Interview with Louis Waterman, September 14, 2016

ELY: It's September 14th, 2016. I'm Carol Ely. And I'm here with Louis Waterman for the Jewish Kentucky Oral History Project, sponsored by the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence. So thank you for coming down and joining us today.

WATERMAN: Thank you for doing this!

ELY: It's, uh, nice to have you here. And this'll be a combination of kind of personal, professional, community questions. And, uh, we're gonna do it somewhat chronologically, so we'll start at the very beginning with you. And just tell me when and where you were born.

WATERMAN: I was born here in Louisville, on May 15th, 1961, at the old Baptist Hospital.

ELY: Ah, not at Jewish.

WATERMAN: No. (laughs) They didn't do babies back then.

ELY: Ah. And, uh, who were your parents? What were their names and occupations?

WATERMAN: My father is David Waterman. I'm, I'm very fortunate. Both are still alive. My father is David Waterman. Um, he is a realtor by trade, also a lawyer by education and license. My mother is Marjorie Bloom Waterman, and she 00:01:00was sort of a jack-of-all-trades. She, uh, worked for ResCare for a long time, in Miami, running the Job Corps center in Little Havana, and then retired from that and became an English teacher, in prison, and is now a, a struggling author, trying to write.

ELY: What is she writing?

WATERMAN: She is writing a book called My Life In Jail. And she's writing her, uh, a book about her time where she's taught English and life skills in prison.

ELY: And are your parents both from Louisville?

WATERMAN: They are, originally. Yeah, both are from Louisville.

ELY: They are.

WATERMAN: My family's--Dad's family originated--came in through, uh, from Brody, Poland, into New York and immediately moved to Terre Haute, Indiana. My great-great grandfather on Dad's side is buried there. My, uh--his family then split at his death. Half came to Louisville and half went to Greenville, Mississippi.

ELY: Oh.

WATERMAN: Both went into the dry-good business. My mother's side--and that was about World--at the end of--between World War I and World War II--Mom's family, the Blooms, came in from Germany, from Berlin. They were in the diamond business. They came again through New York into Louisville, got into the diamond business, got out of the diamond business, and went into the meat business. Um, and stayed here and have been here since. They're one of the founding memol--members of the synagogue Adath Israel.

ELY: Um-hm. So the Waterman family--Poland? From Poland? You said they had a, I believe, a department store--

WATERMAN: --they did--

ELY: --on Preston?

WATERMAN: They had a department store on Preston, where the hospital, where the hospital exchange now sits. Uh, it was Waterman's Department Store. My grandfather had it. Uh, he unfortunately had a heart attack at what we consider to be a young age now--at least I do now--at fifty-five and had to quit working. Uh, and then sold it to family members. They ran it, they ran it, then 00:03:00subsequently, after they got it through the recession, it, it just sort of faded away. Uh, and he went into the real estate business.

ELY: Do you remember the story yourself or is--

WATERMAN: --no, I wasn't--

ELY: --no--

WATERMAN: --alive--

ELY: --it's before your time?

WATERMAN: Both my grandparents were, uh--Louis Waterman, for who--Louis Waterman, for whom I'm named, passed away before I was born, and Irwin--he was known as Brudge--Bloom passed away before I was born as well. So I don't have any memory of either grand--either grandfather.

ELY: Um-hm. And then the Blooms, is that B-L-O-O-M, or--

WATERMAN: --it is--

ELY: --u-m? There are prominent Blooms in Louisville. Is that the family?

WATERMAN: They are part of 'em.

ELY: Okay.

WATERMAN: Um, they owned the Jefferson Meat Market. And then Dr. Irwin Bloom--my middle name is Irwin--

ELY: --um-hm--

WATERMAN: --my mother's maiden name is Bloom--was one of the original, uh, people you see on the picture of the Jewish Hospital groundbreaking. Uh, that is a gr--best we can tell a great-great-great relative of some sort.

ELY: Okay.

WATERMAN: So that's about--

ELY: --that's I-N Bloom, I think is--

WATERMAN: --I think that's correct--

ELY: --right.

WATERMAN: But it's Irwin Bloom is--it's Irwin--Dr. something Irwin Bloom.

ELY: Um-hm. So they've been associated with Jewish Hospital--

WATERMAN: --correct--

ELY: --since there was a Jewish Hospital, essentially.

WATERMAN: Yeah, it's interesting, because the--that was the only connection we can find to the Bloom family. And then my--on--then it flipped over to the Waterman side. My uncle David Waterman was on the board for years. My uncle Norton Waterman was chief of surgery for years, and then I subsequently was on the board and became chairman of the board of Jewish Hospital during the merger.

ELY: Right. We'll talk some--

WATERMAN: --um--

ELY: --more about that--

WATERMAN: --so we have--

ELY: --later.

WATERMAN: --yes, the--well, it started with the Blooms. We have a--my family has a long (laughs) legacy of ownership of Jewish Hospital--

ELY: --right--

WATERMAN: --and, and, uh--in our hearts.

ELY: And, uh, do you know what, um, congregations your ancestors were part of--

WATERMAN: --I do--

ELY: --the Watermans and the Blooms?

WATERMAN: The, the Blooms have always been part of Adath Israel. They were the founding--one of the founding ten or fifteen families of Adath Israel. And my 00:05:00father's family, the Watermans were, were much more Conservative, almost Orthodox, and were always members of Adath Jeshurun.

ELY: So it was sort of a mixed marriage --(laughs)--in a sense.

WATERMAN: Correct.

ELY: Were--

WATERMAN: --they were--

ELY: --were there discussions about that in your family, growing up?

WATERMAN: No. Uh, Dad--when--Dad was raised almost an Orthodox, keeping kosher, and my grandmother of blessed memory, all the way to her death, was, was very Conservative if not Orthodox, and Dad just didn't want to do that. He wanted to be more Reform and liked the Reform movement.

ELY: Um-hm. So growing up, what kinds of, uh, Jewish things did you do in your home? Did you observe holidays, did--you--it doesn't sound like you kept kosher, but--

WATERMAN: No, we didn't.

ELY: Oh.

WATERMAN: But we did do all that.

ELY: Um-hm.

WATERMAN: It was interesting. I remember, as a child, celebrating Christmas in two ways. I remember in our home it was Santa Claus. No trees, no anything, it was just Santa Claus. And at some age that stopped and became only Hanukkah. 00:06:00My great-grandmother on the Bloom side, my mother's grandmother, insisted on celebrating Christmas. She'd come from Germany. They had a tree. She insisted on a full dinner with gifts to be exchanged. Uh, it was really interesting, 'cause growing up, I was raised in Judaism. We--Sunday school, we did all the holidays. Uh, Hanukkah, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, um--the, the--when I would say the holidays, the, the major holidays. Um, we, um--there were Jewish--there was a lot of Jew--I remember a lot of Jewish books around our home. I remember, um, arti--what I would say, uh, items of personal property, Stars of David, we had mezuzahs on the door, those sort of things. There was no question but that we were Jewish, and it was sort of an odd piece in my mother's family that there was always this Christmas dinner. And several members of Mom's family remained Conservative, and they still were required to come, and 00:07:00nobody was gonna cross my great-grandmother, Grab (??) , so they all did that anyway.

ELY: Hmm. Did you have brothers and sisters?

WATERMAN: I do. I have--I'm the oldest of four. My--the next one down, my d--my sister Julie, she was a teacher and just retired this year, from Jefferson County Public Schools. She was a schoolteacher for years, for twenty-some-odd years. My--the next one down is Michael, who is now employed by KentuckyOne and works at Jewish Hospital. He is an engineer--I call it an efficiency engineer. (Ely sighs) He calls it an industrial engineer. But he works for KentuckyOne and the entire hospital chain, doing that. We have some funny stories when I was chairman of the board on that one, um, with my--

ELY: --all right--

WATERMAN: --brother running--

ELY: --well--

WATERMAN: --around the place--

ELY: --remind me to ask you about --

WATERMAN: --um--

ELY: -- funny stories.

WATERMAN: The--and then my baby sister is married to a rabbi and--who she met at, at what is now GUCI [Goldman Union Camp Institute] Camp, which those days was Union Camp Institute in Zionsville. And they have four kids, and they live 00:08:00in Detroit. She runs--in ad--in addition to being the rebbetzin, she, um, runs a business representing Audi and VW in, I guess I would call it public relations type stuff in the area.

ELY: So, uh, are there any other, um, family stories or traditions? The Christmas story is very interesting. Is there anything else you can think of from, uh, the previous generations of your family--

WATERMAN: --Yeah, I don't--

ELY: --that's notable?

WATERMAN: --I don't remember that. I know my grandmother on my dad's side, we always had, uh--after Sunday school we would pick her up and have lunch at the house. Uh, Mom and Dad got divorced when I was thirteen, uh--although Dad was very good about making sure we stayed in contact, and I'm still in contact with both sides of the family. Um, all four of us lived with Dad, which was pretty unusual back in 1974. Um, and so, uh, I remember that, the--my--the other thing 00:09:00I do remember, because I was named after my grandfather, who was my grandmother's husband, I got treated better than--(both laugh)--all the other grandchildren. If, if there was a big present for Hanukkah or a birthday, like a bike, she insisted on getting it for me. I--she was regularly giving out money. She would give out dollar bills or five dollars--I always got more. Um, it wasn't very fair, but she just always made--and she made sure I knew I got more because I was Louis Waterman, and they weren't. (laughs)

ELY: Okay. (laughs)

WATERMAN: That was my grandmother's way.

ELY: And what neighborhood did you grow up in? Where did you live?

WATERMAN: I grew up--I was, I was born ov--right next to the JCC, on Abigail Drive. I don't remember that. We lived in an apartment there. And then Mom and Dad moved sometime in--before 1963--over to Dunbarton Wynde. So I grew up in what was Hayfield Dundee Estates. And then when I was in fifth grade, we 00:10:00moved to--so right around eleven or twelve we moved to, uh, Glenview Hills and built a home there and lived out there. So I lived i--from sixth grade on, out in what I would call the East End of the Ballard area.

ELY: Right. And by that time, there really was not a sense of Jewish neighborhood anymore in Louisville. Or would you disagree?

WATERMAN: Oh, I disagree.

ELY: Okay.

WATERMAN: I, I would tell you that, that I was living in a very Jewish neighborhood. All my friends, the v--the vast majority up and down Dunbarton, Newburg Road, Sutherland, um, Tartan Way, all up--it was all around Atherton High School was very--

ELY: --um-hm--

WATERMAN: -- I mean, we teased about calling it Little Israel.

ELY: Mmm.

WATERMAN: Now, what happened is we--unfortunately, we were one of the first to move. But where I moved to became Little Israel. And--I mean, everybody just moved out to that area.

ELY: It's near the temple, right?

WATERMAN: Now it's--right. We were in walking--less than a mile from the temple, um, today, and that's still--i--now everybody seems to have moved east. 00:11:00I live in Sutherland neighborhood, and we have an enormous number of Jewish families in that neighborhood now.

ELY: Interesting.

WATERMAN: So yeah, I would still tell you that we have a high density of Jewish populations every place I lived. J--the just--when we moved to Glenview Hills, off Lime Kiln--and obviously the temple wasn't there, uh, it, it--we were the first of the group to move that way, and so it was--my friends were still back over by the JCC at--for that period of time. (sniffs)

ELY: And where did you go to school?

WATERMAN: I went to Belknap Elementary. Then I went to Wilder for a year. Then they opened Dunn Elementary, and I did one year at Dunn. And th--in those days, for middle school you went to--you went to either Kammerer Middle School or Ballard High School for your middle school, which was seventh and eighth grades, and I ended up at Ballard for seventh and eighth. Uh, went straight to 00:12:00high school at Ballard, got bussed to Central High School in tenth--had a great year, because what happened was all the guys from Atherton were being--that I grew up with--were being bussed to Central at the same time. So we all got--ended up back together to wreak havoc on poor Principal McPherson, uh, for a year down there. And then for eleventh and twelfth, back to Ballard.

ELY: So Central was largely African American at that point?

WATERMAN: Noooo. It was--

ELY: --no?--

WATERMAN: --at that point, that was the second year of bussing--

ELY: --okay--

WATERMAN: --and it was largely white, because most of the African American puni--community--was being bussed out, and we were all being bussed in.

ELY: I see. So what was your experience of bussing? Was it just routine for you, or--

WATERMAN: --I--

ELY: --were there conflicts?

WATERMAN: --it didn't bother me at all. We had a great time. But again, I had an opportunity--I had started playing soccer in my earlier years, about 13, and so what happened, because it was a relatively new sport to Louisville, the players were from all over. And so--and, and again, I'd grown up with all these 00:13:00guys over by Atherton, and some by Eastern, and we all got all bussed in to--in to Central. So we had--it was like a giant homecoming. It was phenomenal! We had a great time. We nev--I don't remember ever being afraid. I--and we walked around down there, there was a McDonald's and a Red Barn--which we were forbidden to go to, which of course the first thing we did was go there--um, just 'cause we're not supposed to walk off the campus. I mean, we thought it was unbelievable. We had our own swimming pool. You know, we'd never been in a high school that had a swimming pool. Um, so we had a great experience. I mean, I, I really enjoyed (laughs) my year at Central. I had a great time. And we had a very good soccer team, which helped.

ELY: So at the same time you were having, um, Jewish education--

WATERMAN: --um-hm--

ELY: --Hebrew school, Sunday school?

WATERMAN: Did--we went to Sunday school. There was no Hebrew high school like there is now, um--which I subsequently taught in. But the, um--yeah, we went to Sunday school, bar mitzvah, uh, Mrs. Naimoni (??), who was Dr. Naimoni's wife, 00:14:00uh--because we were Reform, we weren't learning--I wasn't going to Hebrew school--

ELY: --um-hm--

WATERMAN: --regularly. So--

ELY: --so you went to the temple--

WATERMAN: --I went--

ELY: --yup--

WATERMAN: --well, I went--yeah, I was going down to Third Street--

ELY: --right. Okay--

WATERMAN: --for Sunday school, and you had to be schooled in Hebrew, and so Miss Naimoni--there was a group of us that had bar mitzvahs all around the same time, and she started a year and a half out teaching us Hebrew. And I, I have a recollection that failed miserably, so she resulted--she resorted to just having us memorize our Torah portions, um, uh, and I'm sure--she is still alive, that I know of, and she is a saint for having put up with all of us.

ELY: So what was a bar mitzvah like then? Was it the huge party it's become?

WATERMAN: No. It, it, it was--it was somewhat the same, but the parties weren't nearly as large. I remember we had a party, uh, and I was inv--allowed to invite sort of my bar mitzvah class to come, and Mom and Dad had a bigger 00:15:00group. We were all out back or in the front yard. It hap--I--it was in May, so we were all outside. I don't remember much of the food or anything like that. I remember I got my first, uh--I had a suit made that I still have a picture of somewhere, and it's a plaid gray, blue, and red suit, with a, a, a crushed velvet blue ti--bow tie. And in those days the platform shoes, much like the women wear today, with the platform on the bottom, I had a set of those. And I had long hair at the time, so, um, I was--

ELY: --I think that--

WATERMAN: -- quite the look.

ELY: --photo should--

WATERMAN: My children--

ELY: --be in the archives.

WATERMAN: Oh, it should be somewhere. My children each have a copy, 'cause when they found it, they thought that was the most amazing thing they could ever see.

ELY: Um-hm.

WATERMAN: So--but that's--that was what we did.

ELY: Right. And did you invite your Jewish and non-Jewish friends?

WATERMAN: Oh, yes. And it was interesting, because when I moved to Ballard, as I moved over and moved to Ballard, the va--I moved from a place where almost--a bunch of my friends were Jewish to they weren't. Cause again, it was sort of trailing me--we, for whatever reason, were from the first families to move into 00:16:00that area. So the vast majority of my friends at school at that point were not Jewish.

ELY: And, uh, Adath Israel was downtown, then--

WATERMAN: --on Third Street--

ELY: --on Third Street?

WATERMAN: Um-hm.

ELY: And--

WATERMAN: --next to the library--

ELY: --must have moved out where you were at some point--

WATERMAN: --it did, and--

ELY: --in your growing up--

WATERMAN: --I don't remember when, but I remember moving--I was--I can tell you, I was done with my, um, my Jewish, formal Jewish education at that point. Now, I continued in Sunday school till confirmation, so to--through tenth grade.

ELY: Um-hm.

WATERMAN: But I was always downtown.

ELY: Mmm. So, um, tell me a little bit more about your, your father and his involvement with the community.

WATERMAN: You know, it's interesting. Dad, Dad was not very involved in the community. Um, people will tell me I'm overly involved. Dad always instilled in all of us that we had some obligation to give back. Um, the--but Dad--I can remember Dad got very involved in the apartment association, because he was--his 00:17:00real estate business was managing apartments, and in fact, formed it--he created it--he's the original president of, uh, Louisville, or Kentucky, Apartment Association. And he also got very active in Sigma Alpha Mu, when it was here at the University of Louisville. So--and I know he was the alumni president, and he was active at the national level at some point. He was not president. But I just--I've seen the plaques on the walls and the things, and I know we used to have these fraternity guys coming over to the house all the time. And I knew he was a Sammy because we had paddles and those sort of things from the, from the fraternity house. Dad was--but Dad wasn't overly active in the community. That just wasn't his shtick. Mom was much more so.

ELY: That was my next question, yeah.

WATERMAN: Right. Mom was very active. Mom, uh--Mom and Dad got married young. Mom did not finish her college education, so in my younger years, Mom was always in school. If you got sick at school or something happened, you called Dad, 'cause Mom was at U of L, getting her undergraduate degree at the Kent 00:18:00School of Social Work and her master's degree. The, um--and she was active in everything you can think of, as long as it was liberal. Um, she in fact, at--for a period of time, right before the divorce, she moved to--somewhere in Arkansas, where we were bringing in--we as a country were bringing in Vietnam refugees and processing them and getting 'em out throughout the country after, uh, Vietnam fell. And ended up, she, she was gone for three or four months, and ended up coming back and bringing a former fighter pilot with her. And he lived with us until Mom and Dad got divorced and then went and lived with Mom, and ended up becoming a very successful businessman here in town.

ELY: Mmm. So do you know what organization she was involved with?

WATERMAN: I don't. It was, it was--I--I just don't have any idea. I would guess it was the Red Cross, but that's a guess.

ELY: Was she in National Council of Jewish Women?

WATERMAN: She was, for a while. I remember that, because she had a pen--

ELY: --right. The pen--

WATERMAN: --and I think I still have the pen.

ELY: Interesting. So did your parents have certain expectations for you as far as what you would do professionally, or were you expected to stay in Louisville and--

WATERMAN: --no, they really--

ELY: --no--

WATERMAN: --didn't. I don't ever remember that. Um, Mom was out of the picture for a long time after the divorce. So, um, she lived here for a while and then moved to Miami, where she remains today. The--I don't remember that with Dad at all. I mean, Dad just wanted us to--there were some life changes at that point. We were members of Standard Country Club, which of course was the Jewish country club at the time, and we had to leave that. Um, and so it was funny, because I had gone--I had grown up, a lot of the time, at Standard Country Club, not the JCC. We left that, so I ended up back at the JCC right around the times I wa--time I was heading into clubs, AZA [Aleph Zadik Aleph], and so I got very active over there again. Um, even though I was living on the 00:20:00completely other side of town.

ELY: Yeah, you've mentioned Standard. I hadn't really thought about that as being part of the life of someone growing up in--

WATERMAN: --oh--

ELY: --Louisville, but I should have. So--

WATERMAN: --certainly on the--on the--

ELY: --tell me more about the Standard Club.

WATERMAN: Well, east end of town, it was the Jewish country club. You know, of course it was founded, um, because the Jews couldn't be members of any other club. And it was a very diverse club. I mean, I can remember, even back in those days, having non-Jews in the, the club. And we all called it the club. I'm not sure why, that's like the temple and the club. I suspect because there aren't any others, so that's what it was. The, uh, but that's where we grew up. I mean, you know, you--Mom and Dad would drop me off in the morning during the summers, and I was--had sort of a full rein of the club, to play tennis, to play golf, to swim, and all my buddies were there doing the same thing. Or we'd go fishing at the pond, and we all sort of hung out and just ran around each other, and Mom and Dad would--somebody would show up at 4:00 and pick us up.

ELY: So Jews and non-Jews at the club?

WATERMAN: Ye--mo--I--in those days it was 90 percent Jews--

ELY: --um-hm--

WATERMAN: --but yes. There were non-Jews, and there were people we knew that were non-Jewish.

ELY: (whispers) Right. And, uh, then you switched over, you said, to the JCC.

WATERMAN: Yeah. After--

ELY: --were there--

WATERMAN: --the divorce, Dad--

ELY: --a lot of youth groups?--

WATERMAN: --what I remember is that Dad said, "I can't spend that kind of money on the club anymore, so we're gonna go back to the JCC." And that--I remember that being difficult because I was not driving yet, and so still getting back--all the way back to the JCC was difficult when, again, the vast majority of the friends, particularly the club members, the AZA clubs, still lived over there. And so I was having trouble getting--you know, and Dad had three other kids behind me, so he couldn't--you know, in those days, there, there were no nannies. There were no--at least, we didn't have one. And, you know, he had to do all the driving. So, um, I had more difficulty staying connected socially. And, and to some extent, that, I think, pulled me away from the JCC after a period of time. I just, you know, couldn't be there, and my friends--so that I 00:22:00was running around with guys in the neighborhood, a couple of whom were Jewish but not the vast majority. So I would say my middle school and high school years were spent mostly with non-Jews.

ELY: Um-hm. Well, people remember those clubs with great affection.

WATERMAN: Oh, great stuff.

ELY: Yeah. So what kinds of things did you do when you were--

WATERMAN: --oh, kissed my--

ELY: --were able to--

WATERMAN: --first girl--

ELY: --attend?--

WATERMAN: --on a--I mean, they, they created a way to date. You know, they, they had--it was like being in a fraternity and a sorority in high school. So they--you--you had gone to cotillion--we all had to do that, um--which was interesting, because it was a--not a Jewish thing, but all the Jews went to it, to this cotillion. And it--and so you learned some manners, but then these--the clubs would organize social events. And back in those days, the ki--we didn't go out with groups. You had a date. And so you very quickly learned how to call somebody on the--call a girl on the phone and ask someone out. And--now, again, Dad had to do the driving, or you got one of the older guys in the club to do the driving. But it--I thought it was wonderful. I got to go to some 00:23:00national conventions. That was my first taste of getting out with other people besides having gone to--to Union Camp, gone to summer camp.

ELY: And cotillion. Te--just describe--

WATERMAN: --oh--

ELY: --what cotillion was.

WATERMAN: Cotillion is very funny, because it was taught by the Ogdens. And the only reason I remember that is one of my classmates at Ballard was Bobby Ogden; his parents were the teachers. And it used to be held at the St. Matthew's Women's Club on Lexington R--I think it's Lexington or Grinstead, whatever that road is. And all the Jewish families went there. I mean, you'd walk in, it was almost--it was like at almost the synagogue! I think some of 'em were actually held at the temple at different times once it moved out to the east end. And--but it was not a Jewish thing. There were other people there. And they taught us manners, they taught us to dance, they taught us different kinds of dances. Um, which, you know, came in very handy with bar mitzvahs and 00:24:00things, 'cause we--there were families having big parties. Again, I don't remember a lot of bands, but I remember what I would--what you'd call disc jockeys, and music being played.

ELY: So did it culminate in a big dance where everyone--

WATERMAN: --no--

ELY: --used best manners?

WATERMAN: Unh-uh.

ELY: No?

WATERMAN: No.

ELY: Just a class.

WATERMAN: Just a class, and you went, and we, we, we complained and kvetched about it forever, and we all looked forward to going.

ELY: Boys and girls.

WATERMAN: Right.

ELY: Uh, so then, uh, what was your decision-making process about college? Where did you go? What were you thinking?

WATERMAN: Mine was really dumb. (laughs) Um, I was an okay student at Ballard. I wasn't stellar, but I wasn't bad. The--Mom and Dad had pretty well instilled in me, "Don't stay in state. You need to get out of here." Uh, like most of the Jews, I got recruited by fraternities at IU [Indiana University], my senior year, which was part of their process. So we were going up there. I had an older cousin; Dad's niece was up at IU and in a sorority up there. She was dating some guy, so I got invited to the ADPi House, to a couple other houses 00:25:00for these weekends, where they sort of show off the, the school and the fraternities to, um, seniors in college. I had been playing soccer and had been playing very successfully. Uh, one of my dear friends, Bill Ha--Billy Handmaker, Stuart Handmaker's son, ig--he went to GW. He was a really good student. I mean, he was--and in the advanced program. And I don't know why, for a whim, I applied there. And I also made contact with the coach at George Washington. (laughs) And to my utter surprise, the coach came back and said, "Yeah, I'm really interested in you." Um, and so Dad and I--so I had applied to IU, I'd applied to St. Louis, I'd applied to some other schools, but I was really headed to IU is where I was headed. The--and this coach came back and said, "I'm really--I am interested in you." So they had us come up on July F--the July Fourth weekend, 'cause I remember--I remember meeting with the coach, I remember the--the, um, the soccer field was at the water gate, and the 00:26:00school was at Nineteenth and F, so it was sort of interesting that it finally occurred to me that this is Watergate? You know, that--wait a minute. You know, I thought Watergate was something different, and, um, th--but then they took--they took me and two or three other guys to, uh--down to the Mall to watch the fireworks. And so here we are--I mean, I--I'm about as green as they come behind the ears. I'm watching fireworks on--on the--on the National Mall, over the Capitol Building with, you know, the National Symphony playing. Um, I was hooked. (laughs) So I immediately--(laughs)--signed every letter I needed to sign to play for George Washington University. So--

ELY: --in what sport? I'm sorry--

WATERMAN: --soccer.

ELY: Soccer. Okay.

WATERMAN: The, um--that turned out to be a debacle. But otherwise that started--I started my education at George Washington; I ended at the University of Kentucky.

ELY: So how long were you at GW?

WATERMAN: One semester.

ELY: Okay.

WATERMAN: Hence the debacle.

ELY: Yes, sounds like. Well, I won't ask too many questions about that--

WATERMAN: --no, it was--one, I lost a scholarship because they got somebody better, and two, I just--when I lost scholarship, Dad couldn't afford to send--with me being the first to go, he couldn't afford to send all four of us. And I just didn't like DC, and I really wasn't--it turned out I was on the team because I could get in with my grades, 'cause I was a good student, and in those days, in 1979, you had to have a certain number of Americans on your team. (laughs) Guess what I was. I was the quota--

ELY: --token American--

WATERMAN: --in reverse.

ELY: Ah. So, uh, were you able to play sports again?

WATERMAN: I did. I came back and played at UK, played soccer at UK. And it was a plub--a club sport at that point in time. It was not Division I. But had a gre--just--for somebody who was trained, born, and told, "Never go in state," I had a great experience and got a great education.

ELY: So d--at college, did you participate in Jewish campus life in--

WATERMAN: --none--

ELY: --anyway?

WATERMAN: Not at all. In fact, while I was at GW I pledged to Sigma Chi. And 00:28:00I remember calling my father and saying, "Dad, I've been offered a bid to pledge Sigma Chi." And Dad said, "Isn't that the one with the white cross?" And I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "Isn't that Sons of Christ?" And I said, "I don't think so." He goes, "Are there any Jews in this thing?" And I said, "Well, Chip Sobel--" who was Homer Sobel's son, from Louisville "--was my pledge trainer. I said, "My big brother's Clint--Kim Bloomberg, from Dallas. There's a black guy and an openly gay guy. Um, and I've got Schwartzes and all kinds of other things." And he said, "Okay." So I became a Sigma Chi, not knowing at that point that I was leaving there. And of course I transferred to a southern school, which was way different. Except the moment you got there, the whole house was Jewish. It--for whatever reason, years and years before I ever got there, Bobby Glick and Richard Schultz, from Louisville, pledged Sigma Chi. And 00:29:00there were no Jewish fraternities at Kentucky. And so, j--I assume just through the old locker room type thing, where you grab the next guy coming in, it became the Jewish house. So to this day, there is a, a, an unusually large number of Jewish Sigma Chis coming out of Kentucky. And I'll bet a third of our house was Jewish when I was there--which is just fascinating, since it's a--

ELY: --interesting--

WATERMAN: --big white cross.

ELY: So--(laughs)--sorry, I have to cough. Okay. So, uh, there's a high concentration of Jews there. Did you do anything Jewishly together? For instance, did you have--

WATERMAN: --we would do--

ELY: --Hanukkah?

WATERMAN: No. We did do--most of us went to synagogue. There were two synagogues in Lexington at the time. There was an Orthodox one, and I remember because the rabbi was blind. And it was just fascinating. I didn't understand it all because it was in Hebrew. And there was a Reform one up closer to campus--um, Rabbi Leffler, maybe, was the rabbi. And so we would go on the High 00:30:00Holy Days there, and we would do those sort of things. But no, we never--if there was a Hillel or those sort of things, we just didn't do them. We were all in the fraternity house. Now, we had a cook at the fraternity house named Gracie Cook. She was known as Baby, called everybody baby, just passed away this year. Uh, and she was a true angel on this earth, to my knowledge--I mean, she had wings somewhere, and I don't know where they were. Um, she was very Baptist, but she was fascinated by religion, and we would sit around in the kitchen with her and talk about the Old and New Testament. And she was very well versed. And when she figured out that Yom Kippur was a fasting day, she refused to serve any of the Jew--even though some of us didn't fast, you were not allowed to eat, and if she caught you eating, she'd hit you with a spatula. She--now, she did the same thing with Catholic boys. They were not allowed to eat meat on Friday, and if she caught them, she would whup 'em with a spatula. And it was just her way, so--and then she would always make sure there was a 00:31:00break-fast meal set aside for us that when the sun went down--she would stay a little later, and when the sun went down, we were allowed to eat. But if she caught you eating after dinner on Erev Yom Kippur--(laughs)--any time she had to either write--if you were--mo--a couple of us did fast. But some of the guys would just go to the student center, go to McDonald's, because she wouldn't serve you.

ELY: Interesting. (laughs)

WATERMAN: Yeah. (laughs)

ELY: So at some point you decided on a career in law?

WATERMAN: Eh, I guess. (laughs) The, um--I didn't--you know, I really didn't know what to do. I got a business degree because I didn't--you know, I had three brothers and sisters behind me; I didn't know if we could affor--I just didn't have any concept of affording law school or not. Uh, got into law school and said, "What the heck, it's better than working." Dad said it was okay, so I went and ended up at the University of Louisville for law school.

ELY: Um-hm. And you decided to specialize in family law then, or--

WATERMAN: No, no, no.

ELY: No?

WATERMAN: I came out of law school in 1983--I'm sorry, in '86. I graduated UK 00:32:00in '83, came out of Louisville Law School in '86, and I was bound, damned, and determined to be a courtroom lawyer, business--I was gonna do business defense. Um, clerked my latch--last year for Justice William McAnulty, of blessed memory, and had a wonderful experience. There was a, a horrible, horrible murder case in this town, called--they call it the Trinity murders, where two young men from Trinity were, were kidnapped and murdered, um, in a horrible manner, on their way to the Trinity-Manual football game. And I ended up being Justice--he was Judge McAnulty at the time--his, um, clerk during that. So I was in the room with these two guys. I was around these guys all the time, doing the legal research and back and forth with him on that. So I knew immediately criminal law is not what I wanted to do. And I got hired by Goldberg and Simpson, and, uh, started doing business law and found it horribly boring. Just found it--there was no passion to it, there was no oomph to it, it was, you know, guys 00:33:00fighting over everybody else's money. Um, and then a fraternity brother of mine from Kentucky called and said, "Mom and Dad are getting divorced, and Dad's a da, da, da, da. Can you help Mom?" And I said, "Sure!" So I went to Rebecca Westerfield, uh, who was na--who, uh, became Judge Westerfield, and Mitch Charney in the firm, and said, "I got this divorce case. Can I bring it in?" They said, "Sure, you can do it, but you gotta do it with us." So that was a start. And I just--it hit me that, that I--this is what I could do. This is what I liked. I mean, it was, um--you know, it dealt with human beings. It dealt with helping human beings through the worst time of their life, up to that point--at least for most of 'em--and it just lit me up. I mean, I don't know any other way to say it. It just caught me.

ELY: There are, uh, obviously quite a lot of Jews in the legal profession--

WATERMAN: --um-hm--

ELY: --in Louisville and elsewhere. Did you find that you had any particular mentor or someone that, uh, helped guide your steps?

WATERMAN: There were really two. The main one is Fred Goldberg, who's still my 00:34:00mentor to this--to this day. He is ninety. He always tells everybody I'm his illegitimate son--(laughs)--and he won't name the, the, the mother. Um, and he, he was as smart a human being as I ever met in my entire life. He had the ability to both--legally, his mind was unbelievable in, in what he could do, and he had what I would call sechel. He could see what was going to happen and predict it and be able to, to move a case that way. Um, turns--and he was a really--a, a pretty strong taskmaster. I mean, there were some not pleasant memories with Fred. I--which, of course, you never--he was "Mr. Goldberg" then. Um, as--particularly after I left the firm--I'm now back in the firm, after eighteen years, but I was--when I left the firm, he and I continued that friendship. And it really became a friendship at that point. I don't do anything in my life to this day--he's ninety, and I don't do anything of any 00:35:00significance without talking to Fred. We generally have dinner every Sunday. Um, the second person was a fella named David Brill. David is a Jewish fella who was Fred's right-hand person. David has since left the practice of law and went into the furniture business, and made a hell of a lot more money, with a lot less ulcers. Uh, but he also was just a brilliant legal thinker, and so the three of us, with Fred leading, I ended up being the third chair on some of these cases, and, and that's really where I got my training. But I would attribute it to Fred, um, for that.

ELY: The legal profession is one of the few where there's a positive stereotype about Jews, I guess. Have you ever encountered stereotypes or anti-Semitism--

WATERMAN: --oh--

ELY: --in your professional life?

WATERMAN: --yes.

ELY: Okay. (laughs)

WATERMAN: Two weeks ago, I got a call from someone who had looked up on the website and wanted a Jewish lawyer. I did not call them back. Um--yes. No, 00:36:00I've run into--I've been in cases where somebody'll testify and say, "Well, I Jewed 'em down." I had a case, uh, where an opposing council, this year, sent a text message to the parenting coordinator and said, "You need to come out of the attic, hidi--like Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis and make a decent decision." That got read into the courtroom aloud yesterday. Um, so it's there. The--so you run into some of that. Now, I would tell you, you would run into some camaraderie amongst all us Jews in the courtroom too. You know? It's, it's sort of its own little club, unspoken or unsigned-up club, in and of itself.

ELY: Is there any formal organization of Jewish lawyers?

WATERMAN: Not that I know of.

ELY: You would know if there was, I'm sure.

WATERMAN: Well, I'm--and I'm--yeah--and I'm a member of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, which is a hugely Jewish organization, but it's a national, uh, fellowsh--fellows program of matrimonial lawyers from all over the 00:37:00cou--there's only seventeen hundred of us, and the vast, vast majority are Jewish.

ELY: Hmm.

WATERMAN: But it is not a per se Jewish organization.

ELY: Well, to turn to the, the personal again--

WATERMAN: --sure.--

ELY: --how did you meet your wife? How and when?

WATERMAN: Um, Mary and I--Mary and I met in 1983 at law school. She and I were in different sections--the law school gets broken into the initial class. You don't have any choices, and your class gets broken into two pieces. And she and I met in law school.

ELY: Hmm.

WATERMAN: And went all the way through law school, and five years after that--and she said I had to fish or cut bait. (laughs) And I was perfectly happy fishing, apparently. Um--

ELY: And you have children?

WATERMAN: I do. Mary and I got divorced two years ago--

ELY: --um-hm--

WATERMAN: --and she is a phenomenal woman, a--just fabulous. And it was interesting, because she was--she's Catholic, and we raised the children in Judaism, um, and she did not convert. But yes, we have--I have a son, who's the assistant soccer coach at Tufts University. He--

ELY: --oh, I went to Tufts--

WATERMAN: --did you?

ELY: Yes. Yes.

WATERMAN: He is a Fighting Jumbo, uh, and loves it up--I mean, just loves Jumbo--you're wearing the correct color if you had some brown on. And my daughter is a senior at the University of South Carolina and, unfortunately, is headed to law school. (laughs) Regardless of her mother and I--we don't agree on everything, but we agree that she shouldn't do that, and she is just bound, damned, and determined to go to law school.

ELY: Well, what were the conversations like with your wife about raising the children in Judaism as, as you mentioned?

WATERMAN: You know, it--we--it was really good. Um, one thing that, that--I mean, she is just--Mary is a--she is the deputy general counsel of Brown-Forman. She is a brilliant--she--besides Fred, she may have the finest legal mind I've ever seen. Um, and just a phenomenal mother and a great lady all the way around. The, um--and again, I don't know whether we were overly mature or what it was, but we talked a long time, and, and she had--we had conversations about converting, and I said, "I don't think I need you to convert, but I would 00:39:00really--it really is important to me that the children be raised in Judaism." And I felt that was an obligation I had to the Jewish race, family, people, was to, to make sure there were two to replace two, even though there really weren't two. (laughs) Um, and she didn't mind that. We had some conversations, uh, with Rabbi Diamond. We had some conversations with a young guy, and I can't remember his name--he was the priest at the cathedral at the time. He was phenomenal fella. Um, and it--Mary was not happy with her upbringing in Catholicism about if you do something wrong, God's gonna getcha! And, and she knew enough, and we talked about enough about that Judaism wasn't really that--you know, that religion didn't work that way. There's plenty of it in the, the Torah, but that's not how it really worked. And so she thought it was a much more healthy way to raise kids, and our real--our real feeling was that they had to have a belief in God, uh, but we wanted them to have some foundation 00:40:00in religion, and we thought we could teach them what they wanted about Catholicism and then they could choose to do what they wanted to do.

ELY: So did you celebrate Jewish holidays and--

WATERMAN: All of them.

ELY: Um-hm.

WATERMAN: Kids went to Sunday school, celebrated all the Jewish holidays: Hanukkah, Passover, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, um--you know, when the kids were smaller, they would come home with Sukkot, and some of the other minor--Purim. Uh, we always had a big Purim party in our neighborhood, and so we always went to that. The--we did all those. Now, we also celebrated, um, the Christian holidays. We had Easter, and we had Christmas. We always had a Christmas tree, um, and our feeling--my feeling was, and I had long conversations, Mary and I, before we got married, about if she's going to make Rosh Hashanah dinner and learn to do those things, why shouldn't we have a Christmas tree in the home? That was appropriate. It was her holiday. And we ended up putting a group together we called Mixed Doubles. And they were people, like us, that had been married, Christians and Jews, and were generally raising their children one or 00:41:00the other. And so we always did Rosh Hashanah dinner at our house, and we always also did Easter dinner at our house. And this same group, plus family, were always invited, so that you--we did both. Um, and I just--we--that was the way we made it work. Um--

ELY: There are some formal interfaith programs, but it sounds like this was spontaneous.

WATERMAN: This was--

ELY: --you just--

WATERMAN: --a lot of Jews in the neighborhood--

ELY: --did it on your own--

WATERMAN: --and a lot of people we just had gotten to know with age-group kids that were intermarried. So we did it, um, and--and it really worked. I mean, I--it was just a great experience, and, and I, now, even though we're divorced, I continue that. We still have the, the interfaith--I still have the, um, mixed group for Rosh Hashanah now.

ELY: And do your kids feel themselves to be both, or do they identify as Jews?

WATERMAN: I think the kids would tell you they're Jewish. They're--at this point, I would categorize them as nonpracticing. Um, I know they go every other 00:42:00year to synagogue on the High Holy Days, 'cause I'll get a note, "Hey, I was in synagogue today," da, da, da. I know they're both dating non-Jews, and so I know they celebra--and to this day they celebrate Christmas with their mother, as they should, and they, they generally go to her parents' home in Virginia. Um, and I don't think--they may do something on Easter, they may not. I think my son goes with his girlfriend, just because they're both in Boston, but I don't think they go to church. My kids don't go to church, that I know of. They, they celebrate--I would tell you they celebrate Chri--always did celebrate Christmas and Easter in a non--in a, um, nonreligious way. I mean, when--even when we were married and going--we'd always go to her parents for Christmas. They would go to church; we wouldn't. Um, it was a very family-oriented secular type of celebration. I mean, the kids knew what it was, and I thought it was important that they understood it. And we would talk about Catholicism. The 00:43:00kids, as they grew up, would ask, "What's the difference between Judaism and Catholicism? Why is this? What's this?" (sniffs) "How does it work?" "Why is Jesus not the Christ or the Savior and why do you--what do you--what does J--how does Judaism look at him?" So--

ELY: It sounds like a lot of discussions in your family.

WATERMAN: It was fun. I me--yeah, I me--and for the most part, it worked really, really well.

ELY: Um-hm. Well, let's switch a little bit, talk about Jewish Hospital--

WATERMAN: --okay--

ELY: --um, you mentioned your uncles who were there--

WATERMAN: --yes--

ELY: --can you talk a little bit more about when and how they became involved?

WATERMAN: I really don't know much. I know Uncle Norton--I know more about Uncle Norton, who's the younger of them, and, and the only surviving one. He went to Harvard Medical School. He grew up in Greenville. He's part of the side of the family that ended up in Greenville, Mississippi. Came--went to Harvard Medical School and came back to Louisville. Uh, was unmarried at the time and married a woman from--not Peoria--somewhere in, around that area in Illinois. And she converted to Judaism. And I remember them al-Mom and Dad always talking that she was a fanatical Jew because she had converted and was 00:44:00doing everything. Um, and Aunt Judy and Uncle Norton are still--I still see them regularly. But he ended up in a surge--as a surgeon, and became--just ended up chief of surgery at the hospital. Uncle David was a lawyer, his brother, from Greenville, Mississippi, and ended up representing the hospital off and on throughout the years. I don't know much about that. I did find some stuff where he was on the board at that point.

ELY: And then you became involved in the hospital governance.

WATERMAN: Yeah. Fred Goldberg got me--I watched Fred--Fred had been involved in the board forever. Um, he, in fact, singlehandedly raised--created what's known now as the KentuckyOne Foundation. It was, at that time, the Jewish Hospital Foundation. He singlehandedly, as chair, raised a hundred million dollars for the hospital over a ten-year period. I mean, just unbelievable. And it has a name--has a room named after him. He--I watched that and want--always wanted to get involved with that, really to be like him, not because I knew the family connection at the time. So at one point I pestered 00:45:00him enough that--(laughs)--in order to make me go away, he got me on the board of Four Courts, which was our--which was a Jewish senior home, old-age home, that was owned by the hospital. And so I started off--that's how I started in, in my trip to that. From there went to the foundation, and then from there went to what we called the Big Board at the time.

ELY: Um-hm. So the hospital itself went through a huge transition--recently.

WATERMAN: Yes.

ELY: And were you--did you have a front-row seat for--

WATERMAN: --I was--

ELY: --that?

WATERMAN: --chairman of the board.

ELY: Right. So can you describe how the idea of the merger came about, and how it practically worked, and--

WATERMAN: The--years before, there was talk--hospitals were starting to struggle, hey--at the heydays of the seventies and eighties, where hospitals were making money hand over fist was clearly coming to an end. Um, the hospital's starting to struggle. We, we had badly--because of the boom, we had 00:46:00overbuilt, so our fixed cost were killer. People were moving out into the suburbs, particularly for medical care, so that the downtown became a pain in the tush for everybody to move around. There was some discussion early on about, you know, we need to do something. We either need to acquire more hospitals, acquire more services. So there was an early talk of merging with Norton Hospital. And that never got out of the boardroom--actually never got out of the two boardrooms. Then years later there was a talk about doing some kind of deal with St. Mary's & Elizabeth, here in town. And that was owned by CHI, Catholic Health Initiatives. And we did that deal, and ended up being where we--(Ely sighs)--when I say "we," Jewish Hospital--we had 75 percent ownership and St. Mary's & Elizabeth had 25. And, and it was called Jewish Hospital St. Mary's Elizabeth Hospital. We just jammed the two names together. And that went on for three to four to five years, and we were doing fine. 00:47:00Again, difficult--all the hospitals were suffering. It was really becoming difficult. Uh, reimbursements were going down, the changes were being made, pharmaceuticals going up--all the problems that you know. And it became apparent that we just didn't have the ability to survive. And several people, uh, predominantly LouAnn Atlas, met with Dr. Ramsey, who's president of the University of Louisville, and starting talking about, "Hey, shouldn't we take Jewish Hospital and put it together with U of L?" CHI got very interested in that and said, "Well, wait a minute, why don't we create one big entity?" Uh, that was during LouAnn's chairmanship of the board. The, the deal was un--we started working the deal. Um, I then became chairman of the board, and so we kept working the deal. There were four of us that were the negotiators from the Jewish Hospital side. It was me, LouAnn, Jerry Temes, and Richard Schultz. And we were negotiating against a group--not against--or with a group from CHI and with a group from the University of Louisville, trying to put this thing 00:48:00together. And of course it went on for months and months. I mean, a huge number of hours. There was a lot of pushback. Um, there was a lot of fear in the Jewish community about losing Jewish Hospital, about lo--it--it--and not as much losing the building, but everybody was very concerned--and I guess the best way to say it, they didn't want the Jewish Hospital, they wanted a Jewish hospital. And, and that's a very different dynamic. Um, there were a lot of pushback, particularly from women in the community, because they viewed the reproductive rights issues, which we were calling the "ethical religious directives," the ERDs, which are part of Catholic Health Initiatives, as a real problem--and, and frankly, so did I. I mean, I, I was raised pretty liberally, and was always a believer that a woman ought to have a right to do whatever she wants with her own body and those sorts of things. The, um--and so there was a lot of pushback. We took the issue--we finally realized--we were trying--we 00:49:00went out on the road, tried to sell it, in the sense of saying, "Here's what we're doing. Yes, there'll be changes, but--I mean, Jewish Hospital's never done abortions! We can't--you're not allowed to do an abortion in a hospital in this state." But that got beyond everything. Um, it, it got way caught up in you--the Catholics are taking over. As you may or may not know, we sent the issue--sent the, the thing to the governor. The governor rejected it. I can remember being called in, in the morning, by chairman of the board, and saying, "We now know that--"--hadn't been before it was made public--"--we now know that, um, the governor's gonna reject this. What do you want to do?" And David Laird was the CEO of the hospital at the time, and we were talking--I called C--my counterparts in CHI and said, "You know, why don't we just go forward? There's no reason that this doesn't work with them." And so we started down that path. Um, there is a funny story during all that. I had become--I became chairman of the board on July one. LouAnn was out on July--on June thirtieth.

ELY: What--what year is this, now?

WATERMAN: Oh, gosh. It's been five years, so it had to be right around 2010 or '11.

ELY: Mmm.

WATERMAN: The--and so July fourth was a weekend that year. And so the Friday before July--(laughs)--fourth, I get a call from a guy named Jeff Polson, who's now the--the CEO or president of--executive director--of Jewish Heritage Funds. He says, "I need to see you." And I had been chairman of the board a day or two. I said, "Jeff, I'm in the middle of something." He go, "No, I need to see you now." (laughs) "Okay." So I dropped my stuff, get in David Laird's office. Said, "We have a small problem." I said, "Oh?" He said, "Yeah. Tomorrow, all weekend, in the paper," and he throws this thing out, and it says, "If you are opposed to the merger between Jewish Hospital and CHI, call Louis I. Waterman," and they put my phone number down, "and David Laird," and put his phone number down. And it was in--in the--in the watermark was all these women who were suppor--who had paid for this ad. Okay? And so first thing I'm looking to see 00:51:00if my wife's on it, 'cause she was very opposed to it. I thought, "Oh my God." I'm looking to see if--I go down to the Ws to see if there's any Watermans listed. And so I have to now call my wife and say, (clears throat) "Over the next couple of days--" and they gave our emails as well. So, um, but--(laughs)--we worked through that. The--but then--so we started putting that together--and ultimately got that done. And as you know, we came back, and then Bob Hewett became--of the new entity, I became chairman of Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence, which was an entity spun out of that; I was put on the board of KentuckyOne; and Bob Hewett, from the CHI side, became the chairman of the board of KentuckyOne. And then we came back and did a joint operating agreement with U of L.

ELY: Now, the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence spun off of this merger with millions of dollars of philanthropic--

WATERMAN: --seventy million dollars--

ELY: --money? Was that the old Jewish Hospital Foundation?

WATERMAN: No.

ELY: Okay.

WATERMAN: And that's very, very important because there was a lot of brouhaha. David Klein, of blessed memory, who was a dear, dear friend, and his family, the Klein family, had given an enormous amount of money over the years. They were the original Bank of Louisville owners. Had--had given an enormous amount of money to the Jewish--to Jewish Hospital Foundation, which became the Jewish Hospital St. Mary's Foundation. And they were very upset because they believed that we had taken that money out of Jewish Hospital and created this entity. That was not true at all. That money, to this day, sits inside KentuckyOne. The part of the deal--

ELY: --and it's part of the endowment for--

WATERMAN: --it is part of--what--it was Jewish Hospital St. Mary's Foundation. It's now called the KentuckyOne Foundation. But it's exactly the same dollars.

ELY: Okay.

WATERMAN: I have a scholarship there that I give to. The, um--CHI paid seventy 00:53:00million dollars to Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence, so that you--what you had--you had Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence became a parent company of KentuckyOne. CHI was the other parent company, both owners of KentuckyOne, in different percentages. We have seventy million dollars in that, and there's very re--various reserved rights that the parents control on KentuckyOne, should anything ever happen. Um, so no, it was a brand new set of money from C--from CHI.

ELY: Okay. And then you became involved--

WATERMAN: --then I became--

ELY: --with that.

WATERMAN: --chairman of that board, yes.

ELY: And just, uh, ex officio in KentuckyOne, or--

WATERMAN: No, at that--

ELY: --no?--

WATERMAN: --point we--at that point, when they did--again, things have changed over the five years it's been in place, but at that point the chair of Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence was a sitting member of the KentuckyOne board, as 00:54:00was the chair of CHI.

ELY: I see.

WATERMAN: So the--because they were the parent, both had a sitting, voting position.

ELY: So what was the process of deciding on the goals and guidelines for the Heritage Fund? Who was involved in those discussions?

WATERMAN: The, the previous entity, called the Jewish Hospital Board, created a--the Jewish Hospital entity created a board when they knew this was coming, and that was gonna be part of that group. And that's the group that created--that--they, they, they took a group and picked who they wanted in the community to be on what was gonna be the Jewish Heritage Boa--Jewish Heritage Board, JHFE. Then we started meeting, and it was--I mean, I--I will tell you one of the more difficult things that I did, 'cause I didn't know what to do! We just started from scratch. We had no executive director. Um, we had no nothing. We had a boatload of money. And so we brought in a person to help us do some strategic planning. And it, it literally just sort of rolled that way 00:55:00with a bunch of us, a lot of fights, a lot of tears, a lot of hard feelings at times as we pushed through, trying to figure out what we were gonna do. The money came to us--we knew that the only requirement we had on the money was that primarily it had to go to medical research. That's all, that's the only directive we had. One of the things I laid in, and, and--which still, to my knowledge, is the mark that I was able to leave, is that research money ha--i--has, has to be spent inside Jewish Hospital. Now, it doesn't say that. There's nothing that says it does. But we wanted it--we wanted the, um, research to be translational, meaning I don't want to do bench research, I want something that's gonna go right into the bedside. And David Kaplan, who I made chair of the grants committee, the first grants committee, I just said, "Look, make this work. And I want everything inside Jewish Hospital. I want to pump up that hospital, because I want it to survive, no matter what." And so to this 00:56:00day all of the research money that goes there, which is considerable, is going to researchers doing work inside Jewish Hospital. Uh, and then the other 49 percent goes to Jewish causes throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

ELY: So, um, then were guidelines set up for the Jewish causes for whether--what sorts of entities could participate?

WATERMAN: Um-hm. We did. We, we, um--you know, it's funny, because the medical part was easy. It was function of--I mean, we had to get experts to help us, 'cause that's what we didn't know. The Jewish causes, as you can imagine, with a bunch of Jews in the room, we couldn't agree--I mean, you have four Jews in the room, you have six opinions. So--and we couldn't agree that today is Wednesday. There was a lot of gnashing of teeth, you know, are we gonna do bricks and mortar, are we gonna do--buy prayer books--what are we gonna do? When we started off, we were gonna do nothing. I said--I sort of said, 00:57:00"Stop. Don't do anything." And I got a lot of feedback, particularly from the Jewish community, saying, "Wait a minute. We've been counting on this money from Jewish Hospital for all these years; you can't just stop the flow!" And, uh, I went and saw Joe Rabb--Rabbi Joe, -----------(??), and said, "I need some help here." 'Cause the interesting thing here was I had not been involved in the Jewish community much at all, philanthropically--meaning I'd given, -----------(??)----------, but I didn't do anything. I was never part of the foun--federation, never did any of that. And so my knowledge of the Jewish--how the JCC worked, all that was nil. I'd been very involved in the hospital. I knew a lot about that piece of it. Uh, other than giving a check every year to the federation, I didn't know anything. David Kaplan and Sandy Hammond did. They knew an enormous amount. So I got--made--got Sandy to be the vice chair and David to be the grants--(laughs)--chair. That--you know, I guess I was smart enough to know what I didn't know. And so then we started down--so what 00:58:00we did is we did a quick analysis of what is it that's survival? I don't want any kids to miss camp. I don't want people to miss some meals. I don't want the, the community Passover to be stopped. I don't want--what were we doing that is survival level? And for the next twelve months, do that. But we're not gonna give away--you know, we're not giving away big money till we figure out what we're doing. And that's what we did. So we made sure that, you know, that we had some old f--um, senior citizen programs going. We had some scholarships to camp. We had, um, some Sunday school scho--Hebrew high school scholarships. We had, uh, community Passover. We had Meals on Wheels. So we did the things, um, that made sure that those things kept going. And then we went to start to develop, What are we gonna do? I mean, we talked about should it be just in Louisville? And we had done a lot with U of L. Can we do something with Kentucky? And Mike Ades, my friend who's on the KentuckyOne board as a CHI appointee, is Jewish, an Orthodox Jew from Lexington. Got him involved because 00:59:00I knew nothing about the Lexington Federation or anything they had done, and he got me connected up there. And then of course, in comes Eli Capilouto, who is Jewish. Um, and so we get involved with him. I call him, and I'm, I'm just--I'm sort of obnoxious, I g--about it, I guess. I called and got an appointment, went up and visited him, and we hit it off and started down the path of doing some things up in Kentucky.

ELY: Um-hm.

WATERMAN: Um, and he's been to Louisville and helped us a great deal. And so now we're trying to expand. The vast majority of our work has been Louisville and Lexington, although there was--we did a project in Bowling Green. There's a very small community or group of Jews in Bowling Green that, I don't remember what the exact grant was, but there was something there. So that was the idea. And it's still--it's still, to some extent, um, being formulated. Meaning, do we give--do we say we're gonna give a million dollars over ten years? Do we give this? Of course, the other big one was acquiring the Standard Country Club. And so what are we gonna do with that sort of thing as well?

ELY: Is that something you were personally interested in because you had a history with it?

WATERMAN: You know, it didn't strike me--I knew that the club was in trouble. It had a note that was being called. Uh, we were able to acquire it, and we still, to this day, the Jewish Heritage Fund owns it. What to do with it is perhaps the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. Um, I would tell you gi--I, I thought it would be a great idea, and I committed, after my chairmanship, to run the committee that would try to figure out what to do with that, because I thought it was so historically significant and such a gem for the Jewish community. So we went to every Jewish entity in town and said, "Give us a member, and we will start having meetings. Every synagogue, give us two, and we will start having meetings and talking about what to do with it." It was the largest debacle, most frustrating--now, to date, the most frustrating thing I've ever done. Um, it was the--the worries I have about Jewish Louisville and their sense of, um, protecting their own turf, I am very concerned that, that we 01:01:00cannot all get along well enough to get those--I mean, we could not get everybody to agree to do anything with that place, and here you have 142nd--forty-seven--pristine acres with a pool, a fishing facility, an eight--nine- to eighteen-hole golf course, a clubhouse, tennis courts, sand and regular, and we can't get the Jewish community to agree what to do with it.

ELY: That's a--

WATERMAN: Oh, it's horrible.

ELY: Yeah.

WATERMAN: It's absolutely horrible. And it's--the, the, the, um--and I get real angry about it, because it's just the--the, uh, lack of vision and lack of, I don't wanna give up my turf; you might be affecting me. You know, the, the Reform Jews don't want Adath Jeshurun to have a foothold on their side of town. Adath Jeshurun doesn't want to--they'd love to get on our side of town. Jewish Community Center doesn't want to move from Dutchmans Lane, they want to stay there. It--it's just horrible. It's absolutely horrible. You know, and you've 01:02:00got an Orthodox synagogue that's failing and about to be sold, and they want to go anywhere--you know, now, it's a little difficult 'cause they can't drive. Or they--they can't--they're not--they don't drive on the--on Shabbat. So how do we help them to--it's just atrocious. It's absolutely an abomination in this community, how bad we don't get along when it's just us.

ELY: There's a planning process, I believe, a kind of joint planning process. But you're saying it doesn't really work well?

WATERMAN: I ran it for eighteen months. We've got a plan, and that's as far as it got. Nobody else would agree. I, I, I just disbanded the group--with permission of the Jewish Heritage Fund--

ELY: --um-hm--

WATERMAN: --because they were so against each other, so uncommitted to working together, so lacking in vision, and we took it back inside, and the Jewish Heritage Fund says, "We're just gonna do something with it." And, and, again, if I--if we sell that off for development, we will make an enormous amount of 01:03:00money. 'Cause we got it for a song. And I would view that as a--my--that to my date as my greatest failure to this Jewish community is I couldn't get that done.

ELY: Mm.

WATERMAN: And I want to tell you, I screamed, hollered at people, begged people, cried with people, um, kvetched to every rabbi I could get, tried to cohort them, tried to pay politics, tried to threaten them. I mean, I did--I threatened the Jewish Community Center and said, "Well, I'm gonna make sure Jewish Heritage Fund doesn't give you another cent if you don't do this." Now, the--Jewish Heritage Fund wouldn't do that, but--I mean, that's how--it, it was so unbelievable to me that we don't have the ability as a community to come together with a vision for something as wonderful as that, to make a win-win for everybody. It was just unbelievably frustrating.

ELY: It's certainly a time of change. A lot of institutions, um, merging, going away, and yet into this what could be seen as a dying community comes this--

WATERMAN: --so says the Pew Study.--

ELY: --infusion of, of, uh, of potential with the Jewish Heritage Fund--

WATERMAN: --right--

ELY: -- for Excellence. So--

WATERMAN: --we had this beautiful thing--

ELY: --it's such an opportunity--

WATERMAN: --right--

ELY: -- to make a change.

WATERMAN: And the Pew Study says our community is dying, our Jewish community is dying, all over the country. And here we have an opportunity, and we can't even agree amongst the factions in the community what to do.

ELY: Well, it's--to--

WATERMAN: --we get what we deserve--

ELY: --to go to a more positive note, what are you really proud of that you've been able to accomplish?

WATERMAN: The, the fact that the Jewish--I would tell you that w--I'm very proud that I had a small piece in making sure Jewish Hospital to this day is a Jewish hospital. We have a head rabbi now. That was a fight. Um, we're working very hard to bring the Jewish community back into that hospital. Rabbi Nadia is working incredibly hard to do that. Um, I'm very proud of the Jewish Heritage Fund, that it's up and running, that I got to do it first, uh, that, that we're--that we're--I mean, we are the eight hundred-pound gorilla in the 01:05:00community now. And it's funny, because the federation isn't. When you're sitting on a hundred million dollars, all of a sudden you're the big dog in town. And I think we've set up a foundation for it to really do some good, both in terms of medical research at Jewish Hospital, which is what it was known for, and for the Jewish community. Carol, I think it's critical that we--that, that, that--I mean, we use these funds to grow this Jewish community or to keep it alive and to keep it vibrant and to keep it in leadership and to keep it, um, uh, interdi--not interdisciplinary--you know, interfaith. That we, we be part of all that. And these dollars will allow us to do that. I'm hoping, uh, that, that the Jewish Heritage Fund, as it grows, as it passes to the next generation, will continue to have a vision--of big growth. Don't just buy prayer books. Do something monstrous. Do, do, you know, something that, that will forever affect 01:06:00lives. Do something that will bring Jewish young people back to this community and say, "God, I want to live there!" That's what I hope we're gonna do. And I'm--I gotta tell ya, I'm pretty hopeful, at the moment. I mean, I think we're on the right path, and I think it's got some great leadership.

ELY: Great. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to talk about, or anything that--

WATERMAN: --no--

ELY: --you want to put on the record?

WATERMAN: No. It's been--it's, it's, it's been a fascinating fifty-five years. It's, uh--I think Jewish Louisville's a really neat place. Um, hence there's books written about it.

ELY: Hmm.

WATERMAN: Um, the--and I think it will always thrive in some level, uh, if we pay attention. I thi--you know, it's like the "Never forget." You got to keep pushing it, making sure, uh--interfaith marriage is a--is a reality, but we have to make it--we have to make it welcoming, we have to make it open so that the kids want to be there that do these things. It's my understanding the clubs are 01:07:00a big rave--rage--all of a sudden now again, that everybody wants to do that again. Um, and that they're, like, filled with the gills over the Jewish Community Center, which I think is phenomenal. Um, but I, I think we're on a good trajectory, you know, for a, for a small, quasi-Southern town that thinks it's a city--(Ely laughs)--um, I think we do okay. But I do think it has to be watched, and I'm--but I'm hopeful.

ELY: Okay. Well, thank you very much.

WATERMAN: Thank you!

ELY: Enjoyed talking to you.

WATERMAN: What a great time.

[End of interview.]