Interview with Joseph Fineman, January 27, 1991

Irving Lipetz:

Two, three, four. Testing. One, two, three, four, five, six.

I.L.:

I'm Irving Lipetz, and this is an interview I'm conducting with Joseph Fineman on January the 27th, 1991 and Mr. Fineman has consented to share his recollection with us this morning. Mr. Fineman, will you please give me your name, address, and if you want your phone number? I started say social security number, but I didn't mean that, your phone number?

Joseph Fineman:

My name is Joseph E Fineman. My address is 2409 Voletta Road, Louisville, 1:00Kentucky, 40205, telephone number is 452-9756.

I.L.:

Thank you. Joe. I know that you have been in Louisville quite a long time, but not as long as some of the others. When did you come to Louisville and why did you come to Louisville?

J.F.:

I went into the Army in 1954 and was stationed at Fort Knox from December of 1954 until December of 1956, and I came to Louisville in January of 1957 right after getting out of the Army. I'm originally from a small town in West Virginia, Chester, West Virginia, a town of about 3000 people. And I knew that I did not want to go back to West Virginia after completing my Army service. So we looked at several different cities, including Cleveland, Miami, Dayton, Pittsburgh.

J.F.:

But while being stationed at Fort Knox, we had occasion to come to Louisville 2:00and the people in Louisville had always been very hospitable to us. And this was during 1955-1956. The Jewish Community Center was brand new at that time, a Jewish hospital had moved to its new location and had a new hospital, and we wanted to be in a community that had an active Jewish community.

J.F.:

And Louisville looked great to us. And these were probably the biggest reasons why we came to Louisville, because it looked like a wonderful place for Jewish people to live. And one other thing I do need to throw in, I was raised in an area of West Virginia that was on the Ohio river, right across the river from Ohio.

J.F.:

And the newspapers we got there were, what in those days were called Taft Republican newspapers, very conservative newspapers to the extent that even that, I remember that when Adlai Stevenson ran against Eisenhower for 3:00presidency, one of the newspapers never mentioned Stevenson's name during the entire campaign, so you never knew who Eisenhower ran against. And I wanted to get away from that. And being at Fort Knox, I had read the Courier-Journal on a regular basis and frankly that was in the heyday of the Courier-Journal, and I'd never seen a liberal newspaper like that, that was so good. And that was one of another attraction that brought us to Louisville.

I.L.:

[inaudible 00:03:29] That's a tremendously important and very valid reason for coming to Louisville. Tell me about your personal family, if you will, please.

J.F.:

Well, I'm one of six children, we were raised in the small town in West Virginia where there was one other Jewish family. When I was in high school, my sister was the only other Jewish student in the high school at the time, but across the 4:00river was a town, East Liverpool, Ohio. Which had about 23,000 people at that time and it did have an Orthodox synagogue and a reformed temple, and my family was Orthodox, and my mother kept a strictly kosher house, but we've spread out from Chester, West Virginia since then. Most of us did not want to stay in that small community. We frankly wanted a more Jewish life and that's what we look for.

I.L.:

Well, you came to the right place, didn't you? Do you have children? I know, of course, you're married.

J.F.:

Yes. I'm married to the former Lois-Ann Levy of Huntington, West Virginia. We got married while I was stationed at Fort Knox. We had previously met at West Virginia University, and we have two children, a son, Daniel, who is now 28 years of age and a daughter, Linda, who is 31 years of age.

I.L.:

Now, how did you get involved in the Jewish community here? Where did you start? Did you start the Center or where did you start?

J.F.:

Well, when I first came to Louisville, I was studying for the bar exam and after I passed the bar exam in April of 1957, I got a job working for an older attorney at that time, H. Solomon Horn, and it turned out that Saw Horn at that time was chairman of a committee here at the Center, which I think was called the cultural arts activities or maybe the adult cultural arts activities, but they used to sponsor such things as forums and and different cultural activities, and Saw asked me to serve on the committee and in order to serve, of course at that time you had to be a member of the Center. And so we joined the Center in 1957, and this was the first Jewish agency in which we got involved.

I.L.:

Now you came to Louisville at a particularly important period of time when new institutions were being evolved. What was the Louisville social Jewish social scene like in 1956, 57?

J.F.:

Well, at that time the Center had, I'm not sure if it was called a couples club or a Mr. And Mrs. Club, but anyway, it did have a club in which young couples such as us in their late twenties, early thirties did meet at a regular basis at the Center.

J.F.:

And of course this really was the heyday of the Center in the Fifties and early Sixties when it was just a beehive of activity, and it was the Center of all Jewish activities here in Louisville, in our mind anyway. And so we became very involved in the couples club there and through that met many of our friends and the Center continued to occupy a primary place in our social life.

I.L.:

Do you recall offhand, I guess this isn't a fair question, some of the people who were the leaders in the Jewish community as you knew at that time?

J.F.:

Yeah, they made great impressions on me because I think there were really great 7:00leaders in the Center then, and that's continued since we've been in Louisville. But I can remember well, such people as Joe Kaplan being on the Center board, although I think this was after Joe had already been president of the Center board. Norbert Friedman, of course, Arthur Clang, and the first committee that I chaired here at the Center, I believe was the children's committee, and Ronnie Khan was the staff person who I worked with, and Ronnie seemed to know everybody in Louisville, and every child.

J.F.:

And I remember by virtue of being on the Center, being a chairman of a committee, I went on the Center board and at that time I was the youngest person on the board. And now it's strange because I went to a board meeting the other night with Irv, next to Irv and his wife, I was the oldest person there.

J.F.:

But Sam Steinfeld, it seems as I recall, was president at the time I first went 8:00on the board, and Sam made a great impression on me because he was a no nonsense type of president who ran a very efficient meeting, but it was what he called a working board, in that everybody who served on the board had some function in the Center, either chairing a committee or being actively involved in some phase of the Center.

J.F.:

And so it was really an educational experience to see Sam Steinfeld act as president of the Center. And of course at that time, Aaron Schreiber was the executive director and Aaron, more or less took me under his wing, I guess maybe because I was the youngest person on the board, but my friendship with Aaron was not only a professional friendship, but a personal friendship. And he often used to come over to my house and for all I know, maybe he did that with most directors, but he would always come over and Lois would get out some homemade cookies and he loved her cookies. And we would sit and talk for hours about the Center, and where the Center was going, and what I should be doing. And what it 9:00was all about and that was really an educational and a delightful experience for me.

I.L.:

What changes have you seen in the Jewish and in the general community in the last 30 years?

J.F.:

Well, that's a hard question, Irv, to answer. I think maybe when we first came to Louisville, the Jewish community was more cohesive in the sense that there wasn't as much intermarriage then as there is now. I guess it seemed more like it was an exception. More people lived in the Highlands. The synagogues were here in the Highlands for the most part.

J.F.:

As far as the Center is concerned, I saw the Center go from, one of its hay days in the late Fifties and early Sixties to a point where in the, I guess in the 10:00late Seventies, maybe because of the deteriorating building, people were not as interested. The Center sort of hit a stage where it was in the doldrums and had some real financial problems at that time, and then subsequently in the Eighties, I think it came out of that and has returned to the situation where it's again, a beehive of activities.

J.F.:

One of the things I think that's been most striking is when we first came to Louisville, I remember being told that people in juvenile court in Louisville used to point to the Center and to Jewish families as guides for teenagers who were having problems to follow, because Jewish kids rarely had problems in those days because of the cohesive family nature of Jewish families. And almost every Jewish teenager in the community was involved in Center clubs. And I think that 11:00has changed over the years to where Jewish teenagers are not as involved in Center clubs. And once they get in, they don't stay as involved for all four years of high school as they used to do in the past.

J.F.:

As far as the general situation in Louisville, it depends on where you're coming from. I know that we're not natives of Louisville, and yet we feel that Louisvillians have accepted us as though we were natives and have made us part of the social life and the professional life here. But I know many outsiders do not feel that way, that they feel that native Louisvillians are a clique-ish group that perhaps do not welcome outsiders in, and we've never had that experience.

I.L.:

Joe, I know that you started out as a committee member and wound up as a president of the Center. What do you think were the highlights of your Center administration?

J.F.:

Well, Irv, it depends. I know exactly what the highlight is and it depends whether you look at it. I want to look at it in a positive manner or a negative manner. And so I'll put it to you both ways, but I'll tell you how I look at it. You've got to remember that Aaron Schreiber had retired and before I became president, and Ben Rothstein had been appointed executive director, successor to Aaron. And at the time Ben was appointed, there were misgivings about whether he was the proper man for the job and he had tremendous shoes to fill in trying to fill Aaron's shoes.

J.F.:

And I guess after Ben had been on the job for several years, most people realized that he really was not the right person at the right time to be guiding the Center. And so Ben left the directorship of the Center and Allen Kotler took 13:00over as acting executive director, or I'm not sure that he was given that title, maybe program director or whatever he was. But he really was guiding the Center.

J.F.:

And I remember that David Kling at the time was the president of the Center and I was vice president at the time, and Lewis Cole and I were appointed co-chair people to find a new director, to chair a search committee to find a new director. And we interviewed a dozen different potential candidates, and we couldn't find the right person. And the search was dragging on too long.

J.F.:

And we had come to the conclusion, David Kling and I had come to the conclusion that we were going to make a big push to have Allen Kotler appointed executive director because we thought he'd done a good job filling in as an executive director.

J.F.:

And we had one last interview, and we interviewed Ray Kayla, who at the time was the assistant director or the program director at Detroit. And Ray came and he just wowed the search committee. He made a tremendous impression in a interview and over the misgivings of some of us,, Ray was appointed executive director.

J.F.:

It turned out very quickly to develop that Ray was not the right person for the job either. That became pretty evident early on and so he eventually was gotten rid of, and then Drew Staffenberg, as program director was made in essence and acting executive director, but we knew we had to bring in somebody from outside.

J.F.:

So the Center went through a phase where it had four executive directors inside a very short period of time. And I became president. I was president at the time that Ray was eased out of his job.

J.F.:

And there were a lot of reasons for that. One of the reasons was that for the first time in its history, the Center, which had always had a balanced budget, incurred a deficit of over $50,000. And that was really a shock to all of us, and rightly or wrongly, a lot of the responsibility on that was attributed to Ray.

J.F.:

And then there were a lot of other personal problems that people had with him. There was unhappiness among the staff and there was going to be a mass Exodus of veteran staff if he were retained, and he was replaced, and a new search committee was appointed, and the search committee found Al Chaseware and employed Al Chaseware as executive director.

J.F.:

So when you asked me what was the high point in my administration, I've got to say, looking at it in a negative fashion, it was having the guts to get rid of an executive director that we felt wasn't right for the job and wasn't doing the job for Louisville or on a positive side, was to hire Al Chaseware, who's been 16:00here now a decade and in my opinion, has done a tremendous job during that decade.

J.F.:

One other thing, Irv, that I would like to say I think my administration accomplished was that because of the tremendous deficit that was run, morale among directors was very low, board of directors meetings had become sparsely attended because all you talked about were financial problems when you came to the meeting during the last part of David Kling's administration as president.

J.F.:

And so when I came in as president, I had vowed that I was going to try to restore the spirit of the Center and try to get away from directors spending all their time on financial matters, and I was able to do that I think. And I think that the spirit of the Center really was restored during my presidency, and of course I've got to give a big part of the credit to that to Al Chaseware who 17:00just came in with a marvelous spirit of fellowship and congeniality and just really moved the Center in the directions that I and others on the board wanted to see the Center go.

I.L.:

Thank you very much. Do you have anything you would like? Any area we have not covered that you like to talk about?

J.F.:

The only other thing, Irv, that I would say is that during my affiliation with the Center, I've held, I think just about every chairmanship, chaired every committee in the Center, and held every office that you can have in the Center. And it has been really a labor of love for me, which I really enjoy. One of the most enjoyable periods though of working with and for the Center, was last year when the Center celebrated its Centennial, and I was allowed to serve as chairman of the Centennial committee.

J.F.:

And I remember attending before the year began, a meeting where the chairpersons of all committees met to talk about plans for the coming year. And the chairperson of the children's committee talked and I thought to myself, gee, I held that job and then the chairperson of the senior high committee talking, I thought, gee, I had that job.

J.F.:

And then the chairman of the cultural activities talked. And I thought gee, I had that job. And then it suddenly occurred to me that I'm the only person who's ever going to be chairperson at the Centennial celebration committee. You know, there may be a bicentennial celebration, really, but there's never going to be another Centennial celebration committee.

J.F.:

And so the high point of the year to me was the first event that we had as part of the Centennial celebration, when we had an essence or were union and tried to attract people from out of town to come back to Louisville. And we had a marvelous evening where everybody looked at the old pictures from all the past decades.

J.F.:

And Aaron Schreiber was there, and the past presidents, and it was just a wonderful occasion and I really loved it. Had a great time. And, but I'm proud of the fact that I'll go down in history as the one and only Centennial chairperson.

I.L.:

Thank you very much. This has been tremendous and I really appreciate your contribution. Thank you so much.