Betty Bronner:
Good evening. This is Betty Bronner. I'm recording for the Jewish Community
Center Family History Project. It's October the 30th, 1991. And I have the pleasure of presenting tonight Delores Levy. Delores, would you give us your name, your address, and if you care to your phone number?Dolores Levy:
Okay. This is Dolores Shaikun Levy. We live at 2536 Broadmeade, and our phone
number is 452-1263.Dolores Levy:
I guess I should start first ... We will go to parents, and I will talk about my
father first. My father came from Troki, I think you spell it T-R-O-K-I. It was more or less a resort around 30 miles from Vilna. My father's parents must have 1:00been medium class Jews. They had a store in Troki and they were well-to-do enough that they had a teacher to come and live in their home to tutor them and to be sure that they were educated as to the needs of the day.Dolores Levy:
My father was one of several children that ... several of them lived in
Louisville, Kentucky. It was Louis Shaikun, Abe Shaikun, Rose Platoff, Helen Krenitz.Betty Bronner:
How do you spell that?
Dolores Levy:
K-R-E-N-I-T-Z.
Betty Bronner:
Thank you.
Dolores Levy:
And there was a sister in Trenton, New Jersey named Gussie Levine, L-E-V-I-N-E.
2:00And they did leave one sister in Europe, which perished in the Holocaust with her family, which was a husband and two children.Dolores Levy:
My father came to the States shortly after his bar mitzvah. Let me go back just
a little bit to tell you some ... It's sort of interesting with my dad, it seems like so many people of his day, they seem to be very uncomfortable talking about their European life. It's true he left there very early, at 14, but it seemed that it made them very uncomfortable to tell you too much of their home life. Like I said before, I knew they had a tutor in the home, and I think they lived very comfortably.Dolores Levy:
But on the other hand, I heard in recent years when when an aunt went back there
3:00that my father lived in sort of a seaside. It was a resort where the King, or whatever they had, the ruling ... that's where they went for their holidays.Dolores Levy:
These were kinds of things that I'd always heard. That Vilna was the center for
religion, and it was very important. My dad even talked, when they used the word Vilna, it was a very important center for learning. I think we were taught from a very young age that learning was such an important part of life. It was just part of life. It wasn't just another ... Like in the United States you go to school, but learning was actually a part of your life.Dolores Levy:
So anyhow, my dad, after his bar mitzvah, I think his parents, I'm sure ...
4:00Their name was Samuel and Drazel, and in fact I am named after my paternal grandmother. They were just as human as we are, maybe more so, they were very unselfish. They sent dad away as so many young fellows especially were sent away, so they wouldn't have to go to the army.Dolores Levy:
And they sent him to the United States. They sneaked him out. The usual story
you hear. Through friends, through non-Jewish friends and across the land until they they got to the ship and came over.Betty Bronner:
Do you know where he embarked - from where he embarked on that ship?
Dolores Levy:
I don't know exactly. I do know he ended up getting to England before he
actually left the European part of the world. My father landed in Ellis Island 5:00and he went direct to Milwaukee. Because there was an older aunt there. So he went there where the only relative that really was ... he knew. He stayed there with her for two or three years, is the way I remember. He sold newspapers to make a little money.Dolores Levy:
In the meantime, he had two brothers in Louisville already, but they were very
young with their young families and they really weren't able to finance him. After he made a little money in Milwaukee, he came on down to Louisville and he stayed with his brother Louie.Dolores Levy:
His brother Louie was already married and had started his family. So like I
6:00said, money was short. So my dad sold newspapers again here in town so that he could give as much money to his brother that he could. So he could help keep up the expenses of the household. In the meantime he decided he'd better learn something more than selling newspapers because you couldn't make a living.Dolores Levy:
So they decide to make a tailor out of him. Well, my dad really was not a
tailor. And it was going to be a very hard way for him to make a living. Well, as things went in those days, a friend of his came by and says, "Well, I want to open up a business down in the country about 85 miles down the road."Dolores Levy:
In those days it was an all day trip. And he didn't have - he needed daddy for
himself more than money. But my dad in the meantime had saved $200. With his 7:00$200 he went down and went in business with a man named Friedman. They stayed in this, really a one room store, probably 20 by 20. A very small little country store. There just really wasn't enough money, or enough sales for two men to make a living, two young fellows.Dolores Levy:
I must say one little story. Every time I start to tell the stories, I think
everyone that lived in these small towns can tell you similar stories. But since there wasn't anything else for daddy to do ... Well first, what did my father live on? Remember, he came from a kosher home and didn't know anything else. He lived on sardines.Dolores Levy:
Well, sardines got very tiresome. Very. But he really - and then he would come
through Louisville to do the buying for the store and eat a good meal probably 8:00about once a month. As I said, it took an all day train trip to come into Louisville. And he would stay overnight and take his merchandise back home with him.Dolores Levy:
On Sunday, when he didn't go to Louisville, what did he do for entertainment? He
sang in the church choir. Now, this was this very religious brought up young fellow. Even he himself felt very strong and deeply religious, but what else was there to do on a Sunday afternoon but sing in the choir? And actually they would have all day dinners and so forth. That was his entertainment.Dolores Levy:
I might stop here and bring up my mother's early history. And then we'll go into
their marriage. My mother's father came from a family ... Both father and 9:00mother, her father's name was Alec Lerner. And his - her mother's name was Esther Myers. They'd come from further down into White Russia.Dolores Levy:
Of course then my grandfather's name was Lerner. That's what it meant. His
people had actually come from, were learning type of people and they'd study the Torah. But there wasn't much place in the United States for just the learner only. I would say that my, my mother's family had come from a larger city in Russia. They had been used to things very nice. In fact they had even hired people in their home when they came to this country and they couldn't live that way.Dolores Levy:
In fact my mother actually was born in Castle Gardens, which was down around, in
10:00those days it was called Seventh and Cedar, and it's a Seventh and ... It's right where the government building is today. And Castle Gardens was still a nicer place than some people lived.Dolores Levy:
Remember, my mother was born in nineteen ninety - in 1899, but this was the way
people lived. Her mother and her mother's sister, they had a very, very difficult time. In fact, the mother's sister took her own life. She could not stand to live this kind of life. It was so different than she had lived in in Europe.Dolores Levy:
In fact, I must make another little story of Castle Gardens. Probably there've
been many stories told about that, I guess we would call it apartment complex. 11:00The Resineers lived in one apartment also. My mother was supposed the smart one around that neighborhood. And she had won this very big contest because of her intelligence. And they gave her a part payment on a piano, or a piano with partially paid for.Dolores Levy:
My mother's family could not afford it. So, she gave her part to the Resineers
and they bought the piano. That was the story that was always told to us. And that's how those people lived, very close. They would help each other.Dolores Levy:
Well, my mother was getting ready to go into high school. Her mother became very
ill. She had to stay home and take care of her. Then, probably around 1918, she and my father met at a used coat store down on Seventh Street. My father used to 12:00come in on Sunday morning to do his buying.Dolores Levy:
By chance this was Aunt Dina and Uncle Abe Lerner, which was my grandfather's
brother and his wife's store. And my father would come in and buy his used men's suit coats. This was a big item in those days. And daddy came to buy them from ant Dina. Interesting enough, when I say ant Dina, I meant that the woman ran the store. Then after daddy bought the coat, there wasn't anyone there that knew how to write English. So they had to call my mother.Dolores Levy:
They called her and said, "Sis," which everyone in Louisville called my mother,
"Sis, come down and write the address on the box for this man that's bought all these suit coats." My mother came down to write the address and she wrote very 13:00nicely. My father says, "Uh-huh, I've found me a nice young lady, and she can write nice English too."Dolores Levy:
They had a courtship of about three to four months. Because it was very
difficult for dad to come back and forth from Greensburg, Kentucky, where he had moved his little bit of merchandise in the wagon and horse from this one room. He moved into the small town. So, he had improved himself already. And so, after three or four months of a courtship, like I said, is too far to come back and forth, he proposed to my mother. And they planned their wedding day.Dolores Levy:
They were married in the beer gardens, I think it was on Market Street. Someone
14:00else might ... can give you more information on that. But it was a popular place that a lot of the couples in that day and time, they got married there or they had parties. So mother and daddy were married. They went back to Greensburg to live. Right after their wedding, my mother's mother did pass away, which left my grandfather and the younger children, which was Dave and Dora, rather a hardship on my grandfather.Dolores Levy:
One brother had already moved to Columbus, Ohio. That's my mother's brother. So,
mother and daddy started their little home in Greensburg, and they were married about a year. And the first daughter came, which was Dina. 15:00Dolores Levy:
Dina is my oldest sister. She is now 73 and lives in Shalom Tower in Louisville,
Kentucky. After about three years, another brother came, which is Lester. Lester is my older brother. And following 18 months after that, Elizabeth. Four years later, Delores, that's me ... came to... let me just ... I'm going to have to backtrack a little bit.Dolores Levy:
After the three children came, as I had said, my folks were quite religious,
especially my father. They says, "We'll have to pack up our children, move to Louisville so they can have a Jewish education and Jewish socializing." They 16:00moved to Louisville.Dolores Levy:
In those few years, my dad had saved a little money, and he bought a building
around Seventh and Market and he opened up a shoe store. And they also bought a home out on Whittier in Strathmore Gardens.Dolores Levy:
So that meant my dad had done quite well out in the country. And therefore he
had brought his young family to Louisville to live. We were affiliated with Keneseth Israel in those days. My father was on the mortgages and so forth because he believed in a synagogue very strongly. Then after they were here shortly I came along while we still lived on Whittier, then something else 17:00followed me.Dolores Levy:
I was born in '27, June the 2nd. Then the depression followed me in 1929, and
things were bad. Things were bad, and it hit the little small man like my father in his retail shoe store. Things were getting to be so bad my father was wondering which way would he turn next?Dolores Levy:
At that point a group from Greensburg had heard my dad was having a hard time in
Louisville making a living, so they decided they would make a trip to Louisville to see Daddy.Dolores Levy:
They came, they said, "Ed, we are giving up our building," which was a bank, "We
have built a new bank building. You come on back to Greensburg, and we will set you up in business." Which they did. So my father packed, at this point there 18:00were his wife and four children, and moved back to Greensburg, where he felt like he at least could feed his children. And then he would try to give them as much Judaism with the help of my mother at home, in our home.Dolores Levy:
We moved back, and really I think we lived a good life in Greensburg. We were
very much a part of the community. My dad was always on the city board. He was always very, very active in the Masonic lodge. My mother was a Grand Matron or whatever the highest seat in the Eastern Star. She was active in the PTA, in the women's club. Whatever else was going on in this small town.Dolores Levy:
I might say to this day we have very - we have many, many ties to Greensburg.
19:00And they haven't forgotten us, and we feel very close to the people there. I might say, I keep talking about Greensburg. And you people that have always lived in Louisville, and you remember it when it was smaller of, say 75,000 to 100,000, it was a smaller place.Dolores Levy:
Greensburg was 1,500. Or maybe a few less. When the Shaikuns left it made it
fewer because there were eight of us. But it was a small town. I mean it, but it was a very active town. In those days, those small towns were active, though. And they depended on... and they did depend on their retailers, the people on the square, they were very important to them.Dolores Levy:
And by chance, the Shaikun family has made a mark and left a mark. My parents
made us walk a straight and narrow, and we had to set an example. I think today 20:00psychologists and psychiatrists feel like maybe it's not a good thing. But we were told we had to do certain things because we were Jews and we represented the Jewish people in this community.Dolores Levy:
My father lived up to that. When any man came to Greensburg to do business, if
they weren't straight, he says, "You get out of here. We don't have these kinds of people in Greensburg," and this happened once or twice even that I remember.Dolores Levy:
It was a man that came and he was selling watches, supposedly good watches and
they were junk. My father says, "You get out of here and get out of here fast. We don't have these people." He did not want a one person to ruin what reputation that he had made through the years.Dolores Levy:
In the meantime Sandra was born. She's five years younger than I am, and then
21:00the caboose, Arnold. Arnold came last and he's about four years younger than Sandra. I had a very good family life. I think that's why I brought in all my brothers and sisters. Because we were and we are very important to each other to this day.Dolores Levy:
Then my folks stayed in Greensburg and brought up all of us until about 33 years
ago. I guess my father had promised my mother all through the years, "When we are able, we'll move back to Louisville." It was around 33 years ago they moved back to Louisville and built them a lovely retirement home. And lived a very good life in Louisville where they could become active again in the synagogue 22:00and at the center and be with Jewish people more again. My father lived around 10 years after they were here and had a wonderful life. And then my mother passed away around 19 years ago.Dolores Levy:
Now we'll go to my husband and myself. As I told you, we'd always believed in
Jewish education in my home, in my parents home. Well, when it came to education, secular, this was also just as important. They believed in educating all of us.Dolores Levy:
So when it came my turn, I went to the University of Kentucky. That is where I
met the Isadore Levy family. Their daughter was in school with me. We had a nice group of girls in those days. When we were in college, the Jewish people sort of 23:00stuck together.Dolores Levy:
First of all, you were affiliated with Jewish organizations, because you weren't
accepted - or overly accepted into non-Jewish organizations. And when I say ... I should say maybe fraternities and sororities. The YMHA - the YWCA was both. Because at one time we even had a Jewish president on campus. But that was public. Otherwise we had to depend on Hillel and Jewish things generally.Dolores Levy:
So Anita's family ... Anita is now my sister-in-law ... And she and I were very
friendly with probably around 20 other girls. When I went to the University of Kentucky, there were only 2,200 students in 1945. So, we almost knew -everyone 24:00knew each other. Being that Anita was a Lexington girl I naturally started going to her home to eat good.Dolores Levy:
My mother-in-law was a wonderful person. And she used to make wonderful meals
and invite us from the dormitory. She and the ladies, they were very hospitable. Their doors were always open.Dolores Levy:
So after - in my first year Raymond came home from the Navy, and he was a nice
young Jewish fellow. So we did date off and on until we were engaged in 1949. And our engagement, like I said, we had a little - I'm getting a little exc-, we had a little rocky courtship. Then right after we graduated, Raymond did come 25:00down with polio. We were an off time for us.Dolores Levy:
But when I heard he had polio I decided well I guess I'd better go to Lexington
to see him, because we were still friends. Well, that started our friendship again. And Anita, in the meantime Anita and I went to Chicago to get a job. And we were still very close friends. And then, I did not care for Chicago. It wasn't for me. In Thanksgiving 1949 I came back home. That is when Raymond and I started dating very much so. We became engaged in December.Dolores Levy:
One weekend while I was visiting the Levy's in January of '50 I became quite
26:00ill. And momma Levy, she says, "I have to take you to the doctor. You can't stay around here sick like that." So, I did let her take me to the doctor. Because truthfully we had a wonderful relationship. A little bit more than the typical in-laws.Dolores Levy:
Well, we found out I had tuberculosis. So we had to put off our wedding plans.
We had planned to get married in that March, and we put them off until I got out and was sent home which was 18 months later. And we were married November the 4th, 1951.Dolores Levy:
And we had a large wedding at Keneseth Israel. And of course all the Shaikuns
27:00were there. All my cousins, and ants and uncles. And also all the Levys. And the cousins, and aants and uncles. They we were very pleased for us since I had been very sick.Dolores Levy:
So then, after our lovely wedding, which in those days as well as today we had
large weddings, and everything was very important. The food was important, the bridesmaids dresses were important. It hasn't changed that much in that respect, believe it or not. Then Raymond and I went back to our apartment that we had already furnished on Clay Avenue in Lexington.Dolores Levy:
We lived in on Clay Avenue for about two and a half years. Then we bought a home
28:00out on Della Drive, which is the south end of Lexington.We lived there about two years. And during that time I was semi retired. I would help my sister and brother-in-law, they had moved to Lexington and open a children's shop in Southland.Dolores Levy:
And Raymond was with his father in the poultry business. Well, we definitely
realized that the poultry business wasn't going any place. It definitely was changing. There wasn't room for the middleman like dad Levy was.Dolores Levy:
Frozen chicken had come in and live poultry was out. It just was - you just
couldn't depend on live turkeys and chickens. It was a different world now. 29:00Raymond decided he would try real estate in Louisville. He came to Louisville and started working for uncle Nat Levy.Dolores Levy:
And he stayed with the Nat Levy Realty Company for about 25 years. I think 24 to
be exact. We moved to Louisville on April the 1st, 19 [silence 00:29:27]-Dolores Levy:
A trip of this type. Now we'll go back. Then we moved on Talisman Road with our
two little boys. Then we started becoming quite active at the Jewish Community Center because our boys had to play every sport there was. And be there every time on another league was organized. 30:00Dolores Levy:
Then around nine years later we came up with a new little fellow. This was Ira
Richard. Ira Richard is named for both his paternal grandmother and grandfather. Isadore and Rebecca.Dolores Levy:
At this point we have a baby and a nine and 11-year-old. Well, we're starting to
think bar mitzvahs now. So we decide we have to look for a place closer to the synagogue, closer to where they'll be learning. Where they can go easier and often. We found a place down close to Adath Jeshurun. And we moved there. This 31:00was our third move, but that's the way it is.Dolores Levy:
And it's true, our boys and Raymond and I, when the doors opened at the
synagogue, we were there. We believed that we had to set the example. We did take them often. We took them on Shabbos. And we felt like if we wanted them to feel Jewish and be Jewish, then you had to show them.Dolores Levy:
So we brought them up in Adath Jeshurun. And each one of them had their own bar
mitzvah and their own parties. Yes, we had parties and in those days also. But we really did have them, they were trained. They were able to do the entire service for their bar mitzvah. They had earned their fountain pen in my opinion.Dolores Levy:
As time has gone on and our children have grown up, we gave up our home and we
moved into an apartment on Broadmeade, which is still very close, in the same 32:00neighborhood. Because we liked where - that neighborhood. Now - I must say that our kids have always been in leagues, and to this day they're still very active at the center.Dolores Levy:
They still say, "Mom, we're playing tonight. You all better come." And we don't
miss too many of their games to this day. The two older ones have married. Michael, the younger, but he has been married for 10 years to Sue Daniels from Dayton, Ohio. And Dale was married five years ago to Sheila Seabolt of Louisville. Sue and Michael now have a three-year-old, our grandson, named Jacob Edward. 33:00Dolores Levy:
To summarize my interview, I hope I have left just a few little words to my
children, and their children, and their children. That they will know how our family started in this country. Or how my side of the family started in this country.Dolores Levy:
I want - I hope that they will always have strong feelings and values that we
were taught in my parents' home. I hope my children were taught high values in my - in our home and that they will follow through and teach their children. Thank you.Betty Bronner:
Thank you so much, Dolores. We really appreciate your sharing your recollections
and your time with us. Thank you. 34:00