Elaine Cogan

Prahl: Please state your full name and where and when you were born. 
COGAN: Elaine Cogan. I was born at Borough Park Hospital in Brooklyn New York.

Prahl: Tell me about the household that you were born into. Who lived with you in that household? 
COGAN: I lived in Brighton Beach and my home growing up and teenage years Brighton beach was a Jewish enclave and it is now the home of the Russian Jews who have settled here because many of them are from Odessa and it reminds them of the black sea. Brighton Beach, if you’ve never been there, has this wide boardwalk that extends from Manhattan Beach all the way to Coney Island. And we were in the middle. It was all apartment house living. I was two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean so I learned to swim in the ocean. I’d never been in a pool of any kind until I came out here to Portland. Brighton Beach was one of the Jewish enclaves there where apartment houses on both sides of the street and everybody was Jewish except the supers or the custodians. And you didn’t have to be Jewish in order to be Jewish. Once a year the supers would put a Christmas tree in the lobby and I always felt that was their way of telling us that they were other people in the world [laughter].

Prahl: Who lived in the apartment with you?
COGAN: My mother and father and my baby sister. 

Prahl: Let’s get all their names.
COGAN My [parents] Belle and Lou Rosenberg. And in fact this week is my dad’s Yarzeit. And my sister Carole [spells].

Prahl: And were your parents immigrants or were they born here?
COGAN: My father came here when he was four years old so he really doesn’t remember Russia. My mother was born here. His parents lived across the street from us, Grandma and Grandpa Rosenberg (that was my maiden name). And they spoke (well they did speak English but broken English so) mainly Yiddish. And I grew up understanding Yiddish. Unfortunately I didn’t learn to speak it. When my parents wanted to say something they didn’t want me know about they would talk in Yiddish. 

Prahl: Did you have a relationship with your grandparents where you could communicate with them well enough?
COGAN: Oh absolutely. I visited them all the time. My father and my grandfather had a fur business in downtown Manhattan manufacturing fur coats. My grandfather would sit (I still have this wonderful memory). We would sit every night with his glass cup of tea in which he loaded with sugar reading the Forward the Forverts. The Forverts came out in brown; at that time it was in brown ink. I remember his reading it from cover to cover but I thought my grandfather was illiterate because he didn’t read English. It shows you the chutzpah of little children. But I had a great relationship with both of them. I was born in ‘32 and so this was during the war, the beginning of the war. And I can remember my grandmother sitting and crying–the stories that they were reading in the Foverts. I realize now what they were reading. At the time, of course, I didn’t know. 

Prahl: Were they politically active in the family? Did they talk about politics in the house?
COGAN: We did but that’s the other thing… Everyone was not only Jewish but Jewish Democrats. [chuckles] I didn’t meet a Republican until I came out to Portland. And that’s really another story. 

Prahl: Well we’ll get to that. 
COGAN:  Now you have to remember that I grew up with the same mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia and the same Governor, Governor Lehman, for 12 years. The same president– FDR. So as far as I was concerned that was what politics was like. But La Guardia was a, well he was a fusion candidate. But anyway, basically we were all Democrats and we were all Jewish. It was a very safe environment. 

Prahl: Were they union people? Did the fur company have a union? 
COGAN: No, no it was a small company and I don’t think so. No it wouldn’t have been union. But my father read the…Oh, I’ll think of the paper because the newspaper now is just a scurrilous sheet it’s a terrible paper, but at the time it was one of the progressive newspapers. I’m thinking of the Post. 

Prahl: The New York Post?
COGAN: The New York Post. But at the time it was a very fine paper; it is not now. So my father, we would talk politics but it was all, as they say, Progressive politics. We all agreed with each other. It wasn’t anything to be talking about [laughter]. But I grew up in a political environment I guess we could say. 

Prahl:  And you went to public school there. 
COGAN: Oh yes I went to PS…. see in New York the schools do not have names they have numbers. I went to PS 253. And I went back to Brighton Beach about 15, 20 years ago. Our oldest son (I am skipping a bit) went to NYU law school and I had some business in New York. I took him on the subway to Brighton Beach which is the elevated part of the subway. We stood on the elevated platform and I pointed out to Mark all the landmarks. I see now that it was like living in a village. We walked to my school and he said, “How could you remember your school?” Well it was that way. And the beach was that way. And my friends lived on that street. And some other friends lived on that street so it was really I would say a self-contained community. You went downtown to Manhattan, oh maybe to go to a movie or something like that. Brooklyn has a caché of its own. There is a Brooklyn day when we joined New York City and we would always have the day off from school. And we would go downtown to Manhattan hoping somebody would stop us and say, “What are you kids doing? [laughter]You’re truants,” No one ever did [laughter].

Prahl:  So you stayed in New York until you were how old?
COGAN: Until the end of my freshman year. Oh and then I went to Lincoln High school. Abraham Lincoln. Everything there is James Madison High School, Abraham Lincoln High School. 

Prahl:  Just like Portland. 
COGAN: No, in Portland we don’t use the first names. I went to Lincoln High School. My father had always wanted to move out of New York and I really don’t know why because his mother and father were there – his whole family. But he always wanted to get out of that environment. I see it now, more than I knew at the time. We had a family friend who would come once a year who lived in New York now lived in Portland. My mother would give him a good meal and he world tell us how the streets were paved with gold in Portland, Oregon. 

Prahl: Do you remember that family friend’s name?
COGAN: No I don’t and it’s probably just as well because when we came out here he never saw us again, which is unbelievable. Anyway, on the strengths of that and my father came out here and took a job. The fur business was not that good after the war. He found a job with Ungar’s, which at that time was the première fur company in Portland. He was a cutter. Now you have to understand. Basically what can you do? If you cut a skin of furs the wrong way you ruin and cannot ever sew it back or knit back. So he was very skilled at what he did. But and he and his father closed down the business. It took an awful lot for them to do this. My mother had her whole family there.

Prahl: Were the two grandparents that you had talked about still living when they left?
COGAN: Yes, her parents, my mother’s father was still living but not his [wife], well she had a step-mother that nobody liked.

Prahl: I’m sorry. The grandparents who lived across the street from you were not the Rosenberg grandparents?
COGAN: Yes, they were the Rosenberg grandparents.

Prahl: Oh they were? And now you are talking about your mother’s parents as well. They also lived in Brooklyn?
COGAN: No, my mother’s family lived in Manhattan and the Bronx. My father’s family lived in Brooklyn. For them too [my parents], they were 38 years old. To pick up and move 3000 miles a way. I wish now I could ask some more I think I knew. In the meantime I was a voracious reader. I wanted to get out of apartment living. I hated apartment houses. I mean giving you an example, in order to get the mail you had to go to a mailbox where everybody shared. And on Saturdays I wanted to go in my pajamas and bathrobe. My mother wouldn’t let me. [laughter] You had to get dressed up in order to go to the lobby to get the mail. Little things like that. I had friends. I was the first freshman ever to have anything published in the school magazine.

Prahl: And what was it?
COGAN: It was a beautiful article. I wish I could find it. I think I have it somewhere. Anyway, it’s very charming. It’s about being a high school freshman and what it was like. And our advisor named it, “Sweet Scented Manuscript.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Rubaiyat? It’s from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám. Anyway I was doing just fine but something in me wanted to get out of Brooklyn.

Prahl:  Maybe you caught it from your father.
COGAN: I think so. Well I wrote something that was printed in Seventeen Magazine as a matter of fact because again I am 14 years old. Somebody had written something about how wonderful New York was or something like that. And I couldn’t have had better parents as far as encouraging me. My mother said, “Well you don’t like New York why don’t you write an article?” And I did. I said, “You just think living in Brooklyn is nice but let me tell you.” Anyway they printed it. I always wanted to be a writer. So here we go. In 1947 I finished my freshman year in high school. We sold everything – all our furniture– everything we own except two sleds. Because we are moving to the Pacific Northwest. Right? [laughter] Okay.

Prahl: How did you get across the country? Did you drive or take a train? 
COGAN: No, no, we took a train.

Prahl: Do you remember that trip?
COGAN: Mainly I remember this stop over in Chicago. I had pen pals all over the world at that time and the country and I had one in Chicago. And they picked us up. What I remember most is when we were traveling on the train through the Columbia River Gorge and it was so absolutely gorgeous and beautiful. We really couldn’t believe this. I was always very friendly and I met someone in the club car. It was a man and he said, “Where you going? And I said well we are moving to Portland.” And so on. And he said, “Well what high school are you going to go to?” And I said I wasn’t sure. And he said, “Well go to Lincoln, Lincoln would be the school for you.” Just like that. And of course I liked that because I had been coming from Lincoln. But I remember that. You know I don’t how he seized me up when he said that. But he says, “You need to go to Lincoln.”

Prahl: And did you?
COGAN: Oh, yes. The only other thing politically was that I was really nervous about going to a Republican stronghold except that Wayne Morse was the senator and Wayne Morse was a Republican turning Democrat turning whatever he ended up. I thought well maybe if there is a Republican like Wayne Morse maybe it would be okay for us. So we moved to Portland.

Prahl: I’m trying to get a feel for when it was. Was the war still going on was the war over when you moved? 
COGAN: No, ‘47 the war was over in ‘45. There was a little bit of a depression. Anyway so we moved to Portland and I remember we got off the train station. Now no one met us. We knew nobody here except this friend who disappeared into the woodwork. And I remember so well. We got off the train station and at that time the Union Gospel Mission, which is still there on Broadway and Burnside, had a long, illuminated sign, “Jesus, Light of the World” [laughter]

Feldman: Welcome to Portland.
COGAN: Welcome to Portland. We almost turned around and went home. Is this what it’s like here?

Prahl: What neighborhood did you move into when you moved to town?
COGAN:  Well, that’s another interesting story. We didn’t have much money. My father had a job, but still. Anyway, he wanted to buy a house the best he could find was out in the suburbs. Now at that time suburbs were really suburbs. It was a 145th Avenue, Southeast, between Powell and Division Street.

Prahl:  Was there a streetcar out there or did he drive?
COGAN: No it was a bus. We didn’t have a car at that time. It was way out in the country. My mother, I can remember, I don’t know how my mother did it. We didn’t keep “kosher” kosher, but we certainly kept kosher style. And there was no way to buy kosher meat or semi-kosher meat here. There was a Safeway. 

Prahl: And there was no Jewish neighbors.
COGAN: And no Jewish neighbors. I don’t know how they did it. I really don’t.

Prahl: Did they know that there were other places in Portland that they could have lived among Jews?
COGAN: My father was very gregarious. He immediately went down to the Jewish Community Center, which has now been displaced by a freeway. And he made friends right away. My mother stayed home. They knew it but we were kind of stuck there for a while in the suburbs. So the first year I went to Gresham High School as a sophomore. I took a school bus–all these new experiences for me. I remember it was just before the Jewish holidays, the Jewish New Year. I don’t think we ever joined a synagogue then but we certainly went.

Prahl: To which one?
COGAN: Neveh Shalom. Which was Ahavai Sholom. And my mother wrote me a note, “Can Elaine be excused for the Jewish New Year?” I gave it to the principal and he said, “Hmmm. I’ve never heard that excuse before but it’s probably OK.” 

Prahl: There were no other Jewish children at your school?
COGAN: There were no other Jewish families, children, anybody. But somehow we endured. I don’t know what else to say.

Prahl:  Did you have any trouble with your classmates at school? Did they notice any…?
COGAN: No, they didn’t know. They knew nothing. Zero. I mean, I was a nobody. I made friends with these lovely two girls, sisters. They said they where going to a youth rally. And I said, “Gee, can I come?” (anything to make friends). And it was Youth for Christ rally. You know I didn’t, we didn’t…. we were so naive. After a few years my mother got a job working for the First National Bank.

Prahl: Was that the first time in your childhood when she had worked?
COGAN: No she had worked on and off before. She was a very good secretary. So eventually we moved downtown, into the east side.

Prahl: Tell me where.
COGAN: Well several places, but we eventually lived in northeast, in Rose City. I went to Gresham high school for a year and that was not to be. We knew that. So my parents made some friends at that time and I used their address in southwest Portland in order to go to Lincoln High School. So don’t tell anybody because that was not legal at the time [laughter]. 

Prahl: The statute of limitations might be over.
COGAN: You think so? OK, so I went to Lincoln as a junior and senior.

Prahl: And that was a better academic experience.
COGAN: It was better academically. And it was certainly better, [socially]. There were some Jewish kids there. In fact Donna Jackson still remembers. She kind of adopted me she was very sweet to me. And we shared a locker. We still talk about that. 

Prahl: And did you participate in the life of Jewish teens in Portland then? Did you go to the dances at the JCC?
COGAN: Yes, well, yes. I went to the Center. I was always getting involved in something. I ended up being the president of BBG [B’nai B’rith Girls]. At that time they had Jewish sororities Jewish high school sororities. Which was always anathema to me. I never liked it. But in order to be “somebody” you were pledged to a sorority. 

Prahl:  Which one did you join?
COGAN: Uh, which one?

Prahl:  I can name all three [laughter] and then you can tell me. [Was it] Queen Esther’s Daughters?
COGAN: No I know. [It was] K’maia. And I met Berta Delman [Berta Olman at the time] and some other people and they were going to Sunday school at the Temple. So I went to the Temple Sunday School. Now I had to take the bus. 

Prahl:  Was there an Ahavai Sholom Sunday School, too, that you were not going to?
COGAN:  There may have been but I didn’t have any friends there.

Prahl: And your parents were fine with that?
COGAN: Oh yes. So I went, in fact I graduated from the Temple Sunday School.

Prahl: So name some more of your friends. You said Donna and Berta Olman.
COGAN: Berta Olman and… there were several. But I always had non-Jewish friends also. I ended up, which was my bent, working on the school newspaper. And that was extremely important to me. I ended up being editor of The Cardinal. We called it The Cardinal but now they call it The Cardinal Times. 

Prahl: So that was the years of ‘48 and ’49 that you were the editor?
COGAN: Yes, I graduated in ’50, right.

Prahl: So ‘49 and ‘50 probably. Well we’ll have to see if we have those issues.
COGAN:  Well there’s one issue (in fact we had a reunion and I think we found that issue). We put out an April 1st edition. Well at this time we were at the old Lincoln, which is Lincoln Hall for Portland State now. And everyone was wondering what was going to happen because they knew that they where going to close the school. And they hadn’t yet built the new school. So we put out an edition. [laughs] (and I don’t know how we got away with it) in which the headline was, “Lincoln to Close; Students to Be Dispersed Throughout the City.” [gasp]. And we did it geographically: if you lived here you would go to Cleveland if you lived here you would go… and so on like that. It’s a whole article, front page. And then we said, “As of April 1st this is rescinded.” or something like that. Well of course nobody read that. And there was panic [laughter]. Parents called the school. I don’t know why we weren’t expelled. I really don’t. We found that edition [for the reunion]. It is so funny but it says, “As of April 1st…” Why didn’t they know better? 

Feldman: Oh that’s great.
COGAN: Our advisor was a wonderful, wonderful woman. And the reason I remember her is that her husband’s sister was married to Bob Packwood at the time, so we had a political connection. Anyway at the end of the school year it was traditional for the paper’s crew to climb Mt. Hood. And our advisor was an experienced Mazama. Now, of course, I didn’t have any gear or anything but I was going to do that and I was very excited about it. That’s when my mother’s father Leon Markowitz came out to Portland for my high school graduation. And he looks up at that mountain and he says, “Nuh uh. No granddaughter of mine is going to climb that mountain.”

Prahl: Was he afraid for you?
COGAN: Mhmm. Well he was from New York. My mother said, “You know you’ll have lots of other opportunities.” Of course I never did. But I did [stay home]. It’s interesting because I was disappointed but I didn’t resent it. She was so sweet. My mother was very, very sweet dear person and she explained it, “You know he’s here only for a short time for the first grandchild to graduate from high school. Do this for him.” So I didn’t go. So I never climbed that mountain. 

Prahl: Let’s talk a little bit about your family. I get a picture of what kind of active and involved kid you were in the social things. What was your family life like? What kinds of things did you do together as a family and what was the family like?
COGAN: I think it was just ordinary. We never had enough money to go anywhere special. We were just very close.

Prahl: So in the evening what did the family do?
COGAN: Well we probably listened to the radio. And read newspapers, always reading the newspapers. We never went anywhere or did anything but it was a very good family it was very dear. I am six years older than my sister, which means that there was really two generations in the family. And so from the time she was born, the day before my sixth birthday, as a matter of fact, I was up and running and she was home being the baby. But my parents always encouraged me. I mean like my mother saying, “Why don’t you write that article? In a way it was, “Gee, aren’t I good enough for you to say, ‘atta girl?’” “No because we expect you to be ‘atta girl’.” So it was that kind of life. It was a very, very, nice life. But nothing outstanding.

Prahl: Did they have expectations for you as far as what you would do when you grew up?
COGAN: No, it’s just that I would do something.

Prahl: Was the expectation that you would go to college? Was that a given?
COGAN: Yes of course. But we couldn’t afford it. So you’re going to have to find a way to do it. It was that. And what else are you going to do? So you get all As, so what?

Prahl: Did you learn how to drive a car? Did they eventually have a car?
COGAN: Eventually I learned how to drive a car. Yes, we finally did get a car. And the first time I went out to take my lessons, (I was just telling our granddaughter about this the other day) I’m driving along and I’m doing fine and I make a turn from a four lane street on the left hand side to another four lane street and I turned into the outer lane. I don’t know what you call it, the right lane. So the guy who was testing me said, “That’s it, go back, you flunked; you didn’t pass.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Well you turned from an inner lane to an inner lane.” That was it. So I got home and my father was furious he said, “I do that all the time.” Anyway it was just a nice family. I went down to the Center all the time and made friends there as I say, there was BBG. I met Arnold, which is a whole other story. It was just fine I ended up going to Lincoln and Lincoln was good for me and I for them and everything. 

Prahl: That’s great. So let’s get to the part about Arnold right, that happens very soon, right, still in high school?
COGAN: Oh it happens very soon. 

Prahl: Before we leave 1948 I want to talk about the state of Israel. Were your parents Zionist? Did they have any opinions when the state of Israel? 
COGAN: Never talked about it one way or another.

Prahl: Do you remember it being anything that your friends talked about in the youth groups?
COGAN: No. You know it’s interesting as I look back on it. In New York I did go to Habonim, which was a Zionist group. I did that all the time my freshman year of high school. When we came out here I don’t think there was one. Never heard of it. There was a very interesting Jewish discussion group at the Center. I don’t know who the man was who ran it. I used to go all the time. We concentrated on the works of Israel Zangwill. Your not familiar with him? Well you probably should be; he was a pre-Zionist writer and we would look at his work. But as far as Israel or Zionism or anything it was a given but not really discussed. 

Prahl: Ok. Now we get to Arnold.
COGAN: Now we get to Arnold. It is June 10th 1949. All the Jewish sororities had dances. So there was a Jewish dance and we had to ask somebody. I asked somebody who turned out to be very boring. I don’t even know where he is now. Which is just fine. So I’m at this dance and I met this fellow from Bath, Maine named Arnie (at the time). I know I still have an accent and I am conscious of that. And at the time it must have been pretty bad. So we were introduced. Arnold had come from Bath, Maine a year later. We came in ‘47 he came in ‘48 this is ‘49. We were introduced to each other because the people said, “We don’t understand what you two are talking about so why don’t you talk to each other?”. East Coast people. I kept a diary and I still have them. 

Prahl:  We’ll probably want those at the museum.
COGAN: It would be nice to give them to somewhere. I don’t want to lose them. In the diary for that date I say, “I went to this dance. I had a boring date. I met this really nice boy from Bath, Maine named Arnie. I hope I see him again.” And it’s right there. 

Prahl: I’m sure you showed that to him later when it was pertinent. 
COGAN: Well he’s seen it. I showed it to the grandchildren and they love it. 

Prahl: When did you see him again?
COGAN: Well this is Saturday night. Monday morning I was recruited to be a junior counselor at the Jewish Community Center Day Camp that summer (this is June now). I walk into the room where the counselors are and he’s sitting there. Can you imagine?

Prahl: So he’s a counselor. 
COGAN: So he’s a counselor too. I couldn’t believe it.

Prahl:  So he came from Bath, Maine and did he finish high school here in Portland as well?
COGAN: Yes, he graduated from Grant. So it was just one of those things. We got to know each other very well. About two weeks later someone lived in Lake Oswego and had a picnic on the lake. And he volunteered to show us girls how to canoe. The other girls really liked him but he said, “No, I am going to take Elaine.” So we are in the middle of Lake Oswego on this beautiful summer day and if you are in a canoe your backs are to each other, right? And he was very shy. So suddenly I hear this, “Will you go to the movies with me tomorrow night?” [very quickly] Just like that. And I said to myself, “Did I hear right?” but I better not ask, because if I ask he won’t say it again. So I said, “Yes.” And that was the beginning. 

Prahl:  Oh that’s lovely. So how long did you date?
COGAN:  We met when we were juniors in high school and we were married when we were juniors in college.

Prahl:  Did you go to the same college?
COGAN:  Well that’s a long story. 

Prahl: Well that’s what we’re here for.
COGAN:  Anyway, so then I met his family. Now Arnold is one of six children. He’s the fourth. They were a girl, two brothers, and then he. So for seven years he was the baby in the family. This describes a lot of what he’s like today. I won’t go into a lot of detail. But anyway he was the youngest of four. Then seven years later his parents had number five and then three years later they had number six. So he is one of six. But he’s the middle child at the same time, which speaks a lot about his personality; he always wants to get to yes. The family still uses him as that. So suddenly we are a little family of four people. More or less content about that what did we know. And then I suddenly met the Cogans. And my god there was so many of them. [laughter]. Well then I met his mother and his mother was a second mother to me. We developed a relationship like everybody should have with an adult woman. It was so… all the sudden there was this big family.

Prahl: What kind of Jews were they? What was their family life like?
COGAN: They were affiliated with Tifereth Israel on the east side.

Prahl: Which was an Orthodox?
COGAN: No, no, no Conservative… well I mean it wasn’t Orthodox. I mean they kept kosher. You should have a whole history of that. And I think you did, someone did when you interviewed Arnold, because that was a 50 year old congregation which was founded by the Jews who lived on the east side. His parents and his father particularly was one of the founders. Well they were not only very nice to me; they adopted my family. So my parents joined Tifereth Israel. 

Prahl: I need to interrupt you for one minute. How could his father have been one of the founders of the synagogue if they didn’t move here until 1948?
COGAN: Well he was not one of the founding founders but he’s one of the early members. His father had been here before as a teenager. Arnold’s father was one of three brothers. The oldest brother is Nathan Cogan’s father and then there was another brother, Lou Cogan. Nathan Cogan’s father settled in New England. Lou Cogan came out here to Portland and eventually did very well financially. Arnold’s father was the youngest, David Cogan. He came out here well it was 1920 when he was in his early 20s and he and Lou Cogan, his father played the saxophone, and they went up and down the Willamette Valley in a band playing for the hop growers at the grain halls. And then his father went back east and met his [Arnold’s] mother. 

Prahl: I see okay now we can pick it up again so then your parents also joined Tifereth Israel.
COGAN: So anyway my parents found a home not only in the synagogue but with a lot of other people; it was beautiful to see. So anyway Arnold and I, here we are tootling along. We finished high school. I didn’t have any money. He went off to Oregon State because he was an engineering student. I went to Portland State, which was then Vanport. And loved it. It was a great education. Nobody had any money we all wanted to go to school. The professors were new and young. I don’t know if you ever got to know Judah Bierman. He would have been wonderful to interview. Judah was an English teacher. He came up to me (he was like that) and he said, “I understand that you were the editor of your high school paper. Well we are starting a college paper and how would you like to be editor?” I said, “Of course.” What did I know? So we started the first issue of the Portland State Vanguard way back when. I don’t know if you knew or heard about Dick Bogle. Dick was black. He grew up in Portland and he was on the Portland City Council later on. Anyway Dick was my sports editor. We had a wonderful time and we put out a paper. Again what did I know? I didn’t know anything. But we did it. Portland State was only a two-year college at the time. 

Prahl: So what kind of degree was it offering?
COGAN: I don’t think they offered any degrees. I was on a committee (this is political, this is when I got political) to get the legislator to, first of all to give us permanent status, because we were temporary, and secondary to make us a four-year college. I went around; I and a group went around and we lobbied every legislator in Salem. Dick Neuberger, who then became a US Senator, was in the Senate House and became our champion. That was my first taste of politics. Portland State eventually did get status. Arnold and I, in the meantime, wanted to get married. Well this is the point we wanted to be together. I missed him dreadfully. He’s down in Corvallis and I’m in Portland. It was not good. So, I had an experience with our older son Mark when he was at University of Oregon in the ‘70s or ‘80s and he wanted to move in with his girlfriend. So Mark takes me aside and says, “Mom, I always wondered, why did you and dad get married so young?” and I said, “Mark, we were in love, we didn’t have any money, and we wanted to be together.” He said, “Oh I know all that but why did you get married?” Now there’s your generation gap there. I said, “Nobody was doing anything but.” Well, maybe there were a few people sleeping around but you know, we were not. I don’t know to this day that he understands that. So we had to talk our parents into the fact that we wanted to get married. We chose December 21st 1952, in fact that was one of the things I had here because we just celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary. 

Prahl: Oh yeah you had the party at the Jewish Museum. That’s right.
COGAN:  Anyway, so we were married at Tifereth Israel. 

Prahl: Yes and I remember you telling me once that you were the first couple to ever get [married there]. How is that possible after fifty years?
COGAN:  Well no one ever thought of it.

Prahl: So there were other weddings in the community, they just didn’t happen at the synagogue. You were the first one that happened at the synagogue. Was it not traditional in those years for people to get married in a synagogue?
COGAN: I think if you were going to get married in a synagogue you got married in the bigger places. We had some friends who got married in the Temple and I was the maid of honor. I don’t know; I never paid attention.

Prahl: Was Tifereth Israel a little sanctuary?
COGAN: Oh, it’s a lovely little place. It’s still there. It’s a church now because they sold it. 

Prahl: I’ve driven by it on 15th and Alberta.
COGAN: It’s on 15th and Wygant. It was a gem of a place; it really was. If fact we had movies. We showed movies at our party because one of the friends of Arnold’s father had a brand new 8mm movie camera.

Prahl: So you have movies of the wedding ceremony? We are going to want those for the museum too.
COGAN: Really? Oh, OK we’ll have to make a list. Anyway we showed them at our party. So when we had to have rent a rabbi because there was no rabbi. What was his name? He was an Orthodox rabbi and he’s kind of stuffy. Because we married December 21st, which turns out to be the shortest day of the year and the longest night, as people have reminded us. So anyway, by the time we got to signing the ketubbah it was the next day and he was very Orthodox about it. We had to start it all over again because it was within 20 minutes of the next day. We had two cantors we had Cantor Ail from Neveh Shalom and we had another cantor who had been Cantor Boxer. They had services every Friday night at Tifereth Israel. But they were usually lay-led but for the Holiday they hired a cantor.

Prahl: And services Saturday morning?
COGAN: No, just Friday night. Once in a while Saturday morning. Anyways so we had our wedding. 

Prahl: So as a 20-year old couple were you young people who went to synagogue ever at that point or was it just to get married?
COGAN: No, not really. I mean not that we didn’t, it just wasn’t part of our lives. We were busy with school. So where was I to go to school? I was absolutely bound and determined to graduate. I had to go to Oregon State if I was going to get married because that’s where Arnold was and he couldn’t leave. So I enrolled in Oregon State as a junior. Now the problem with Oregon State at that time was that there were few choices for majors: forestry, agriculture, engineering, and home economics. I was an English major. That was my specialty. There was no place for me. So I decided on the lesser of all evils. I enrolled in the school of home economics. I’m a junior now and I have to take freshman classes. They were all women; they were all girls. I was the only one who didn’t know how to thread the needle in the sewing machine. [laughter]. I had never done this; I had avoided it everywhere. Here I had been getting straight As at Vanport and I’m getting Cs and Ds. It was very sad. So I went to see the dean of the school. I feel terrible that I don’t remember her name. There are people in your lives who make a difference. I am sitting across the table she’s looking at my grades. A, A, A, A, A, at Vanport C, C, C, C-. She says, “Why are you here?” I said, “It’s because I want to get married.” “Oh.” She said, “What do you like?” This is the middle of my junior year. I said, “Well I like English. I like history.” She says, “Ill tell you what I’ll do: if you get through this year I will void all the courses you have to take to graduate from this school. I will sign off on them and then you can take anything you want.” Can you imagine someone doing that?

Prahl: Wow, what a lovely thing. And were there classes that you did want to take?
COGAN: Oh yes, well I took English from Bernard Malamud, for example, who was there. I took history. I took all kinds of things. But you couldn’t take them for a degree – they were minors. So I took all these classes. 

Prahl: So you did get a good education at OSU it just wasn’t the one they intended you to get. 
COGAN: Not only that, the funny part is at the end when, we are graduating (we are skipping forward a little bit). Arnold was a very good engineering student. We were both tapped for Phi Kappa Phi, which is the equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa. Also I was asked to join the home economics honor society because I was in that school. You know, I remember saying, “But you… but… I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here.” 

Anyway, going backwards a little bit because it is kind of funny, I go down to Oregon State. We are not married yet. I barely had enough money to live in a dorm. We didn’t have any money. Someone suggested, “Well why don’t you see if you could live with a family and get room and board?” So I went down to the housing department. I’m standing there asking if they know of anybody and this fellow walks in. He’s got a Hawaiian shirt and he’s big and burly guy with a New York accent. His family’s looking for a live-in student and I’m looking for a family. Well we made the marriage. Turns out that he is a Lutheran Minister and they had four lovely girls. We hit it off like people have never done before. So I moved in with them and got room and board free. I had my tuition taken care of and all I did was have to look after the little girls. Now that was ‘49 maybe. We graduated in ‘54 so it was in the fifties. We are still friends with that family. The Lutheran Jensens. They learned about Judaism I learned about Protestantism. We went to church with them. It was the most wonderful relationship. Now the reason I tell this story is that when Arnold and I got married we didn’t have a car. We decided we were going to get married at the beginning of Christmas vacation or winter vacation. So we decided to have our honeymoon in Corvallis in a nice little apartment and we didn’t have a car. So the Jensens (their youngest daughter was our flower girl) drove us back to Corvallis for our honeymoon. 

Prahl:  And that nice little apartment is that where you ended up living together?
COGAN: Yes, oh yes. 

Prahl: After you graduated in ‘54 did you stay in Corvallis or did you leave?
COGAN: No, no. We did not. We came back to Portland. At that time I was in flux because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Then Arnold became an engineer for a few years. That’s another story and I did social work for a while. I ended up writing a column for the Oregon Journal, when the Oregon Journal was still a good newspaper. I knew the editor and Arnold encouraged me and I said, “You know what they need? They need a weekly column of public affairs.” He said, “Well, why don’t you go talk to them?” So I marched up to the Journal and I spoke to the editor Don Sterling. He said, “You know, that is a really good idea.” I had three columns to show him. He looked them over. He said, “Sure let’s do it.” He said, “But we don’t pay much and I said that’s okay.” He says we really don’t pay much. He said, “We pay $10 a column.” I said, “Oh really?” He said, “But that’s what we pay all our syndicated columnists – Art Buchwald…” And I said, “Yeah but they have a hundred papers; I have one.” He said, “It’s all we can do.” I said, “Fine.” So I ended up being a columnist for the Journal until the Oregonian took over the Journal and then Bob Landauer who was the editor of the editorial page. You should probably interview him. Bob and Sally Landauer. Bob called me and said, “You know we’re taking over the Journal. Would you like to join the Oregonian Family?” “Okay.” So maybe they upped the salary a little. Maybe they paid me $15. So I wrote that column for 15 years.

Prahl: Now were you starting your family at that time?
COGAN: Yes, and that time we were starting a family. I didn’t want a full time job. So writing for the paper, doing freelance writing, was always very appropriate for me. 

Prahl: Sure. Where did you two live?
COGAN:  Well we had an apartment first. We finally bought a little house. I’m skipping a lot of stuff. 

Prahl: That’s okay. You can come back to it if something reminds you of it.
COGAN: We always lived on the east side. We bought a little house on NE Morris Street, near Siskiyou.

Prahl: Did you live on the east side to be nearer to family? What was your reason?
COGAN: I never had any interest in moving to the west side. I think of the west side (and I still do we have lots of friends over there) as suburbs, even Hillsdale, and we didn’t want that. We wanted sidewalks. Anyway the east side has always been our place of choice. And so, really skipping forward, in 1961 we built a house in Mt Tabor. Ella Ostroff’s husband was the architect. He was a good friend of ours and we lived there ever since.

Prahl: How old were [your children] when you moved into the house that you built?
COGAN: They were all born. In ‘61 Leonard was a baby. So they were about six, four and one.

Prahl: So thinking about raising those kids, how was their upbringing, and particularly Jewish upbringing, different from your own and Arnold’s? 
COGAN: Well they went to Sunday School. First of all they went to the Foundation School at Neveh Shalom, two out of the three. Leonard, our youngest, is a musician and somewhat iconoclastic and he did not like nursery school. 

Prahl: He was iconoclastic at three? [laughs]
COGAN: At three. Well but I wanted to leave him off because I had a life to lead so I pick him up maybe a month later or so and I said, “How was school?” He said, “Well, I didn’t like it and I cried but I put my head to the wall so no one would see it.” Oh, what’s a mother to do? “Okay, you don’t have to go anymore.” 

Prahl: Before we get too much further, say the names of the other two. 
COGAN: Okay, there’s Mark and Sue or Suzanne. Then there’s Leonard. We are very fortunate they all live in Portland and our grandchildren live in Portland. We are one happy family. 

Prahl: So what plans did you have for raising your children? What were your child rearing plan and your goals for them?
COGAN: Well, we were definite that they would have a Jewish education. So they went to the Sunday school they went to Foundation and Hebrew School. Sue was one of the first girls to have a bat mitzvah at Neveh Shalom the other two had bar mitzvahs. It was not easy to schlep them there every Sunday. There was two other Jewish families in the neighborhood and we kind of had a car pool. We always had Shabbat. That’s very important to us. When they got to be in high school, for Sue especially because she always had to go to a game on Friday night or whatever, we said, “We’re going to eat first but we will eat early. We will light candles and say the Kiddush. Then you can go about your business.” We didn’t ever celebrate Shabbat on Saturday and I am sorry about that but we decided early on that we wouldn’t do Havdalah if we didn’t have Shabbat. I think that you either do it or you don’t do it.

Prahl: And did you do the holidays?
COGAN:  Yes all the holidays. Yes we would always go to the synagogue on the High Holidays. We still do. For Purim we make hamantaschen and now we have to take orders. Arnold is a poppy seed hamantaschen person. I’m never going to understand that. We are a prune hamantaschen family. Now my son Mark wants, because he lived in New York for a few years, now he wants apricot; so we take orders. When Arnold’s folks were able we had two seders and they were always at their house. But then later on when they where unable to do it and then, well you knew Zadell, my sister-in law, who died a few years ago. Anyway then they [Zadell and Gerald] would have one night and we would have another night. And then it ended up that we were having it. Now we do the seder.

Prahl: Would you talk a little about your Haggadah?
COGAN: Oh, yes . [chuckles] Not only that – we have something for Hanukkah, too. I should probably share that with you, too. Over the years we have a Hanukkah book; it’s stapled together. It’s nothing very elaborate. But there’s a different prayer for every night. It was written by Dore Schary. It doesn’t mean anything to you? That’s too bad. He was a Hollywood director, writer, probably in the ‘50s. It was printed by the Rabbinical Council years ago and I got a copy of it and I have since changed it. So that for every night [it says], “This is the first night…” Every night the candle symbolizes something. And we read that every night. It’s interesting. I was speaking to somebody recently I saw at a party, and he said, “Did you know that we are still using the Hanukkah thing?” Anytime I have a chance to write something I write something. So then we have reproduced our own Haggadah. Well do you have a…

Prahl: We have a copy at the museum. 
COGAN: I change it every year a little bit.

Prahl: We probably need a new one. 
COGAN: Well you know just little tweaks here or there. We threw in the midwives. I don’t know if you have the one with the midwifes. The whole midrash about how the midwives really saved the Jewish babies because they told the pharaoh’s minions that Jewish women gave birth too quickly [for them to kill the babies at birth]. Anyway whatever it is it’s a little midrash and we also have songs. 

Prahl:  Did the children get involved in deciding what would go in it and what wouldn’t or was that you?
COGAN: No, that’s me. Arnold a little bit, but that’s me. What else do you want to know?

Prahl: What activities did you do with your kids as they were growing up? What were the things that you shared together?
COGAN: This in another tradition. We go down to Ashland every year for the Shakespeare festival. And we’ve been taking the children since Leonard was about six. Now Arnold and I go by ourselves. But our daughter and her husband, who have three children, take the girls. It’s a tradition. And I don’t know. I think it was just living on the east side our children didn’t have too many Jewish friends. They went to Washington high school. Which was an excellent experience. That was another reason we wanted to live on the east side, frankly, because Washington High School and Grant High School have more of a mix of students. They’re not all white. And they’re not all middle class. That was very important to us for our children to have that exposure. 

Prahl: Did they ever have any issues about being Jewish among those people or did they fit right in?
COGAN: Not that I know of. There were some Jewish kids, certainly at Grant but they didn’t go to Grant. They all went Washington. No, there were several Jewish families. It just didn’t come up as an issue that I know of. 

Prahl: Great, unless you can think of other family things to talk about I am really excited to get on to the career stuff.
COGAN: Okay, well all this time the children were growing up, I was writing but staying home. I also became involved early in the League of Women Voters. I learned a tremendous amount from that. I ended up president. I usually end up president of something or other. 

Prahl: And what were the activities of the League while you were there? What were they doing specifically?
COGAN:  They were very political. What were we doing? Oh yes, something that was very important. I don’t remember the date. When would it have been? Maybe the ‘70s, no, earlier than that. It was a time when there were riots. It was when was Lydon Johnson was President, the ‘60s. Anyway, there were big anti-Vietnam War riots all over the country and we were confronted in the city of Portland with what could have been a major catastrophe. The American Legion was having its National Convention here in the summer time. A group called the People’s Army Jamboree were mobilizing to come and confront them.

Prahl: They were war protesters, right?
COGAN: Yes war protesters and they where rag-tag, pot-smoking kids, hundreds of them – thousands of them. So I got involved representing the League in the ad hoc committee to do what we could to basically put a lid on it. Now this was in the paper but I had never been involved in it as far as publicity. This is when Tom McCall had the brilliant idea to open up McIver Park in Clackamas County for these kids. 

Prahl: The Vortex? 
COGAN: The Vortex, right, right, right. And they all went out there and were smoking pot and running around without clothes on, whatever. I was involved in the inner circle trying to get these folks at least to calm down. I put together several TV interviews and it was very interesting to me because the young people were more willing to compromise then the American Legion, who said, “These kids… blah, blah, blah, blah!” So my job was behind the scenes. I became very involved in that politically. And it worked. I think there was one window broken in all that. I learned a lot about through the League, luckily. I got to know everybody who was anybody in political life in the city. I became involved in Model Cities. Model Cities was part of Lydon Johnson’s war on poverty. And I have so many stories about that. They chose 26 cities throughout the country and gave them massive amounts of money. The whole idea was to bring minorities together, education, economic development jobs, whatever.

Prahl: And who got to allocate that money?
COGAN: Well the federal government did. I was in on the original application. We wrote this tremendously large, voluminous application and we weren’t accepted. It turned out (this is where policies come in), that Mayor Terry Schrunk, who was our mayor at the time, was the president of the League of Cities and he went to the White House and said that it was a shame (a schanda, if you will) that his city was not chosen and here he is the … whatever. So we got money. [laughs] And I became very involved in the whole Model Cities program. That was one of the pivotal experiences of my life. 

Prahl: In what way were you involved? What did you get to do?
COGAN:  Well first of all we had to put together an organization. And I was on the original steering committee. Oh! So the mayor appointed me as a representative of the city and then other people got appointed as other representatives. I think there where fifteen of us, black and white. My first exposure… I was always very liberal but I didn’t actually have any black friends. I got put in this caldron. This is the time when there was lots of civil rights agitation going on. Portland was practically an all white city. There were still signs downtown at restaurants, “We reserve the right to restrict patrons.” Here I am, a nice Jewish liberal, a woman liberal, right? I really got into it. I became part of the steering committee. The chair was a wonderful black businessman who became a very good friend of mine. And he told me when he met me, “Elaine, I know I can trust you.” He said, “When I was growing up in Cincinnati I was a young, poor boy. I got a job at for a furniture store run by a Jewish family. They where so good to me; they helped me buy clothes for school. They fed me…” He said, “You’re Jewish. That’s all I need to know.” [laughter]. I mean really! I couldn’t believe this. Anyway, he and I became very good friends and when I got the League involved we started the first neighborhoods in Portland. The Humboldt, The Buckman, I could name them. 

Prahl: Are you saying that the neighborhood didn’t have names before then?
COGAN: They had names but they didn’t have organizations. 

Prahl: I see, the Neighborhood Associations?
COGAN: Yes. We organized them as a part of the Model Cities. And the Model Cities was most of North and Northwest and Northeast Portland and a little bit of Southeast. We put together education programs. We got money for Unthank Park. And I don’t know if you know where PCC’s NE campus is. Well there was a church school on the property and they were going bankrupt. It was one of these small, denominational schools and they owed the Federal government a million dollars. And the Federal government was going to foreclose and who knows what they were going to do? Just sell the property. So we brought together the HUD people and the folks from the neighborhood and we said, “Look, (oh, and Portland Community College was willing to start a campus there). “Why don’t you just give us the money and we’ll open up a campus?” And I’ll never forget that conversation because the bureaucrats said, “We’re not sure we can do that.” And we said, “Yes you can.” So they did. We got our first campus for PCC. I don’t know if you’ve seen it lately. It’s marvelous. I am so proud when I go over there. 

Anyway, it was rough times. There were some very difficult confrontations. [laughs] I learned a new vocabulary. I came home and the kids said, “Mom, watch it. You know you aren’t over there anymore.” Remember Charles Jordan? All right, well we hired Charles. We were looking for an executive director and I’m on this small committee and this tall, (Charles was six feet, six inches tall.) tall black guy comes in as a candidate. He was a city manager of Palm Springs, California. How he ever got that job I will never know. But anyway we hired him. And every time I would see him he says, “Elaine you’re responsible for my coming here, you know that.” We got to be really good friends. So it was a pivotal time for me. It was a pivotal time for the city. And I’m very proud of what we did, a lot of things. Some became unraveled. I still have some friends there in that community. The first time we had an executive committee meeting at my house they came over to Southeast Portland. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Scanner but that’s the black newspaper. They castigated them for coming over here to my side of town.

Prahl: Because it was too white?
COGAN: It was too white. But I learned so much, as I say it was a pivotal (probably four years), pivotal experience for me. 

Prahl: Well we are back from our little break and I want to transition from the League of Women Voters and the Model Cities Program to the things that you did after that.
COGAN: Okay, on the strength of my work with Model Cities and some other things. I was appointed to the Portland Development Commission. Now that is, and still is, the prestigious commission in the city of Portland. 

Prahl: Were there other women at the time?
COGAN: Never. And there never has been since.

Prahl: What?!
COGAN: I am the first and only. Which is absurd. Their headquarters in downtown Portland…it’s so much fun, you walk in there, into the conference room and here is a picture of all these white guys who have been their chair (there was one black guy but he was very light-skinned) and there is Elaine. Right? With my Madame Butterfly hairdo. Why? And I’ve teased them about it. 

Prahl:  And nobody since?
COGAN: Nobody since. This is, and I’ll give this to you, What year is this? ‘73 oh my goodness. These are two interviews with me in the paper about what I hoped to accomplish.

Prahl: What did you hope to accomplish?
COGAN: Well, several things. I was imbued with the Model Cities spirit and I wanted to make sure that we continued to serve underserved people. And they don’t have it anymore but we had offices on the east side as well as our downtown. I opened up our meeting so that people would feel comfortable speaking to us. It was just a different era when I was chair. There are one or two people still left on the staff who remember that. So I really tried to make a difference. Now politically, this was at the time when Neil Goldschmidt was just elected mayor and I had been appointed by the previous mayor. Anyway, Neil became mayor in January and in February he asked all the boards and commissions in the city, all the people to resign. That was a power play because he wanted to appoint his own people. And one by one, some very important VIPs in Portland resigned. They said, “Yes, Mr. Mayor, anything you want.” And then it came to Elaine. I called the City Attorney’s office and I said, “Is this legal?” And he said “No.” Because the people on the boards and commissions (and we have lots of them) are appointed for fixed terms by the City Council and the mayor has no right to ask you to resign, except for malfeasance or if you’re a crook or something.

Prahl: And none of the ones who resigned thought to ask whether it was legal?
COGAN: No, because they all wanted to please the new mayor.

Prahl: Were they hoping that they would reappoint them after? 
COGAN: Yes. So I said, “No, thank you.” And he was furious, very angry at me. Now Arnold and I had worked on his campaign; we thought he’d be a great mayor and I said, “It’s a matter of principle.” 

Prahl: Did you have private meetings with him?
COGAN: Yes. He called me into his office and was yelling at me. And he said, “Look just resign for me and I’ll reappoint you.” And I said, “That’s worse. Nothing doing.” What I don’t have is the editorial. There was an editorial about me. People stopped me on the street and said, “Good for you.” Anyway I refused to resign and after I refused there were some other people who didn’t also. So that was my run-in, my first big run in politically.

Prahl: Now was it dangerous to make an enemy of the mayor. Were there things you needed him to do for the commission?
COGAN: It was absolutely dangerous to make an enemy. He took it out on the staff, which was really bad. I called a meeting of the staff. Some people still remember, and I said, “I’m really sorry to put you in this position. It’s a matter of policy and I’ll protect you.” What did I know? How could I protect them? But I just felt that I had to. Well yeah, he tried to take away our money. He had some other machinations that he tried. It was awful. 

Prahl: Did you ever repair your relationship with him?
COGAN: Yeah, after a while but it was never the same. Those are the things that I say at length in Ernie Bonner’s interview [OJMCHE has a copy of this interview]. But basically with Neil Goldschmidt, there were two sides to him. There was a very mean-spirited, brutal side that some of us found out about. Anyway, so that was my political work. Oh, one of the things that I got when I was on the Portland Development Commission was this: We were given a national award for a small park that is a little south of the auditorium. So I became chair and we were told that we were given this national award and a representative could come back to the White House and receive this. And I said, “Yeah but I had nothing to do with it, it was done before I was chair.” They said, “No, no you’re chair so you get to go back.” So I got a trip to the White House. This was just when the Watergate’s dam was bursting. And here is a picture of me and Mrs. Nixon. This was her last public appearance. We were in the White House. There were only a hundred of us, (well less, really. It was supposed to be two from every state and from Oregon and a few others it was only one so maybe there was 75). So it’s a small reception at the White House and I’m asking the honor guard, “Is the President in today?” And they point to the oval office. The oval office, first of all, is oval. You can see it from this little vantage point here. And he was in there that day. He was doing a lot of stuff that day. That date is on the Watergate tapes. I’ve looked it up; that’s another story. 

Prahl: So he was busy breaking the law while you were there in the White House?
COGAN: Yes he was. [laughter] He was busy doing some terrible things. Anyway, so here’s a picture of me and Mrs. Nixon and my award. They also gave us, because these where horticultural awards, they gave each of us a little cutting from the White House lawn. It was of a tree. I still have it because it was in a very tiny container that looked like a stick and it had three little leaves on it. And this was Mr. Nixon’s favorite tree, thank you very much. It’s a Sophora Japonica and I know nothing about trees. I brought it home and we planted it on the west side of our house. This was in April and then there was a harsh winter and the poor little thing, one stick and three little leaves, I thought, “yeah right”. Well that tree is now eighty feet tall. 

Prahl: Nice tree?
COGAN: No. It has the ugliest bark I have ever seen. Tiny, tiny leaves that shed all the time. My husband calls it “Nixon’s Revenge.” [laughter] And it’s also a Heritage Tree, Portland has Heritage Trees and it’s one of them. So it has a little plaque on it, which means we can’t touch it [laughter]. But you’ve got to see it to believe it. But I still have the little pot that it grew in. 

Then I also became involved in Neveh Shalom and on the board.

Prahl: Did you do that because the kids were in Sunday school? What got you involved?
COGAN: No. We were very close to Rabbi Stampfer and he was always getting me involved in all kind of things. He’s the one who got me involved in the Oregon Jewish Museum. He said, “Come on Elaine. We need you on the board.” Anyway it just evolved. So I was on the board of Neveh Shalom and then I became our first woman president. When I was asked to be president I said, “Do you know what you’re doing?” to the nominating committee chair. And he says, “Of course we know what we’re doing. We need you.” So that was the end of that. 

Prahl: Was there any fallout? Were there people who were upset by it? 
COGAN: One person was really angry. But he was someone who had a temper anyway and he didn’t do much else except be angry. 

Prahl: Did he have an argument of why that shouldn’t happen?
COGAN: No, he said, “That’s blah blah blah…” You know that kind of thing.

Prahl: There had already by that time been bat mitzvahs going on.
COGAN: Oh yes, the rabbi’s daughter was the first and then our daughter.

Prahl: And were there women in other leadership roles?
COGAN: No, no that was very interesting and I called up Rabbi Stampfer and I said, “What do you think about it?” He said, “Of course.” He would have no other opinion but that. And he said, “We’re not going to have a woman cantor but we’ll have a woman president.” Of course. I became president and I had a different point of view, no doubt about that. I was much more interested in service. Well I had some hard-headed (as they still do) business people on the board. These guys were bottom-line people. They looked at the budget in terms of the bottom line and what could we afford and we weren’t going to borrow money. Whatever, And I had a different point of view. We are going to serve people. And we’re not going to charge if someone can’t afford it; we’re not going to charge them. We are not going to give them the third degree. We’re going to find ways to raise some money. That was my point of view. Well, I wasn’t universally liked by the board members but that’s just tough. Well, if you know Neveh Shalom at all you know we have a parking lot that is above three creeks. It always sinks. Every president has a problem with the parking lot including Elaine. So we put together a campaign to get the money and we sent this out. 

Prahl: [Reading a flyer] “Help get us out of the hole.” That’s great.
COGAN: Help get us out of the hole. Those are the people on my executive committee and basically what we sent to our members was… I said, “You know, let’s be a little playful. Why do we have to be so serious?” And we raised all the money in no time. It’s just another way of looking at things, really. So if that was my contribution… I would go to services every Friday night. I made that point. Not too much on Saturdays but every Friday night. What happened is, the little old ladies, (you know it’s funny now that I’m older but I still think of them as little old ladies), especially if I was there without my husband, would say “Are you going to be alright? Are you going to get home all right? Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need any help?” They were just very sweet and solicitous about it. So that was my term of office.”

Feldman: I think there was something I read where you were involved in changing the prayer book at Neveh? Are we not there in the chronology yet?
COGAN: You know, I’m trying to remember when that was. That was after I was president, yes. Well I was critical for some time (I still am) over the reference to God as a “he” as a “him.” So I’m talking to the Rabbi one day, and said I had looked at other prayer books and there was nothing that was satisfactory. So Rabbi Stampfer (and if you get to know him, you know that this is so typical), he said, “Well then let’s write our own.” I said, “Moi?” (or whatever you say in Hebrew).) My Hebrew was very, very small, scant. He says, “Yeah we’ll just write our own.” So we formed a committee. I was the chair. We met every Monday night for a year- rain or shine – and we set about to rewrite the Friday night prayer book. We went through every word, every word. It was all by consensus. Each member of the committee would take a chapter or a part of it and until we agreed on the revision we didn’t move. So we would spend maybe a whole night on two words or whatever it was. I still picture that when I read it. So we prepared the prayers and Rabbi was, of course, our Hebrew scholar here in residence. I guess if there is a word to describe me I guess would be “intrepid.” 

Prahl: Is it a published book?
COGAN: Oh yes, we use it every Friday night.

Prahl: What did you name it?
COGAN: Oneg Shabbat. Joy of the Sabbath. 

Prahl: Oh, how wonderful. We have to get a copy here.
COGAN: The other part of the story is that I never gave a thought to how we were going to publish it. We were just busy writing. And I had a colleague, a man named Don Erceg, who said he was a lapsed Catholic. He and I were working on a project. We were driving. I remember very well; we were driving out to the Columbia Gorge. He said, “What are you up to lately?” I said, “Well I am just finishing this prayer book.” He said, “Oh that’s wonderful. How are you going to print it?” I said, “Oh I don’t know, we’ll probably just run off some copies and staple them.” And then he began to lecture me. He said, “You are doing a work of God. You cannot just print this off.” He is an artist. He says, “I will design the book and have it printed for you.” And then he starts giving me a lecture on archival paper, which I had never heard of. We have to have archival paper. And we have to have a certain kind of ink and the cover has to last 50 years and whatever. 

Prahl: Good for him. 
COGAN: You bet. You have to see the book it is a beautiful book. It’s beautifully bound and we use it every Friday night. And there is some sense that it’s dated a little bit, but still I’m so proud of it. And there are some words in there that are very strong words to describe situations with the Almighty. Something like that. That is one of my crowning achievements. I am so proud of it. Thank you for asking. I don’t know why I didn’t remember that.

Prahl:  When did you and Arnold found this business?
COGAN: Oh, 40 years ago. We do have to talk about this. 

Prahl: What lead to this? Was Arnold already doing this while you where doing…
COGAN: No, Arnold has an illustrious career in this state. He was the first planning director for the State of Oregon. He worked with Tom McCall as one of his half a dozen trusted advisors responsible for the land use planning system we have today. He’s gotten awards for it and I mean really it’s been delightful. He was working for a large consulting company out of Los Angeles. I was doing my freelance writing. This was 40 years ago. We said, “You know, we’re so smart why don’t we go into business?” which was one of the dumbest things we ever did [laughter] because there was a depression the next year. We worked out of our home. We had always collaborated. I have edited his work for years. I edited some of Tom McCall’s speeches. We didn’t tell anybody but I did. So we just decided that we would open up our own business and it’s always been small. Maybe a dozen people at the most. And everyone else is a professional planner; they do a lot of planning things. I am the communicator. I’ve done the editing. I’ve done my own work. I’ve gotten several awards for projects of my own. So that’s it. Because we didn’t know any better I guess. 

Prahl: So then while you where doing that and running a business, then you were doing the Portland Development Commission?
COGAN:  No this came afterwards. Because what is 40 years ago from now? 

Feldman: 1975.
COGAN: 1975. Right. 

Prahl: Oh and the Development commission was ’72 and ’73.
COGAN: Right that was before that. But in the middle of it, we’re tea drinkers. We are confirmed tea drinkers. We were on the east coast with some kind of a project and we traveled all over from New England down to New York. And everywhere we always ordered tea and we couldn’t get a good cup of tea. I mean you could go to the fanciest places to the smallest places. And it was just kind of annoying. So we got home to Portland and we where in Hood River for some kind of a meeting and sat down at a café. Ordered a cup of tea. A little white porcelain pot and two porcelain cups and great tea. So we don’t have it. Anyway, so I fired off a letter to the New York Times (and I know we have it somewhere) and I wrote that it was so great, you like to tweak them in New York anyway, that we had just come back from New York and couldn’t get a cup of tea anywhere and I just don’t understand it. So it was some small letter like this. I get a call from the editor of The Times saying they wanted to make sure that I was the Mrs. Cogan who wrote the letter because they always check up. And he said, “And your letter will be printed on Thanksgiving weekend.” So we call our son Mark, our very serious son Mark who is at NYU Law School. “Mark look for my letter it is going to be in The Times the next weekend.” “Oh Mom, there’s so many important things going on in the world and you have to be concerned with something so frivolous.” I said, “Well that’s all right Mark maybe no one will read it.” Well it turns out lots of people read it. And I got phone calls and letters from people all over the country. “It’s about time someone stood up for us tea drinkers.” “We are the maligned minority.” “Absolutely.” “Thank you so much.” Then the Times wrote an editorial about me and it was called, “Tea Snobs and Coffee Bigots.” And they said, “Mrs. Cogan is absolutely right,” and they go on with their problems with tea drinking. And the last line is a prize. It says, “And the worst part is after you’ve drained this bad cup of tea the waiter comes and pours coffee in it.” So we said, “What have we got here?” I called some food editors of magazines. We thought, “We can’t open up a tea business.” See this was before the tea revolution, which is too bad because we could have made our fortune. And what we were looking for was a mail order tea business and there wasn’t any so we started our own. We still had our consulting business and we had a board of directors and they insisted on calling it Elaine’s Tea Company. I know I have a tin; I’ll show it to you. Anyway so we started I had all kinds of publicity with the tea business. 

Prahl: This is wonderful. How long did the business last?
COGAN: Oh about three years. We put out a beautiful four-color catalog. We had orders but we just couldn’t sustain it. I had to make a decision, did I want to be a consultant or did I want to be a tea maven? I should have chosen the tea maven [laughter].

Prahl: I don’t know. You’ve had a pretty good run with consulting. 
COGAN: Yes but still. Anyway and I’ll show you the tin. So that’s the tea business. People still ask me about it. “Are you still in the tea business?” My daughter Sue is in the public relations business. I had been travelling, like when I was in Chicago to do some workshops and I did a tea tasting party on TV. What I would do is I would have different kinds of tea just like you do with wine and there was always a Lipton’s. Anyway, and people would taste it and realize what good tea was. On the upshot of this I got a call or a letter from the Lipton company. They where putting out a new kind of tea. Lipton’s, I guess I can say it here is really not good tea. 

Prahl: I don’t think that’s going to come as a surprise to anybody. 
COGAN: Okay so they were putting out another kind of tea called Sir Thomas Lipton’s and wanted me to be their spokesperson. I tell you I have given up more opportunities to make money than anybody I know. And I thought about it because, boy you know… but I said, “I can’t compromise.” [laughter] So anyway I turned them down. There is a company in New England, John Harney, and he and I have become real buddies. You talk about Republican, he’s Republican, but still…. And he has a very nice boutique tea company and my tea is available. My one tea “Elaine’s Special Tea is available from him on the Internet. So you can look up Harney and you will find “Elaine’s Special Blend” there. 

Prahl: I will definitely look for it. Tell me what’s next.
COGAN: One of my hobbies is baking bread. I had baked our own bread for years and years. We haven’t bought a loaf of bread for years and years we haven’t bought a loaf of bread in I don’t know how long. So I got a call from the editor of the Oregonian Food Day. When was that?

Prahl and Feldman: 2004.
COGAN: Okay. And she said, “We understand you bake your own bread.” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Well can we send someone over to talk to you.” So they send a reporter and photographer. We spent that whole morning baking bread. Anyway is that challah? I can’t remember.

Prahl: Yes it is. When do you have the time to do this?
COGAN: Well that’s my weekend pleasure. Sunday afternoon I bake bread. So anyway that was in The Oregonian. What else? [looks through papers]

Prahl: What’s the American Jewish Committee? Tell me about that. 
COGAN: Well we were honored, they honor people every year.

Prahl: And what had you done to deserve this?
COGAN: Nothing I know of [laughter].

Prahl: Your work with consulting and your work with the community.
COGAN: Yeah, something I mean whatever they say. I mean they need people every year. You can make a copy of that too. 

Feldman: You were also involved with the Jewish Review?
COGAN: How do you know all of that? Yes, the Jewish Review, (this must have been 20 or 30 years ago now), they were really on hard timed and I was asked, she was not a very good editor frankly; she really wasn’t. She edited the paper like, well she was catering to VIP’s. It was more like a social paper. So they had a board a directors who was getting a little tired of that. They asked me if I would edit the paper. Now again I am still doing consulting so I said, “Yeah, but just for a limited period of time.” So I did for two years. And I think we did a good job. We put it on its feet. I insisted that we weren’t going to be the spokespeople for the Federation even though the Federation paid for it.

Prahl: Were you a monthly or bi-weekly at that time.
COGAN: No, we were a monthly. This was very important to me to get it on the right track. And we had controversial articles in it, glory be.

Prahl: Did you do any of the writing or did you just edit?
COGAN: I did some of the writing when I needed to. I had an assistant who did a lot of the writing and then we paid for freelance stuff.

Prahl: Where was your office?
COGAN: Right here [laughter]. I did it right out of here. We had to and she worked here.

Prahl: There was no Jewish Review Office at the time.
COGAN: Oh no, no, no. It was just something they asked me to do and I thought it was important to move it in another direction. And then they hired Paul Haist after that.

Prahl: Did you meet with any resistance to those changes?
COGAN: Well, not resistance as much as not thinking it was going to work. I think the Federation folks frankly didn’t dare oppose what we were doing but they didn’t like it. I mean we just didn’t give them the coverage that they had had before. I wasn’t about to do that.

Prahl: When Paul took over as editor did he keep the same ideals that you had?
COGAN: Oh yes, he did and he did more. He didn’t do the features that I did. I think we did a lot more of the feature articles than he did because I was always looking for different ideas. I don’t think he bothered. But he did a fine job.

Feldman: And your books.
COGAN: And it’s my books. This book You Can Talk to (Almost) Anyone about (Almost) Anything. Was written with Ben Padrow. Here’s another picture of Elaine in the early days, here. Ben was the premiere speech coach in the state. If any political candidate really wanted to go anywhere. He taught at Portland State. And he was unbelievable.

Prahl: Wow, this book is endorsed by Bob Packwood. 
COGAN: Oh yes. And you should read the endorsement. It’s glowing. People have asked me, “Why don’t you tear it out now since Bob is, you know.” No. Anyway, Ben and I were talking one day, “Well what are you up to?” I said, “Well I don’t know.” He said, “We need to write a book.” No. He says, “I have so much to say about speaking and there isn’t a book like this. The others are three hundred and fifty pages of small type.” I said, “All right. Why don’t we do it?” I mean again a lot that we knew. So we met weekly and I culled all the information from him and I wrote it. And then we didn’t know what to do with it, but we had a series of articles in the Oregon Business Magazine (and I can’t find those) based what we were writing in the book. Glen Fahs, who was then the manager of the Portland State School of Continuing Education. Of all things, he was in his dentist’s office. He read the magazine. He read our articles, got in touch with me. He says, “You got something here. Why don’t you write a book?” We said, “Okay.” Now we didn’t know anything about writing a book. He didn’t know anything about publishing a book. So we had an agreement. Portland State University Press, which doesn’t exist now, published the book. We wrote the book. It did very well. It’s now out of print. Although I know somebody who just bought one from Google and I know Powell’s has a few of them. So that’s book number one. And then this one, Successful Public Meetings. I was contacted by the publisher Jossey-Bass, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jossey-Bass. They’re one of the national publishers. I have made part of my professional career designing and facilitating public meetings. I’ve probably done hundreds of them. My point of view is bringing people together to reach decisions without yelling and screaming at each other. So this publisher had heard about at that. At that time when I was travelling I did workshops all over the country. And he had seen something that I had done. And he said, “How about writing a book? We don’t have a book like this.” He said, “We’ll send a writer to Portland and she’ll take notes and we’ll write your book.” And I said, “Well, I’d love to do it but I’m going to write the book.” And he says, “Oh? really?” And I said, “Yeah.” So we had a deal and I wrote this book. This was now published by the American Planning Association. They took it over and it’s used, I’ve been told, by planning schools all over the country. Well it’s a primer. I write fairly clearly and I spend a lot of time trying to get people to understand that there are ways to hold meetings where you can get something done but you have to work at it. So those are the two. I am now rewriting this speaking book. I’ve got another book that I really, dearly need to write. I’ve got one chapter written. The title is, and I’m not a fiction writer, We’ll Never Be One of the Boys but Who Cares? How about that?

Prahl: I love it. I’m sure it will be a best seller.
COGAN: Well I don’t know. But anyway, that’s about it.

Prahl: This has been fabulous. What do you see for the future? Are you going to be a writer? Do you see Cogan-Owens-Cogan going on?
COGAN: Cogan Owens is now Cogan Owens Greene. We’re selling our business to our partners. But we hang out here and we’re called founding principals. We can do what we want to do. [talks to husband, Arnold, outside of room] Anyway, he’s got projects to do. I’ve got my books to write. We’ll probably do them here. Just enjoy the children, the grandchildren. But not retire. Retire is not in our nomenclature.

Prahl: Are you still involved in the Jewish community at all?
COGAN: We’ll are, mainly through Neveh Shalom. We’re active in the past presidents’ council. So we’re always giving advice. When they want it. 

Prahl: Are you part of this Mizrach on the east side?
COGAN: Yeah we’re on the steering committee. And we’re putting together this wine tasting.

Prahl: And that creates activities for Jews on the east.
COGAN: Yeah, right. Whenever we want to. It’s very informal. I would say I’ve never been an institutional Jew. 

Prahl: That’s a funny thing for a past president of a synagogue to say.
COGAN: Well, I mean I’ve avoided Hadassah and the National Council. Because I get too impatient, I think, with just spinning wheels or social… I mean some people love it. Arnold’s mother was Hadassah. In fact she gave me a lifetime membership. She loved all that and she was wonderful at it. But my mother was never very social and I’m not.

Prahl: Not a club joiner. You didn’t talk about your activities with the Oregon Jewish Museum at all. You’ve left out whole chunks of your…
COGAN: We’ll Rabbi Stampfer again, he says you know “We’re starting the museum. I think you need to be on the board.” “Ok. Anything for you.” I said, “Are you kidding? I don’t know anything about museums.” He said “So what?” 

Prahl: Were you involved in any of his other things like the Institute for Judaic Studies? And his other…
COGAN: No, we’re members but we don’t… but I’ll tell you a story about the Jewish Museum you may know this. Every president makes a contribution, we hope. My contribution was getting the archives of the Jewish Historical Society.

Prahl: That was a pretty huge contribution.
COGAN: We’ll I’ll tell you that was tough.

Prahl: That got me a job. [laughs]
COGAN: Yeah. I was so glad that we were able to do this. That was not easy. I said that that was going to be my goal. Some of it probably shouldn’t be recorded.

Prahl: Yeah I think personalities and things don’t need to be recorded but that was a wonderful thing because they’ve been preserved and so accessible to the public.
COGAN: Exactly and we had to do it. I said if I do any thing else that’s what we’re going to do. So we did do that. And I love the museum, of course; You know that. But I’ve never been someone who could be a docent or a guide or sitting behind a desk greeting people.

Prahl: You make contributions in bigger ways. 
COGAN: Well different ways anyway. What else? Anything? I want to show you my tin of Elaine’s Tea. 

Feldman: I was just curious. I know this would mean there would be a long answer but the short question is: How did you manage to balance all of your civic work and your other kinds of consulting work and raising three kids?
COGAN: Well that is very interesting. The children always came first. So we where at every concert every school event every, you name it they knew I was there. I was always active in PTA. Most of the time that was a waste of time. But you’ve got to do it. I think we just took it for granted. As long as I didn’t have to work. You know our managing partner here. She is a dear person. She’s in her early forties got two little children ages six and four. I don’t know how she does it with a full time job and daycare and whatever she has to do.

Prahl: Did you have help with the kids at all?
COGAN: No. But I didn’t need to because I could work at home. And even when we opened up our own business our youngest was in high school. I just did it. But I didn’t have the pressure that these women do, of the day care and all the schlepping. We just did it. And there were certain things like Shabbat Friday night that was important. But I was fortunate that I could so much of it from home. My Model Cities meetings were at night. My League of Women Voters meetings were in the daytime when the kids were in school. That kind of thing.

Prahl: So you just didn’t have any down time.
COGAN: Well weekends and I would bake some bread. [Laughter]. So everyone does it differently really. And you’ve had your two boys.

Prahl: Yes, and it’s a balancing act. 
COGAN: Yes, but they have to come first. And luckily I’ve had enough energy or good health to be able to do all these things. So there.

COGAN: In order to get to the White House, when I went to the White House, you drive up to the gate. A driver drove me up to the gates. They ask there for identification. They had my name on a list of guests so that was good. I can’t imagine having been this nervous but I must have been very nervous. I could not find my ID. The only thing I could find was my Multnomah County Library card. [laughter] I show this to the guard. He says, “I’ve never seen anything like that before. It’s probably OK.”

Feldman: You should have said, “You should see our library. Of course it is OK.” [laughter]
COGAN: We have the best in the country. But I had my driver’s license… but the best I could do was my library card. But this is important. One of the other parts of my life was that I was a political commentator for WKGW TV. The manager called me one day and said, “How would you like to do this?”

Prahl: Oh! You used to be on TV during an election in the evening. I remember that!
COGAN: Exactly. And my job was to prognosticate before the elections, during the elections, etc. This was a very important election when Ron Wyden was running for the first time for the US Senate against Gordon Smith. I tried. I said to myself, “We are going to have to figure out how to figure out what is happening.” I had a young assistant in the office who was a math whiz (which I am not). And I said, “What I want you to do, Matt, is go through every county. List every county and what the Democratic and Republican registration is. We are going to figure out what each of these candidates needs to win.” So he gave me this spread sheet. Luckily I had him at my side. But I was on camera – he wasn’t. There were two things about that election. Number one was that it was very important and number two was that it was the first time that we voted by mail in ballot. There were no precincts anymore, which I found out later (and no one else figured it out). So we figured out that this is what they needed to win, each one of them in each of the counties. Now, unfortunately for Republicans, or generally, whoever wins in two out three of the metropolitan counties has got it no matter what happens any place else. But you don’t tell them that because you don’t want to hurt their feelings. But that is basically what it is. 

So I am on camera. Polls close at 8:00. We are getting the results in and Matt is feeding me the information. It becomes very obvious to me at a quarter to 9:00 that Ron Wyden is winning in Clackamas, Washington, and Multnomah counties, and Lane County, and Benton County. Anyway, there was no way that that was going to change because we were no longer talking about precincts. This is very interesting– a little political information. So I am looking at the information and I get on the headphone with my news director off camera. It is about ten minutes to 9:00. And I said, “I know who won.” He said, “What do you mean?” He said, “It’s too early. We haven’t heard from 90% of the voters.” or 80% of the voters, or whatever. I said, “I know what the trend is and I know who is going to win. He says, “Well keep on looking.” It gets to be 9:00 and he says, “How are you doing?” I said, “I know who won.” He is tuning into the other stations.

Prahl: He sees that nobody else knows.
COGAN: Nobody else knows and they are all waiting for the precincts and I said, “John, there are no more precincts. Once the votes come in they come in.” So I can hear him breathing. He takes a deep breath and says, “Do you want to go on the air and say that?” I said, “It’s your station but I will do it because Wyden has won.” I was that sure. Don’t ask me why I was that sure. I can’t tell you. Anyway, I go on the air about five minutes after 9:00 and say Ron Wyden. “I predict Ron Wyden.” Nobody else is doing this until 10:00, 10:30, 11:00. I found out that they showed it on a big screen at the Hilton and everyone start yelling and screaming. Anyway, I was right. 

So I come home and Arnold is sitting in his bathrobe. It is about 11:30. I am really tired. We are sitting there like this. And he says, “I saw you do it. How did you it? And why did you do it?” [laughter] “I thought they were going to run us out of town!”

Prahl: That is wonderful. We are going to have to end this interview now.