Interview with Morris Weiss, August 1, 2016

ELY: Well, I think I'm supposed to say for the tape that, uh, we're here with Morris Weiss, and, uh, it's August 1st, 2016. I'm Carol Ely, and we're talking in Videobred Studios. And, uh, Dr. Weiss has a long connection with Jewish Hospital, which will be part of the focus of this interview, but the first question is really tell me when and where you were born.

WEISS: Well, I was born July 18th, 1933, at Jewish Hospital at Floyd and Kentucky Streets, and, uh--

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: --the, uh, my--my father had come to Louisville in 1921 as a, uh, freshman medical student from Cleveland, Ohio. He had gone to Baldwin Wallace College and, um, was befriended by Emmet Horine, a very famous physician. He was a medical historian in Louisville. He went to New York and became a cardiologist, which--Emmet Horine was the first cardiologist in this part of the world, and, um, he came back to Louisville and was invited to a small dinner 00:01:00party at the corner of Cherokee Road and Longest, Dr. Leon Solomon, who was my great uncle and the brother of my grandmother. Uh, the, uh--my mother, who had been born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, was in Louisville with her brother, who was a cheerleader at the University of Alabama. They were playing the University of Kentucky, and Uncle Doc, Leon Solomon, had a small dinner party and introduced this newly minted cardiologist, uh, to my mother. And they corresponded for a number of ye--several years and finally got married, and, uh, they, uh--mother moved back from Mobile to Louisville where the family had really started. I think I ought to inject a bit here.

ELY: Sure.

WEISS: Uh, in 1863, Josef Solomon came from Heppenheim on the Weisse, Germany, 00:02:00a Bavarian village just on the, uh, west bank of the Rhine.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Came to Louisville during the Civil War, and, before we started this--this conversation, you mentioned that this organization, uh, that's doing this was interested in communities other than just Kentu--Louisville and Lexington. Uh, my great-grandfather, Josef Solomon, had been a merchant in Heppenheim. Uh, his bride-to-be, Eva Bach, had come a few months before with her father. They--they got married. They set up shop, and he began a mer--he became a merchant in rural Kentucky.

ELY: Do you know what town exactly?

WEISS: Yes. Uh, my grandmother, Edna Solomon, was born in Chaplin, Kentucky. He had stores in Waddy and Radcliff, and the fi--the big store was in Vine 00:03:00Grove, which is still existent, and, uh, I just finished an article about the store, and it's going to be published in, uh, one of the, uh, historical magazines of the county, uh, of Hardin County. The, uh--he raised five daughters and, uh, one son. Uh, he was successful enough to come to Louisville and send Leon Solomon to--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --to Male High School. He was a brilliant student and wen--entered medical school, uh, in 1892, graduated in '94, and was sent to Germany. His father sent him to Germany for three years where he studied at the great medical centers in Germany and France, and Louisville and Kentucky at that time were very backward in terms of medical care.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And he came back to Louisville and was a professor what they called materia medica, or internal medicine, now, uh, at the University of Louisville 00:04:00Medical School at the turn of the century. And in the winter of 1903, Leon Solomon, who I call Uncle Doc, uh, and several other prominent Louisvillians decided to, uh, start a hospital. The Jewish Hospital was finished in 1904 as a state-of-the-art building, uh, because at that time the Jewish doctors weren't being allowed--weren't allowed to really--to practice at some of the other hospitals in town.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: So they had their own hospital, a state-of-the-art hospital and, uh, open to all comers from the very beginning. So that's--those are my roots. The hospital was built in 1904. It's where I was born in 1933. Uh, my s--junior or senior year in medical school, the--that--the current Jewish Hospital on 00:05:00Chestnut Street was built, and I remember my father calling me. Uh, by the way, my father, Morris Weiss, Sr.--I'm a junior--uh, was--uh, being one of the first cardiologists in America and, uh, a very, uh, outstanding doctors, and also he knew medical history and--and the science of cardiology. And, uh, he--he--in fact, in 1954, my freshman year in medical school, he was still giving the--he gave my class the last class the history--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --the cardiology lectures. In those days, the pra--the practicing doctors, uh, did pro bono work at the medical school. They had a very small full-time faculty, and physicians like my father gave the lectures. And, uh, in '57 or '58, he called me one day. He says, "When you've finished clinic, come over to the Jewish Hospital; you've got to carry the medical records over," 00:06:00because they carried--they hand-carried all of the patients' records over to, uh, Chestnut Street. That was quite a, uh--a, uh--a, uh, uh, a wonderful day. And then, from that grew the Jewish Hospital of the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: But--which is now, uh, an entirely different organization.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And in a week or so, I'm giving a lecture on the history of Jewish Hospital, uh, to the, uh--one of the boards, so--

ELY: Well, it's--it's clearly in your blood. Medicine is, uh--

WEISS: It's in my blood.

ELY: --been so important to your family.

WEISS: It's my--in my DNA.

ELY: Yes, yeah, so it was y--Leon Solomon was your uncle.

WEISS: Yes, the brother of my grandmother. One of his sisters--this is, uh, just for, uh--as an aside, Josef Solomon, uh, was from Heppenheim, and Samuel Braun or Brown--he changed it to "Brown" when he came to America--was from a 00:07:00little town called, uh, Alten-Schoenbach, "beautiful creek."

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And they came to, uh--he came in 1847. I don't believe they knew each other in Germany, but they did know each other in, uh, the States because they were Reform Jews. Uh, uh, we--we can't get into the history of Reform Judaism and what was happening to Jews in the first half of the nineteenth century--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --in Germany and how it--how all that, uh, developed, but I--I would say, just in two sentences, in 1814, when Napoleon conquered Bavaria and mo--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --he required all the Jews for example and anybody that didn't have a family name--up to then, they only had a first name. You had to have a number on your house. And then, in 1824, when Napoleon is defeated at, uh, Waterloo, 00:08:00uh, Germany, uh, beg--began to get more conservative again, because--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --Napoleon had libe--liberated the Jews, the Catholics, and the gypsies in his campaigns. And by 1840 or 1850, these liberal Jewish thinkers who became what we now call Reform Judaism--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --uh, started moving to America. And since they didn't keep kosher, they didn't--that wasn't required, and they had been business, uh, uh--merchants in Germany. They came to the South.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And that's why they--that's why--

ELY: That's the whole story of the Kentucky Jewish community, yes. (laughs)

WEISS: Right. So my mother's, uh--the Solomons lived in Mobile--

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: --and, uh, in Louisville, and the Browns lived in Mobile, and somehow or other these two men got together and started marrying their daughters and--and sons to each other. So we're all double cousins.

ELY: So they were always--right, and always affiliated with Reform Judaism.

WEISS: All--they were all basically the--the original first two deca--three--first three decades of Germany when Reform Judaism under Geiger and other thinkers, uh, began to develop that whole concept. But these--these men--for example, the Flexners--

ELY: Um-hm, I know.

WEISS: And I throw that name--Abraham Flexner Way--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --is right--right there now.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Well, in, uh--at the time of the Civil War in 1863, Mr. Flexner, who had seven children by the way, including Abraham, who re--whose famous paper changed all of American medicine--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --for the better, they lived right--their house, the Flexner House, is right where Jewish Hospital ends--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --and the--and the--and the, uh, Frazier Rehab starts right--

ELY: Yeah, it's funny how the neighborhood--

WEISS: --it was Madison Street there.

ELY: --yeah, the Jewish neighborhood is the hospital.

WEISS: That's where the Jews--that's where the Jewish people lived.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And now, interestingly enough, it's called Abraham Flexner Way.

ELY: Right. Well, where--where did you grow up? Where did you live here as a child?

WEISS: I grew up, uh, on Bonnycastle. I--my--my parents were living in a--in a, uh, apart--in a small home just, uh, closer to Bardstown Road from the Commodore Apartments.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And then, uh, they moved over in Tyler Park when I was about a year old. And after the '37 flood, a house opened up on Village Drive, and my father bought that house, and we lived there until '44, and then we moved to the circle on Village Drive, and I lived there until I was a--we lived there until we--I was a junior in medical school, and my, uh, parents built a home out off Lime Kiln Lane at that time. So I grew up in the Highlands, uh, and, uh, I still live there. I came back. I live on Cherokee Road and--uh, on Willow Avenue right off Cherokee Road now.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: That's--that's my part of the universe.

ELY: Well, that's--that's like a classic story of Jewish Louisville, is moving 00:11:00from downtown to the Highlands to the East End. Coming back to the Highlands, that's a new chapter, so--

WEISS: Right. Well, that, you see--we never lived downtown. My father was a doctor and--and didn't have a business here.

ELY: OK.

WEISS: He marries my mother from Mobile, uh, and that Brown family was very successful financially.

ELY: Oh, you mentioned the corn

WEISS: So they started out--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --in the Highlands.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And--

ELY: So they were precursors. They were ahead of their time.

WEISS: They were precursors, right, to--because I--I think, uh, Carol, it would be a good--if I might make a suggestion in this conversation--

ELY: Right. Sure.

WEISS: --that one of the ways of separating and--and getting thinking about Louisville is to think of the Ashkenazi Jews who came--

ELY: Sure.

WEISS: --in the 1840s to 1860s, and then the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews who started coming around 1888 to ninet--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --nineteen--1890 to 1910. Then, Louisville solidifies, and then there's po--perestroika, and--and, uh--and Chernobyl. And we had an influx of--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --several hundred Russian Jews--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --to Louisville. Louisville took them in. Uh, they were an interesting culture. They had grown up under Communism and--

ELY: Yeah, we're actually going to talk about them a little later.

WEISS: --so if--if you talk about Louisville, you really need, I think, to have those three migrations in your mind to p--sort of pull thi--to--to--not to hold things together, but to understand what people are saying and thinking about th--those particular--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --times, because they--all three had enormous impact on our community.

ELY: Right, right, and you're connected with that first migration historically.

WEISS: Right.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: But the, uh--you know, we're going through a har--a very difficult phase 00:13:00now, because I was 83 a couple weeks ago, and all my children I sent off to college up east, you know--one went to Hampshire. One went to Julliard. And they never came home because there was no--nothing here for them.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: The Bach's stores --first of all, they didn't--they decided not to go to--into medicine, and we didn't have a family store. But the people who owned haberdashery shops, uh, clothing stores, drugstores, grocery stores, the box stores completely put them out of business.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And when their kids started growing up, they--they looked around, and there wasn't anything for them. So the Jewish population in Louisville, which was--has gone from 10,000 down to 7,800 in the last fifteen or twenty years--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --because my--the children of my generation didn't come back.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And that's one of the big crises now, of course, in--

ELY: Sure.

WEISS: --in this community, how to deal with that, an aging community like 00:14:00myself, and the middle group who should be caring in the community are living elsewhere in America.

ELY: Um-hm, interesting. Um, just go--going back to your childhood, where did you go to school, to public schools or--

WEISS: I went to Belknap School.

ELY: --uh-huh.

WEISS: And, uh--which is right at Douglass Loop, right in that area.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And then, I went to Male High School, and, from there, University of Michigan as an undergraduate. And my father wa--was in private practice but was on the faculty of the medical school all these years, so I went to--entered medical school. Our anatomy class was Arnold Belker, myself, my future brother-in-law (laughs) Robert Keisler, and Alan Bornstein.

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: Uh, that was our anatomy class our freshman year in medical school, and, uh, all Louisville men. We all grew up together. We played ball together down 00:15:00as Se--2nd and College at the old--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --YMHA. And then, by the time we got to medical school and still were playing ball, we were out at, uh, the JCC.

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: And, uh--

ELY: So did you always know you were coming back to Louisville or--

WEISS: Well, no.

ELY: OK.

WEISS: No. I went off to Pennsyl--Univ--Pennsylvania Hospital to intern. I was the first Louisville boy to ever intern there. It was the oldest hospital in America, built by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. That was--I was very proud of that. And then, I had my year of cardiology at HUP, University of Pennsylvania. Then, I did my internal medicine at Washington University at Barnes Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis. Uh, I had accepted an appointment in the public health service. I was going out west to treat Navajo Indians and, uh, with a wife and a one-year-old. And, uh, my father, three months before I finished my residency, he had a coronary, and he didn't--he 00:16:00survived it, and, uh, actually, he was on vacation when he had it.

ELY: Oh.

WEISS: He knew what he had. He went to his hotel room, didn't die, came home, and then he--he slipped into congestive heart failure becau--

ELY: For a cardiologist, this must have been--

WEISS: Right, well, he knew what had happened to him.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And, uh, he was on an airplane, actually, when it happened. Uh, and, uh, the--remember, uh, this is 1962, and they were somewhere where there was no good--no decent medical care anyway at that time. So he survived, but he--he had had high blood pressure for a few years, and his heart began to--he slipped into heart failure. We brought him to Barnes, patched him up, he came home. He wasn't doing well. He called me and said, uh, "Morris, will you come home?" So I gave up my public health service, uh, uh, uh, uh, not--commission, came home 00:17:00on June 26th, 1962, so I just finished my fifty-fifth year in practice. I rolled into town with a two-year-old, a pregnant wife, and I said, "I'm here." He said, "Good. You're on call tonight." (laughter) So, uh, here it is, fifty-five years later, and, uh, I've--I've, uh--he died seven months later.

ELY: Oh.

WEISS: He fell dead talking to a patient, and, uh, I was still 29 years old, and I took over this practice, and somehow I survived.

ELY: Um, we've talked about your father. Can you talk about your mother a little bit?

WEISS: Yes. My mother, uh, was a wonderful woman. She, uh, uh--

ELY: What was her name?

WEISS: --went to Goucher College. She grew up in Mobile, Alabama.

ELY: Right. Uh, her name was?

WEISS: Uh, Evalyn Brown.

ELY: OK.

WEISS: It's E-V-A because her grandmother, Eva Bach--

ELY: Ah.

WEISS: --was Jos--uh, was her grandmother,

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: So she was named Evalyn Brown. It was Braun in Alten-Schoenbach, Brown when they got to America. Salamon in Germany becomes "Solomon." The A's were changed to O's.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: It sounded--it was better in English that way. So, uh, they grew up in Mobile. They were a very successful family. The Browns, uh, and--were ext--very successful, and my mother grew up very graciously. The--the Jews in, uh--the Reform Jews in Mobile took on all the--the--the, uh, accoutrements and habits of the well-to-do Mobilians. Yiddish, uh--they never spoke Yiddish in 00:19:00Bavaria anyway, but they didn't speak German. Uh, everybody spoke only English. They--they dressed like the, uh--like America, and they were raised that way. It--they were very gracious living--

ELY: Do you feel that was--

WEISS: --and they had made a nice living. They were very, very, very comfortable, and, uh--

ELY: Was that different from Louisville in your experience? Did you--

WEISS: What?

ELY: --uh, was Mobile different from Louisville in that way? Did you feel like people here were inclined to speak German?

WEISS: Well, uh, uh, in--in Louisville, uh, the--Uncle Doc's, Leon Solomon's sisters, only one lived in Louisville. They all married very well. Two of them moved--two of them married bro--well, a brother and a cou--a first-cousin in Mobile, so suddenly the Browns and the Solomons are all intermingled. And one went to Shreveport, uh, Louisiana, and, uh, married--was, uh, married--a rabbi, and, uh, so--but they all stayed in the South.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And, uh--but in Louisville, the only part of this family that remained was Leon Solomon, and he was one of the prom--most prominent doctors in Louisville.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And, uh, so, as a matter of fact, his house just got hit by a big oak tree.

ELY: Oh.

WEISS: It makes me sad, right on the corner. I just live a block from where I used to go as a child for dinner on Sunday to--to his home, uh, on Chero--corner of Cherokee Road and Longest. Uh, a big oak tree fell and crushed that house on the corner. They're rebuilding it now. But, uh--but he lived very graciously, of course, and was--was a doctor to a lot of prominent Louisvillians. And with my father, uh, uh, who marries Evalyn Brown, whose mother grew up here--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And when they came, when my grandmother came back, all the girls 00:21:00that--young women that she had grown up with in high school were--you know, were married, and we--we knew all that. That wa--that--that German Jewish Reform group of Louisvillians was my family in Louisville.

ELY: Right. And so, your mother, how--do you have brothers and sisters?

WEISS: I have one sister who passed away last year. She, uh, was married to a Memphis man, Dorch, but then was divorced and married my good friend Robert Keisler.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Uh, who is an orthoped--a retired orthopedic surgeon.

ELY: And, uh--

WEISS: I'm going to turn this off. I hear it's doing something. Uh, the, uh--and my brother Alan is, uh, retired. He's seven years younger than I, but he's a retired attorney.

ELY: Um-hm. So was your mother active in women's groups? Was she--

WEISS: I'm sorry?

ELY: --was your mother active in women's groups and philanthropy?

WEISS: Absolutely. She, uh--she was involved in the Council of Jewish Women in, uh--at the temple. If you go to the temple, uh, she was really handy with the--she loved needlepoint, and she--one of the really wonderful accomplishments late in her life, she needlepointed all twelve Chagall windows.

ELY: Wow.

WEISS: And if you go to the temple along the hallway back to the rabbi's office--

ELY: I've se--I've seen that.

WEISS: --you'll see those. Those were all needlepointed by my mother.

ELY: Wow. So were there particular causes in the National Council that she was interested in? You mentioned on the phone--

WEISS: She was always interested in the, uh, minority groups, uh--

ELY: Right. You mentioned Civil Rights was important in your family.

WEISS: --and Civil Rights groups. My father and mother were both liberal. My father came from Cleveland, and I remember I was--Senator McCarthy--I was a 00:23:00junior or senior in high school, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was standing in the Senate floor. He had taken on, uh, an anti--he was an anti-Communist, uh, rabble-rouser, but it turned out that he was very anti-Semitic, and most of the Communists he was after were--were, uh, Jewish actors in New York and the ones that were prominent in Hollywood.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And my father, being a liberal, uh, Jew from Cleveland--secular Jew, I might add--uh, they call belonged to congregations, and my father had been bar mitzvahed, but they--they were basically secular as--as they grew up.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Uh, he read, uh, Mencken's magazi--journals and all that, and McCarthy would stand on the Senate floor and read the subscribers to the 1920s and early '30s of these magazines and then mail them to the local city editors.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And my--I remember the d--consternation. They were so afraid that Barry Bingham would do that, but he didn't

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: He never published one name like that from, uh, McCarthy, but--so that--that--that's part of my, uh--my DNA also. I've been very much involved in the African American community here in Louisville. I just finished two years ago a five-part history of--of, uh, African American medicine. The Red Cross Hospital and the, uh, uh, Louisville National Medical College, which was the most prominent black medical school in America from 1888 to 1910, and, uh--

ELY: I do want to talk about that, but I just want to circle back a little bit and finish talking about your family background, and then we can--

WEISS: OK, go ahead.

ELY: --OK, I'm sorry to interrupt, because you were--it's--it's interesting to me too.

WEISS: No, no, I--

ELY: Um, just--

WEISS: Well, I hope so.

ELY: --did--did you have--(laughs) did you have an affiliation with a temple 00:25:00growing up? Were you members?

WEISS: Absolutely.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Eva Bach and Josef Solomon were, uh--were origin--one of the early--earliest members of Adath Israel, and my nephew, Bobby Keisler, who is now on the board of the temple, and his children, who were recently bar mitzvahed and bat mitzvahed, are the consecutive seventh generation of my family at--

ELY: Wow.

WEISS: --at the temple, all at--it was Adath Israel. It was not Brith Sholom, uh--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --my family never belonged to Brith Sholom. It was always Adath Israel, so--and I don't know if there's another family extant in Louisville now that can say there are seven generations continuously--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --continuous generations at the--at the temple.

ELY: OK. So did you, uh, attend services regularly? Did you get a Jewish education there, or what was your relationship?

WEISS: Well, we--we were confirmed.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: We weren't bar mitzvahed. It was, in a way, more social. Uh, the confirmation was a very, very, uh, formal event. Girls wore formals, and--and we had, of course, a religious service in--in--at the tem--at the--at the temple. And, uh, the, uh--the first class that Herbert Waller had was my class in '47, and, uh, the, uh--but the teachers of--were--in the Sunday school were not professional teachers. They taught us morals and ethics, but they--it turned out they knew very little about Jewish history, and--and they--they certainly weren't theologians. And they were prominent lawyers or businessmen in town that volunteered to teach Sunday school.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Uh, and I--I realized, uh, later in life that I had to, uh, start studying on my own so I understood things better, which I've done.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: But, uh, it was, uh--so, to answer your question, yes, uh, Adath Israel was very well organized under Rabbi Ralk and then Waller. And, uh, most of the well-to-do businessmen at that time in Louisville, the--the ones that had big stores, uh, were members of the, uh, uh--of--of the temple.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: The--at that time, uh, the, uh--about the time of the war was coming, World War II, the, uh--the--the Eastern European Jews were beginning to become 00:28:00very--were being very successful financially.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And, uh, the, uh--that changed the pattern in Louisville, but mainly--they were mainly, uh, in stores downtown, in, uh, Market and Brook Street. They had drugstores all over town when--if--if they could get into pharmacy school and, uh--and dental school. Uh, but the--the, uh--by the time World War II was over, and you get into the '60s and the Vietnam era, every--Louisville's Jewry was incredibly successful.

ELY: Um-hm. And often, people have spoken about that there was a divide between the sort of German origin Reform community and the Eastern European community, but that World War II is what changed that. World War II is what brought the two groups together so that now it is more like one community.

WEISS: I--I think that's--I think that that's a fair statement, yes.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: The, uh, uh--it was a while before, uh, the Reform Jewry and the Orthodox Jewry of Eastern Europe began to understand each other, because, uh, uh--in a way that was compatible with, uh, a lot of, uh, good social interaction. And by the '60s and, uh, late fi--mid-60s, late-60s, early '70s, there was a lot of marriage between the Orthodox Jews' and Reform Jews' children. And in--in the '30s and '40s, you would not have seen that at all.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: Not at all. They didn't know each other.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: They didn't know each other. I got to know a few when I went to Male High School and I started playing ball. I would--basketball was my sport and softball. I always did athletics in the Jewish community, and, uh, so I got to know a lot of these--these--these families. My father knew them all.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: My father knew them all because he took care of them all.

ELY: Right, right. Well, other people have also said that the JCC was a--a big leveler, and it brought people together through, as you said, sports and through clubs and other activities.

WEISS: And the--before the JCC, it was the YMHA at 2nd and College.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: That's where I started when I was seven years old. My mother sent me down there to--for gym classes and to get to know people.

ELY: Um-hm. And then it moved out to, uh--

WEISS: And then, when I was in medical school--

ELY: --to Dutchmans Lane.

WEISS: --I played in the first game on a Sunday. We had a wonderful medical 00:31:00school team, my goodness. We were--we had some real athletes.

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: Paul Gradder was in our class, and he was all-state football, basketball, track, and baseball. He had gone to Yale, and myself, I was tall. Arnold Belker was a terrific athlete, and we had two or three other guys, uh, and nobody could beat us. We played the first Sunday when the gym open in JCC.

ELY: Um-hm. Did you, at--at this time, now, we're talking as--as you were growing up and in medical school, did you experience anti-Semitism in the community? Did you feel that there were limits put on you because of your Jewish affiliations?

WEISS: Well, uh, I can tell you a couple of wonderful anecdotal stories about medical school. Uh, in the anatomy lab, there were four students to a table, and I remember when we were graduating, uh, one of my friends who had been in the class--he was a bright guy--came up to me, and he said--my nickname is 00:32:00Moose. He said, "Moose." I was class president at that time, by the way. Every five years, I have to organize the--our reunion. This next one is going to be a little thin I think, uh, in 2018. But he said, "Moose, you won't bel--," you know, when I--I grew up in Central Kentucky, and until I--the first day, your table, Weiss, Bornstein, Belker, and Keisler were pointed out. "You--those are the guys that are going to set the curve for the class. Watch out for them." But, you know, what was even more--this gu--he was--he and I were half-drunk, and he said--he said, "You know, at that point," he said, "I always--I was taught all Jews had horns, and none of you guys had horns." Now, this was a freshman in medical school.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Uh, eight years later, I come back to Louisville, and my father dies, and they put me on the heart--uh, board of the American Heart Association, Kentucky Heart Association. We met at the Pendennis, and I couldn't go to the 00:33:00Pendennis except as a guest, so I asked them to change it to the Seelbach. And, you know, Dan Bick, whose father--uh, whose--who went to Penn and learned to play squash, and Shelly Shiller were friends with Harvey Sloane, because they were squash players, and the only squash court in Louisville was at the Pendennis. And, you know, you--you cou--as a Jew, you couldn't--you couldn't join there, but that changed. Uh, they--they--they did blackball Dan Bick, but Shelly Shiller became a player after Harvey became mayor. And, uh, the, uh--but a lot of things like that, you know, that--that was--that was life. We did fine, and, uh--but all--it's--right now, that's all gone.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: I don't--I don't know anywhere, uh, that--I don't feel that anywhere, 00:34:00uh, anymore. Uh, the, uh--as a matter of fact, there's an African American--a couple of African American members of Pendennis, and, up until the last few years, they were only waiters, right?

ELY: Um-hm, Um-hm.

WEISS: So, uh, the, uh--anyway, uh, Louisville is, uh, in my professional life and as an adult, it has changed immensely.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And right now, we're, uh--it's--of course, Jewish Hospital, that's another story, uh, since it's owned by, uh, the Catholic Health Initiative out of Denver, and that's changing everything right now.

ELY: Right. How did you get the nickname "Moose"?

WEISS: That's a handle that's lost in a--in the--in the fog of antiquity. Uh, it--it just grew up on Village Drive, and it's been there ever since I've been 00:35:00eight or nine years old.

ELY: It sounds like one of those stories of the sibling that can't pronounce your name, and therefore--

WEISS: (laughs) No, no, I--

ELY: --no?

WEISS: --no, it wasn't--I don't know, maybe because I had big ears or something. I don't know. I mean, I was a big, tall, gangly kid, uh.

ELY: Um-hm. Well, let's talk some more about Jewish Hospital, and, uh, you've mentioned, uh, just in the last few minutes some things about Civil Rights. And Jewish Hospital being open to everyone in the community, that was relatively revolutionary at the time.

WEISS: That was revolutionary in 1904.

ELY: Right, so--

WEISS: In 1951, my father, uh, arranged for Dr. Jesse Bell and Maurice Rabb, two black physicians, uh, to become members of Jewish Hospital staff and get into the Jefferson County Medical Society. There were no--the black physicians 00:36:00had their own society, and Dr. Bell was the first. He was a very prominent, wonderful man, and I--he became very close in our family, and, uh, which--that's another story. I don't know if we'll get around to that today, but, uh, the, uh--Dr. Bell and then Dr. Rabb joined Jewish Hospital. They could bring their patients there.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And, uh, those physicians who promoted them, like my father and several others, we--and when I came back, we'd go to the Red Cross Hospital to see consultations, but--

ELY: Um-hm. Now, the Red Cross Hospital was the, uh, black hospital.

WEISS: That's the black hospital, yeah, on--right. It's now the, uh, uh, drug center on Shel--Shelby for, uh--I'm--I'm groping for the name of the organization that runs it. I can't say right now.

ELY: OK. So, uh--so your father was personally involved with bringing the 00:37:00black physicians into Jewish Hospital.

WEISS: He--yes, he was the one that nominated Dr. Bell and for the county medical society.

ELY: And what was the response from the other physicians there or from the county medical society?

WEISS: You know, I don't know all the details, but--

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: --it was never--there was never any problems that--that I ever ran into. I started in '62 practicing in Louisville, 1962, and what happened between '51, '52, and '62 is just the gradual integration of soci--of culture and society, and--but, you know, you--there were no black physicians practicing at Norton or Baptist at that time.

ELY: Now, Jewish Hospital started out as a place for Jewish physicians to--to practice. How long did the staff remain primarily Jewish, and how did that change?

WEISS: It remained primarily Jewish up until modern times.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: There were, of course, consultants and other non-Jewish physicians that practiced there, but at that time in the '50s and '60s and '70s, and, uh, let's say in the '20s and '30s, there were enough Jewish physicians--they staffed the hospital.

ELY: Um-hm. Was that true of the nursing staff as well?

WEISS: No. The nursing staff was--was, uh, uh, both Jewish and non-Jewish women, uh, and the Bernheim--Isaac W. Bernheim and his brother Bernard provided the money for the nurses' home right ne--not a nursing home, but the nurses' home--

ELY: Right.

WEISS: --next to the Jewish Hospital.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: On--on Kentucky Street.

ELY: And, uh, also, Jewish Hospital relied a lot on volunteers from the 00:39:00community as well to take care of desk jobs and--and some things like that.

WEISS: They--

ELY: Were volunteers

WEISS: The women of--of--the Jewish women of Louisville, my mother, of course, included, took care of the gift shop. They were--they sat at the desk to welcome people that came in and didn't know where--where to--where to go to get to a room to see a patient. Uh, they provided, uh, uh, uh, countless other activities of providing money and cook--bakery--baking, where they're sell for--to--to buy something like an X-ray machine. And they did all of that. It was just done internally within the Jewish community.

ELY: Um-hm. And the Jewish community seems to have always been very proud of Jewish Hospital.

WEISS: Very much so.

ELY: Yes.

WEISS: Very much so.

ELY: You'd come into town, and the first thing you see on the way in from the airport is this huge sign for Jewish Hospital.

WEISS: Right, and it--what the doctors like Leon Solomon, my uncle, my great-uncle--he trained in--he went to Germany and France. He spent three years going to the best medical centers in the world at that time. There was nothing in America. There was maybe a couple of hos--there was Hopkins. Johns Hopkins ha--was using at that time, at the end of the nineteenth century, the European model.

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: And that's what Flexner bought into, but, uh, the--Leon Solomon and a couple of other men, one other Jewish man, Ian Bloom and, uh--and some non-Jewish doctors went to Europe to study, and they came back and created a, uh, uh, an advanced medical soc--culture. And that, many of these doc--these doctors primarily practiced at Jewish. But now, you've got to get after World War II, and, after World War II, I do my residency. I finish up at Penn and 00:41:00Barnes, and I came back to Louisville, and I opened the first, uh, ICU unit, four-bed unit. And to do that, the board of trustees had to close the OB section.

ELY: Oh, right. I remember reading about that. Uh-huh.

WEISS: And, uh, the--and--and that was the beginning. We got monitors, and, uh, then there was a young Canadian surgeon by the name of Allan Lansing who came to Louisville. He had a PhD in physiology. He had gifted hands, and he had learned how to do a bypass surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, and he'd spent a year in Texas with DeBakey. He came to Louisville, and Jewish Hospital, uh, gave him his chance.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And, uh, then, that--the hospital just--just blossomed. I mean, everybody came from everywhere, because you could get your bypass here.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: That's all there was, and a valve, if you had certain valve problems, Allan could do those too.

ELY: Cardiology became a huge specialty at Jewish.

WEISS: Yes, and we just saw--people came from everywhere, and we did a really good job. And then, David Jones at Humana got this idea he was going to buy--he bought the, uh, first, uh, mechanical heart.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And he owned, uh, Autoban, so he bought Lan--bought Lansing and took him out there. Well, there was a crisis at Jewish, of course. I sat in--I remember sitting in, uh, Hank Wagner, uh, office with my partner Leonard Lang and, "What 00:43:00are we going to do?" Well, there was a great surgeon just--Laman Gray, who was young and brilliant and, uh, uh, had not been given a chance to really show what he could do. And Laman came and, of course, even expanded it beyond what Lansing had done, and we had another twenty years of--of--of--of, uh, wonderful cardiology and, uh--

ELY: Um-hm, and the Rudd Heart and Lung Center.

WEISS: Laman is retired now. He and I remain close friends, but he's retired, and, uh, he has his cardiovascular institute. And he comes over to the--I'm downtown on Tuesday and Thursday now, and he and I have lu--a brief lunch together. He comes over from his institute, which is on the corner of, uh--of Muhammad Ali--Walnut Street, Muhammad Ali and Floyd. And, uh, so we, uh--we've 00:44:00not been able to replace Laman with a leader and, uh--of his caliber and--and trained like he has. He has magic--he has magic hands, he and his father. His father was a--a--the leading gynecol--gynecologic surgeon in Louisville for many, many, many years and was on the medical school faculty. He had trained at Hopkins in gynecologic pathology, so he'd read all the slides on cancer of the uterus and cervix, but he also was a master surgeon, and Laman inherited his, uh--and beyond--his hands. Laman is, uh--there aren't very many people in the world that--that have the skills with their hands that that man has.

ELY: Right. And you continue to practice. What's--do you have a subspecialty 00:45:00within cardiology that--

WEISS: Me?

ELY: --yeah, you.

WEISS: No, I do general pr--I do general cardiology. I'm just an old-fashioned doc. I could have practiced family medicine. I could have done anything. That's the way I approach my patients. I've always been very--my practice has been very personal. I spend time with the patients. I still know how to use a stethoscope. Uh, I don't need an echo to tell, uh--to tell them what kind of murmur they have, and, uh, I just--I--I'm in--I'm in medicine not because I'm a cardiologist but because the care and main--care of patients and the, uh, treatment of illness, and particularly the psychiatric--psychological aspects of illness are what motivates me.

ELY: Um-hm. Well, let's switch gears for a minute and talk about your family. 00:46:00You mentioned a wife and children. How did you happen to meet your wife, and what's her name?

WEISS: Well, I, uh--I was a, uh--my mother's roommate at Goucher was on the board of the Jewish summer camp in Philadelphia and introduced me to a counselor there when I was a fellow in car--uh, cardiology at Penn, and we got married. We had three children.

ELY: And her name is?

WEISS: And, uh, Gladys Lillian August, and we had three sons: Dan, John, and Michael. And--and on Christmas Day of 1967, I got drafted, uh, for Vietnam and, uh, drove to Texas with my three kids. And by the time that was all over, my marriage was breaking up, and I was a bachelor for ten years, uh, almost eleven. 00:47:00And during that time when my--I put the boys in summer camp. I started doing something that I had always wanted to do, and that was do archaeology, so I did thirteen years in classical archaeology acro--around the world, in the Mediterranean, all--most of the great countries, areas of the Mediterranean, and continued to do archaeology, uh, Egypt and--and--and Greece and, uh, Italy and Majorca and--and, uh, Sicily. I--in other words, I had always wanted to study that part of the world and ancient history, so I made it my business, since I--I could afford to go on these digs, and they got to know me, the professors at Harvard and Michigan and Yale and all those places that have those digs. I'd--I'd go because it didn't cost them anything, and I was a nice guy.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: And I'd get down, and I was--I worked with the nineteen-year-olds as grunts for years and years, almost fifteen years in the field. In fact, I dr--I then met Terry, my curr--my wife now. Terry just had her sixtieth birthday, and, uh, she was twenty-eight or -nine and we were--I was the dir--I was--had started the chapter of physicians, anti-nuke docs, physicians against nuclear war, and she was the director of the Council on Peacemaking and Religion. And, uh, we, uh, fell in love, and, uh, we have a child who is twenty-eight, and, uh, so I've got a fifty-five, fifty-three, fift--fifty-five, fifty-three, fifty-one. Uh, Terry had a child from her first marriage. He's thirty-eight. I've got--we've got a twenty-eight-year-old, and I raised--that's another interesting 00:49:00story we won't get into, but I raised an African American boy who is now about forty-five years old. And, uh, the, uh--we've--we have a wonderful life together. We travel and, uh, raised these kids and grand--kids and grandchildren, and we have a wonderful cadre of friends in--in Louisville, and, uh, so I--I'm--I'm--I'm very, very blessed.

ELY: So, um, you--so you've had two--two families, basically.

WEISS: I've had two fami--I have two families. Not had, I have two.

ELY: "Have," I'm sorry.

WEISS: It's present tense.

ELY: Yes. And, uh, did you continue to, um, uh, educate them Jewishly? You mentioned you--

WEISS: They're all, uh--

ELY: --had to educate yourself in a sense.

WEISS: --they're all--they're all, yes, every one of them.

ELY: Um-hm. And, uh, do you share family holidays together when they're in 00:50:00town and--

WEISS: We do. We do. The, uh, uh--my first wife was, uh, uh--was from a, uh--an Orthodox Eastern European family that b--has sort of become con- a Ref- uh, conservative in Philadelphia.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Uh, and, uh--

ELY: So it's a mixed marriage in a sense.

WEISS: Yeah, it's been a mixed marriage, and Terry is Episcopalian.

ELY: Uh-huh. So you have a lot of different religious tendencies to juggle in your family.

WEISS: No, uh, no, no, I--I don't like that. No, I won't accept that. Uh, uh, this family is based on moral and ethical principles.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And, uh, Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture is, uh--is based on--if you get down to the basic culture, at--at the basic roots, it's all about, uh, ethics 00:51:00and morality.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And actually, the Ten Commandments are about all your need, and, uh, but--uh, so that--everybody respects--

ELY: And you had--

WEISS: --everybody's feelings. Uh, in Mobile, some of the family, some of my first-cousins, uh, didn't ag--they--they all grew up in this ultra-Reform atmosphere, and one of the children, uh, became, uh, Protestant, uh, Baptist, and, uh, the other two remain Jewish. One is secular Jewish. One is active. It just--you know, it just--it--it's--it's--it's America now.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Because of, uh, the way this country is evolving and has evolved, is that many mixed marriages--I think 50 percent of the marriages now are--uh, Jewish marriages are to non-Jews.

ELY: Yeah.

WEISS: If you want to look at it that way or--so, uh--

ELY: Just looking at politics today, both candidates have Jewish children.

WEISS: --but, you know, yeah, you just--you--if you respect--if people respect--if the couples respect each other and have basic, uh, uh--if they're grounded well ethically and morally and not financially, it's not an issue.

ELY: Right. Um, you mentioned that you traveled a lot in Europe researching your family's roots and--

WEISS: Well, uh, Peter Hasselbacher is a retired professor of rheumatology at the university. We've become very close. Peter and Martha, uh, and Terry and--and Moose see each other a lot. We traveled together, uh, recently, and, uh, Peter has become a--Hasselbacher is a--he became fascinated with his German roots. He has made about ten or fifteen trips to Europe over the last, uh, decade or so, and he has tracked--he has found thousands of Hasselbachers. And he found one branch right near, uh, where I knew--where I had learned where my 00:53:00family originally was from, and he and I went to, uh, year--not this summer, the sum--last summer, uh, to, uh, Germany for a week, and I visited Alten-Schoenbach and Heppenhim on the Weisse (??), found, uh, the--the homes that my gran--great-great-grandparents had, uh--had lived in, the schools they went to. One synagogue is still intact. One isn't. And we were able to get into the archives, uh, the German Archives. And one thing that Hitler didn't do--and he was--he--he killed all the Jews, but he saved all the cemeteries, and he saved all the archives.

ELY: Great records, yes.

WEISS: And the--I got records back to 1771 of my family in, uh--in Alten-Schoenbach and Heppenheim. And I've been working on that now. In fact, I 00:54:00just put, uh--put it two weeks ago on Ancestry.com for my--my immediate line, 252 relatives dating back to seventeen-fif--uh, 1771, just my mother's family, the Weiss--the Braun, Browns, and the Solomons. My conclusion after finishing this, that the women in this family did not ha--say--didn't know how to say, "Not tonight," in German or English.

ELY: (laughs) Yeah.

WEISS: So, uh--

ELY: Sixteen, seventeen children in the family. (laughs)

WEISS: Well, the most was nine.

ELY: OK.

WEISS: But a lot of six and sevens.

ELY: Uh-huh. Well, that's--are your, um, kids and, I assume, grandkids as interested in the family story as you or--

WEISS: I have one. I'm getting, uh--they're not quite there yet, my children. You know, you've got--to get--to--to do this, you've got to--you've got to get middle-aged before it sets in, when you really start thinking about where--where 00:55:00is all of this going--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --where--where is all--what am I going to leave.

ELY: Legacy, yes, which is a question here. You know, you've, um--with the transition of Jewish Hospital, do you feel like a chapter has ended? Do you feel like the legacy that--that your father and--and, uh, uncle started continues?

WEISS: Uh, two weeks from now or--I'm giving a lecture on the history of Jewish hospital. I'm just putting my slides together this weekend. Uh, the answer to your question is, uh, that there's only one way Jewish Hospital's name will stay on the building much longer, and that is if the hospital becomes part of the university, because on- the--Mount Sinai in New York and, uh, Caesar 00:56:00Sin--Cedars-Sinai in LA, those two great Jewish hospitals, remain intact because they either became medical schools or--or--or became part of medical schools.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Chicago, uh, is gone, and other major cities, and Jewish Hospital will be like--the sign on the building will be like Kosair. This week, they're taking the Kosair sign off Children's Hospital after a hundred years, right?

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Well, that'll be gone before long unless it becomes University Hospital slash Jewish, because in St. Louis it's--Barnes, Washington University slash Jewish, because they had--they became part of the medical school. Otherwise, it's gone, because these hospitals, several hundred--no, I don't think it was that many, maybe 50 or more--that were developed at the beginning of--the end of 00:57:00the nineteenth, beginning of the twentieth century, were--these Jewish hospitals that were put in cities were there because the Jewish doctors didn't have a place to go to practice, and, uh, now that's--that's not necessary.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: So the need for these hospitals is gone, the--not the need but the--the--the motivation to build them in the first place is no long--no longer exists in our society. And if you're going to preserve them, you're going to have to con--the Jewish name, anyway--you're going to have to identify with a medical school, and that's what--I don't know if that's going to happen now. Uh, I don't have to tell--everybody in Louisville knows the fight between Ramsey and Dunn, who is the head of the medical school and--and the problems with the 00:58:00funding from Denver to the me--ho--university hospital. All of this is daily in the newspapers now, and, until that gets sorted out, that's a real problem in our community.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Uh, the medical school, of course, will not be allowed to fold. Uh, it's a--a major cultural, uh, and societal institution, uh, but Jewish Hospital, unless it can become identified with what--what the university hospital eventually morphs into, uh, it will also disappear.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: So that's--that's a long answer to a short question.

ELY: Well, it's an important question. And you also talked some about the changes in the Jewish community as a whole in--in your time here. And do you have any further thoughts about, uh, how things have changed, are changing? I 00:59:00mean, with Jewish Hospital not being "Jewish Hospital" potentially, other institution are changing as well.

WEISS: Well, I think that the Jewish community in Louisville is under incredible tension and pressure. Uh, the JCC is only open because, uh, 80 to 85 percent of the membership is non-Jewish. And when I--when it was opened, it was 95 percent Jewish. The Anshei Sfard is--Skippy Davis and--and a couple of others are saving Anshei Sfard. They're bringing in a couple of young rabbis. Hopefully, that will work. That's Orthodox. Uh, the, uh--the Russian Jews who moved into Shalom Tower, that--that building has been sold. Four Courts, which was the best nursing home in Louisville, started by Kelly Helman and--and it's--he was a prominent lawyer--and his group, and built it into the best 01:00:00J--nursing home in Louisville. That was sold to a man in California. Uh, Jewish Hospital has been sold to the CHI in Denver. Uh, the, uh--I know the temple is at 5:30--4:30 this afternoon, I'm meeting the, uh--the president of the board of Jewish--uh, the board of trustees, the president of the board of trustees at Jewish hospital asked me to meet her for coffee and discuss, uh, some financial issues that are going on there. What am I going to do? "Moose, what are you going to do?" And, uh, the, uh, uh--and, uh, the two conservative synagogues, uh, Brith Sholom--I mean, Adath Jeshurun and, uh--

ELY: Keneseth.

WEISS: --Keneseth, they need to be one congregation, uh, but they--they got--they've gotten close, but they've never done it, becau--but it's all 01:01:00financial, because there's not enough people. The population has dropped from 10,000. It's keeping--going down, 100 or 150 every couple--few years. And the base that supported all of this, the Bichs, the--the Levys, all of these people with big--they were the box stores, and they're all gone, and their children have all disseminated. And now, you know, it's--it's the Walmarts and the Cost--Costcos that--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --are the box stores. And, uh, all the Jewish, uh, pharmacists who haven't died or retired are now working for Walgreen's or whatever.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: They don't own their shops anymore. So that--that's putting enormous stress on the Louisville Jewish community, and it will--it's gradually becoming like the small Jewish communities, uh--Mobile is still pretty good, but all the little towns in Mississippi and Louisiana and Tennessee that had Jewish 01:02:00communities, uh, that have long since disappeared. And now, there's that one cultural group that meets and keeps the magazine going, a little, uh, uh, paper going to--and they collect Torahs and whatever, and they reminisce about what happened from, you know, uh--in 1860 to 1960.

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: But the, uh, uh--that's all gone, and Louisville is heading that way, because Louisville, when I grew up--you know, during the Civil War, Louisville was, uh, one of the richest cities in--in America. The railroads came through here and--and the--and the steamship lines, and there were nine Union hospitals, and, uh, Brandeis's uncle uh, uh, they came with money from, uh, Austria, but he became an immensely wealthy man. He was an attorney, but, you know, he went to Springfield, Illinois, and he nominated Abraham Lincoln for presidency--

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: --for the presidency, a young Jewish, uh, immigrant from Germany. And, uh, the--there--there was so much--they were so successful, they had a big synagogue right whe--you know, it's at 6th and Broadway where the Courier-Journal Building is. That was the original Adath Israel, and, uh, before they bought--uh, when they--when they sold that and moved over to 3rd Street, at 3rd and, uh, uh--where the library is at whatever college or whatever it is.

ELY: Uh, York?

WEISS: Yeah, uh, so that's where--where I grew up down there. But anyway, uh, that's, uh--it's all different now, and unless Louisville can somehow regain, uh, so--a strong financial, uh, uh, industrial base, it's just going to go down 01:04:00more and more and more.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: Uh, UPS, you know, they--they've got billions of dollars worth of airplanes, but they don't hire that many people. They don't make anything.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And, uh, GE, which had 22,000 employees when I was in high school and college now has 1,200 or 1,500, and that's been sold.

ELY: Right.

WEISS: So, uh, it's--and I don't see anything, uh, happening in Louisville. All the big conventions are moving on because we don't have nice hotels for them and whatever.

ELY: Hmm.

WEISS: So it's--it's--it'll be a wonderful city. It's got a great tradition, but it--it's being--it's being left behind, I'm afraid.

ELY: Hmm. Well, is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to talk about or say? Is there something I've missed that you--you want to have on tape for posterity, or have we pretty much covered, uh, your life and interests?

WEISS: Well, I'm--I personally, and my--and the family that remains here in Louisville are dedicated to Louisville and preserving the Jewish and the hist--and the--Louisville's historical, uh, culture, but we're--everyone is realistic about, uh, the nature of--of, uh, what the next fifty years have--or twenty-five years it's going to be like. But that's always very, very hard, because we--all of us live for today. We have the day's problems, the sickness, whatever that you have to deal with, and family, and you--you--sometimes, it's very hard to just look at the picture and try to predict where you're going. 01:06:00My--I think my kids are smarter than I, because, you know, they didn't come home. My boys, my older boys, are all up east. They've not come home, and they've been very successful.

ELY: Uh-huh.

WEISS: And, uh--but if they were here in Louisville, they'd be very successful, and they'd be--

ELY: (laughs) Right.

WEISS: --building the city more, but everything they're creating is up east now.

ELY: Um-hm.

WEISS: And that--that's a problem, and it just--the next generation is going to have more and more financial problems. It's--it's going to have to contract down more and more. They sold the Standard Club. They're going to--you know, they're going to play--play--play golf, but they're going to s--sell the back acreage. They're already talking about selling the land behind JCC, uh, and it--it's just--it's just a slow, slow contraction. Everybody means well, and, uh--but, uh, I personally don't see Louisville exploding again into the city 01:07:00that it was during the Civil War, uh, during World War II, and after.

ELY: Um-hm. OK, well, uh, I think we're done then, and, um, thank you so much for--

WEISS: You're welcome. I hope I was helpful.

ELY: --stories.

[End of interview]