Gayle Breslow Marger

Crangle: Gayle, could I just get you to start by getting you to state your name and your place and date of birth?
MARGER: My name is Gayle Lois Breslow Marger, although I don’t use the Lois anymore. Breslow was my maiden name. I was born on April 4, 1944, which turned out to be 4/4/44, here in Portland.

Crangle: OK. And you grew up in Portland?
MARGER: I grew up in Portland. I was here until I left for college when I was 17. I went to the east coast for college. I got married, then lived in Louisville and then Ohio. Then we decided to come back to Portland after our sons were born.

Crangle: What neighborhood of Portland did you grow up in?
MARGER: When I was little we lived in what is known as Colonial Heights, on 25th and Harrison, just above Ladd’s Addition. I went to Hosford Grade School and then started at Cleveland High School. My father died when I was eight. My mother remarried when I was 13 and we moved at that point to an area called Broadmore. I went to Beaverton High. That was a radical change from Cleveland. Beaverton was a social anomaly. There were two social groups: the Portland Golf Club group (who almost all went to Catlin Gable, which is a private school), and then the Townies. It was kind of a “town and gown” situation. And then there were those of us who didn’t belong in either place [laughs], and like what happens a lot of times, we ended up in the theater department.

Crangle: If I can just go back to your early childhood, who was in the house growing up?
MARGER: My mother, my sister Adrienne, who is seven years older than I am, and my dad, and me. When my mother’s family moved to Portland, they lived in Old South Portland. After my mother and dad married they moved to San Francisco. When they came back to Portland, because it was during the war and they couldn’t find housing, they moved in with an aunt and uncle, who lived just off of east Burnside in the Laurelhurst area. So that is where I kind of started out. Then my parents bought a house in Portland, on Harrison.

Crangle: What were your parents’ names?
MARGER: My mother was Gertie Levin Breslow and then she became Feves. And my father was Max Breslow. He was a professional musician. He was a trumpet player and his brother Hymie, was a violinist. His father came from Lincoln, Nebraska. From what I understand there is a very large Breslow family community in Omaha. But I don’t know that much about that side of my family because my father died when I was so young and I never really had a chance to ask questions. I remember my grandmother’s house on Lincoln in Old South Portland. And I remember the ladies, (everyone went by just last names; no one ever used their first names) Mrs. Breslow. She lived across the street from Mrs. Levin, who was the fish lady, and Runi Hyman, who was a baker. My grandmother and grandfather had, I guess, a small grocery store. They didn’t by the time I came around. 

My two aunts both married Sephardic men. When we would go to my grandmother on my father’s side of the family, that is the tradition that was celebrated. When we would go to my mother’s side it was Ashkenazi. My mother was the youngest by 21 years of her oldest sibling. At my aunt’s house, she was more like a grandmother than an aunt. She was 18 years older than my mother. Her children, who are actually my cousins, I grew up calling Aunt Sadie and Uncle…. It took me a long time to figure out that they weren’t really my aunts and uncles, that they were actually cousins. At some point I realized that you have to be a brother or a sister to a parent to be and actual aunt or uncle.

My Aunt Yetta came to Portland because she married a fur trapper. My Uncle Phil, who was the eldest, had settled in McGill, Nevada, of all places. And my Uncle Abe went to work with him. Then Phil died in the flu epidemic of 1918 and somehow Abe ended up in Utah and married a woman from Salt Lake and settled in California. My mother and her next oldest sibling were in Portland but, as I said, there was a big age difference between them.

Crangle: What part of the world was your mother’s family from originally?
MARGER: They were from the Pale of Settlement someplace. I don’t know exactly, but in the Poland, Ukraine, or Russia, depending on who won what war. I know that my grandfather was quite a linguist and that he was in the Russian army. That is why he ended up coming to the United States. My mother told me that he sensed that there would be a war with Japan and he left. Then, after he raised enough money he brought my grandmother, you know, the traditional story. He brought my grandmother and the children to the United States.

Crangle: And they lived in Old South Portland when they arrived?
MARGER: Yes, but my mother was born in Pueblo, Colorado. The story is, as I understand it, that they came through New York and the moved to Alabama (I have no idea why) and my grandmother didn’t like it so they moved to Pueblo, Colorado. When my uncle died in the flu epidemic they moved to Portland to be close to the next oldest child, who lived in Baker, Oregon, which is quite a drive now. I can only imagine what it was like then, driving in that era between Portland and Baker. Eventually my aunt Yetta and Uncle Harry and the kids moved to Portland because they wanted to have some Jewish education, which they weren’t going to get in Baker.

Crangle: How did your parents meet each other? Do you know?
MARGER: You know, I’m not sure. They both grew up in Portland and I don’t think the Jewish community was all that big. Probably my mother knew one of my father’s younger sisters, went to school with her and then met him. I understand that my father was really well-known because he was a musician and played in a lot of different places. I once heard a trumpet player on TV say that people who don’t want to be noticed don’t take up the trumpet. But I didn’t really know my father because I was eight when he died. But I understand that he was very outgoing and kind of liked being the center of attention. The trumpet tends to be the center of attention.

Crangle: I suppose it must be difficult, as you say, to have those clear memories in your head given that he passed away when you were so young.
MARGER: Yes, most of the memories that I have are associated with photographs. I don’t know if I really remember them or I just have seen the photograph so often that it feels like I remember it.

Crangle: Yes, I know. It is quite difficult to separate that, especially when the memories are from when you are so young. You mentioned that your mother remarried. Was that a few years after?
MARGER: When I was 13. That is when they moved from the Cleveland school district to Beaverton. At the time that I was at Cleveland, that area was (for Portland) very mixed in terms of there was a big Italian community and Chinese, Greek. There was even some Japanese families that had come back to Portland after the war. The produce district was very close to where I grew up. Most of those were Italian-owned, Gatto Produce, Sunsarri Produce, Amato Produce… They lived close to where those businesses were. When I got to Beaverton High it was totally different. I felt like I integrated the school. I felt like I was the only brunette. Consequently I became more and more Semitic, just because, if I was going to be Semitic anyway I might as well.

Crangle: That is interesting. I think a lot of people, if they move to a school that was so homogenous, they would try to fit in. But you did the opposite.
MARGER: I think I realized that there was no fitting in. I mean, it’s not that people were mean. But the whole social life took place at Valley Community Presbyterian Church. And then there were some other school sororities. Meanwhile, Portland had a lot of clubs for Jewish teenagers. In the seventh grade, I remember, there was a group for girls called Dahlia. I don’t remember if there was a boys’ version of that. Then in high school you were asked to join either K’maia, QED, or Omega. Those were the three sororities. And there were a couple of clubs for boys. There were two or three AZA groups and two BBG groups. But I was only active in K’maia. I guess I kind of liked it. What I got most out of it was that, when I decided to apply to college, I wouldn’t apply to a school that had a sorority [laughs]. So I guess that, while I put up with it, I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like the whole idea of having to be judged in the way that you are judged to be in those kind of clubs. So, to my mother’s great unhappiness, I wouldn’t go the University of Washington, which was where almost all of the Jewish kids went for college while I was growing up. University of Oregon didn’t have Jewish sororities or fraternities. No, I think they did have a fraternity. I think they had SAMMY. But they didn’t have sororities. Consequently, my sister and everybody else went to the University of Washington. That was like the “local” college. They had Phi Sigma Sigma and AE Phi. And then there were ZBT and SAMMY for the men. Because we couldn’t get into other sororities and fraternities at that point.

Crangle: They wouldn’t accept Jewish applicants? 
MARGER: No, it was a long time before they would. When I was at Rutgers, I went to Douglas, which is the women’s division of Rutgers. It didn’t have sororities, but Rutgers had fraternities and only one of them was mixed.

Crangle: The initial school you went to you mentioned that there were a lot of ethnicities there. Was there a large Jewish contingent there?
MARGER: Well, the school that had the most Jewish kids when I went to school was Grant, in northeast Portland. Cleveland had a pretty big amount, but compared to other cities, probably not. In Portland, it had more than Jefferson or Franklin or Madison. At that time, the community was transitioning from northeast Portland to southwest. And Wilson because the school that had the biggest Jewish population after a while. The Jewish Community Center was on 13th, right where the freeway is now. So there was a new community center built, right where it is now. And all of the synagogues also got knocked down in that urban renewal project. I didn’t know for a long time that those synagogues had actual names because they were referred to as “First Street, “Sixth Street,” and “Meade Street.” First Street was Shaarie Torah. Sixth Street was Neveh Zedek, which then joined Ahavai Sholom and became Neveh Shalom. And Meade Street was Kesser Israel. The only one that I knew at that time that had an actual name was “The Temple.” The temple was The Temple. But everybody else was just by street.

There was also the Sephardic synagogue, which they insured and tried to move to a new location and it broke in the move. But they were able to build a whole new building because they had insured it with Lloyds of London.

Crangle: Which synagogue was yours?
MARGER: Well my parents belonged to Temple. But my aunt and uncle and my grandparents belonged to Shaarie Torah, to First Street. So we would go to the second day of Rosh Hashannah and sit with them in the balcony, which I actually liked a lot better because you could just visit and talk and not pay attention. But at Temple you had to pay attention because you were right there. [laughs] Then after a while the kids were allowed to just run around and be a kid. 

Then I would go to the Sephardic synagogue with my cousins sometimes, too. So I had a multi experience, for Portland.

Crangle: That’s interesting. Did people from the various synagogues mix with each other a lot?
MARGER: Not really. It was just because of my family’s…. A lot of the kids that were at Temple, because Rosh Hashannah was one day, had grandparents at the other ones and would go spend time with them. Then when we got to K’maia and those clubs, you did mix more.

Crangle: And did you go to places like the Jewish Community Center?
MARGER: I did. Dahlia was out of the Jewish Community Center, and so was BBG, but I wasn’t active in that. The Center had a woman working for them by the name of Helen Gordon. In fact, there is a preschool here named for her. She was an amazing person. She started the first program here that integrated children with disabilities into a normal preschool setting. I was her aide for two summers. I was there in the summers working when I was junior high school age. But everybody went to the Center. That was where you went. I remember the way it looked and I remember a lot of the people there. I think the boys went for basketball and whatever. And the girls went because the boys were there to play basketball.

Crangle: Is that what you went for?
MARGER: You know, I don’t think I did as much. There must have been a group that I was interested in. Oh, the synagogues also had their own youth groups. I was active in the Temple youth group. And then Neveh Shalom had a youth group and so did Shaarie Torah. There was a place to mix and then the synagogues had their own groups. I think I was more active in the Temple youth group.

Crangle: What sort of activities would they have?
MARGER: Oh, you know, they would have a dance or something. I don’t remember anything outstanding. I think it was just a place for Jewish kids to get together and know each other. There must have been something, we had elections; someone because president. But after that I don’t remember anything.

Crangle: What about Jewish life in your own home? Were you a particularly observant Jewish family?
MARGER: My father, as I said, was a musician. So after work (which would be at 2:00 in the morning) he and the other musicians in the band—he played in the symphony and also in a jazz band—would go for Chinese food in Portland. My mother said that my grandmother kept a treif pot so that he could bring Chinese food home and they could heat it up. My mother kept kosher while my grandparents were alive but then after that she didn’t. Everybody had a deli that they really liked. There were quite a few delis at that time and each family had one that they swore by, “This is the best deli.” I don’t remember the name of the one that we went to. But I remember one was Korsun’s. That one lasted longest because he rebuilt after it was knocked down. One was Halperin and Collistro. That was an Italian and Jewish deli, but I don’t think that was where we went. I can picture the fellow but I don’t remember the name of it.

Crangle: Sure. Those other places you mentioned were mainly Old South Portland institutions. Did you visit that neighborhood a lot?
MARGER: Oh yes. That is where my grandmother lived, on Lincoln. In fact, years later, there was a motel, I think it was the Thunderbird, that was built on Lincoln. There was some kind of a family event there and my sister came from Seattle, where she lived. She said, “Where is this brunch going to be?” Looking at it I said, “Well, we’re probably eating in Grandma’s dining room.” They had knocked down all the houses there. It wasn’t quite there. I think my grandmother’s house was between Fourth and Fifth on Lincoln. And the Red Lion was more like First and Second. But it was close enough.

Crangle: That area was traditionally known as the hub of the Jewish Community.
MARGER: It was. In fact, years later I got involved in the National Council of Jewish Women when we came back, who had built and owned the Neighborhood House. That was a settlement house for Portland immigrants. I was president of the section and our office was still in Neighborhood House. It was really just around the corner from Meade Street, where Kesser Israel still was, so there was still a lingering community but not really very much of one at that point.

Crangle: What time are we talking about then?
MARGER: That was in the early ‘80s, late ‘70s.

Crangle: Oh, as late as that.
MARGER: Mmhmm. They owned the Neighborhood House for quite a while. National Council of Jewish Women sold it sometime around 1985 or 1990. Somewhere in there.

Crangle: What are your memories of the neighborhood as a child?
MARGER: Oh, it was fun. Everybody knew everybody. But I wasn’t there all that much. I remember that it was the kind of a neighborhood where people lived on their porches, which today we don’t. We don’t live outside in front. But they did. Then they would be able to visit as people walked up and down. My aunt Yetta lived in Laurelhurst, and that was much more like the rest of Portland. Old South Portland still had that immigrant community feel. And then it was gone!

Crangle: Your grandmother lived in that area?
MARGER: Yes. My father’s mother.

Crangle: Where was she from?
MARGER: She was from Russia also. I don’t even know if she and my grandfather met in this country or if they met in Russia and then he brought her over. I think all of the children were born here. My father was the third. There was Ida, and then Hyman, and then Max, who was my dad. Then Eda and Eva. My father was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. So, my guess is that all of the children were born in this country. 

In my mother’s family, only she and my aunt Molly, the next oldest, were born in the United States. The rest were born in Russia and came over when Phil was about 14 and Yetta would have been 11 and Abe would have been maybe eight.

Crangle: What are your memories of your grandmother?
MARGER: It’s funny how children…. or maybe it was just me. I didn’t know if she spoke English. The English she spoke didn’t sound like English to me. And I couldn’t figure out how I could understand her because I didn’t speak whatever she was speaking. I remember saying to my sister about “Grandma not speaking English” and she said, “Yes, she speaks English.” But it was so heavily accented that I didn’t think she was speaking English.

Also, when I was at her house and we had a Sephardic tradition, like for Passover or Rosh Hashannah, or whatever it was, I just assumed that every family was like that. There are two days for Rosh Hashannah so that you can go to one side on one day and the other side the other day. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t Sephardic because my cousins were Sephardic. It was just, “When I’m here, I’m Sephardic. But when I’m there, I’m not.” I don’t know at what point it occurred to me that that wasn’t actually the truth. But it worked.

Crangle: Do you know if it was controversial at all for two people of two different traditions…?
MARGER: Oh, very controversial. I know that my niece’s husband in Seattle (Seattle has a much bigger Sephardic community than Portland—Seattle has two synagogues [names them]. One was Istambulese and one was from the Isle of Rhodes. Here it wasn’t big enough for them to have two so they had to get along). Anyway, Sandy’s mother was a child of the first marriage between an Ashkenazic and a Sephardic in Seattle. In fact, my brother-in-law Vic belonged to a fraternity that had to start at the University of Washington for Sephardic boys because they couldn’t get into the other two Jewish fraternities.

Crangle: Oh, I see. It was that exclusive, then.
MARGER: I’m not too sure at what point things began to be more realistic. There was a lot of that, you know. Multnomah Athletic Club didn’t allow Jews. I can kind of remember the first Jewish Rose Festival Princess. Golf clubs didn’t accept Jews—that is why Tualatin was built. You didn’t really think about it that much. I think there were Jews at the City Club but there weren’t women. I remember when women were admitted to the City Club. That kind of prejudice was more out of habit than anything else. I don’t know that people even thought about it. I find it more disturbing that the Sephardic community and the Ashkenazic community didn’t mix. That one I never really understood.

Crangle: Do you know why there was so much tension between them? I assume there were historical roots.
MARGER: I think people are always somewhat uncomfortable about differences. That is the only thing I can point to. And certainly there are differences. The Sephardic community came from an Arab culture. I don’t know if it is strikingly different from the older Russian culture, in terms of treatment of women. There may not have been that much difference between the two communities in that.

Crangle: Did you ever experience any discrimination yourself, personally? Any antisemitism?
MARGER: Well, yes. I told you that I went to Beaverton and I would have to get pre-excused to be gone for Yom Kippur. And the dean said, “You know, you can’t have your holidays and our holidays, too.” and I remember looking at her and thinking, “What does that mean?” Senior year, the graduation dance was at the Portland Golf Club and I went. I said, “You know, this golf club is restricted.” And she said, “Well they will let you in that night.” [laughs] I didn’t go.

The only time I ever spoke out about anything, there was a world history class. I really liked the teacher, which is probably what gave me the nerve. I said what I said without even thinking. He said something about “Christian brotherhood” and I said, “Why just Christian?” There was this silence in the room and I realized that I had said it out loud. He looked at me and said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “When you say Christian brotherhood that kind of eliminates any other group from having brotherhood. Isn’t the whole point of brotherhood that it isn’t restricted to just one group?” Everyone kind of looking at me because you just didn’t speak out like that. Afterwards he called me in and said, “I thought a lot about what you said and I realized that I need to be more careful.” So, after my one-person strike of not going to our graduation dance because it was held at the Portland Golf Club, 20 years later the class held their reunion there [laughs]. It was such an effective strike. But that time I actually did go to the reunion, figuring it is their loss. I don’t even know now if there are Jewish families there. I know that there are now at Waverly and that was the most exclusive of all the golf clubs. The Columbia Edgewater was built by Catholics who couldn’t get into the other ones. And now all of them are all mixed.

Crangle: Tell me a bit about going into adult life. You mentioned that you didn’t want to go the University of Washington. Where did you go?
MARGER: I wanted to go away. I wanted to go someplace where nobody else…So I applied to Stanford and I applied to the Seven Sisters. At that time, if you didn’t have an interview, you applied to the Seven Sisters as a group. Wellesley, Vassar, Radcliffe, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Barnard, and… I don’t remember what the last one was. So I did. I applied to the Seven Sisters and they placed me. I was on Stanford’s wait-list. I was surprised I even got that far. It was also known for having a quota for Jews and I think every decent Jewish student on the west coast applied there. It was the thing to do. Anyway, the school that they placed me at for the Seven Sisters was Barnard, which is right in New York City. I was smart enough to know that there was no way that I could have gone to live in New York City. I was very young when I went to school. I had skipped second grade, so I was barely 17. I just knew I couldn’t do it. I started looking around and I found Douglas, which turned out to be perfect. It was a bus ride from New York and a bus ride from Princeton. It was the women’s division of Rutgers University. It was at one end of New Brunswick and Rutgers was at the other end. You could take classes back and forth. 

I started out as a speech therapy major, which I hated after about three seconds. And realized this was not for me. I ended up in theater design, which knowing now what I know about myself, and had the era been different, I would have gone into architecture. Even now women have a hard time going into architecture and this is a lot of years later. Architecture came out of engineering school, where there were almost no women. Now architecture comes out of engineering and design schools. That would have been my choice but it never even occurred to me. In my era, women could be a nurse or a teacher. There were some other things. If you were a good language student, a lot of the girls ended up as simultaneous translators at the UN. Or you could be a secretary at a publishing house in New York. There were other options but relatively speaking, the world was not open at that point with a lot of choices for women. You could also go to graduate school. But I had met Jerry. He was in engineering school. It is now the New Jersey Institute of Technology but at the time it was called Newark College of Engineering. He grew up in the same neighborhood that Phillip Roth wrote about, Weequahic, in Newark. He worked days and went to school at night. Although he is three years older than I am, we graduated at the same time. Then he applied to law school and we ended up in Louisville, where again, he worked days for BF Goodrich and went to law school at night. I thought about going to graduate school in Louisville but our finances were such that I decided I didn’t want to spend the money. Graduate school is a lot more expensive than undergraduate.

Crangle: Yes. So you met Jerry while you were in college?
MARGER: Yes, my junior and senior year college roommate got pinned, which is what people did then. It is kind of a pre-engagement. I don’t know if anybody bothers anymore. The fraternity would have a pinning party. I was fixed up on a date so that I could go to the pinning party at this fraternity. Jerry was not my date. He was somebody else’s date but I met him. That’s how we met.

Crangle: Was that soon after you had arrived?
MARGER: No, I was a junior in college at that point.

Crangle: I want you to tell me about how it felt when you were young moving to the other side of the country. Was that intimidating or exciting?
MARGER: When I look back on it now, it was such magical thinking. I knew I would just get on an airplane in Portland somehow end up at Douglass. It never occurred to me how I would get from the airport to the college. I would just do it! Luckily, someone here in Portland—and how she even knew I was going to Douglass is beyond me but I was forever grateful—called me and said, “Gayle, I have somebody in town from New Jersey who goes to Douglass, would you like to meet her?” Well, I did. I went over. Her parents volunteered to pick me up at the airport. I stayed with them for a couple of days and then they drove me to Douglass. I don’t know what I would have done. I wouldn’t let me parents come with me. And they hadn’t gone to college so it would never have occurred to them to say, “Are you out of your mind? Of course we are going with you.” Having said that, it was wonderful. I loved it. I loved the east coast. As I said, I was a theater major and for me it was heaven. I have always been fascinated, and that is part of why I have been taken with museums: What do you have to do physically to get an audience or a viewer to get the message you want them to get from what it is you are putting on? Whether it is an exhibit at a museum or at a theater, you want the audience to feel something. That is your intent. So what do you have to do? How do you make that happen? I have always been just fascinated with that. I go to museums and I look at something and ask, “What did they do to invoke this emotion?” When I go to a theater, especially if I don’t like the show, I can’t get engaged in the show itself but I will get engaged with the colors they used or the background. I can keep myself going through the show because I am involved in figuring out what they did. Jerry, on the other hand is looking at his watch every ten minutes, ready to leave [laughs].

Crangle: So you moved to Louisville immediately after graduation?
MARGER: Yes, that was the other thing. My mother said, do you want a wedding or do you want the money? Well, we didn’t have any money so we said, “the money.” But she said, “Oh, I will be so disappointed. I want to give you the wedding.” So we got the wedding. We came back here and she just kind of pointed where I was supposed to go and what I should wear. We went through all the wedding stuff that we did at that time. And then we left for Louisville.

Crangle: Whereabouts in Portland did you get married?
MARGER: At Temple. Temple had its own thing at that time. My sister’s husband is Sephardic. He wanted a more Orthodox…. He wanted to be able to step on the glass and wear a kippah. And the rabbi at that time, Rabbi Nodel, (it was “High Court” Reform) wouldn’t allow them to get married in the Temple. They had to get married in the chapel. I don’t know if he thought it would sully the Temple. He told them that the stepping on the glass signified the breaking of the hymen and he wasn’t all for it. But Vic decided that he wanted to anyway. The wedding was in the chapel. When I got married, which was about seven or eight years later, it was a different rabbi. Rabbi Rose was already there. So we were able to get married in the Temple with a kippah. 

So we got married. We moved to Louisville, where Jerry worked for BF Goodrich. Because we got married in August and I had a teaching certificate… I had gone to Portland State to do my fifth year in the summers so that I would have teaching certificate after I graduated. When we got to Louisville, all the jobs had been taken because it was August. I ended up starting a preschool program, a drop-in preschool at the Jewish Community Center in Louisville. And I also taught religious school. Then at some point, I found out I could take a civil service test, which I did. Then I worked at the Office for Economic Opportunity as a social worker.

Then Jerry got transferred by BF Goodrich to Ohio, to the research center, which is in Brecksville. We lived in Akron and he went to the university of Akron.

Crangle: And how long were you there?
MARGER: We were in Louisville for a year. And we were in Akron for five years. When he graduated, and knew he had to take the bar exam somewhere. Reciprocity issues were not the same then as they are now. I said, “You know, I could be happy anywhere.” (which was pretty much true, but), I said, “Do we have to live in this climate?” Ohio was just snow and I didn’t grow up with that. Even New Jersey was snowier than Portland, but it wasn’t Ohio. We ended up coming back to the west coast. Our plan was to go to Seattle but that was the year that Boeing decided that they had 100,000 employees too many. So we came back to Portland. We were glad, but it wasn’t our original plan.

Crangle: How old were you when you got back?
MARGER: I was 21 when I got married, so I was like 27.

Crangle: And did you have kids?
MARGER: Our boys were born in Ohio. They are 19 months apart. Matt was born in 1967 and Brian was born in ’69.

Crangle: So they were pretty young when you came back?
MARGER: Oh yes, Brian was less than a year old. I came ahead of Jerry. He was going to finish law school and I came ahead of him to start house-hunting.

Crangle: How did it feel moving back here? Was it easy to reintegrate with the community?
MARGER: Well, it was, in the sense that I knew the geography. But it was very different. Most of my friends were people who had moved to Portland about the same time. The friends you make…. They had gone on with their lives. Also, the [new] friends we made were people who had been in graduate school like we had, and had no money, like we had. It was very different. But having family here (my mother was here) made it a lot easier. During the time when my kids were born, those five years, we didn’t have anyone. In fact, we wanted to have a bris for Matt. I didn’t even try to do that with Brian because the rabbi was so impossible. I had to find ten Jewish men to come on a Tuesday afternoon for the bris. We didn’t know ten Jewish men, let alone men who would leave work and come. I thought, “I’m not putting myself through this again.” Brian was named at the temple. I didn’t know anybody, and when you are in school you know the people you are in school with. You don’t have the finances to go out and join clubs and meet people. When you have little children, you don’t either. You are very limited in who you know. And, to be honest with you, the weather was limiting. When you have babies, you don’t go out in the sub-zero weather for a walk. You might go out to the grocery store, but that is about it. I had a couple of friends and that was all I really knew.

Crangle: And when you came back here you had a much bigger circle?
MARGER: I did. I had a support system I could reach out to, of people I knew. And I could meet other people through them. Then I had relatives. I could meet people through them. As I said, most of our friends were people who came to Portland about the time that we came back.

Crangle: Were your friends mainly from a Jewish background?
MARGER: They were from all backgrounds. I think the ones that I have stayed closest to were the Jewish friends. But it wasn’t an exclusively Jewish group.

Crangle: Sure. When you came back to Portland, what did you and your husband do for a living?
MARGER: Jerry took the Bar exam. He is a patent attorney. His first job as an attorney was with a classic attorney; it wasn’t a patent firm. That was another thing. There were very careful rules about where Jewish attorneys could apply. For certain law firms we were told, “Don’t even bother. They won’t take anyone who is Jewish.” So, he got a job with a single practitioner. And he got a lot of experience that year that he worked because he also had to take the Patent Bar. It is the only legal field that has its own, second, exam. He had to pass the Oregon Bar and then he had to take the Patent Bar before he could actually practice patent law. He left there and worked for Crown-Zellerbach, in their research department. Then he worked for another patent lawyer. Actually, I think he worked for Chernoff Vilhauer before he went to work at Crown-Zellerbach. Then he started his own firm with someone that he had met. Jerry was a chemical engineer and the other fellow was an electrical engineer. 

Meanwhile, I taught preschool. One of the things that I had done while I was in school was that I worked in children’s theater. I realized that I was not the kind of person who could work full-time and have a family full-time. It was just not for me. I taught preschool so I only worked half-days. Then, when my kids would come home I would be home. And that was much better for me. I stopped teaching for a while and I worked for an art gallery. Then I went back to teaching at the end. Then when Jerry and Alex opened up their law firm, I became the office manager for the firm for five year. I remember saying at a speech I had to give (and I think this is very true, and is kind of what has happened to organizational life) …. I called myself part of the “bridge generation.” Those who were older than me didn’t have careers. The ones that were younger than me did have careers. And my generation, we were too old to have careers and too young to not be working. It was a gap. It was also a demographic gap because in my age group, we had our kids very young. Now, women aren’t having children until they are in their 30s. The kinds of organizations that depended on volunteer help aren’t going to get it. By the time that women are in their 40s, which is when their kids are old enough…. You see, demographically, things really changed. A lot of organizations aren’t really here anymore. Also schools are now having to pay for help where they once had volunteers. It is a very different time than it was when I was starting out in the work field. The issue of working full-time was less of an issue than it is now.

Crangle: Yes, sure. It sounds like you did a lot of volunteer work. You mentioned that you got involved with NCJW.
MARGER: Yes, I was president of NCJW and then I was the state public affairs chair, which I really liked. That is a lobbying position. You lobby your own legislature and you lobby in Washington, your elected officials. We did lobbying on issues for women and children, basically. Family, women, and children. Then I was on the national board of NCJW for six years. They were two, three-year terms. Then I got involved with the synagogue board for a short amount of time. And then I got involved with the museum here and I was president for two years. I am still on the executive committee.

Crangle: When did you first get involved with the museum?
MARGER: It’s probably been about 15 years. I can’t remember the exact date. I was on the board and then other things if that is what they ask you to do. When I started at the museum, the museum was in what I like to call the “closet on Davis Street.” We had that first, little, tiny office. Then we moved from there to Kearney Street, which is where we were just before we came here. That felt like we were moving into the Taj Mahal compared to the office we had had on Third and Davis, just below where we are now. Then, of course, we moved into here and that was just a huge risk. It was kind of a leap of faith when a non-profit takes the leap that this place was. But I think it was the right thing to do.

Crangle: Yes, it certainly is looking like it worked out. Are there any other things you were involved with? I mean, I suppose you did a lot with NCJW. Were there any campaigns or particular…?
MARGER: Well, I was very involved with a campaign here. First it was called “No On Nine.” Oregon has a strange initiative petition. Almost anybody can petition to have something put on the ballot. If they get enough signatures it will get on the ballot. This was an anti-Gay initiative. I was on a committee that was the “No On Nine.” And then, after that one did not pass, there was another one. It was called 13. That didn’t have the same kind of ring in terms of the… [laughs] “No On Thirteen” is not as sexy sounding as “No On Nine.” Again I was active on that.

I was also involved with RCAR, which is the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Once I was asked to speak at the medical school. It was a weekend meeting of Medical Students for Choice. They asked to have ministers there for a religious point of view. Because they were having this panel discussion on a Saturday they couldn’t find a rabbi to speak on the Jewish position so I got drafted to go up to the medical school and do the Jewish position on abortion. Actually, I had to find out what our position was. I knew, or I thought I knew but I didn’t know why. The other two speakers were two Protestant denomination- men. We did our little things and then they talked about it and there were questions. We all answered the questions. And then they gave their final bit, advice they would give if a woman came to them. I thought about it and I said, “You know, I’m the only person at this table who would have to say to herself, ‘What would I do if I were a student alone, with no money, in a small apartment, with no family?” What would I do?” That was a whole different thing than advising somebody else. And I could see the reaction of the students who were listening, “Yeah, what would you do?” In other words… I think it was helpful. It was interesting for me that there was this group. And it was interesting for me to explore the Jewish view and where it came from. 

I haven’t been as politically active in the last…. Of course I wasn’t active during the Obama because it was such a feel-good time. But now with Trump I have to say it is a different era and I have become more involved with certain things again.

Crangle: You have?
MARGER: Well, only with writing letters and that kind of thing, although I did do the Women’s March. But I haven’t been active in other ways. I think it is time for somebody else. I will be 75 in April. Now there is another generation. I went to Planned Parenthood luncheon and heard Pat Schroeder. She was a representative from Colorado (to the House of Representatives) and she was the speaker. She said something that made me remember (it is so easy to forget). She said that when she was in law school in Connecticut and she was already married, but they didn’t want children yet because she wanted to finish law school, they would drive to New York to buy birth control pills, which were illegal in Connecticut. Had she been stopped and found with the birth control pills in Connecticut, she would have ended up with a felony charge and never have been able to practice law. The younger women at the table were shocked. They had no idea. It reminded me that in order to get birth control pills in Oregon before we got married, my mother had to come and swear that I was getting married within three months before the doctor could prescribe birth control. I had forgotten. You get beyond it and you forget. It reminded me of that and it definitely shows that things have changed and yet you have to still keep fighting for it.

Crangle: Yeah, I suppose that brings me nicely on to the next question, which is, what changes have you seen, both in the Jewish community and in the city more generally from when you were younger to now?
MARGER: Well, I think in the city there is a lot more acceptance of differences. It is not enough, but it is a lot more. Portland certainly still looks predominantly White. But I see a lot of interracial couples walking around. We have a large Asian community. We always have. I think that the acceptance in the socio-political structure of the city. It is not just who is elected; it is also where the seats of power are. They are not always in City Hall. They are very often in organizations like the MAC club and the City Club, the Arlington Club, which was another one which was exclusive. I see that changing, some faster and some slower. And I don’t know, because we don’t belong to any of them, I can’t say if they are interracial. But I can certainly say that their acceptance of Jewish membership is different than it was when I was growing up. 

Even the Rose Festival, which used to be…. I remember the first Jewish Rose Festival princess. Now, of course, it is totally different, as it should be. I think there is change and yet, it isn’t quite as fast as…. Looking back, you see the change. If you haven’t gone through it, I don’t know if you would feel that it is an open as other cities. But you can only start from where you are.

Crangle: And what about changes within the Jewish community?
MARGER: I think that, on the whole, the Jewish community is much more accepting about intermarriage, and certainly much more accepting about gay marriage. I can’t say that I know about some of them more orthodox synagogues. We belong to Neveh Shalom and I know also that Temple is very accepting and also Havurah. I can’t speak for the other ones. I think the important thing is that no matter what, there is a place. You are not locked out of the whole community. There is a place. How widespread that acceptance is, I don’t know. For instance, Kesser Israel, the more orthodox synagogue, I’m not too sure. But on the whole, there is a lot of acceptance now.

I think one big difference is intermarriage. I’m not talking about gay marriage now, but about intermarriage. At one time not very long ago, let’s say 15 years ago, if there was an intermarriage – Jewish and non-Jewish – at Neveh Shalom. The non-Jewish member of the family was not listed as a member of the synagogue, on the roster. Because they were not Jewish. That is no longer true. Now, if the family is a member, they are all members. Sometimes little things like that can be more hurtful than big things. A friend of mine said to them [Neveh Shalom], “My husband is working on it. He hasn’t officially converted but we are here and he is the one that is paying the dues.” Well the Conservative Union says, ‘Blah Blah Blah’ and we can’t do it. It is those kind of little things that are no longer true anymore. Those little things become very hurtful. They become very big if it is your family.

Crangle: I’m interested to know: growing up, did you feel like you had to marry someone from a Jewish background or is that just how it happened?
MARGER: I think I wanted to. I know that growing up I was allowed to go to school functions with someone who wasn’t Jewish but anything else it had to be someone who was Jewish. There was no one else who was Jewish [laughs]. I think there were two or three other kids. That was it.

Part of why I wanted to go to the east coast was to be in an environment where there were more Jews, where I didn’t have to explain myself all the time. You know how it is, “No, I don’t celebrate Christmas. I celebrate Hanukkah.” It was just so relaxed. Honestly, being in New Jersey I felt like everybody was Jewish.

We were talking about somebody. I was new at school. She was going out with somebody; I don’t remember his actual last name, but let’s say it was something like Tagarico. I said something about him being Jewish and they looked at me like I was a lunatic. “No, he’s Italian.” And I said, “Gee, the only reason I asked is that I have friends whose last names are Suriana and Mazzestrano, you know.” [laughs] Because they were Sephardic. That was new to them.

On the whole, it was like you had to go out of your way in college not to date someone who was Jewish, at least where I went. I suppose if you were at Dartmouth it would be different. But Dartmouth didn’t have girls then anyway….

Crangle: Right, so tell me a little bit more about your kids. What have they gotten up to?
MARGER: My kids played ball all the way through high school. Well, actually, Brian became a bodybuilder and Matt played baseball. Then they went to college. Matt’s objective for college was to find someplace that would let him play baseball. And Brian’s objective was to go where Matt went so that he would not have to do any investigation on his own, I think. [laughs] Matt ended up in California. He started out at a junior college, which was perfect for him. Some kids know when they are 12 that they are going to write their essay when they are 13 so that at 14 they can send it in to the college of their choice. My kids were not like that. My kids woke up their senior year and said, “Oh! What am I going to do next year?” We didn’t push it. The only thing we did push was that we made sure that they worked in the summers at jobs that were so awful that their choice would be – either go to college or this is how you are spending your life. They didn’t really know anybody who hadn’t gone to college. They didn’t. 

I remember, Brian pulled wire for a wire company and after a week he came back and said, “Even if I got a lobotomy I would not be dumb enough to do this for the rest of the summer.” So we said, “Go talk to someone and see if they have another job that you can do.” He did. And Matt worked in construction and would come home covered in sheetrock dust. They pretty much decided that they wanted to go to college. So both of them went to junior college. And then Matt transferred to San Diego State. He has a business degree and went on to get an MBA. Brian started out in premed. He got an internship at the medical school and discovered that he hated hospitals. He hated the medical school. He felt trapped. He transferred to the University of Oregon and also got a business degree. He was a bodybuilder in college. We went down a few times to watch the bodybuilding shows which were something I never had seen before.

So the kids went in their own directions. Matt got married and divorced. He has two kids, Noah, who is graduating in June from Dodge Film School, and Malia is graduating high school and will be starting college. It is really funny. They were both at the Arts and Communications Magnet Academy in Beaverton. Noah really like it but Malia wasn’t happy there. She just couldn’t quite find herself there. She found that they had this program at the community college where you can go to the community college and finish high school at the same time. So she has been at the community college. My first reaction was to say, “Oh Malia, you won’t be in high school.” But then I thought to myself, “What are you talking about?” I would have killed to have a program like that. I hated high school. But you have this Hollywood image of high school, you know? In my head, it was cheerleaders and ….

And Brian and Robin have been together for about 15 years. And that is the other thing. It never occurred to me to not have kids. But now it is a choice that a lot of people make and I have no problem with it. And they are not active in the Jewish community but, you know, they are grown men and they make their own choices. I made my choices; they make theirs. I’m comfortable with that. The world has changed and I don’t expect them to make the same choices that their father and I made.

Crangle: Do you think their Jewish education growing up was significantly different from, say, yours when you were growing up?
MARGER: Well, it was. In Matt’s case it was not an overly good experience. Matt’s dyslexic, which hasn’t, obviously, stopped him from having his own business and getting an MBA. But Hebrew school was hard for him. And the person who was the head of the Hebrew school said to me that she had looked into it and there is no such thing as dyslexia. My interpretation of that is that basically, there are two kinds of students: smart and stupid. And Matt fit into the stupid bowl. So I don’t think he had a very positive experience in terms of his Jewish education. But he is very Jewish in other things. And so is Brian in terms of holidays and the kids. They are culturally Jewish even if they are not religiously Jewish. But I’m not too sure that they would be religiously anything.

Crangle: I suppose that is another way that things are changing.
MARGER: Yes, I think it is. For Christian kids and Jewish kids the whole idea of religion is less important.

Crangle: I think that we have gotten through my questions now. Was there anything that you wanted to talk about that maybe we haven’t gotten to?
MARGER: I don’t think so. I was just looking at the list. Just one thing. When I was a brand-new baby, my parents had moved from Salt Lake, where they worked, to Portland and they couldn’t find a house. They moved in with my aunt, who I told you was like a grandmother. My cousin Nat, who was the youngest of their three children was 17 and worked in the shipyards, contracted Polio. The house was quarantined for two months. My mother wasn’t allowed out. I was four months old and my sister was eight. 

Then the March of Dimes prevailed on my uncle to accept the money (he wouldn’t accept it as charity) but Nat was in rehab in Vallejo California, which was where they had a Polio rehab institute. My aunt and her family would go weekly from San Francisco to visit him in Vallejo. He came back and finished high school and then went to University of Portland and went through college. That was an era when there was no help at all in terms of handicapped access. Curbs, there were no curb-cuts. There was nothing. I am very aware of that change. The only person I know of whom I can say, “He was a saint.” He was the most amazing man – great sense of humor. Never a complaint. I never once heard him say anything. I would see him drag himself upstairs using crutches. I would have my heart in my teeth because I was afraid he would fall. Now, when I look around and I see the access that the handicapped have now, I am so grateful for that. That is why communities have lightened so much – because we have handicapped access so those people who need it can be a major part of the community and lend their intelligence and their opinions. Just because they can get in and out of buildings and they can drive and park. It is amazing to me the changes that that has wrought for people who are on crutches or in wheelchairs. 

Even our synagogue had to make changes to make handicapped access. It just wasn’t anywhere. If you were handicapped, you stayed home.

Crangle: That is certainly a good development. And hopefully with mental disabilities as well it will be coming too.
MARGER: I would hope so. That is always a harder thing. It is so much easier to fix a broken arm than a brain that is having a problem. Anyway, to me, that handicap access has been a huge addition to making our communities more inclusive.

Crangle: That is certainly an interesting comparison between when you were a baby until now. It shows how much things have changed.
MARGER: Absolutely, and I have to say that I’m pretty nasty when people park in handicapped spaces who shouldn’t be.

Crangle: Well, fair enough [laughs]
MARGER: Well, Thank you.

Crangle: Thank you very much.