Interview with Carol Seifer, August 16th, 2018

Tom Owen:Good afternoon it is August the 16th, 2018. I am Tom Owen, I am having a conversation with Carol Seifer, and we are in a small room, on the second floor of Ekstrom Library at Belknap Campus at the University of Louisville. Carol, good afternoon.

Carol Seifer:Good afternoon.

Tom Owen:I would like to begin by just talking about childhood. When, where, and who?

Carol Seifer:Okay. Well my brother was born February 26th, 1943. As is with the Jewish religion when you are born, you are named after someone who has died. Right before my brother died my mother's father Julius Khourt, K-H-O-U-R-T, had 1:00died. Julius became Julius Khourt Friedman. I came along in May of 1946. We were always close, but he was always the prince in the family. My mother had a sister, and she'd had two daughters. My mother had had the only son. And so from day one, he was the prince, and everybody knew it.

Tom Owen:Clarifying he was two years older?

Carol Seifer:He's three years, and three and a fourth years older than I am.

Tom Owen:I see. You were born just as World War II ...

Carol Seifer:Ended.

Tom Owen:Ended, and he was a war baby.

Carol Seifer:Right.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:We lived on Carson Way, which is across from Bowman Field.

Tom Owen:From the beginning. Your parents were there when you came?

Carol Seifer:They might have been on Alta Avenue when Julius was born, but when I was born they were on Carson Way. A lot of nice families, a lot of kids. A lot of kids on the block. So we played outside all the time with all the kids. Nobody was worried that their child would be abducted. I could not pronounce "Julius" for the longest time. I used to call him Budu.

Tom Owen:B?

Carol Seifer:B-U-D-O - no B-U-D-U, Budu.

Tom Owen:Bodu? Budu?

Carol Seifer:I think I was trying to say "brother," but it came out Budu.

Tom Owen:Budu.

Carol Seifer:We were always close, because all the kids in the neighborhood ... We'd go out in the street and play baseball. We'd play hide and seek. All the stuff kids don't do today. We would ride our bikes everywhere. You just knew you 3:00had to come home at dinner time. I can remember one time, I can't even think how old he was. Maybe six, seven, something like that. We couldn't find him. My parents were going crazy, and we were looking everywhere. He was under the basement steps, for what reason I do not know. But he stayed hidden until we finally found him.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:Yes.

Tom Owen:Oh boy.

Carol Seifer:Yes.

Tom Owen:Do you remember any repercussions of that?

Carol Seifer:Yeah, there was a lot of screaming, a lot of screaming.

Tom Owen:On the block there on Carson Way, were there other Jewish families? Were you a singular Jewish family?

Carol Seifer:No, there were two other families. Actually about four doors down 4:00there were two daughters around our age. Across the street from them there was a daughter, and a son. The son was my age, the daughter was his age. Then two doors down from us, there was two brothers, and one was my age, and one was younger.

Tom Owen:There on Carson Way, let's hold that for a minute, and go back and do some pretty quickly some Friedman's, and some Khourts. Where are they from? Short term, not...

Carol Seifer:Well my great grandparents emigrated from Russia.

Tom Owen:The Friedman's?

Carol Seifer:The Khourts.

Tom Owen:The Khourts, yes, yes.

Carol Seifer:The Khourts, and the Krenitz. Actually it would have been the Krenitz's. I guess there was one pogrom too many for them in Russia, and they just 5:00picked up stakes, and I don't really know how they got to Louisville. But my grandmother, who was three at the time, she had originally eleven brothers and sisters.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:Some died young. I'm named for one of them, Charles. But the interesting thing is, is that with my grandmother, having all these siblings, she had two girls, and each of those girls had two children. Quickly what was a big family shrunk to almost nothing. We would visit our ... We had an Aunt, and we would visit Uncle Joe, and Aunt Helen. Then there was one Khourt that changed the spelling of his name. He was the only one, and it was K-O-R-T.

Tom Owen:The Venician blind people?

Carol Seifer:No, he didn't do that, but I - and I don't know why he changed his name.

Tom Owen:Sure.

Carol Seifer:But he did. And so when my grandfather died, my grandmother moved in with us. I shared a room with my grandmother my life until she died. Julius had his own room.

Tom Owen:Okay. You were sharing a room. And it was a three bedroom, small three bedroom home?

Carol Seifer:Uh uh (affirmative).

Tom Owen:This is grandmother Khourt?

Carol Seifer:Yes. This was my mother's mother who had married Julius Khourt. She had been a Krenitz and she married a Khourt.

Tom Owen:Were the Khourt's also from Russia you think? Do you have a feel at all?

Carol Seifer:Probably.

Tom Owen:Yeah. Is there a Khourt family in Louisville now? I'm not familiar with 7:00that name at all.

Carol Seifer:No. They've all ... Let's see. I think they've all died. All the family that would've been related to the Khourt's have died.

Tom Owen:But they were a Louisville family.

Carol Seifer:Yes, yes.

Tom Owen:As were the Krenitz's.

Carol Seifer:Yes.

Tom Owen:Spell Krenitz.

Carol Seifer:K-R-E-N-I-T-Z.

Tom Owen:Krenitz. Okay, all right. Now about the Friedman's. Who are they?

Carol Seifer:Well, it's interesting, because there was ... My father was a pharmacist. There was another Friedman who was a pharmacist at the Douglass Loop, Coleman Friedman, and everybody thought we were related, but we weren't. My father - it was a very sad story. My father's mother either died in child birth, or very soon after that. He was really raised by an aunt and uncle, who 8:00had wanted to adopt him, but his father who hated my father, because he blamed him for the wife's death was just horrible to him, horrible. I only remember seeing him two, or three times at the most. He stayed in Cincinnati.

Tom Owen:That's where your dad was raised?

Carol Seifer:Yes, but he came to Louisville to go to pharmacy school.

Tom Owen:Yes, yes, yes.

Carol Seifer:He met my mother, and they got married.

Tom Owen:The aunt and uncle that raised your dad, they were also in Cincinnati as well. I see.

Carol Seifer:In Cincinnati.

Tom Owen:He came here for the Louisville School of Pharmacy?

Carol Seifer:Right.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yeah.

Carol Seifer:Right.

Tom Owen:Right, okay. Well, as long as we're talking about your dad, talk about where he did pharmacy work.

Carol Seifer:Well he first was a pharm ... He had a pharmacy at Hickory and 9:00Burnett. Right near Kosair Children's Hospital, the old Kosair Children's Hospital. Every year, the Kosair picnic, we would all go. Mother would always put two nickels, or whatever it was, on whatever she was betting on. She would always put two. There was one for each of us. We loved that. My mother didn't learn to drive until we were probably, maybe 13 ... No, no, probably ... He would've probably been nine, and I would've been six. But anyways, so it was a stick shift. It's an old Ford stick shift. Eastern Parkway has hills.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yes, yes.

Carol Seifer:She was a white knuckle driver, because if she had to stop on a 10:00hill, she was scared to death.

Tom Owen:Oh I understand, yeah.

Carol Seifer:That she was going to roll back, and hit somebody. I do, I remember that vividly.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yeah. Your dad was at Hickory and Burnett as a pharmacist.

Carol Seifer:Then he left there, and opened a pharmacy in Shively, on Cane Run Road. It had a soda fountain. The one thing I remember about my dad is every Christmas, and the day after Christmas, we would work in the store, because everybody would come in for a late minute gift, and there was a perfume called Evening in Paris. It had a cobalt blue bottle. That was a big seller. Then after Christmas batteries. Batteries, batteries, batteries.

Tom Owen:You were open on Christmas?

Carol Seifer:Oh yeah.

Tom Owen:Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Carol Seifer:Oh yeah, we were, we were.

Tom Owen:Busy enough that everybody was thrown in to the breech?

Carol Seifer:Oh yeah, we did. We both worked as soda jerks, and Julius one time did not flick the malt thing up, this shaker. When he turned it on it flew across the room with malt going everywhere. I still remember that.

Tom Owen:Oh my, my. Both of you were working in the drug store?

Carol Seifer:Oh yeah, we did.

Tom Owen:In both cases your dad was a solo owner-pharmacist?

Carol Seifer:Yes, yes. In those days, you could. The competition would've been Taylor Drug Stores. But you didn't have CVS, you didn't have Walgreens. I mean it was coming, and my father would have probably had to go work for one of them, 12:00but he owned the place. Then he died very suddenly, very young.

Tom Owen:Just absolutely fell over, and died?

Carol Seifer:Well it's an interesting story. My father suffered what in those days was called manic depression. When he was manic he was great. He was fun, it was so much fun to be around him. But for every mania, you have three times as long as the depression. When he would have depressions it would be so bad that he was incapacitated completely. Julius and I argued over the fact that I said my father was wearing a green robe, and Julius said no it was maroon. But we have the same exact memory of him crying in the bedroom. This particular night ... Mother and dad's room was on the first floor, and our rooms were on the second. For a reason I do not know, I crept down the steps, and decided to sleep 13:00in the den, which is right next to their bedroom. I could hear my mother, she was in the bathroom, she was brushing her teeth. Dad was asleep, I thought. I heard what sounded like a snort. Then I heard her going in, and saying "Martin, Martin, Martin." The next thing I remember is the police were there with a stretcher. I mean he had died. He had a coronary thrombosis, and it blew out his heart.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:My mother was very resentful of psychiatrists, because she felt that once he was labeled bipolar, which he had - it runs in the family. It runs in his family, the Weinberg family. Once he was diagnosed that way, that any time he had a complaint it was, "Oh, it's in your head, it's in your head, it's 14:00in your head." His depressions were so bad, that he had shock treatments, and they were not the kind of shock treatments they are today. But it would help a little. My mother was scared that he had taken pills, and killed himself, because he was a pharmacist, he certainly could have access to that. She had an autopsy which is not done in the Jewish religion. You do not do an autopsy, because the body has to be intact for when the Messiah comes. She had an autopsy, because she had to know. They told her, a whole wall of his heart blew out, and he also had cancer.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:He'd been having angina attacks, and just blew it off. I went upstairs the next day. Mother wasn't back yet, and I said to Julius, I said, "You're not going to believe this. Either I had a horrible dream, or Dad died 15:00last night." Just about I finished those words coming out of my mouth, my mother came home, and in fact said, yes.

Tom Owen:She didn't come up ... Oh she ... She went to the hospital [both talking at once] ...

Carol Seifer:With him, and she came back, and said he had died. I was 15, and Julius had been in his first year of college at U of K, because he wanted to be an architect. U of L did not have an architecture program. I mean it was horrible, because what happened is ... Well first, in the Jewish religion it's like a wake times seven days. Shiva is seven days, and people come over, and they visit with you, and they bring food, and all of that. You have all of that 16:00tumult, and then the weeks up. Everybody goes back to their life, which is normal.

Tom Owen:Where is the body?

Carol Seifer:Oh no, no, he ... The Jewish religion you're buried very quickly.

Tom Owen:Okay, but there's an extended period of mourning.

Carol Seifer:Right. We don't embalm. You're buried very quickly, and then from the day of the burial, you go out seven days, and that's the Shiva.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:I can remember when all of that was over. I can remember sitting at the table, and all you heard was the clanking of the forks and knives on the plate, because Dad wasn't there telling all these stories. As I say, when he wasn't in a deep depression he was fun. He was a lot, a lot of fun.

Tom Owen:Storyteller, or raconteur...

Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:He liked the horses. We used to always go to the track with him. I 17:00can remember in those days, it wasn't a computer. You actually got a ticket when you bet.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:Julius and I would be climbing all over Churchill Downs picking up tickets. We would come home, and we'd say, "Look ..." We'd come back, and "Look at how many tickets we've got!" And of course then Dad had to deflate the bubble by saying, "Those are the losing tickets."

Tom Owen:Now how did he ... As a solo pharmacist in bed in a season of depression go into the track? Who's running the shop? Who's running the store?

Carol Seifer:He had another pharmacist who worked for him.

Tom Owen:Oh okay.

Carol Seifer:The spring, and fall, Churchill Downs, he didn't go every day.

Tom Owen:I understand.

Carol Seifer:But he liked to go, he liked to go, and go to bet on the horses. In fact the guy that had been the pharmacist bought the store from my mother.

Tom Owen:Oh I see. Your mom, as you related, being with your Dad with that issue. You consider her long-suffering?

Carol Seifer:Well I will say this. My brother and I both suffer from major anxiety. I think that came from two reasons. One, my mother was always anxious that Daddy would fall into one of these depressions. Two, her mother lived with us, who I shared a room with. Grandma Minnie was not nice about my father. Never said a nice word about my father. I remember when Dad died, I was in my room, and she said something nice about him. I said, "You know Grandma, that's a little ... You're a day late, and a dollar short." I said, "He can't hear you now. I don't want to hear you telling me how nice he was now that he's dead." 19:00There was a lot of friction between my mother and her mother. She favored the sister that lived next door to us, but that sister didn't take her in, my mother took her in.

Tom Owen:You had an aunt next door to you?

Carol Seifer:And an uncle, and our two cousins.

Tom Owen:Oh right, my goodness. Were those kids close?

Carol Seifer:Yes we were very close.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:We were close as kids.

Tom Owen:Are they still around?

Carol Seifer:One of the daughters is not. She died of cancer. And yes, the other daughter is in New York.

Tom Owen:But just going just a little bit on the thread. You were saying you believe in some sense the tensions of the house with your dad's condition, your 20:00grandmother, and your mother in some sense being an arbiter I guess, in some way at least, between your grandmother when she was living with you, at least. That kind of created some coming through anxiety that lingered for both you and Julius?

Carol Seifer:Oh I definitely think ... I also think, because actually we're both bipolar, but we have never suffered the depths of the depression my father had, because psychiatry has come a long way. There are medicines that work. And so we would have depressions, but not anything, not incapacitating. You could still manage your life with it.

Tom Owen:Go back to Carson Way. I'm hearing now "cousins next door." They were Jewish.

Carol Seifer:Yes, yes.

Tom Owen:They were Jewish. They would be among the Jewish families, the few Jewish families. Being Jewish, in a largely non-Jewish community, area.

Carol Seifer:Well the other people who weren't Jewish... Now that I think about this. One, two, three, four, six Jewish families lived on the street, and then a seventh moved in later. But all the other people were Catholic. It's very close. I've always said if you listen to Gregorian chant, and close your eyes, and nobody tells you that it's Gregorian chant, it sounds like Hebrew chanting. It has the same cadence, very similar, and if you take Jesus out of the picture ... I mean the Catholics were like the Jews in wanting a large family. They were 22:00very family oriented. We had one day to confess all our sins which was Yom Kippur, and you all had every day. You all took it to an extreme, but the little hat, the kippah that we wear the Pope wears.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:There is a lot of similarity.

Tom Owen:The Protestant majority looked as different, Roman Catholics as different, Jewish, no question. In that sense there's some sharing I think.

Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:Yeah. The notion of being odd person out on Carson Way is not an issue?

Carol Seifer:No.

Tom Owen:Yeah. Talk about family faith. Both where, and what.

Carol Seifer:Okay we belong to Adath Jeshurun Synagogue, which on Woodbourne, which is a Conservative synagogue.

Tom Owen:Your earliest memory they were on Woodbourne?

Carol Seifer:No, my earliest memory they were on Brook Street, which is now the Unity Temple, which I got to see, because there was a wedding there. I asked if I could go in to the sanctuary, and they let me. It's very, very similar. No, we were on Brook Street. You would go to synagogue on a Saturday, and then you would walk from Brook Street to Fourth Street. All the kids would hang out. We didn't go every Saturday. We went every Saturday there was a bar or bat... Back then it would've been only bar mitzvah. But yeah, everybody did that.

Tom Owen:You would walk from Brook and College, or Brook and whatever. You would walk down to Fourth Street, busy, busy, city center Fourth Street.

Carol Seifer:Yeah we'd go to a movie. Right, we'd go to a movie. We'd eat at 24:00Kunzes a lot. Then by 5:00 you take the bus to go up to the Heyburn Building on Broadway. You'd catch the bus, and you'd go home.

Tom Owen:Catch the bus, go home.

Carol Seifer:Once again, you didn't have a helicopter parent following you around. Nobody thought your child was going to be taken away.

Tom Owen:Was your dad participant as fully as your mother in these things?

Carol Seifer:No, no, because he worked ... Wel,l between all the hours he worked, that was actually a ... My brother never gave up on this criticism, that his father didn't teach him how to use a hammer, how to build things. I don't know why he expected that he would. Even if he ... I mean my father wasn't ... He didn't know how to build anything. But Julius always resented that fact. Julius was closer to my mother, than he was to my father. It was that mother/son 25:00thing going on there. It's different from mother/daughter, because I once said to my mother much later, I said, "You love Julius more than me." She said, "No I don't." I said, "Oh yes, you do."

Carol Seifer:"I can cite you chapter, and verse, you do."

Tom Owen:Did you say that with edge feeling resentment, or were you just ...

Carol Seifer:No, I was just saying it.

Tom Owen:Yeah...

Carol Seifer:I mean I didn't resent my brother. I was never jealous of my brother, but he was the prince in the family, and there was just no two ways about it.

Tom Owen:Well isn't there a little sense as a person from the outside, that you've already eluded to it. There was no bas mitzvah.

Carol Seifer:No.

Tom Owen:There was a bar mitzvah.

Carol Seifer:Yes.

Tom Owen:You are raising up a male who's going to read in synagogue.

Carol Seifer:Right.

Tom Owen:I mean I'm just thinking about, yeah.

Carol Seifer:By the time I had my daughters they had bat mitzvahs, exactly, read Torah, because we're a Conservative synagogue.

Tom Owen:Yes.

Carol Seifer:We got a rabbi at the time ... The rabbi we had growing up was Rabbi Gettleman, and when he spoke it sound like God. "Who's calling?" I mean everybody was scared to death of him. But when he was going to be emeritus we hired a new rabbi, who only had daughters. He was very active in the Conservative movement. By that time the conservative movement was allowing girls to be bat mitzvahed on a Saturday, not on a Friday night. He said, "I'll only come if they can have their bat mitzvahs on a Saturday morning, just like a boy would have a bar mitzvah." They agreed, and that's why my daughters read Hebrew beautifully. I went back as an adult and learned Hebrew, and learned to read 27:00Torah, and Haftarah, but it was never offered to me as a child.

Tom Owen:You did not go to Hebrew school after school?

Carol Seifer:No.

Tom Owen:Did Julius?

Carol Seifer:Oh yeah.

Tom Owen:He learned ... Did he ever stand in synagogue...

Carol Seifer:Oh my God yes. I can remember distinctly the morning of his Bar Mitzvah, he drank some orange juice and threw it up. That's the anxiety level.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:But he did fine. He did well. He did well. He had lots of friends, Jewish friends, that were all bar and bat mitzvahed. My brother veered from Jewish people after he became a graphic designer. Then he had one friend who was Jewish. But in those days if you were a Jewish boy, your parents wanted you to 28:00become a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, an accountant. Artist was not amongst the ones. How are you going to make a living being an artist?

Tom Owen:Right.

Carol Seifer:Now architect it would've been okay, but when he came to the University of Louisville he went into the graphic design school.

Tom Owen:We'll talk about that. Let me kind of in my own mind, kind of make a little place that I can understand. Your father had died, and you are 15?

Carol Seifer:Hm-mmm [affirmative].

Tom Owen:He had just headed to UK, or at UK ...

Carol Seifer:Daddy died in January, and that was the year, that was Julius' first year at U of K.

Tom Owen:He was already at UK.

Carol Seifer:Yeah. I guess he was 19.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yeah.

Carol Seifer:He had completed one semester.

Tom Owen:Why did Julius come back from UK?

Carol Seifer:You know I really don't know. I have a theory, but we really never talked about it. The theory is that Julius liked being in Louisville. He liked being at home. Even though he didn't live at home, this was his home town. He was familiar with this. He had many opportunities to go elsewhere, and he never did. He never left Louisville.

Tom Owen:Throughout his entire career?

Carol Seifer:His entire career. He was comfortable ... This speaks to anxiety levels. Like coming down here today. Dean Fox gave me directions. But I haven't been on University campus in many years.

Tom Owen:Sure.

Carol Seifer:I left really early in case I got lost. I mean that's how we would always think. Even though intellectually I know worry is stupid, we worried. I 30:00think he just wanted to be close to home. Even though... he might have lived with us that year, but after that ...

Tom Owen:He was on his own.

Carol Seifer:My mother made the fatal error of saying, "Well now you're the man of the family." He didn't want that title.

Tom Owen:Even though a prince is a male.

Carol Seifer:Yes, yes. He kind of ... He started hanging around with other people who were in the field.

Tom Owen:This is pop psychology, and I cannot help but pull on that thread just a little bit, and then I know where I want to go next. Going back to the image, the anger, the resentment of "my father never taught me to use a hammer." Did 31:00that play out literally in some manifestations throughout Julius' life?

Carol Seifer:Well throughout his life he would mention that.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:"Other people, they know how to build things." I'm thinking you're an artist though. What ...

Tom Owen:Did he ever learn to use a hammer? Did he ever build things?

Carol Seifer:I mean he didn't build anything, but he could hang a picture on the wall. When they bought the house at Hampden Court it was a slum. They took six months off, he and his partner, to redo the house, so he obviously could do certain things. He could do anything with a car. He had a Model A Ford, and he loved cars. He knew how to make that car work. He had a 1950 truck, pick-up truck. He loved cars, he always knew about that, but I don't know why ... It was obviously a sore point in his life. He mentioned it repeatedly. The other thing 32:00he mentioned repeatedly, that I was very close to saying, "You got to stop this schtick." Which is, "I think my parents found me, because they weren't into art, and I am, and my sister is." Personally, they weren't into art in the way that they went to museums all the time. But their house was decorated beautifully. They had beautiful antiques. It just wasn't something ... I bet you if you went into any middle class Jewish home at that time, they weren't focused on art. He had this gift, and it was a gift. Like I said, people just have it.

Tom Owen:He was quoted at one point of saying "A stranger must have left me on the front step."

Carol Seifer:Yes. He did that all the time. I was very close, last time he did it, of going up to him and saying "You've got to stop this. It's very disrespectful to me, and your parents, and your grandparents. You don't know. There might have been someone in Russia that was an artist, who was a Krenitz, and you've inherited that. You don't know that, but your parents loved you, and they permitted you. They didn't give you any argument when you said you wanted to be a graphic designer."

Tom Owen:Which in the Jewish community was a ...

Carol Seifer:Yeah. All his friends became doctors, dentists, lawyers, and accountants. He was the oddball out.

Tom Owen:Yeah, sure.

Carol Seifer:They didn't stop him. They didn't say don't do it. When my father died, he had two insurance policies of $10,000 each. It was to pay for our 34:00college education. Back then $10,000 would pay you four years of college. We each got a degree in four years with that money. Couldn't have done it today, but that's what we did. As I say, I don't know why ... It was a sarcastic jab at his parents, our parents, and they didn't deserve it. They just didn't deserve that.

Tom Owen:But it was a way of highlighting his unique talent?

Carol Seifer:Well, I always say my mother named him Julius, and the only other Julius I knew was Julius Caesar, and Julius LaRosa. You don't find that name, it's not on the top 10, even though names have come back into vogue like Sophie. 35:00Julius has not come back. He had a unique name, which he was given. He had a really good ... They provided a wonderful childhood. Yes, our dad had depression, and that was not good, but we had a good life. He would say that, "Well where did we get our taste in art?" I said, "I don't know. I don't know, but we have it."

Tom Owen:Let's get you through high school, and into college, and pull the art thread, your interest in art through that period of your life.

Carol Seifer:Well, Julius could draw. In fact he had to take a ... To get a graphic design, he had to take a class in drawing, a drawing class. We had three 36:00of his drawings that he had done. They hung in the den, and they were beautiful. He didn't stay with drawing. He went to photography, and I don't know. We just had an eye how to do things, or how to decorate things. We loved art, and it did not have to match the sofa, which down the road, when we had the gallery, that was one of the things: "Well, it doesn't match my sofa." I would always say, "If someone gave you a Rembrandt, would you take it, and it didn't match your sofa?"

Tom Owen: A client coming into the gallery?

Carol Seifer:Yes, yes.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yeah.

Carol Seifer:Those were only times when I got annoyed.

Tom Owen:Did you have an interest in art in high school?

Carol Seifer:I couldn't draw a lick, never could, so I never took any art 37:00classes. The story I tell everybody is when Julius and I were little kids. The TVs were very small. There was a game called Winkie Dink. You put a green plastic... fit over the screen. There were eight crayons. Julius gave me purple, and he took the other seven. Purple never drew, on the odd occasion. What they would do is they were drawing, and you would follow their lines.

Tom Owen:On the screen.

Carol Seifer:On the screen.

Tom Owen:With the plastic overlay.

Carol Seifer:Yes. So I always said that that's where his talent started.

Tom Owen:Making a picture on the television screen.

Carol Seifer:Yes. Even as a kid, I mean he did murals. He did a mural in our living room. In his room he had a gigantic tree.

Tom Owen:Your mother would let him paint on the walls?

Carol Seifer:Oh yeah, paint on the walls.

Tom Owen:Was it decent work that he did?

Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:As a 14-year-old?

Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:Not as a six-year-old? Not eight-year-old, but ...

Carol Seifer:No, no he was well into his teens.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yeah.

Carol Seifer:She'd let him do it. He had that interest. We made a good team, because Julius was never very verbal. He could talk a lot, but as to sit down and write a letter, do something like that, or do a resume. I did all of that. I would say he's visual and I'm verbal, and it worked perfectly. But we both really liked ... I think one of the things is we liked pretty things. Objects that were pretty. We've always wanted, both of us, to have our nest, no matter how big, or small had to be pretty. If you've ever been in his house on Hampden Court...

Tom Owen:I was, but I forgot.

Carol Seifer:I mean it was an 1840s house that was huge.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yeah.

Carol Seifer:It could hold a massive amount of quantity of art. But I didn't have the talent that he had to be able to reproduce something. When he was in high school he used to do cartoons for all his girlfriends. That was his thing.

Tom Owen:Were you both at Atherton? Both at Seneca.

Carol Seifer:No we were both at Seneca.

Tom Owen:Both at Seneca, yeah, yeah.

Carol Seifer:He started out in Fern Creek. His first year was in Fern Creek, because Seneca hadn't ... But he was the first graduating class of Seneca High School. His sophomore through senior was at Seneca. Then I went to Seneca.

Tom Owen:Yeah, then what did you do?

Carol Seifer:I was really good in history, and English. I love history, and I love English. Not so great in science and math, but tolerably good. I made it 40:00through Algebra II. But I love to read. I love to read history, and to imagine what it was like to be a pioneer going across this country on iron wheels, with the threat of being killed by Indians. I know Julius and I would not have been amongst those people. We'd have stayed put wherever we were. That would been too much anxiety.

Tom Owen:Back to the nest.

Carol Seifer:Yeah, and the nest was important.

Tom Owen:Yeah, yeah. Did you go to college? Did you go to university?

Carol Seifer:I went to ...

Tom Owen:You're using insurance money [both speaking at the same time]...

Carol Seifer:Yes I went to IU for two and half years, getting a double major in history and English. The Christmas of my junior year I got mono, and I got so 41:00badly that I could not go back to school. I was bedridden for six weeks. Then they sent me down to IU ... I had to go to IU Southeast take my finals. Then I just said, "What the hell, I'm just going go to U of L and finish up." I had a year, and a half, so I did. I finished up, and then I taught school for two years, and then I taught in the Newburg area, and they couldn't read. I decided I'd get my Masters in reading. I got a grant, and I finished one year, and gave birth that August to my daughter, and didn't come back and finish it, which ... [both speaking at the same time]

Tom Owen:You were back for the reading degree at U of L.

Carol Seifer:Hm-mmm [affirmative].

Tom Owen:Yeah. Let's pause just a second. Go back, and thinking about your mom. 42:00Your dad died. There were two insurance policies. With you as the beneficiaries, you and Julius?

Carol Seifer:Hm-mmm [affirmative].

Tom Owen:It was your money, and it was understood, but was there enough reserve ... She did not work?

Carol Seifer:Well this was a very, very difficult time, and it bred some resentment with Julius. When my dad died, and we were not a wealthy family by any means. Here she has this drug store, but she had to get two pharmacists to always be running it, and she worked every day. She would go from Carson Way to Shively, "lively Shively."

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:Every day. She wasn't home like she used to be, and Julius resented that, but what was she going to do?

Tom Owen:What? Wait a minute, he's in college.

Carol Seifer:I know, he still resented it. He still resented that she had to go to work.

Tom Owen:Was that a class, a social class issue, or was it, "I came home one day, and Mom wasn't there?"

Carol Seifer:Yeah, I think that Mom was no longer there, like she had used to be. Of course I don't know why he was upset over that, he wasn't there. But he did voice that complaint. She kept the drug store maybe 10 years, and then sold it. She remarried, and then he died, and so I said to her, "We're going to put on your forehead, 'caution, this woman may be hazardous to your health.'"

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:Julius always wished that she had married someone that had a lot of money, that could take her places, and do things. He never figured that maybe he 44:00could be that person.

Tom Owen:That was where my thought quickly went.

Carol Seifer:No, he did not ... No.

Tom Owen:It just wasn't him.

Carol Seifer:It was not him at all.

Tom Owen:Was that second marriage decent enough for her?

Carol Seifer:Yeah, he was a nice guy. He was definitely a grandfather to my two children, and they loved him. He was very nice to me, he's a sweet guy. Didn't make a lot of money, but the worst thing that I remember, and I can speak to it personally, is that my parents had three or four couples that they always were going out with, always, always, always, always. When my dad died they quit calling. I used to say when ... I'm divorced, and when I was divorced, no one 45:00would ask an extra woman to a party. They'll ask an extra man every day of the week. I finally got a shirt, that said, "I'm not after your spouse and I can afford my own dinner." But it still didn't work.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:I had one couple that continuously called, and we would go out. But no, as an extra woman, as my mother was an extra woman, those women just disappeared, just disappeared. It was so painful to her, because back then you didn't have divorce like we do now, and he died at 47, so she was young. That was hard to watch. That was very hard to watch. She became somewhat bitter about it, and I don't blame her.

Tom Owen:Sure, sure, sure. You mentioned a little girl being born. You'd come back to U of L, you worked on a degree in reading.

Carol Seifer:I did I got one year done.

Tom Owen:Was there anyone here at U of L who you remember as an instructor, or a professor that you liked especially, or was it just a matter of getting it done, getting it through. You obviously weren't hanging around as a coed, I guess.

Carol Seifer:No, no. I can't remember my statistics teacher, but I liked him, because he got me to look at it as a language. Once he did that, I could do it.

Tom Owen:That's interesting.

Carol Seifer:Yeah, I did like that class. And I can't remember the woman's name, who I was a graduate assistant to. She was from Tennessee. We were in some kind of library, but nothing like this. She was nice. As I say, unfortunately, or 47:00fortunately, I was married to a doctor. He would say ... I'd say, "I want to go back, and finish it." "Well, who's going to take care of the children? Who's going to take care of family? I'm not going to do that. I'm busy." Then I started up again, and then Rudy died, her second husband, and then I had Mother all to myself to take care of. After the second time I thought, "You know ..."

Tom Owen:You did come back, and gave it another swing.

Carol Seifer:I gave it another swing, but ... In that day and age, if you were a woman, okay: you became a teacher, you became a nurse, maybe a speech pathologist, but you weren't looking at it as "I'm going to have this career." Julius used to tell me all the time. He would say, "It's too bad you were born 48:00when you were born. If you had been born later ..." Because I was at the cusp ... The Women's Movement started as I was graduating from college. I never thought about being anything other than mother. Then when my Melissa was in the second grade, my younger daughter was in the second grade, Julius knocked on the door, and he said, "Look, I'm splitting up the business. This guy is leaving, and I need some help for a couple of weeks until I find someone. Will you do it?" I said, "Yes, as long as I can be off if the kids are sick, be off in the afternoons when I have to pick up at Cherokee Triangle, because they were at Saint Francis, was like 4:00." So what turned into two weeks was 22 years.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:When he knocked on your door, were you single at that time?

Carol Seifer:Oh no, no, no, I was still married.

Tom Owen:Yeah, you were married a good number of years.

Carol Seifer:I was married 37 years.

Tom Owen:37 years?

Carol Seifer:Yeah, yeah. Our kids were grown. They were in their 30s.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:They were grown, married, and had children. But, yeah.

Tom Owen:Talk a little bit about your two daughters, and then we'll pick up with Julius knocking on the door.

Carol Seifer:Well, I had two daughters, Caryn and Melissa. They're two grades apart. I used to have this thing that I would say to them when they were in high school. I said, "Your father is a doctor, so there's no business that you can inherit, so you best find a job that will afford you the lifestyle that you want. You don't have to pay ... We'll pay for college, we'll pay for graduate school. But at the end of that period, you're on your own." Last Thanksgiving, 50:00I'm up visiting the kids. I always go up for Thanksgiving. Caryn's oldest child says to me, "You know Nana, Mother is always telling me that I need to get a job that will afford me the lifestyle that I want. I don't know why she says that, but she says it all the time." I said, "You know where she got that?" He said no. I said, "Nana told her that, because your mother, like you, likes expensive things." She went into business, and she's made a lot of money from the day she got out of graduate school. Now your Aunt Millie, Melissa, will only buy something if it's on sale, unless I'm paying for it.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:But if she's paying for it, it is ... She loves the hunt. And she's a therapist. She can't make in a year what Caryn probably makes in two days. But 51:00they're both happy. I said to Max, I said, "You have expensive taste." Once again there's no business to inherit. You've got to find something.

Tom Owen:Is Melissa a psychotherapist? A psychology therapist?

Carol Seifer:Yes. Both my girls went undergraduate to Michigan. Caryn went to Cornell for this graduate program. It's called a Masters in Labor Relations, but what it is, is they train people to go into Human Resources. The school is so well thought of that they literally do get a job, because all the companies come to that school looking for their graduates. Caryn actually went back and talked, gave a lecture at the school. Melissa graduated Michigan and then she went to NYU. She got into Columbia, but she didn't want to go to Columbia, because NYU 52:00has a more clinical side to it, to their master's degree. She's been a therapist. In fact she was in a building right next to the World Trade Center.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:Luckily for me, Melissa was always late. When I saw that plane fly into the building, I called her, and I could get through then. I said, "Melissa where are you?" She said, "I'm at home." I said, "Don't go to work." "What are you talking about?" I said, "Did you see the plane?" Yeah. I said, "Don't go to work Melissa. Do not go down there." Of course just then the second plane hit, and she didn't go down there.

Tom Owen:Is your older daughter in human relations?

Carol Seifer:Yes, she got her job. Michigan alumni will hire Michigan alumni, if 53:00everything is equal. One of her friends sends her a wedding announcement from the New York Sunday Times. It says Cline Berkowitz, and Caryn is looking at going, "I don't know Cline, and I don't know Berkowitz." But she reads the thing. The woman had gone undergraduate to Michigan, graduate at Cornell. Caryn's same program. Caryn got in touch with her, and said, "I'm graduating, and I'd love to talk to you. I'd be interested in working at Citi ..." This was CitiBank before Travelers bought it, and they hired her. She worked with a lady that did executive compensation, which is a real narrow field. Caryn is very precise. She started, and she worked for CitiBank for maybe four years. Then she went to PepsiCo, and worked for another 10 years. Then she left PepsiCo to go to 54:00Foot Locker, and she's at Foot Locker. She does executive compensation. Comp and benefits.

Tom Owen:For the executives of the company?

Carol Seifer:For everybody.

Tom Owen:I see.

Carol Seifer:Down to the person that's selling you the shoe at Foot Locker.

Tom Owen:Yeah, right.

Carol Seifer:In fact PepsiCo makes you ... When you're hired you go out on a truck with the driver delivering the soda.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness.

Carol Seifer:She just had had it...

Tom Owen:Are both girls in New York City, or metropolitan New York?

Carol Seifer:Yes. Caryn and her husband, and Melissa's husband all work in the City. They all commute to the City every day. Melissa has her practice in her town.

Tom Owen:In town, yeah.

Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:The marriage of 37 years, was he Jewish?

Carol Seifer:Oh yeah.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:Let me tell you something. I had a grandmother, and if I had a non-Jewish person over to the house, we were sitting in the living room, she'd 55:00walk through and she'd go [clears throat]... There was no way I wasn't marry someone Jewish. I actually told that to the girls.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:I said, "I am sending you to a school that has an enormous Jewish population."

Tom Owen:Michigan.

Carol Seifer:I said, "Please, come home with a Jewish husband if you're going to get married." Caryn did, she dated her husband from freshman year on. Melissa, had a stint where she was with a non-Jewish person, and I told her ... she said, "Well he said that we could raise the children Jewish." I said, "That's very nice, but his family is going to celebrate Christmas, and they're going to celebrate Easter, as they should." The grandmother spoke Italian. I said, "There's inherent problems in any marriage, but if you go into it with two different backgrounds." She didn't speak to me unless she was ... She spoke to me only through clenched teeth for the two years they were together. Then she 56:00broke up with him, not because of anything I said. It was something he did. I remember her calling up, and she says, "I'm going out with a guy, and you're going to love him." I said "How do you know I'm going to love him?" She said his last name was Cohen.

Tom Owen:It might be ...

Carol Seifer:She did admit later, that when she met his family she felt at home, because the culture is the same. It doesn't matter what degree of religiosity you have in a Jewish religion, there's a huge spectrum, but the cultural ... She said "I felt like I was with you and Dad." I said, "Yeah, and that's what I was talking about." Caryn has two boys, 17 and 15 now. Melissa on her first try had identical twin boys that are 15.

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Tom Owen:She calls it something else? Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:I'm familiar with some of this myself. And I've passed on a few things.

Carol Seifer:Whatever you say it is, I'm glad you're taking some medication, and you feel better.

Tom Owen:That's right. We're familiar with medication in my family. Although I don't, but I probably ought to.

Carol Seifer:A lot of people should.

Tom Owen:There's no doubt about it. I certainly have had my struggles. Okay, let's do one other little piece here, right now. You mentioned the word "religiosity," "cultural Judaism," the importance of that. You, and now we're 58:00going to do a little piece of Julius here. You remained in traditional faith? Julius?

Carol Seifer:Did not.

Tom Owen:Yeah. Can we elaborate on that just a bit?

Carol Seifer:He just moved away from it, and as I say his friends were not ... None of them. Actually he had one Jewish friend, and she worked here. Gail Gilbert.

Tom Owen:Oh yeah?

Carol Seifer:Art Librarian.

Tom Owen:Yes, yes.

Carol Seifer:That was a very close friend. I don't know Gail's religiosity myself, but they were very close.

Tom Owen:You know who Delinda Buie is? The person that walked you up here? Gail Gilbert - Delinda told me yesterday she has the key to Gail Gilbert's house.

Carol Seifer:Oh wow.

Tom Owen:That close.

Carol Seifer:That's close.

Tom Owen:Yeah maybe every Saturday morning coffee.

Carol Seifer:Good. Well I like Gail.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:I like Gail a lot. But Julius now, he never came to synagogue with 59:00me on the high holidays. Maybe two times in a very long period he came with me to say kaddish for one or the other parent. He just ... It didn't mean anything to him. Now, however, he did have a Jewish burial, and he is in a Jewish cemetery, because ...

Tom Owen:Was he aware of that?

Carol Seifer:No, he wasn't, but we spent the last 26 days of his life, or probably 24, the last two he was unconscious. He never said anything to me about burial. I decided since he didn't say anything that we would be buried together. I got plots together, as close to my parents as I could, and I got a stone that 60:00has his name and dates of birth, my name, date of birth, but no date of death yet. Because he had this creek out on his property on in Westport, 18 Mile Creek. It's all black, which my brother always wore black, and it looks like there's a stream in the wind stone going through it. Then there's going to be if they ever finish it, a bronze egg that sits between the two of us, because of his posters, Fresh Paint and the Louisville Ballet were his most famous posters. So I thought we needed an egg. Somebody said, "Why did you bury him there?" I said, "Because I wanted to be next to him. We were that close. I think we can be close in death." Somebody said, "Well, he wanted to be cremated and his ashes 61:00thrown in the creek." I said, "Jews don't cremate," and I just left it at that. I don't know about Reform Jews, but I know Conservative and orthodox, you don't, you do not cremate.

Tom Owen:Are you still an AJ person?

Carol Seifer:Yes, I still go.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:They did ... I lucked out for the funeral, the rabbi was out of town, and the cantor, who came to visit Julius twice, brought his guitar. They sang music, and he gave the eulogy which was beautiful, and he sang the song "Forever Young." Then I gave the eulogy.

Tom Owen:Does that mean that the service was not a traditional Jewish service, or was it a traditional service?

Carol Seifer:It was a traditional Jewish service. He just ... Cantor has allowed a few times a song, because he sings well.

Tom Owen:I see.

Carol Seifer:He came up to the hospital with his guitar. Julius just looked at him, and said, "Where are the shabbas candles, and the challah and the wine. He said, "Well if you want me to, I can go back and get it." I mean...

Tom Owen:That's Julius talking.

Carol Seifer:Yeah.

Tom Owen:He was clearly cultural.

Carol Seifer:Clearly understand.

Tom Owen:Cultural.

Carol Seifer:Yes, yes, he was a cultural Jew.

Tom Owen:Yeah. Did you see ... In his creativity, did you see any of that Judaism bubble through?

Carol Seifer:He did a couple of posters that were Jewish in nature. One was for the Holocaust and one was ... I don't know what the other one was for. But I got him a piece of the Torah that he could reproduce. You have to find a piece ... I 63:00think only in the book of Esther, where God is not mentioned. He did those two. But I don't think it was a driving force. I don't think he ... He would never deny that he was Jewish, but it did not play that much of a role in his life.

Tom Owen:By contrast, that has been important to you.

Carol Seifer:Yes I've always liked being Jewish. I think it's a very ethical religion and I just like it.

Tom Owen:Sure, sure. Let's go back to the ... Then I think maybe we'll do maybe 15 more minutes. We might do a little more. We're about an hour in.

Carol Seifer:Okay.

Tom Owen:We can do this again, and I'd love to do it again, and do a little more with the seasons of that ... Was it 22 years that you worked together?

Carol Seifer:Yes.

Tom Owen:22 years that you worked with Julius. We'll deal with more, 64:00considerably more with that.

Carol Seifer:Okay.

Tom Owen:Let's go back to the knock on the door. You had daughters in school. You were married to a physician. He was saying you're responsible for certainly raising these kids, because I'm busy. Julius had lost a collaborator, or a business partner?

Carol Seifer:Business partner.

Tom Owen:Who was that?

Carol Seifer:Franklin Ross.

Tom Owen:Franklin Ross.

Carol Seifer:Originally Julius was with Nathan Felde.

Tom Owen:Yes, I saw that in the clip.

Carol Seifer:They were very, very close. Nathan just decided at some point, because he's brilliant that he wanted to go back to school. He went back to MIT, got a graduate degree. Then worked in computers. He was way up the ladder at 65:00Nynex, and then he and his wife had children. At some point he said to his wife, "I'm done. I want to stay home with the kids." She was a wedding photographer, so I guess she did that. Later he got a job ... He teaches at Northeastern University. They were extraordinarily close. Julius was very unhappy when Nathan left.

Tom Owen:Non-Jewish, Nathan is non-Jewish. Met at U of L maybe, perhaps?

Carol Seifer:I think so.

Tom Owen:I feel like I remember ... I was actually wandering through U of L in '63 - four, no '61 - two, came back 67, and I'm feeling like and somewhere in I remember Nathan Felde. Did he say Felde.

Carol Seifer:Felde, F-E-L-D-E.

Tom Owen:I remember him. Actually out of curiosity I looked him up online yesterday, and saw what he had done through his career. I had read in a clipping, that Julius and Nathan were partners. They kind of began, and even began with apartments in the Hampden place.

Carol Seifer:Yes, they lived there, and in fact when Julius died ... Nathan was in Poland, and he desperately tried to get back while Julius was still alive, but he didn't, but he was here for the funeral. He stayed at the house. I always said he could stay at the house. He slept in Julius' bed, and he came back probably four times. We would talk about Julius, and he said if ... He had a lot of things, emotional things attached to the house, and everything. He just 67:00needed time to go through that, work through that. When he left last time, he took Julius' bed.

Tom Owen:Oh my goodness sakes.

Carol Seifer:Yeah, I gave him Julius' bed. Then, moving back to this, but then I get a call from Nathan about six months ago. He says ... Because at Northeastern University, all the students go abroad, and Nathan was going to Berlin to teach a class, but he stopped in London to see his kid. His eldest kid lives there. Then he went to ... By the time he got to Berlin he could hardly stand up. They told him you got to go home. They put him on plane back to Boston, to Brigham hospital. It turns out he has stomach cancer. He sends me this thing. He says, 68:00"I don't know if it was the barbecue ..." - because he wanted barbecue when he was here - "or Julius is lonely, and he needs me, but I've got this stomach cancer." I texted him back, I said, "Oh no, you're not leaving." I said, "I can't have another person leave me, I just can't." They caught it in time, and he's on medication, and he's doing very well.

Tom Owen:Good, good, good.

Carol Seifer:But when Nathan left there was a guy named Franklin Ross, and he and Julius were together. I can't even tell you how many years they were together, but both of them had really big egos. Julius would always be deprecating, but he did have a big ego. They parted ways, and they let go of the secretary.

Tom Owen:Help me. Franklin got... moved out, did his own thing, but there was a 69:00secretary that worked for both of them?

Carol Seifer:And they let her go, because...

Tom Owen:I see. Now we're getting to the knock on the door.

Carol Seifer:The knock on the door.

Tom Owen:Because the secretary was no longer be employed just for Julius.

Carol Seifer:Yeah, no one was there. I said, "Okay." What eventually ... How it evolved, is that I did all the book work, bookkeeping, and I was smart enough to know when we started wholesaling the posters, because Julius never made money as a graphic designer, not much. He had an okay life. But when I started wholesaling the posters all over the world, I mean money was just coming in, and it was during the Carter years, which meant if you had money, you made money. If 70:00you had to borrow money you were up a creek.

Tom Owen:Yeah, 12, 14%.

Carol Seifer:I was buying commercial paper at 16% every month, turning it over, turning it over. I was buying triple A municipal bonds, non-taxable at 10 1/2%. Then I was buying certain stocks. Julius would have never taken the time to do that.

Tom Owen:Wait a minute. With the profit ...

Carol Seifer:The profit that was coming off of the posters.

Tom Owen:Yeah. You invested that money. Was that his money? Your money?

Carol Seifer:No, it was his money. Originally I worked for art work. I didn't get a salary.

Tom Owen:Oh really?

Carol Seifer:I just worked for art work, and then at some point I said, "You're just going to have to pay me."

Tom Owen:Where were you living at the time? Where was your house?

Carol Seifer:When he first came, I was on Clayton Road off Valley Vista ...

Tom Owen:Oh yeah so you didn't come forward at Hampden Place.

Carol Seifer:We worked at Hampden Court for a long time.

Tom Owen:Hampden Court, yeah.

Carol Seifer:I remember I worked in the alcove in the foyer. Julius had some crazy ass people that were friends. I mean some of them were very scary. Finally I said to him, "You know?" He had many ex-girlfriends. I said, "I'm going to take the first bullet, because I'm going to be the person they see first. I'm going to work in the same room as you. I have a 50 / 50 shot that maybe I won't get killed." He agreed to it. Then we were in a big room. We were across from each other. We stayed there, and then one day he said, "I'm tired of working in the basement." Because we also worked down in the basement. He said, "What do you think about doing a gallery?" I said, "We can try it." Which is what we did. Where the Frazier museum is, we had the entire second floor. Of course it was a 72:00beautiful gallery, just beautiful. But Main Street didn't look like it does today. There was no foot traffic, and people would come, and they would love everything. "Oh, it's so beautiful, it's so beautiful, it's so beautiful." Not buy anything. We would have different shows, and we would sell certain things, but not to the extent we should've been. We had this joke. They either come in, and it has to match their sofa, or "I like it, but my spouse doesn't." The third was, "Is this a good investment?" I would say "no" to the investment. Only if you by blue chip art, and even then you don't know. Your guy could fall out of favor, you would get nothing. I said, "Art is the emotion that the art work 73:00evokes in you." If it evokes emotion in you, and doesn't in your husband, you should still buy it, and he should do that to some piece that he likes. I said, "If you liked Elvis paintings on velvet, and they evoke an emotion in you, that's art. That's what art is. It's the emotional attachment to the piece." Well, I could've been talking to these filing cabinets.

Tom Owen:Well now, clarifying, a gallery is a place where we're selling more than the art work of Julius Friedman.

Carol Seifer:Yeah we had international.

Tom Owen:You had artists ... Just out of curiosity, how do you get international artists to be interested in placing art at your place?

Carol Seifer:Well we would do shows, like I curated a show. It was called The 74:00Tea Pot Show. I would send letters all over the country. People either said yay, or nay, and submitted things. That's how we did it. Then certain artists knew Julius. Julius maybe had bought a piece of theirs, and they would be willing to show ... Even if it was less money than if you'd gone to a big city, and I was ... I know it's part of the university, but the Speed Museum.

Tom Owen:It's not part of the university. It just happens to be on this ... I think they pay a dollar a year since 1927.

Carol Seifer:Well the Speed Museum, I've always had a difficult time with, because they have a group of people who are wealthy, who they take all over the world.

Tom Owen:I've heard that.

Carol Seifer:To visit artists' studios, and of course they buy, because this 75:00piece ... "I talked to the artist, yada, yada, yada," all this crapola. Consequently, the people who have money in this town would never buy a piece of art in this town, because they don't think it's good enough. The people who love it, would stand lovingly looking at whatever piece it was, don't have the money to afford it. I blame the Speed for convincing these people. "Oh the town you live in, their art sucks." I never liked them for that. When Julius died, the Archives wanted his stuff. Various people, Frazier. Nary a call from the Speed Museum, and Julius had a very large ceramic collection that was really good. He had a lot of [?]...

Tom Owen:That he had bought from ...

Carol Seifer:That he bought over the years. They never called, nothing. My protest is I won't go to the Speed. Every time my girlfriend calls, "Let's go see the exhibit." I said no.

Tom Owen:Even though some of them might be interesting.

Carol Seifer:I said, "It could be interesting, but I'll just go to the museums [?] ...

Tom Owen:Give me a feel ... I'm headed toward wrapping things up for this time. Give me a feel for what year it was that this guy by the name of Ross moved out, secretary was dismissed.

Carol Seifer:Okay, let's see. Melissa was born in '73. She was I think ... Probably 1977.

Tom Owen:77, okay. So 1977, and who's living in Hampden Court when you go to work there?

Carol Seifer:Julius had the first floor, and his partner Jerry Looney had the 77:00second floor.

Tom Owen:Business partner? Artistic collaborator?

Carol Seifer:Yes. No, no, no, no, Jerry was just ... It was Nathan, Jerry, and Julius who originally bought the house. When Nathan left, Julius bought out Nathan's share, and he had the first floor, and the basement, and Jerry had the second floor.

Tom Owen:Jerry lived there, and worked there? He was an artist also?

Carol Seifer:No, he wasn't an artist. He lived there, he didn't work there.

Tom Owen:Oh I see. Partner just means co-owner of the house?

Carol Seifer:Right, he was a co-owner in the house, yes.

Tom Owen:I see, I see. This might be a little bit sensitive, but you mentioned some of the people who you might have been unsettled or afraid of. Were drugs used in the house a lot, frequently?

Carol Seifer:I cannot say for sure. I think my brother on occasion smoked grass, and I think on one occasion he took LSD, and it really scared the bejeezus out 78:00of them, and he never did it again. Julius wasn't into that scene. He never did cocaine, heroin. He just ...

Tom Owen:From the outside, if I had been peddling my bicycle, and kind of seeing some of the people going in, and out, I might have thought that.

Carol Seifer:No, Julius didn't. I never did. He told me as a young kid, he'd break my arm if I ever smoked. The only time he ever smoked cigarettes was on a press run. He would bum a cigarette from one of the press people, because we were always down for the press runs. Julius learned the art of printing. What he did with Fresh Paint, with a yellow yolk, a blue yolk, and a red yolk. Well, you could do it like that now digitally, but back then you couldn't. You had to understand the printing process of how to do it. The press men all loved him, 79:00because they're printing brochures that are totally uninteresting, or annual reports that are boring, but this was fun. They liked this.

Tom Owen:Yeah.

Carol Seifer:We would always be down there, and over time Julius learned the printing process. I will give him mucho credit when it turned to computers. Julius didn't know a thing about computers. We were doing cut and paste. That's how you did type. You called a photo refinisher if you wanted to take lines out of someone's face. He learned, over the years, how to do it digitally. I'm very proud, because he was an older.

Tom Owen:He was an older dog, new tricks, yeah.

Carol Seifer:He did, he learned it.

Tom Owen:Good, good, okay. Let's complete this part of our conversation, August 16th, 2018. If you're willing I'd love to do another round, where we kind of 80:00talk more in this next phase. I would like to understand more kind of the everyday life as you were working together as partners. Just the whole thing about ... I'm curious about marketing, and building a clientele, and international, and all of that kind of stuff. We can focus on that next time.

Carol Seifer:Okay.

Tom Owen:With that, I think we'll stop. This is the end of the conversation on August 16th, 2018. Tom Owen having spoken with Carol Saffert, thank you. Seifer, Seifer, Seifer.

Carol Seifer:Seifer, no T.

Tom Owen:Yes no T. Got it, thanks.