Arnold Silver

Fuks: Thank you for doing this, Arnie. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me the date that you were born and where.
SILVER: I was born May 13, 1933 in Portland, Oregon.

Fuks: Begin by telling me a little bit about what you remember about your early life.
SILVER: Well, I was probably considered a “gap baby.” By that I mean that Milt Hasson would have been the last of the people that lived entirely within a Jewish community. There is one other fellow that’s here that I was going to recommend to you, Norman Berlant. He was born there too.

My early life was kind of spoiled because I was the youngest in the family. I had two older brothers and my father and mother. They, in essence, treated me as the baby boy. I really don’t remember too much about when I was a young man. I do start remembering things about when I started and finished grammar school.

Fuks: So let’s start there. Which neighborhood did you live in, and where did you go to grammar school?
SILVER: South Portland. I was born there. My old house is still there. We didn’t move from there for a number of years. The interesting thing about it is that I had very few Jewish friends at that time. They were all Italian; it was a mixed neighborhood. That’s how I grew up. I didn’t go up to the Jewish Community Center very often because there was a community center in the neighborhood that I could walk to called the Neighborhood House. And there, there were not very many Jewish kids. There was myself and one other fellow, I think. The rest of them were all Italian. That’s how I remember the early days.

When I got older, in high school, they were basically all Italian. I met a few Jewish kids and I hung around with them quite a bit, but mainly they were all Italian. That’s what I remember about that. It was kind of a cliquish situation. I was probably one of the few Jewish kids that never had any trouble with any of the Italian kids; I was just part of the clique. But I think that other kids had problems. In high school, we’d associate during class, and going home after class, we’d walk together. The closest one to my house was a fellow named Joe Collistro. He used to walk with me, and then he’d take off and go home.

Fuks: Joe was walking with you out of friendship?
SILVER: Yes, we were friends.

Fuks: And you were at Lincoln High School?
SILVER: At Lincoln. My other friends that I grew up with in the neighborhood went to Cleveland. At that time, it was called Commerce. You had a choice, and I went to Lincoln because my brothers went to Lincoln. David was quite a good basketball player. He was, I believe, one of the first Jewish FBI agents on the West Coast. J. Edgar Hoover was kind of funny about who he appointed. Dave was an FBI agent. He went back east quite a bit, and he came to the neighborhood quite a bit. I remember one episode where he was telling me that there was this German kid named Schneiderman, and he said something to David, and David started chasing him down the street. That was kind of funny.

Fuks: Was David the oldest of the three of you?
SILVER: No, he was the middle.

Fuks: And what was your oldest brother’s name?
SILVER: Milton. Milt had kind of a hard life. He got married and moved to Seattle and then eventually came back to Portland. David made All-American at the University of Oregon. He was a member of the Oregon Tall Firs. That was the first team to win the National Championship. So we were proud of him. I admired him. Then, during the war, he got married, in 1942. That’s when he and his wife had to move all over the country. From my standpoint, that’s what I remember from my early childhood. After school, as I said, we’d walk together. I’d see him at night at the Neighborhood House, play basketball, swim.

Fuks: The Neighborhood House was quite an asset to the community.
SILVER: It was. It was on Southwest Second and Woods. It was not only for Jews; it was for anybody. We had mainly Italian kids, a few Black kids, and then the neighborhood started changing and I started looking for a house for my mother. I finally found one near some friends of hers on Southeast 22nd and Harrison. I bought the house, and I lived with them until I got married. Then I lived with them in ’67, when I got a divorce and had to return back to the house. Later on, I met my second wife, and we were married for 33 years. That one took. I think you might have spoken to Rochelle Silver. She’s my first wife.

Fuks: What did your parents do for a living?
SILVER: My dad, prior to the war, had his own tailor shop. He was partners with an Italian guy. They did everything in tailoring. They were not alterers; they made suits and stuff. He did that for a while, and then the war started and he had difficulty making a living because people weren’t spending money. So he went to work for the original Meier & Frank. Even when he retired, he kept working part-time with another shop after that. He used to bring Russian-Jewish sailors home for Friday night. They came off the boat, and they were very happy to have somebody take them home. He stayed at Meier & Frank for almost — it was quite a while. He then retired and started working, as I said, for another shop part-time.

Fuks: Did your mom work outside of the home?
SILVER: No, she had her hands full.

Fuks: With three boys, I would say so.
SILVER: Well, I wasn’t born for — there are 17 years difference between David and me. That’s why I say I had three fathers.

Fuks: Both of your brothers served in the military during World War II?
SILVER: No, David was in the FBI. Milton served in the Navy, in the Pacific. He came home a little changed. He just wasn’t the same.

Fuks: Where was he in combat?
SILVER: He was on a hospital ship near Australia. So when he got leave, he went to New Zealand and Australia and almost married a Jewish girl there, but her parents didn’t want her to leave. Then he came back and was a salesman, a men’s salesman. He did that off and on until he passed away. That’s all I remember.

Fuks: Was your family religious?
SILVER: My mother was, deeply religious, but my father didn’t care. You could drag him to shul on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, but that’s about it. He didn’t attend services.

Fuks: Did your mom keep a kosher home?
SILVER: Yes, very much. But then she finally had to give that up because my older brothers kept on bringing meat from Safeway. She used to shop at Levine’s Fish Market, where you picked fresh fish. Then across the street was the schneider. The butcher was there. She’d go in and pick out a chicken or some kind of [inaudible word, sounds like kalbenes] shank. He had to kill the chicken, and she’d bring it back. I remember this. I was scared of the guy. He was all white and had blood all over him. I can’t think of his name, but I was scared of him. She’d take the chicken and they’d wrap it in some kind of brown paper, and she schlepped it home. That was a walk for her. She was very religious, but she eventually got worn down by my brothers.

Fuks: I see. Did you have much of a religious education?
SILVER: I went to Hebrew school with Dr. Chernichowsky [Hayim Isaac Chernichowsky]. I didn’t graduate, but I went two and half years. Then I just gave it up. My cousin Norman Silver didn’t go, and I figured if he didn’t have to go then I didn’t have to go. The rabbi used to come down and talk to my mother and father, but I just didn’t want to do it. Can we pause this a minute, David?

[Recording is paused then resumes.]

SILVER: David, I had a recent diagnosis of a terminal illness, and that’s preventing me from thinking very well and collecting my thoughts. I’m a lot more coherent than that.
Fuks: I think it’s going fine.

[Recording is paused then resumes mid-sentence.]

SILVER: . . . were chased down and killed. And that was a little village outside of Rovo [spells out this way, but sounds like he had said Rovna], Ukraine. They grew up in a little town called [Osavo?], which was a Jewish village. My dad grew up in a village outside of Warsaw called [Plak?]. He never learned what happened to his family, but it soured him.

Fuks: So you were first-generation Americans. I didn’t realize that.
SILVER: Yes, I was. And, as I said, Milt Hasson and Norm Berlant would be the two members left, and then, of course, Milt died.

Fuks: But Norman’s still around. Could you talk a little about your high school years? What do you remember about that?
SILVER: Oh, yes [laughs]. High school years I was what they would call a “sosh.” I had a lot of friends in high school. They were not all Jewish, but some were, and we got along well. They came to the Neighborhood House once or twice to play ball, and I went to the JCC with them. Mainly, though, the group was not Jewish. Not all Italian either, but not Jewish. I was one of the first Jewish kids that was taken in to the local fraternity. Somebody had to do it, and I said, “Why not me?” So I was a member of Optimist and did that until I graduated. It was fun. Then I went to the old Vanport College, which used to be out by Vanport, which was a city. It eventually, as you know, got flooded out.

Fuks: Yes, there was a very destructive flood.
SILVER: Yes, it was. It wiped everything out. Then I transferred to the equivalent of Portland Community College, and I took history. That was my favorite subject. I took history as my undergrad with the thought of going to law school.

Fuks: This was Portland City College? It was a precursor to Portland State?
SILVER: Yes, PCC. Then I went to Portland State, and that’s when I graduated and eventually went on to law school.

Fuks: Where did you go to law school?
SILVER: I went to law school here in Portland because I worked, and it was at night. So we had four years of night law school. It was hard, but I passed the bar the first try, and for three years I worked for a title company, as a title lawyer. Then eventually, after the three years, I joined the Office of the Attorney General here in Portland, and I stayed with them for about 32 years. I did all kinds of work. It was basically the practice of law. My last few years, I worked in the environmental field and did environmental law. From my standpoint, it was interesting. We’ve had five attorneys general during my tenure, and they didn’t get rid of me. They got rid of a lot of other people, but they kept me. I survived that. So I figured, “Well, I must be doing OK.”

I finally retired when Ted Kulongowski was the attorney general. Then I started doing some part-time work as an administrative law judge, and I did that for about three years when I just retired. Then my wife and I traveled. We went to Europe a few times, never went to Israel. We used to drive to New Mexico to see her parents and her sisters. We did that quite a few times. We went to Alaska, to Juneau. We took a cruise. She grew up in Juneau, Alaska, so we went back and she saw her old house. We just traveled and took it easy, didn’t do much. I had a good time.

Fuks: Did you and your wife have children?
SILVER: No. She had two miscarriages, and I thought that was enough, so we didn’t have any of those. I wish we had, but we didn’t. As I said, my first cousin Norman went to the old Commerce High. What’s interesting about that relationship is that my uncle married his mother. We’re related on both sides of the family. My uncle’s name was Morris, and he married Celia. Then, of course, my mother was a Kaplan. She was related to the Kaplan family through her grandparents in the old country.

Fuks: Is this the Caplan family that had the sporting goods store?
SILVER: Well, there are so many Kaplans. This was Kaplan with a “K.” There was Anna Rubenstein, who had a daughter named Helen Stern. She married Jerry Stern. Then there was a daughter named Bessie Zidell, and she had a daughter, Thelma Newson, and another one named Ted Zidell, who’s here now but can’t remember much. And who else? Oh, yes. The Rubensteins had two kids, and I’m related to Ted Rubenstein. Then finally there was Harry Kaplan, and he had some children. So it was almost incestuous, but it was a nice family, a very close-knit family. I just didn’t see them that often.

My mother, as I indicated earlier, we moved to Southeast 22nd and Harrison, where she lived very happily. She had a lot of Jewish friends in the neighborhood. My father thought it was nice too, once he got there, but moving him was like moving an oak tree.

Fuks: He had pretty deep roots where he was.
SILVER: Yes. By that time everybody had split up anyway, out of high school. And I was going to college and didn’t have time to mess around.

Fuks: So I want to ask you some questions about your legal work with the attorney general’s office. It’s interesting. You were an attorney with the state during the Tom McCall administration, is that correct?
SILVER: Yes.

Fuks: And of course, he was very engaged in a lot of the environmental heritage for the state. Were you involved in any of that?
SILVER: The cleanup of the Willamette River, that was a project of McCall’s that we were involved in, helping to clean that up. He was involved with field burning, which affected Eugene more than Portland. They used to light their fields to kill pests, and at the same time, that generated smoke. Eventually there was so much smoke that there was a seven-car collision near Albany, and some people got killed. That prompted him to really get involved in the field burning. Then, after he left, I’m trying to think who — I think it was Lee Johnson. He was very active in stopping field burning, legislation and everything. Those were the early environmental years. Then I started doing their general contract work, constitutional work. Just general law practice. I represented a lot of different agencies.

I did that for a number of years. They ranged from the medical examiners to the board of chiropractic, dentistry, social work. Then I started doing the Public Employees Retirement System. And after that, they transferred me to the Environmental Section. I stayed there until I retired. That was about three years.

[Recording is interrupted by a phone call and then resumes.]

Fuks: Did you have a favorite governor in your time with the state?
SILVER: I liked Tom McCall, but he did a lot of harm to the state. One of his expressions was, “Come visit Oregon, but don’t live here.”

Fuks: “Come visit, but don’t stay.” I remember that.
SILVER: Yes. And that detracted from the ability to build factories and employ people. He meant it. It didn’t change until later, when we got Intel. Then it changed. There was a lot of division among people about whether that was a good policy or a bad policy. But he was the governor, so I did what he wanted.

Fuks: Sure.
SILVER: Then, after I retired, I became an administrative law judge.

Fuks: So what sort of cases were you . . .?
SILVER: Mainly fish and wildlife, and water rights. They needed a lawyer to handle their cases. I did that. And then I finally just gave it up.

That’s basically all I can remember. Except my wife. We were very happy. She did OK, then she contracted cancer. She died at Hopewell House. So from our home, I came to Rose Schnitzer and lived there a number of years, as you know. Then I came over to Robison, and I’ve been here ever since, about three or three and half years.

Fuks: You’ve faced some serious health issues.
SILVER: Yes. They felt that I couldn’t walk safely anymore, so I got a wheelchair. But they still didn’t like that, so I eventually came over here. I didn’t want to, but that’s the way it worked out. I spend most of my time across the street at Schnitzer; that’s where all of my friends are. But over here — you have to have some cognitive abilities to carry on a conversation, and there are very few of them that have.

Fuks: You were the president of the residents’ council.
SILVER: I was for five years, continuously. Then one year I took a break, and Shelly Petcher became the president, and his nominating committee, at the end of his term, wouldn’t reappoint him. I don’t know why, but they wouldn’t. Then they asked me to take it over again, so I took it over again for another year. This time around I said, “Give it to the vice president.” I could have done it for life, but it’s not fair to people. And that’s where I am right now.

Fuks: You also were on the board of directors of Cedar Sinai Park.
SILVER: I still am, but I have to deal with that. I’m going to have to talk with Sandra about whether I should continue. She probably knows it already, but I need to speak to her.

Fuks: OK. But you enjoyed being on that board?
SILVER: Very much. You learn a lot of things, but you don’t know how much you can honestly disclose. As a representative, you think you can tell your folks what it’s about, but you can’t because it’s marked “Confidential.” It presents a challenge segregating the stuff that you can disclose and the stuff you can’t. We worked, as you know, on the expansion of Robison and the building of the new nursing home. It’s gone up awfully fast, and we attribute that to David Fuks.

Fuks: You’re being very kind.
SILVER: And that’s kind of where I am, David.

Fuks: Well, Arnie, you’re nearing the end of your life, I am sorry to say. I’m wondering if you have any observations or things that you want to share with people, things that I didn’t ask you about but that are important for you to share from your perspective.
SILVER: I didn’t quite get that, David. You want me to share what?

Fuks: Any observations about your life or the city of Portland or this community, or anything of that sort that we haven’t talked about.
SILVER: The community was kind of close-knit, but I find that they were close-knit with each other, with their relatives. Sisters would hang around with sisters. The husbands would come with them to functions. It was not, I would say, an open community for me or other folks. It was very upset during the war. I remember that. Everyone was terribly unhappy and worried. I’m rambling. I remember I used to take my mother and my father out to one of her cousin’s homes for a party. We’d go there for bar mitzvahs and just all kinds of different functions.

But the other part of it, other than them, Mom had some close friends that lived up by Shattuck grammar school, and she used to walk from the house all the way up there. I used to go up with her. She’d walk and meet her friends up there, and they’d sit and visit. They’d have tea and snacks, and then about three hours later we walked home. It was complicated, but I enjoyed meeting these people because I could listen in on the conversation and pick up Yiddish. That was fun. At one time, I spoke it fairly well, but not so much anymore. I find that nobody here can speak Yiddish. It’s a challenge. But the family, when my father got unhappy, we didn’t go anywhere. It was a hard situation, I think, for my mother to be in. She was more of a social person. My dad wouldn’t want to go to these, but I dragged him in the car and took him. I think that’s it.

Fuks: OK. Arnie, thank you so much for taking this time.
SILVER: It’s my pleasure. I hope everybody finds it useful.

Fuks: I’m sure they will.