the march.

DUBOW: In Selma, Alabama. So we left New York. Uh, we, uh, we drove down to Virginia. We had friends there. Teach--Tish had taught there, uh, at Sweetbriar College for a year. Uh, and we drove, uh, uh, through, uh, Alabama, and, uh, and we arrived, uh, on the highway that runs between Selma and Montgomery. Uh, Dr. King had said--really, I'm, uh, uh, I'm, I'm never too much taken by what people say on the radio or on television, but he's--I'll never 00:44:00forget that; he said, "I welcome people of goodwill to come and join with us." I, I was really touched by that. Uh, so, uh, I said, I, I'm coming. I said to Tish, "I'm, I'm going." She said, "I'm going, too"--(laughs)--and so we both went. Uh, so we, we, we got there, uh, uh, we asked people what, what you should do, and they said, "Well, there's, there's an o-- there's, uh, an office, uh, somewhere." Uh, I parked my car at the, at the, um, airport, uh, in Montgomery, and, uh, they assigned us to a house, because the, the march had completed for that day, and we were one day out of Montgomery.

FERNHEIMER: Wow.

DUBOW: Uh, I wasn't there for the Edmund Pettus Bridge and all of that. Uh, um, so they assigned us to, to a home of an elderly black lady, had no running water in her house, uh, and we slept there overnight, and she fed us a, a real 00:45:00Southern breakfast. I remember that. And then we got along the street, and there came Dr. King and the, the, the front group, and all these people behind. And we, we just got in, got in line, and we were in line, uh, with everybody else. And we walked up to the, up to the state capitol. That's where George Wallace made--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --one of his impassioned speeches about "Never here, never, never, never"--

FERNHEIMER: --um-hm.

DUBOW: --uh, which eventually became "Maybe, maybe sometime." (laugh) Uh, in any case, uh, and then when that was over--I mean, I didn't have a sense of danger. I must say that honestly. I mean, I was a--

FERNHEIMER: --that's what I was gonna ask.

DUBOW: I was a law officer. I'd been in a few dangerous situations in the arresting of parole violators--not many, but a few. I didn't have a sense of danger. And we were on our way back to Atlanta to sleep over in, in At-- in Atlanta before going back north to Virginia again, and, and, and then home. And 00:46:00then we heard on the radio, on the car radio, that a woman had been shot. This--her name was Viola Liuzzo. It's a--was a famous--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --famous, uh, uh, event. Uh, she'd been in, in a group of, um, KKK people, uh, saw her and, and actually shot her in her car, uh, and killed her. Uh, mother of two children and so forth, very sad. So that was, that was that. We were involved in all of the, all of the stuff in our home, in our home communities. Uh, uh, and we were, uh, very, very involved. And then I decided it was time for a career change, uh, that I really wanted to work in civil rights work. I went back to NYU. I, I had, I had started a master's degree at NYU. Uh, uh, originally I wanted--believe it--I had wanted to be a warden, a 00:47:00prison warden. I thought that would be an interesting career for me. I now know it's a horrible career, but I, but I thought it would be exciting and interesting. And so I went to NYU, because at NYU there was a small, uh, group, uh, uh, that was being trained to work in civil rights work. See, the social work schools were training counselors and psychological people. They weren't doing anything for, for, for civil rights. But in the school of education, it was a professor by the name of Dan Dodson, and Dan Dodson was, uh, uh, training people in a multidiscipline master's degree program. Uh, he and a, uh, African American, uh, woman professor named Jean Noble, uh, for people to go work in civil rights work. Uh, I met a, uh, a, a woman. Uh, we became friends. Uh, her name is Carol Sticks (??). Uh, and eventually Tish and I became, uh, um, 00:48:00very good friends with Carol and her husband Edward, and the Sticks family and the DuBow family were very, very close, became close friends. And, uh, that turned out--I got my degree, and it turned out to be the summer of Black Power. That was the end of, of Jews working in the, in the NAACP corps, SNCC, and all the rest of the organizations.

FERNHEIMER: What year was that?

DUBOW: That was-- Well, I, I knew that that was the end. I mean, you know, then--meanwhile, I had a job. It's not that I was jobless. And she said to me, "Did you ever consider working for a Jewish human rights organization?" I said, "I, I'll work for anybody to get out of this." (laughs) Uh, she said, "Well, I'm active as a layperson in something called the American Jewish Committee." Okay. She said, uh, they have a small office in Westchester County, New York. 00:49:00It's a big organization. They have more than thirty offices in the United States, and they have a--and they're looking for a director in Westchester. And Carol Sticks is one of the great manipulators of all time. She's a--(laughter)--she's really-- Well, she was sort of a politician. She was on the Scarsdale board, and she lives in Scarsdale, and, and she manipulated an interview--that's a funny story, that's a good story--uh, at the, at the AJC for me. So I went and I interviewed with the director of the field operation, all the thirty, thirty-two officers, uh, named Sam Katz. And Sam and I talked, and, uh, I told him that I knew Westchester, because, as a parole officer, part of my territory was in Westchester, and I knew some of the black community. I was very interested. And AJC at that time was very, very involved in civil rights work.

FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.

DUBOW: So I'm--that was a good fit for me. Uh, so he said, "Well, I think you 00:50:00have the right stuff." He said, "I'd like you to be interviewed by my assistant," and he set up an appointment, and a couple of days later I went into New York, to 165 East 56th Street, where the American Jewish Committee building is, still is.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah?

DUBOW: And I was interviewed by his assistant, whose name was Will Katz. Uh, so Sam Katz and Will Katz. And, uh, we, we hit it off well. And he said, "I would really like you to be interviewed by, uh, the head of personnel. Her name is Eleanor Katz." (laughs) I'm thinking maybe I had the wrong name to get into this organization. (laughter) Any rate, uh, she interviewed me, and she said, "We'll, we'll let you know." Tish and I--uh, it was the end of school. I took a vacation. We went to Martha's Vineyard. And, uh, uh, I called in from Martha's Vineyard, and they hired me over the phone.

FERNHEIMER: Oh, wow.

DUBOW: They hired me over the phone. And so, uh, I came back to New York after the next week, I guess. Uh, uh, told 'em I was leaving. I handed in my gun, my 00:51:00handcuffs, my badge, and I was gone out of that to become the director of the Westchester chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

FERNHEIMER: What year was that?

DUBOW: This was in 1966.

FERNHEIMER: Okay.

DUBOW: September 19th, 1966. And I learned about AJC, and I learned about Jewish life. I mean, I was pretty secular. I mean, I didn't go to synag-- I still don't go to synagogue very much. Uh, uh, I was very secular. I knew very little about Jewish history and Jewish life, but I'm a fast learner. I, I began to learn. I learned a lot. And, and a lot of it had to do with organizing meetings, and getting speakers, and, and being good with laypeople, and I, I, I could do all of that. I had a master's degree, now, in human relations and community studies. Uh, uh, so I did all kinds of things, uh, there. Uh, I was, of course, part of the national setup. And while I was in Westchester, the 00:52:00Six-Day War broke out. Uh, uh, and AJC went from being a civil rights organization--turned and really became much more Jewish, and very much more interested in Israel. All the, the whole Jewish community of the United States became--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --much more interested in Israel, uh, then, because there was such a, a possibility that there wouldn't be an Israel, uh, in the Six-Day War, but there was. Uh, so I did that, and, uh, then in 19-- the end of 1969, um, an opportunity came, uh, to go to a bigger office in Chicago. Neither one of us had any connection in Chicago, but I flew out there a few times, and, uh, and, uh, it's a great--it's a great city. It's great. Tish came out, and we were able to rent a house, a beautiful house, right on, right on Lake Michigan. Uh, 00:53:00yeah, a great house. So we--by that time we now had, had, had a daughter, Reed, R-e-e-d. Uh, and, uh, we went out to Chicago, and I was the director there. And I also had, uh, some supervision responsibilities in St. Louis, uh, and, uh, and Kansas City. And--(rolls tongue)--and probably that was probably it. Uh, and, um, eventually in Cleveland. I supervised that from Chicago. And we were there for ten years, and I learned a lot. And, and if I did one good thing--actually, I did two really good--you know, in the--in life, if you have two or three good things in life, important things in life, that's, that's really enough. I mean, that's--uh, most people don't even get that, that shot. I did two in Chicago.

FERNHEIMER: What were they?

DUBOW: Number one, there was the, uh, attempted Nazi, neo-Nazi march in Skokie, 00:54:00Illinois. They made a movie out of it. There--books have been written. Most of the books that have been written about--are the legal issues about, uh, uh, uh, the rights of a group to march, or to have any kind of a demonstration. At that time, uh, I was the AJC director. Uh, I'd been there for, uh, quite a while. This is now 1980--nine--let's see--nineteen se-- 1978. That's right. Uh, and the Jewish community of Chicago was not organized very well. There was a good fundraising operation called the Jewish United Fund, but community, uh, organization they really didn't have. And so I saw that as an opportunity. I called them in New York and said, "I'm going to loan myself to the JUF, to the Jewish United Fund," which I did. They approved it. And so I literally moved 00:55:00into the federation building, and I organized the whole Jewish community. I was a good--I'm a good organizer. Uh, I organized the police into being marshals. I organized, uh, uh, uh, the, um, the Skokie Swift--uh, that's the--uh, one of the commuter trains that doesn't run on the weekends to run on the weekend. We organized a very large counter demonstration. Uh, uh, I organized speakers. I flew down to--uh, on the p-- on the governor's plane. I flew down to the, to the capital, and we had a discussion with the governor about--he agreed to come. Uh, and it was a--it was a big event, and it became a big national Jewish event. Uh, and, um--

FERNHEIMER: --what were the dates?

DUBOW: Uh, as a matter of fact, uh, I got a call one night at home from a guy who I didn't know. He said, "We're, we're coming." I said, "Okay." "We're expecting a lot of people." Yeah, uh-- He said, "We're coming on a 747." I 00:56:00said, uh, "Where are you coming from?" He said, "We're coming from Los Angeles. We're coming on a, uh, an entire 747. We have all the seats on a 747. (laughs) We're coming to the demonstration." One of the things I did, one of the smart things that I did, uh, I think, was I was in touch with the, um, Justice Department, and, and the Justice Department has a small unit in it called the Community Relations Service. And what the CRS does--I think that's still there--is when there are community troubles, they send people who work for them to stand sort of in the middle--

FERNHEIMER: --um-hm.

DUBOW: --between the warring factors, trying to see what they can do. And so they s-- they sent a couple of guys, uh, and I figured out that that was a good way--I mean, with, with, with their help--I mean, we, we talked about it, and they weren't, they weren't pro-Nazi--for me to communicate with the Nazis 00:57:00through them. And I told 'em, we're gonna have, we're gonna have a, a massive counter demonstration. We're getting ready for five thousand casualties. We have hospitals and, and, and ambulances ready. Well, the Nazis are about twenty people. (laughter) The eventually, they eventually got scared and, and called the thing off. It never--it never happened. They had a little demonstration around the, the federal building on a Saturday when they knew no Jews would be there, or very few would be there, even though the guys on the 747 came. Uh, and, and then we--I dismantled, I dismantled it all. So that was, that was the number one thing. Number two thing was during the beginning of the Soviet Jewry movement--

FERNHEIMER: --oh, yeah.

DUBOW: --to try to get Jews out of the Soviet Union, uh, um, one of the fellas 00:58:00who worked for me in Chicago, Juda Graubart (??), came to me, and he said, "In the paper there's a little article here about a nun, a Roman Catholic nun, who made a, a speech about Soviet Jews." I said, "Really?" I was shocked. I mean, up until that time, it was a, it was a totally Jewish, Jewish thing. I mean, Jews, uh, talking to other Jews about a third group of Jews in the Soviet Union.

FERNHEIMER: What year was this?

DUBOW: This was-- Well, let's see, I've got eighty-something-- Yeah, late '70s sometime. Uh, so I said, "Let's take her to lunch." So we took her to lunch. Her name is Sister Margaret Traxler (??), and she was the, uh, director of something called the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice. The Catholic Church at that time was a very conservative--it's gotten much more liberal in the--over the years--and this was the liberal--this was the left 00:59:00wing, the, the liberals, uh, in the, uh, civil rights, uh, uh, part of, of the Catholic church. They were very close with the National Office of Black Catholics. So she would say, "Yes, yes, uh, uh, we have to get Jews out of the Soviet Union. It's terrible." Uh, so I introduced her int-- to New York, and we, we eventually set up something called a National, uh, um, uh, Council for Soviet Jewry--

FERNHEIMER: --I hear Tish in the background.

TISH DUBOW: ----------(??)------------.

DUBOW: Uh, uh-- Any rate, yeah, we, we set up, set up our own organization. Uh, she got another sister, Sister Ann Gillen, to be the director. Uh, it was called the National Council for, for--

TISH DUBOW: --the Conference for Interracial--

DUBOW: --the Soviet Jewry, NCC--NCCIJ. So, uh--

FERNHEIMER: --let me translate Tish from the back. The National Council for Interracial--

TISH DUBOW: --the Interracial Conference--

DUBOW: --no--

TISH DUBOW: --of, of Inter--

DUBOW: --that's not right.

TISH DUBOW: Okay.

DUBOW: At any rate-- (laughter)

FERNHEIMER: We'll google it later.

TISH DUBOW: Yeah.

DUBOW: Right, you can delete that part. Anyway, it, it was, uh--and, and, and she became a--she became a national figure in the Soviet Jewry movement. Uh, we had her every year at the AJC national meeting. She got more applause than anybody else. Here's a Catholic woman--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --Catholic nun who was going around the country trying to organize Christians on behalf of Soviet Jewry, and it all started in Chicago, and started at my office. Uh, that was, that was really--she was a great, great person, wonderful, wonderful person. She's dead now. They're all dead now. But, uh, uh, she was, she was a great, great person. And, uh, one time when Sharansky, who's now a minister in Israel, a minister of the government, uh, but he was, he was, he was the lead person, he got arrested, she, she, uh, volunteered to 01:01:00exchange with the Soviets that she would go to prison if they would release him.

FERNHEIMER: Wow.

DUBOW: That made a lot of headlines and, uh, and all of that. Of course, they, they didn't accept that, uh, and, of course, eventually the Soviet Union fell apart, and that was the, that was the end of that. So those are the--those are the two, two really good things I, I think I did in, in, uh, Chicago. So then, after now being in Chicago for ten years, uh, and adding another child, uh, uh, my, my younger daughter, Nicole, uh, the offer came for me to go back to New York and to be the supervisor of all the thirty-two offices--

FERNHEIMER: --wow.

DUBOW: --to take Will Katz's position. Sam Katz had retired, Will Katz had taken his place, and they were offering me the job as the director of--what they called the director of community services. So, uh, uh, in the spring of 1980, after ten years in Chicago, I moved back to--we moved back to New York, and I 01:02:00became the director of, of all the, all the field offices, the thirty-two offices. I traveled a, traveled a lot. And, by the way, uh, we had an off-- we still had an office in Cincinnati, and so I always arranged to, if I had to go pay a visit in Cincinnati, to arrange it at the end of the week on Friday, and then I would, I would come to Lexington, or go to Louisville. I had a fraternity brother there, Stewart Yesman (??), uh, Oliver Sholem (??) that, uh, long dead. Uh, and we would come to--he had tickets to the basketball games. And so my Kentucky connection continued throughout all of these years. Uh, um, and, and I was the supervisor of, uh, the field offices for seventeen years. And in 1989, I think it was--maybe it was 1990--uh, 1989, the American Jewish Committee, for whom now I had been working for a long time, uh, uh, started a, 01:03:00um, a connection to Germany. Uh, of course, Germany was, uh, looked upon by the Jewish community as a, as an enemy. This is now West Germany.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: There was a West Germany and East Germany. That's, uh, something that no Jew, no self-respecting Jew would, would be interested in. But the committee--I have to say this about the committee: the, the committee has always been at sort of the forefront, on the cutting edge of Jewish thought, um, and so they decided to have a connection in Germany. And, um, uh, there was a fellow who worked for, for AJC, uh, who spoke fluent German, and he arranged with the, uh, German Foreign Office, uh, that we could have an exchange program if we could find a partner. So, uh, letters were written to various, uh, uh, 01:04:00institutions in Germany, and we got an answer from something called the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. As you know, Konrad Adenauer was the first, the first Chancellor of West Germany after World War II. It's connected, by the way, to the Christian Democratic Party, uh, and that is the part of the, the current chancellor, Angela Merkel. It's, uh, her, her party, and, uh, and the--uh, that-- So, so we set up this exchange program with the Adenauer Foundation.

FERNHEIMER: Between whom and whom? Who was part of the exchange?

DUBOW: Laypeople from AJC, leadership people from AJC--

FERNHEIMER: --mostly in New York?

DUBOW: --and the Adenauer, and the Adenauer Foundation had--they have, uh, different kinds of people. They have younger people who are, uh, active in the party, who are professionals in various, uh, uh, professions--uh, journalists, lawyers, uh, uh, judges in training, all-- So they send a--we used to do more. 01:05:00We're down to now about a dozen each. Originally it was about twenty each, but it's a very expensive program. Still going, by the way. It's the oldest American Jewish German program that there is. So, uh, when the second, uh--nineteen, uh, um, ninety-one, we, uh, uh, uh, didn't have a, uh-- Wait a minute, wait a minute, n-n-- I'm sorry. Excuse me, 1981. I'm, I'm getting all confused about my years. Nineteen eighty-one. Uh, uh, they decided I should go with the group. That was my first trip to Germany. And it was very interesting f-- to--uh, for me.

FERNHEIMER: What was it like then?

DUBOW: Yeah, it was very interesting. I went with a lot of trepidation. I'd never been in Germany before. I'd been in Europe a couple times, but I'd never been in Germany before.

FERNHEIMER: Had you lost family during World War II?

DUBOW: No. I had no--had no family lost in the Holocaust. I had no connection to Germany. I didn't speak German. I didn't know anything about, about, you 01:06:00know, the German government. I mean, I began to read, and began to, began to know. But I went. Uh, and what happened to me happens to many Jews now who go to Germany and meet Germans, and they realize after a day or two that the people only, only pe-- they're people. And, and the people we were meeting were people born long after World War II. Also, we made connections with the Jewish community. There was a very small Jewish community, uh, in, uh, uh, in Germany generally. There were only twenty-eight thousand Jews, uh, in Germany. Uh, uh, the largest of the groups was in, of course, in West Berlin, and there was a very small group in East Berlin.

FERNHEIMER: And where were you visiting? Where were you when you were visiting in Germany

DUBOW: Well, we went to, to Bonn to look at the go-- the government was in Bonn in those days.

FERNHEIMER: Um-hm.

DUBOW: Uh, the government was not yet in Berlin. The gov-- the gov-- West German government was in Bonn. So we went to Bonn. Uh, we went to, uh, Munich. 01:07:00Uh, and we've--we, of course, flew into Berlin. Now, Berlin--it's hard for me to explain. Berlin is a city that was surrounded by East Germany, was in the middle of East Germany, and Berlin is--was divided into four parts--

FERNHEIMER: --mm.

DUBOW: --uh, the American, the German, the French, and the Russian. So it was in an island--it was an island inside of a much larger German, German Democratic Republic, or, or, or East Germany. Uh, it was--that was very interesting in itself. Now, while I was there, we were able to go into East Germany. Uh, the East Germans and the West Germans had sort of established some kind of relationship, and so we were--uh, uh, and, and I was able to, even by myself, to walk around, uh, in Alexanderplatz and around in, in East Berlin a little bit. And I'd read, of course, I'd read, read all the John Le Carre books about spies 01:08:00in East Germany, and, and I said, you know--(laughter)--I looked around, I said, jeez, everybody's a spy. What I found out, after the wall came down, everybody was a spy. I was right! (laughter) And there was--everybody was, uh, in the Stasi. Everybody was a spy, pretty much. Uh, but, but, uh, I got to know a few people, and then AJC decided to upgrade the program, and we had another group go back in, in, uh, nineteen, uh, eighty-three. I went, I went with that--I, I-- Uh, and then, when we went back in '83--again, it's a very long story which I won't bore you with--uh, we were able to make a connection, uh, in East Germany, with the Communist East Germany. Uh, somebody told us, a fellow from the West Germany government, told us--he said, "Well, you know, you have full diplomatic relations with East Germany." We--I didn't even know that. Nobody knew that. There had been a treaty a couple years before, quiet, nobody knew it, and that East Germany and the United States had diplomatic rela-- and we had an 01:09:00ambassador there. So I decided we were going in '83 with a group. Uh, let's go to East Germany. So how, how do you do that? Uh, so this fellow from West Germany said, "Well, the State Department." I called the State Department. I'm a good organizer; I told you that. I said, "Can I speak to the person who handles East Germany?" Said, "Hold on a minute"--(laughs)--and a guy got on the phone. He's the East German desk officer. He eventually became an ambassador. Nice guy. And I explained, "I want to go with a group of American Jews." And he said, "Well, what would you do there?" I said, "Well, we can meet with the ambassador. We want to meet with people from the government and see what they're all about, and if there are any Jews there, I want to meet with them." He said, "Well, I don't know if we can do that," he said, "mostly because nobody asked before." (laughs) So I said, "Well, I'm asking, okay?" Said, "I'll get back to you." About a week or two weeks later, he called me back, said, "It's 01:10:00all arranged. You'll be in West Berlin. We'll send a US Army bus. We'll bus you into East--(laughter)--East Berlin. You'll meet with, uh, uh, the ambassador, and the East Germans have set up a meeting for you." Okay. So I met with the--we met with the ambass-- woman ambassador, uh, at that time, uh, American ambassador to-- I mean, now, in, in retrospect, it seems so funny. She said, "You know, you can't trust them. They're all Communists." (laughs) Well, I was saying to myself, well of course they're all Communists! It's a Communist government. Uh, and, uh, then we were bussed over to a, to a hotel for coffee and, uh-- And we met the, uh-- In Germany, it was called the Staatssekretär für Kirchenfragen, the state secretary for church questions, a man by the name of Klaus Gysi, and he was himself Jewish, and he was sort of the godfather to the very small Jewish community there. So we met with a few 01:11:00representatives of the Jewish community, and they, they said, "Well, there's no anti-Semitism here," because there were no Jews, practically. Uh, uh, uh, "There's no anti-Semitism. It's a great country. You can walk free in the street," which, of course, it was true, uh, because if you got out of line they put you in, in, in jail. Uh, but I, I established it with, with the president--uh, uh, his name's Peter Kirchner (??)--I established a relationship with him. And I--when I was leaving that day I said, "Is there anything we can do for you?" He said, "Yeah, we don't have enough prayer books. We don't have enough kosher wine, uh, uh, for Passover. And, of course, we don't have a rabbi. The rabbi from West Berlin would--came and did funerals, but he didn't do services. We have a, a sort of a semi-professional cantor who has--does the services." Okay. So I came back again--again, I'm a good organizer. I called the Manischewitz company and I said, "I'd like to speak to--" I got some 01:12:00manager. I said, "Listen, uh, there's this group of Jews in East Germany. They don't have enough kosher wine for Passover. What can you do?" He said, "How much do you want, and where do I send it?" (laughs) And he was--I don't--can't remember, ten cases, whatever it was, they sent it. I had gotten to know, then, a, a, uh, a woman in, uh, in Germany by the name of Rachel Salamander. She opened the first Jewish bookstore in Munich, and was the only Jewish bookstore in Germany.

FERNHEIMER: When did she open the store?

DUBOW: Excuse me?

FERNHEIMER: When did she open the store?

DUBOW: Oh, I don't know. This was in the--this was now in the '80s. Uh, probably, probably shortly before that, probably 1980, something like that. She now has a store in, in Berlin, as well. Uh--(clears throat)--so, um, I said, "Look, I, uh, I was over in East Germany, and I met with these--and th-they don't have enough prayer b---" I, I had no i-- "How, how do you get prayer books in German?" She says, "No problem, we get 'em in Switzerland." 01:13:00(laughter) She said, "How many do you want?" "I don't know, twenty, thirty, forty. You send, send them--" I told her where to send them, and I said, "Send us the bill and we, and we'll pay for it." And then I started working on getting a rabbi. I found--I found one. Uh, I found a guy in, in, uh, uh, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, at the University of Illinois. He was sort of, uh, out of--an out-of-work rabbi, divorced, uh, and he--actually, he was Polish, but he spoke--between Yiddish and German, he spoke enough. At any rate, I took him with me to East Berlin. I became the East Berlin expert. I had no, no background in foreign affairs at all, and I became the East German guy. And so I took him with me, and we made a couple of trips back and forth to Germany, and they--and they hired him. And he, he went to live in East Berlin, and, uh, unfortunately he--there was a little bit of a scandal. He had an affair with one of the female members of his, of his--

FERNHEIMER: --congregation? (laughter)

DUBOW: --congregation. To, to make--uh, to--I'll tell you the, the funny part 01:14:00of it. The--he wanted to get out and bring her out and get married to her. She was quite a bit younger than he. Uh, but the East Germans wouldn't let her out. Why? Because her father was the minis-- assistant deputy minister, I think of, uh, uh, the--of the interior. Now, in the United States, the interior is the National Parks and so forth. In East Germany, it's the Secret Police. (laughs) And so they wouldn't let her out. They fin-- and finally he made such a big stink, uh, that they fin-- they finally let her out. And that--and then the whole thing, the whole thing crashed down. I looked for another--and then the wall--and shortly after that the wall came down, and that was the end of that. The two Jewish communities joined together in what they called an Einheitsgemeinde, a unity community, uh, and, um, it's a mess now. That's a whole different story. It's a mess now, uh, because--it's very interesting, 01:15:00because the Russians have, have come to, uh, to Germany, Russian Jews, and they're, you know, ninety percent, and there's this friction between the old-timers and the, uh, and the new Russian Jews. And I'm sure in communities in the United States there's the same kind of, uh, same kinds of problems.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: So, uh, all of that happened, and I was, again, doing my j-- still trying to do my job as the field director. But as I got close to my seventieth birthday I decided it was beginning to be time for me to, to retire. And so I went and I spoke to David Harris, who was the director of AJC, and still the director. And, of course, I've known him practically since he's a boy. He came to us when he was quite young. He's terrific, uh, terrific leader. And, uh, he said, "You know, we are thinking, uh, about opening an office in Germany." 01:16:00Said, "We have an offer of a free office for ten years in a new building that's going to be built, and we're thinking about having an office." I said, "Well, you know, if you're thinking about having an office, you'd better think about me--you should think about me--because nobody in the agency knows Germany better than I do." He said, "Well--" I said, "Look, I understand. I'm not so young anymore. You may want somebody who really speaks German, which I don't. Uh, you may want somebody in Germany. I'll understand." Meanwhile, I had been invited, uh, by a friend in Germany to teach at the University of Bayreuth. Uh, I went to Bayreuth, because that's the home of Richard Wagner, the greatest--one of the greatest anti-Semites of all time. (laughter) Uh, uh, and I thought it was a course to teach a course on the Jewish community in Bayreuth. And a f-- uh, this friend of mine in, in, invited me. His name is Michael Tsera (??). 01:17:00He's a professor, uh, now, now retired. Uh, and I was on my way to Bayreuth, and I said, "You think about it and, you know, and if, and if it doesn't work out, that's okay, too, but I'm planning to--I'm pretty much planning to retire." I came back from Bayreuth after the summer, I worked into his office, and the first thing he said, before he said hello, he said, "You're going to Germany." He had made up his mind that I was going to Germany. So it took another year--two years, actually--a year we didn't say anything, and then a year--of course, the building wasn't, wasn't built yet. Uh, the building is very interesting, by the way, and I'll get to that in a moment. I was, uh, uh--it, it took another year, um, 1996 to ninety, uh, to '97. And I spent a whole year traveling around the United States. I went to fifteen cities to make speeches about why the American Jewish Committee was opening an office in Germany. People were very opposed. "Why are you wasting your money in Germany? Uh, uh, 01:18:00why aren't you putting the money into Israel?" I'd make the, make the case for them. Germany is Israel's greatest partner in, in, in Europe. There's a growing Jewish community in Germany. What happens in Germany affects all the, all the European countries. It is a tremendously important country for Jewish interests.

FERNHEIMER: Mm.

DUBOW: Okay, so I made that c-- ma-- made that case. Um, so, um, uh-- I had another story to tell you about that. At any rate, I, I went and, um, I had a talk with my wife, and, uh, and I said, "Look, I have this opportunity to go to Germany, to"--she had a career. She was working as a CPA. Uh, she said, "Well, how long would you go for?" I said, "I'd go for two, two and a half, three years, something like that, just to get it started. I'm not there for good, just to get it started, get it going, uh, and then I'll find somebody to take my 01:19:00place." So I have to say on her behalf, she said, "I think you should do." Said, "We'll manage. You'll come over, I'll come over, and, uh, and we'll manage." And so I told David that, that I would do it, and, and, uh, indeed, uh, in 1997, uh, July 1, I took my, my, uh--I had an apartment to (??) a friend, my laptop, flew to Berlin--

FERNHEIMER: --no trunk this time.

DUBOW: --plugged my laptop--pl-plugged my laptop into the--I'll tell you about the building in a minute--uh, into my--in my apartment, into the wall. And the American Jewish Committee was the first American Jewish organization to actually have an office in the Federal Republic of Germany, and I was the first director of the office. And I'll tell you about--the building was not built. Uh, you know, when the wall came down, there was West Ger-- West Ger-- West Berlin and East Berlin, and in between there was a no man's land. That was the killing 01:20:00fields. Uh, there was barb war in the wall. Of course, the wall was there. But when the wall came down, it was like the Wild West in terms of building. All of sudden there was this--all this building, right in the middle, smack in the middle of Berlin, all this, all this room to build, and builders from all over were-- So a builder from Hamburg, uh, named Roder (??), uh, Hans Roder--he's now dead, also--God, everybody's dead, except me--(laughter)--uh, that's what it seems like, pretty close--uh, uh, he--

FERNHEIMER: --you've got a few friends here still.

DUBOW: --he, he started negotiating with, uh, the people who owned this piece of property. It's a Jewish family by the name of Mosse, M-o-s-s-e. They had been-- They had been famous newspaper publishers in Germany, liberal, and when Hitler came to power in '33 they fled, and, uh, Hitler took over their building 01:21:00where their home was. They had a, literally a palais, a real palais. And, and where the--w-where the newspaper was printed. Uh, and this--the, the piece of property was the palais. Uh, and it's in a great, absolutely great loc-- what a, what a location. Uh, right near the Potsdamer Platz. Uh, and so he started negotiating, and he, and he bought the property, uh, from, from his family. And--(clears throat)--and started to build, but ran into all kinds of problems in--with the, uh, uh, local authorities, and it took him a long time, but he finally--he finally got it, got it all done, and in February of 1998 we literally moved in, my assistant and I, uh, moved in to the building, uh, and we were the first tenants in the first building in this enormous Potsdamer 01:22:00Platz/Leipziger Platz area. There's something really--there's some significance in there somewhere--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --that a Jewish organization should be the first. And the--and we were in business. And, you know, we--and I got--I made a--I worked, I worked very hard, and I worked all the time, uh, um, seven days a week, eight--twenty-four hours a day, making the contact with the government, and all the kinds of people, so we established ourself as the voice of the American Jewish community. And indeed, when we opened the office one of the local newspapers said, "The American Jews have established an embassy in the Unite-- in Germany." They really-- Well, I was an ambassador, maybe I was an ambassador, but I didn't have a car. (laughter) I didn't have anything. I went to work on the subway. They have a great subway system in, in Berlin. If you've ever been there, it's wonderful. And I have a good story about that. After I was there for--I got to know all the diplomats, all the government people. I got a call from the 01:23:00Spanish counsel general, and he said, "Eugene, I would like to invite you to the international club for lunch." Very, very, very good. Uh, I said, "I accept, the date's open." I said, "How do I get there?" He said, "Well, your driver will know where it is." I said, I said, "I don't, I don't have a driver. (laughter) I don't even have a car." He said, "That's not a problem. I send--I'll send my driver to pick you up and take you." So I said, "If your driver comes and takes me, how do you get there?" He said, "My other driver takes me." (laughter) So I was an, I was an ambassador with no car, no nothing, but, uh, I made some very good contacts, including the chief of staff to the president of Germany, who's the formal head of the government, and I got invited to every top-flight meeting, including meeting Bill Clinton in a small reception. Uh, and so--

FERNHEIMER: --and--

DUBOW: --I, I, I set it up. And then, after about a year and a half, I 01:24:00decided, uh--(clears throat)--the thing is now running well. Everybody knows us. Uh, um, I began to look. And, uh, then my assist-- I only had one assistant. Uh, by the way, another good story--I have a lot of good stories. I can tell--my brother--

FERNHEIMER: --we're gonna have to have another interview!

DUBOW: My, my brother and my sister--uh, uh, my brother-in-law--my brother and my sister-in-law come to visit me, we're in a cab, and we happen to be going from the hotel near--right by the office. And I said to the cab driver, just to find out, you know, does anybody know, I said, uh, uh, "What's that building?" He said, "Oh, that's the Jewish Committee." (laughter) They thought we had the building. We had this little office. There were only, there were only two of us in the, in the office. Uh, in any case, uh, uh, uh, I started looking. And I found Deidre Berger. Deidre Berger was the National Public Radio correspondent in Germany, and had been for about a dozen years. Everybody, uh, 01:25:00knows the, the gal from, from Italy--uh, I can't remember her--I can't remember her name, but, uh, but she was the German--the, the, uh-- She was Amer-- I thought--I'd listened to her for years; I thought she was German. Turns out she's American, she's Jewish, uh, from St. Louis. And so, any rate, I hired her as an assistant. She was terrific. She took over, uh, beautifully. And, uh, with the new millennium, January 1, 2000, I left, I left the office, and she became the director. I came back to AJC for a couple of years and did fundraising, and then, then I really, uh, decided it was time. I was getting to be seventy then, and, uh, uh, I re-- retired. Uh, and now in my, in my, uh, semi-retirement, and in my dotage, uh, I, I rec-- I recognize the fact that there was very little communication between American Jews in Germany, and 01:26:00Germany is very important, as I said earlier, very important, uh, to American Jews--uh, to, to, uh, uh, to, to Jewish interests all over, particularly Israel.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: And Jews are very important to Germany, because without Jews there's n-- there's no really welcoming back in, into normal society for Germans without Jews. By the way, the Jewish community in Germany has gone from twenty-eight thousand, when the wall came down, to over two hundred thousand now.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Many from the former Soviet Union came to settle there, which caused all kinds of problems, but, but they're, but they're there. And we are told that there are fifteen thousand Israelis who are not connected to the Jewish community, but Israelis who are living--be-because they, because they like the cultural life, uh, in Berlin, and Berlin is, is a gr-- has become a great ci-- world-class city, really a wor-- world-class city. So I decided to do a 01:27:00newsletter. Uh, and it turned out--again, a long story--it turned out to be two newsletters, one basically for American Jews, and whoever else is interested, on what's going on in Germany, and one for people basically in Germany on what's going on in the American Jewish community. And I do each of them once a month, uh, and, uh, without much humility. I call them DuBow Digest. It's a digest of, mostly a digest of what other people I've read, and some commentary by me on the subject, and that's what I do.

FERNHEIMER: How big is your circ-- how big of a circulation do you have each--on each of your lists?

DUBOW: My mailing list is now over two thousand.

FERNHEIMER: Wow.

DUBOW: Uh, it started--it started with a, with a small group of people going on this exchange program. I would send them some information, and then one guy who went the year before came to me and said, "You know, I enjoy getting the information, but I only do it for people who are going that year." He said, 01:28:00"Well, put me onto the list." He said, "I like getting it." And then I began to think about it, and, uh, then that's how the thing grew. And plus I--plus it's posted on three or four different websites, uh, um, so, so, uh, you know, a, a couple thousand people read it every month, I think. Uh, and it's free. Anybody, anybody who wants it, all I need is their, their email address and they get it free, you know. That's my--that's been my--that's been my professional--

FERNHEIMER: --right.

DUBOW: --uh, my professional life, uh--

FERNHEIMER: --so now, y-you're here. It's, uh, November 1st, 2013.

DUBOW: Right.

FERNHEIMER: You're back at the University of Kentucky. You started by telling me this wonderful story about the--getting off that train, and your--

DUBOW: --right.

FERNHEIMER: --first experiences on the train. And, and you yourself said that your experiences here at the UK--at UK were foundational, right?

DUBOW: Absolutely.

FERNHEIMER: So I wonder, after listening to you tell me these wonderful stories 01:29:00about your involvement in Selma, and creating these different kinds of meeting points of different people, whether it was in the Civil Rights Movement, or whether it was Americans and Jews, or American Jews and Germans, what was it about your experiences here? One thing we haven't talked much about is, is Hillel and ZBT and those kinds of things.

DUBOW: Yeah.

FERNHEIMER: And I wonder--

DUBOW: --well, it--

FERNHEIMER: --what was it about that that--

DUBOW: --well, it works--

FERNHEIMER: --that prepared you for this?

DUBOW: --it, it-- These kinds of things--when I s-- when, when I said it re-- it really becomes integrated into your personality and into, into your life, it, it, it really has, uh, with me. Kentucky really is, is, uh, very much a part of my life, even though I--frankly, I don't, I don't get here very o-- very often. I was here a couple years ago, and before that four or five years before that, and maybe s-- five or six years before that. Yeah, I don't come very frequently. Um, uh, but somehow, uh, you know, how do you figure what goes into 01:30:00a person's mind, uh, and into their emotions? Uh, and it's become a, a, a big part of my emotional, uh, uh, emotional being. Incidentally, I, I, I should mention, talking about Kentucky and the university, uh, it's that I've done some good things in the AJC over the years, and I did one good thing for the University of Kentucky. Uh, I haven't given them a lot of money 'cause I don't have a lot of money to give them, but, uh, it dawned on me about three or four years ago--well, little more, four, maybe four or five years ago--that the University of Kentucky did not have a, an alumni club in New York City. And I started to think about that, and I looked at alumni clubs having meetings, and alumni clubs this, and alumni-- So I sat myself down, uh, and wrote a letter to President Todd. He was the president of the university then. And I said, "It's hard for me to believe that the University of Kentucky is probably the only 01:31:00university in the entire--(laughs)--United States that doesn't have a New York City, uh, club. Uh, uh, this is--uh, New York City is the centerpiece of f-finance in this country, and if one thing the university is in-- is interested in these days, it's raising money. Uh, this is, this is the place. You have to--you know, Willie Sutton, the bank robber, u-used to say--they ask him, "Why do you rob banks?" And he said, "I rob banks because that's where the money is." Well, th-that's where--in New York, that's where the money is. The money is in New York. And so, I gotta say, for T-- um, uh, President Todd, he was right on, I guess, immediately with Stan Key, who was the director of the, uh, alumni association, and they sent this young woman up and, and I met with her. But she, she did the smart thing: she didn't lean on me. I mean, I'm too ol-old for that. Then she found two young women who were--who are, uh, uh, UK 01:32:00graduates, who would be interested in working at it, and they, they started a--they started a club. Now we found out--this, this is really shocking to me--that in the New York area there are seventeen hundred--seventeen hundred!--graduates of the University of Kentucky. And be-between the--between the, the city, the suburbs, New Jersey, and southern Connecticut, which compromise the greater New York area, there were, there were seventeen hundred. I--uh, that, that really shocked me. Uh, so they've started, and then they, they found this sports bar in New--in New York called Jack Dempsey's, who now has every UK football and basketball game on a special TV hookup. (laughter) It's good for them, I guess. It's good business for them. But they have, they have meetings--I mean, the, the thing has really, really blossomed into a re-- 01:33:00to a real club, and, and does other things, including, uh, working, uh, on, uh, uh, just a, uh, just a week ago Tish and I, uh, participated with, with a few alumni in, uh, this, uh, cats for a cause. Uh, we worked at a, at a school in the Bronx. Being that I'm a Bronx guy, I couldn't say no to that, to do some, uh, uh, good things, uh, uh, in a school in the Bronx. So they do, they do very good things. It's very active. Uh, uh, I think it's a good meeting place, uh, for, uh, UK graduates. And it all started f-from a letter that I sent to President Todd. So, so that, that's a good thing. So, look, uh, it's, it's hard to, hard to explain, uh, why this kind of--you know, why do things happen. Why do people fall in love? Why do you love one person, you don't love the other person? How come you, how come you love an institution and you don't--by the way, I have, I have other institutions. (laughter) You know, I, I, I, I 01:34:00have a master's degree from NYU. I get mailings from them all the time. I don't care about them. I, I give 'em a toss. I have, I have a, another master's degree from Hebrew Union College. I, I don't toss those, but I don't give 'em any money. You know, I don't--you know, I'm not that interested in, in, in them, uh, uh, uh, as well. And I have a, an honorary doctorate from, from, uh, from HUC. (clears throat) And, and yet, when it comes to being emotionally connected, right here. Right here. That's--this is the place for me. So, I mean, uh, uh, it's hard--again, it's hard for me to explain, uh, for instance, and stay-- staying, uh, uh, here--I never stay at a hotel, because Earl and Sarah Levy insist that we, that we stay with them. (clears throat) The food is better, and the sleeping arrangements are better than a hotel. (laughter) Uh--

TISH DUBOW: And it's cheap!

DUBOW: Uh, so-- (laughter) But there are people who are--you know, uh, Earl 01:35:00grew up here, and he spent his whole life in Lexington, uh, pretty much.

FERNHEIMER: And you guys met while you were both in school here, right?

DUBOW: Right, and went to school here, right, and both of them went to school here. Uh, and it's hard for me to, to explain that when I--when, when the plane, when the plane crosses over the Ohio River I begin to get, to get all excited about it. You know, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm coming to Kentucky. I mean, this is the pl-- this is really an emotional, uh, place. We--by the way, I didn't--I did not mention--(clears throat)--and I should have, earlier, that, uh, I was due to graduate in June of 1953. My youngest sister, uh, Carol DuBow, now Carol DuBow Cott (??), uh, for, I don't know, fifty-five or six years, uh, at that time graduated from, from Taft High School in New York, and she came to school here. But she stayed for two years, only two years, and she went home to 01:36:00New York. My father wanted her home, the only girl in the family, two sons and one daughter, and she finished up there. But so she has, she has friends and, and, uh, and actually Sarah Levy was, was, uh, was her roommate, uh, uh, when, when, when Carol came here in January of 1953, in '53. And about the Levy--the Levys are great people. Uh, uh, uh, Mary--and, and, and Sarah's sister, Sonia, showed extremely good taste, extremely good taste. She and I dated, and we were pinned, actually, you know. But, uh, she gave me back the pin and she married a fraternity brother of mine, Ivan Goldfarb--(laughter)--and she showed very good, very good taste and good common sense in marrying him and not marrying me. Uh, so, uh, so we had--so we have a lot of, uh, family connection here, uh, uh, 01:37:00family connection here, as well, friends, friends, uh, connection, long, long-term, fifty-, fifty-, sixty-year friends, maybe more, because I started here sixty-four years ago, and there are people here I know, have known for sixty-four years. That's a long time to have a friendship, and, uh-- So Kentucky's very, very special for me, and, I must say, though, now, turning to the new, to the new UK, the new--I, I'm shocked. (laughs) The size of it is gi-- gigantic. When we were here, I don't know, uh, maybe it was the spring before last, uh, we went to a baseball game. Tish and I went to a baseball game. I had a r-r-- a rented car, and I parked it in the street somewhere, and we walked it around to the, to the baseball field, and we, we went to the baseball game. And, um, I couldn't find the car. (laughs) I couldn't find--we were walking up and down the streets and I couldn't find the car. I mean, the 01:38:00whole thing has gotten so big, I thought--and I, I thought I knew, knew Lexington. Well, I don't know Lexington. By the way, what we had to do is there was a UK policeman directing traffic after the game, and I went over to him. He was--in typical Kentucky fashion, he said to me, "Wait a few minutes," and he took us in his car, and he drove around all the streets. And I try to, I try to explain to him where we were, and he--and we--and he located the car for us. Uh, instead of saying, "Well, go here, go there," he took us in his--in the police car. Uh, um, so the, the size of it is, is just gigantic. The, the hospital, the medical school.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: After all, when I was there, there was no medical school. Uh, there was no, uh, dental school. Uh, the pharmacy was in, in Louisville. Uh, it was just--uh, it was a s-- it was basically a small school. And, of course, Lexington w-was a, was a farm town. You know, it was really a farm town. Maybe, maybe it's gotten a little bit bigger. There was, there was one company 01:39:00in all of Lexington, one manufacturing company, called Irving Air Chute. They made parachutes, uh, and that, and that was it. Other than that, it was tobac-- all along Limestone Street, opposite the university, were tobacco warehouses. There, there--I mean, I can still s-- I can still smell them. They're not there anymore, because, uh, because nobody smokes anymore. If you have--if you have any common sense you don't smoke.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: Current, current people-- I'm sorry--(laughter)--if you smoke. Uh, but, uh, I mean, uh, there's no more real tobacco, uh, industry, uh, any longer.

FERNHEIMER: Can I interrupt you just for a second, Gene? We don't have a whole lot of time left today, although I imagine--

DUBOW: --really?

FERNHEIMER: --we're gonna probably have hours and hours of stories later.

DUBOW: (laughs) Well, I think I--I think I told you everything.

FERNHEIMER: But I want to--I want to ask you a few specific questions--

DUBOW: --please.

FERNHEIMER: --about what it was like. You mentioned the Levys. You mentioned all these people you know from the fraternity. And we haven't really talked 01:40:00that much about what it was like to be in the Jewish fraternity.

DUBOW: Ah, what it was like to be in a Jewish fraternity.

FERNHEIMER: And sort of what--how'd you--you found it through these other guys, and you--it sounds like you found it kind of early, but walk me through that a little bit.

DUBOW: Well, first of all, it was a lot of fun. Uh, there, there, there were--it was a great, great group of people, uh--

FERNHEIMER: --how big was it?

DUBOW: --living in a very, very, very, uh, small, small area. I mean, 113 State Street is small.

FERNHEIMER: How many guys were in the house?

DUBOW: How--uh--

FERNHEIMER: --or, or in the fraternity and living in the house?

DUBOW: Oh, there was, there was a--you know, uh, there was a, a--you know, there was a, a president and a board. I mean, I mean, there was some organization, uh, and, and everybody--uh, most people had some kind of job. Uh, um, it seemed to me the higher you went, the lower you got, because eventually I became the president of the fraternity, 1952 to 1953. And the thing you got, as the president, you got the only single room. But--(laughter)--the single room 01:41:00was right next to the bathroom. There were, there were, there were, there were two, two sinks and a toilet, and then you walked into the president's room. So you had the, you had the honor of, uh, of having the bedroom right near the, the, uh, the, the john, uh, and there was just a, a small door in between--(laughter)--and, and it was, uh-- I would say it wasn't much of an honor. Uh, uh, but, uh, people, people took it seriously, I mean, took, took the, the fraternity seriously. Uh, it--uh, we had meetings, and we had--

FERNHEIMER: --how often did the meet--

DUBOW: --we had responsibilities. And also, it was the integrating force for many of us, or all of us, in, in, in university life, until this got-- Maybe it's different now, but in those days fraternities were, were where all the social life was. All the social life was in fraternities. It was very little, uh, other. You know, I haven't gotten into, by the way, to Hillel. I was the 01:42:00president of Hillel for, for a year, uh, a-and, and, and all of that.

FERNHEIMER: What year was that? What year did--

DUBOW: --'51 through '52. Uh, uh, I did--I think I did su-- such a splendid non-job--(laughs)--in, in, uh, i-in, uh, uh, uh, Hillel that they decided I should become the president of the fraternity. Uh, but in the fraternity we had some, we had some interesting things. We have--one of the, the most interesting things--I won't mention any names, but during the Christmas holiday, when everybody left to go home, one guy stayed on. Evidently he didn't have much family. And when we got back, a few guys were missing textbooks. And, um, one of the--uh, another one of the guys in fraternity decided that that was not just something that happened, and went around and through the Kennedy bookstore, 01:43:00which is still here. It--by the way, it opened while I was at school. I think it opened in 1951. It's still there in the same place. Uh, and said, "Did anybody come here and sell textbooks?" And said yeah, so forth. And it was one of the fraternity brothers. And so we had a whole long discussion. It was a diffi-- it was difficult, uh, to decide what to do with him. Uh, he admitted it, admitted. He'd gotten drunk. He drank a lot. He got drunk, didn't have any money, and thought that was the only way to get some, some-- I mean, how much money could it have been, a few bucks? But, but, but to steal stuff from a fraternity brother, that's serious business. Well, uh, I had to do my Job number and, uh, and what we did was we decided to put him on probation, that he wouldn't--he would not be allowed to come to any meetings, not at--participate in any--and we part-- we participate in all the university things, you know, the homecoming and, and, uh, uh, all the things that, that fraternities, uh, do. We 01:44:00had fraternity dances. The inter-fraternity council had big band dances in those days. He couldn't-- We, we finally reinstated him at the end of the year, but, but, people haven't forgotten. And I--he's dead now, so, okay, it's, it's a dead issue--really a dead issue--(laughter)--uh, but I, but I've never forgotten. I've never forgotten. See, it was a close, very intimate group of people. Uh, and, and not only would we live altogether but we were all Jewish, in a, in a world that wasn't Jewish. And so that, that was-- Now, that didn't mean that we only dated Jewish girls. Uh, some, some did, some didn't. And there was a lot of mixed dating. It's interesting that, that one or two of the guys-- ------------(??) without names--that never--wouldn't date a Jewish girl have, in later life, become very, very active in their Jewish communities. (laughter) Somehow, somehow that happened. Uh, and, um, uh, I was on the 01:45:00inter-fraternity council. I was on the interfaith council. That was a--that was an interesting, uh, thing for me where groups from all the, the Christian denominations were. And I, I remember once having to explain that we did not participate in the Easter ceremony, uh, and I think people were surprised. I mean, it's hard for me to know how they looked at Jews. I mean, most of them didn't think about it. Not--you know, I, I guess there were a few that, you know, had these, you know, horns, and had--Jews had horns and, you know, and were devils, and--you know, maybe, maybe a few. But the most people--just most people just didn't think about it, never thought about it. They met a Jew, they really didn't know, didn't know, "Oh, you're Jewish, you know, what, what's that all about." They had no idea what that was, what went into it. They knew it wasn't so good, but, but, uh, uh, uh, they really--they really didn't turn out 01:46:00to be hostile, and a lot of 'em turned out to be q-- you know, quite positive. One of the leading, uh, people at the university was he professional who, who handled the interf-- interfaith council. Name is Bart Peak (??), and Bart Peak was very good at integrating Jews into the interreligious situation, uh, at UK. Now, in, in, in many ways we're just seen as another, another religious group, just another small religious group, not, not of, not of great significance, uh, at all.

FERNHEIMER: And yet it seems like it was really important for you to be part of the Jewish fraternity, and to be involved with things that were Jewish, whether it was Hillel or the fraternity.

DUBOW: You know, today--of course, I have a long, now, a long career in Jewish, in Jewish organization and life, and I hear, I hear young people--or it being said about young people--that being Jewish is an option. I, I must, I must tell you: I, I don't even understand that. I can't--I can't understand that. I've 01:47:00tried, tried to intellectually think, you know, how could that be an option? I mean, you are. You're, you're Jewish. That's it. I mean, at least where I come from, at the time that I came from. Maybe for younger people today they say, "Well, if I'm not Jewish I'm something else," you know. To me, it was never an option. I am what I am what I am, and it was never--and as long as it was a Jewish group here, I mean, certainly I was going to be a member of it, which I, which I was, and am very glad that I was. It was a great, great experience for me.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Well, it sounds like those early leadership roles, as president of Hillel, president of--

DUBOW: --yeah.

FERNHEIMER: --uh, ZBT--you say--you referred to yourself several times throughout this piece as a good organizer. Do you think you got your start back then?

DUBOW: Yeah, I th-- I--well, I think that's true. I didn't have any experience before this in, in organizational life, and how organizations worked. Uh, and, and, of course, I spent my whole life in organizations here and afterward, 01:48:00literally my whole life in organizations. Uh, so, uh, I mean, even when I was a parole officer I was a--I was one--I was the vice president of the New York State Parole Officers Association, uh, and the, the union, and stuff. And so, so that was an--that was--that was important for me, as well, uh, certainly. But the most important thing was to bring the fact that I was Jewish to the forefront of my thinking, which I didn't think about very much before. And, uh, that has, uh, stood me, I think, in pretty good stead. Uh, and, uh, I just, I just--I hope today that younger people, you know, have, have more of a feeling than I, than I hear them having. I hope it's more, more serious than that.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah. Thank you so much for talking with me today. I hope it won't--

DUBOW: --well--

FERNHEIMER: --be the first--or hope--it's the first time we've gotten to talk 01:49:00in this way. (laughter) I hope it won't be the only time.

DUBOW: I, I don't know, I think-- I think I've told you everything that, that there, there--pretty much that there is, that there is to tell, uh, and, uh, of course, it was allotted--I don't know, was it close to two hours? It's--

FERNHEIMER: --yeah.

DUBOW: --close to two hours.

FERNHEIMER: I--

DUBOW: --that's a, that's a lot.

FERNHEIMER: I guess I'll ask you one more thing. Since it is--

DUBOW: --yeah.

FERNHEIMER: --homecoming weekend, and you're back for your sixty-fourth, uh, anniversary of being, uh, a student here at UK, what do you--what was homecoming like back then, and what, what's it like compared to what you've seen since you've been back?

DUBOW: Homecoming--uh, my recollection is we, we put up things in front of the fraternity house, uh, uh, some kind of decorations and stuff, or something. They judged the--they ju--- We never won anything. Uh, and we--

FERNHEIMER: --but you guys participated--

DUBOW: --and we--by the way, we had teams. We had teams, also. We never won anything, either, uh, with our teams. We weren't, we weren't great athletes, even though we had a couple of really good basketball players, uh, but we didn't, we didn't win very much. And, um, the, the, the important thing is we were like everybody else. That's it. And we were taken like everybody else. 01:50:00Uh, we were--we participated like everybody. We participated fully, with the exception, maybe, of, of Easter and, and, uh, and, and Christmas, uh, but we participated in our own way, and we were certainly an integral part of the University of Kentucky, and, uh, and I think we did pretty well. Uh, it's, it's, it's a hard burden (??) to me, and I'll leave you with this last thought: um, as I was leaving the fraternity in 1953, the National Interfraternity Council, uh, started to have meetings on the question of whether all fraternities should be religiously integrated, but they didn't talk about, uh, racial, because there was--there were Southern-based, uh, organizations, but, uh, uh, they started to talk about, uh, uh, having those kinds of restrictive 01:51:00clauses--(clears throat)--in fraternity life taken out. And, indeed, that's what happened. Uh, and once that happened, then, as I understand it--and I wasn't--I was no longer here--uh, then Jews could be members of other fraternities. They were rushed by other fraternities. They could be--and, and, and ZBT could, could have non-Jewish members, as well. And so the, the intra part of, of, uh, of ZBT sort of, uh, I think, fell apart. Its raison d'être--and by the way, it's still, it's still active somehow. (clears throat) After forty years, or fifty years, they finally found me again and started sending me--(laughs)--emails and asking for money, uh, uh-- (laughter) Of course, I haven't had anything to do with them in, in, in, you know, in a long time. But I think that, that ZBT as a Jewish entity was no longer a J-- totally 01:52:00Jewish entity, and that really ended it. And I don't know exactly--you'll have to ask Earl Levy. He, he knows all about those things, uh, about how long-- But I don't think it lasted another five years, maybe, and then it--and then it sort of--five or six years, then it frittered away.

FERNHEIMER: Yeah.

DUBOW: And that's it.

FERNHEIMER: Well, thank you, Gene.

DUBOW: Thank you. Thanks for asking me.

FERNHEIMER: Yes. It's been a real pleasure. Uh, today is November 1st, 2013. I'm not sure if I did that at the beginning, and I think I was supposed to. So, thank you.

END OF AUDIO FILE