Sally Cohn

Tanzer: Sally, where did your family come from? 
COHN: Well, on my dad’s side, my Grandpa Cohn came from somewhere in California and his people came from Germany, just like Henry Heppner‘s people. 

Tanzer: What was the relationship between your family and Henry Heppner’s family? 
COHN: My Henry Heppner was my dad’s great, great uncle. That would be on Dad’s mother’s side of the family. 

Tanzer: Henry Heppner was your dad’s great uncle? 
COHN: Yes, my dad’s great, great uncle. 

Tanzer: Tell me again 
COHN: On my dad’s mother’s side. 

Tanzer: Then she was a Heppner? 
COHN: I don’t know whether it was Great Grandma Cohn, or Grandma Cohn who was a Heppner. I think Grandma Cohn was a Goldstone and Great Grandma Cohn was a Heppner. 

Tanzer: Do you know why the family came to Eastern Oregon? 
COHN: No, I don’t, except they came out from California following the California gold rush, and I imagine it had something to do with a lot of disappointment [from] finding it to be a fizzle, because a lot of people moved to the Pacific Northwest after. They didn’t find the gold rush all that it was cracked up to be. 

Tanzer: Do you remember your grandparents? 
COHN: They died before I was born. 

Tanzer: The grandparents on both sides? 
COHN: Yes, the grandparents on my mom’s side and my dad’s side, both. 

Tanzer: Do you remember your father talking about the Cohn family and the Heppner family? 
COHN: More about the Cohn family. This was when I was a little kid. He had an Aunt Gussie down in California. She died in the ‘40s and he would get to talking about the Cohn family when we visited them (this was in 1942) but I can’t remember too much of the substance of the conversation as far as the people were concerned. 

Tanzer: How much contact did you have with other Jewish families in that area? 
COHN: When I was growing up? Practically nil. None in the area. I had contact with Ted and Elinor Shank who were relatives. Either they would come up there to visit or I would go to their summer home in Central Oregon, or when I would come down here. I remember when I was a little kid we had dinner in Herbie Sichel’s home. I must have been about eight or nine, because Dad used to get his clothes from there and I remember they used to kid about Mom and her Herbie, M and H Sichel, but that’s about the… There were no families in Eastern Oregon that I had any contact with. I didn’t know of any. I always had the feeling that there were some well-kept secrets in Eastern Oregon. 

Tanzer: In terms of the Jewish families, you mean? 
COHN: Yes, in terms of identification. Dad would talk about his business doings with Lou Levy and Roy Alexander. I think he had some insurance from Roy Alexander and I know that Dad and a lot of these people made all kinds of contributions to the various Jewish organizations. But I never personally met these men. I think part of it was because well, let’s face it, Dad was a male chauvinist and it was a man’s world. I would have loved to have gone with Dad to a lot of places and been in on his dealings but that just wasn’t his way of doing things so I never personally met these people. But I heard him talking about them and I know that one time he was doing business with the Rudnick family down in Bakersfield. They were into sheep and I know one time, when I was in high school, he called one of the Rudnicks on business long distance. I used to handle Dad’s phone in the summer and earn a little money. He called one of the Rudnicks and there was some Jewish holiday they were observing. Anyway, Mr. Rudnick couldn’t come to the phone and Dad had to call later. That was the first time that I was aware that there were a lot of different holidays. About the only thing I knew was, “Jews don’t celebrate Christmas.” And I thought, “Well, that’s funny. Ted and El [Shank] celebrate Christmas.” At least they were at one time. I knew about the Saturday religious attendance and that’s about all I did know. So I really didn’t know anything until I started digging when I was a freshman in college and I decided that I would do a standard English comp term paper on something I knew very little about. I figured I would pick Jewish holy days since I knew next to nothing and I went to my Aunt El and she sicked me onto the ADL office that they had in Portland at the time. I got what I could there and then I went on up to the public library and did some digging and I got my paper done. I think I got an A on the paper because I footnoted properly. 

Tanzer: How large a family did you have in Eastern Oregon? 
COHN: Well, Mom and Dad, my brother Phil and me. But Mom and Dad had two children who died before I was born. There was Phil first, Philip Harold actually. He was still born and then Philip William is my brother. Then there was Richard A. I don’t know what the A. stood for. He died before he was about a year old. 

Tanzer: Philip was named for your paternal grandfather. 
COHN: Yes, that’s right. That tradition still exists. There’s a young Phil Cohn now who is 22. 

Tanzer: Had your grandfathers been the one to start the business? 
COHN: Let’s see. The warehouse business, I’m not sure whether Grandpa took that over from Heppner and Blackman or what the deal was. Now, some of these things that I’m vague about, my Aunt Elinor could probably fill you in on as to the details. 

Tanzer: Well, what do you know about the beginning of the business? 
COHN: Well, it was a warehouse for all the wool that was being shipped out of the Heppner area and Granddad had the warehouse and then my dad worked in it and I think Henry, his brother, worked in it. And then I don’t think that Dad ever owned the warehouse. Grandpa, now he moved to Portland when Elinor was a teen-ager, so he probably sold the warehouse. 

Tanzer: Now, let me ask you to go back to the family. Your Grandfather Cohn, whose name was Phillip, had how many children? 
COHN: Well, he had Harold, Henry and Elinor. 

Tanzer: And your father is Harold? 
COHN: Harold. 

Tanzer: Is Henry still alive? 
COHN: No, Henry died some time last year. He had been in a coma for several years after having a stroke. 

Tanzer: And Elinor? 
COHN: Elinor is alive. 

Tanzer: And she’s Elinor Shank now? 
COHN: That’s right. 

Tanzer: Now, when you say when your grandfather moved to Portland, what was the reasons for his moving to Portland? 
COHN: Well, I was told it was so she [Elinor] would meet a Jewish boy in high school and she went to Grant High School and I don’t know whether the original motivation ever, well, it didn’t materialize. Later on she did meet a nice Jewish boy, but not in high school. 

Tanzer: So there was some concern about [marrying Jewish]? 
COHN: Yes, there was concern, yes. 

Tanzer: And was that concern ever manifested in your own family? 
COHN: Not in me. It was in Elinor’s family when her daughter was sent up here to Lincoln High School for very similar reasons, but with me, no, it wasn’t manifested. 

Tanzer: Or with your brother? 
COHN:  No, not at all. My brother went all four years to Heppner High School and then went into the Navy. I went three years to Heppner High School and got ticked off and said, “I’m not going to spend my senior year there.” But it wasn’t religious motivations. It was simply I got tired of being a wallflower. Mother said, “Well, if you go away to school I’m going to pop you in a boarding school somewhere and she did.” 

Tanzer: Where did you go to school? 
COHN: St. Helens Hall. I’ve got a niece there now. It’s called Oregon Episcopal School. 

Tanzer: So you actually did leave during your senior year? 
COHN: Yes. 

Tanzer: How did you adjust to the transition? 
COHN: Well, let’s see. I had a student office I was elected to when I left Heppner High School. I was on the honor roll, and when I came to St. Helen’s Hall I was with a batch of “new girls” who were seniors, which was a unique situation. We were resented and I adjusted outwardly as best I could, but I held in a lot of feelings of rejection and frustration and anger, you know, by God, keep a stiff upper lip and show them that I’m not going to be a weakling, but I really felt that I was at the bottom of the heap and the big criterion was how long you had gone to school there. There was no other criterion, but there really was a lot of mob energy involved in how long you had been there at that school and these feelings of rejection did not immerge because you were from a small town or because you were of … let’s say a religious minority. Oh no, in fact there were other old girls at the Hall who were Jewish. They were in on this too. Let’s see. Yes, one of the most, how would you say it, most rejecting people were from Eastern Oregon. They were from small towns too. It was just a matter of seniority. I hadn’t been there long enough and so I carried emotional scars around behind that for a long time. 

Tanzer: After graduating from St. Helen’s Hall did you return to Heppner? 
COHN: No, well for the summer vacation. Then I went to Lewis & Clark College for two years and then switched to the University of Oregon. Let’s see, reasons behind the transfer to the U. of O. Lewis & Clark was primarily a commuter’s campus when I was there and I lived in the dorm. The bus service wasn’t good on weekends. The social life revolved around commuters who had homes in the area. I just simply felt out of it. I felt isolated and I wanted to get myself into some kind of social life and so I transferred to Eugene. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t. Academically I was better off if I had stayed at Lewis & Clark; I would have been better off scholastically. 

Tanzer: What kind of life did you find in Eugene? 
COHN: Let’s see, how would I characterize it? It was a bit of a country club, but it was very stiff academically. There was less personal concern with the student. I had the impression that every professor down there simply didn’t give a damn about the student; it was sink or swim. And with that mentality I struggled as best I could, but I was in a major where I was over my head. 

Tanzer: What was your major? 
COHN: History. I liked Western Civ when I took it in the form of Humanities at Lewis & Clark. The emphasis was on cultural history and I dug that, but when I got to the upper division in the history courses, the emphasis was economics and political and I simply just don’t have that bent. I couldn’t approach history from that standpoint plus, well I flunked Economics and political science I didn’t do much better. I just don’t have the knack for that, so by that time I was in the wrong major, but it was too late to do anything about it, so I was kind of stuck. I tried to make the best of a miserable situation. 

Tanzer: What was your life like at the University of Oregon? 
COHN: Well, I was in the Delta Zeta Sorority, which has since gone off campus for financial reasons. I had some social life. I started drinking quite a bit down there. It was a big thing to be guzzling beer all the time. It wasn’t pot then, it was beer. Let’s see. I was very active in the Canterbury Club, which is an Episcopal student’s group, and I wanted to be active in some other off campus activities. At that time you had to petition for everything. In other words, fill out an application and let’s face it, there was a student power structure which was you know, certain sororities and fraternities. If they wanted you in, they would vote you in on some activity. It could be the most insignificant activity in the world. Anyway, I felt intimidated to petition for too many, but the sororities of course would put a little pressure. They wanted their members to petition for this and that. Oh, I would. Of course I didn’t expect to get accepted for anything, but I was on the browsing room committee which was the Erb Memorial Union that had a Friday night movie and lecture series up in the browsing room which was the extension of the library and I was on that committee and got some enjoyment from it, but that was about the extent of it. Life on the campus was a lot of grind, grind, grind. I spent more time in the stats in the library and also struggling. I had demands on my time made by the sorority and there was a big resentment there. You know, I wanted more time to hit the books and there would be some of these damn activities that I would have to participate in, or there would be some house function that we would have. You see, I didn’t express my resentment then. I held it all then in. Nowadays I would have told them to get lost and I would have marched down to Golda Wickham’s office and said, “Damn it, Golda, I want to live in the dorm.” But I tried to play everything going through channels, and of course, channels meant talk with your officers at the house. No way was I going to, so I stayed there and stuck it out, but I hated it. 

Tanzer: Would you say then that you were too easily intimidated at that time? 
COHN: Oh yes, very easily intimidated. 

Tanzer: To what do you attribute that? 
COHN: Oh, I really had a crummy self-image then, but since then, with a lot of hard work it has been altered. 

Tanzer: In retrospect, if you could trace back what you call the crummy self-image, did that emerge from your general environment? 
COHN: Well, when I was a kid growing up in Heppner, I had temper tantrums and there was the reputation I had as a kid as being crazy. They called me nutsy, nutty, crazy. We would go by Eastern Oregon State Hospital driving somewhere and the kids would say, “Why don’t we drop Sally off here?” Well, a lot of my emotional energy was put into, “I’m going to show everybody that I’m as normal as everybody else.” You know, being one of the crowd, conforming. Another reason I didn’t want to stay in Heppner High School, I felt the guys were leaving me on the sidelines because they remembered how nutty I acted in grade school, and so I had that self-image of being nutty, inferior. Let’s see, I’m trying to think what else. There were several things going there. That was one of them. Yes, the environment of my peers, growing up, they let me know that I was somehow different. I was nuts. Maybe it was simply that I was a little on the intellectual side and the kids resented it. I don’t know.

Tanzer: How did your parents counteract this different type of feeling that you had? 
COHN: Gosh, I don’t know. Well, Dad was always telling me, “Lower your voice. Don’t be shrill.” My folks were always getting on my case about that. If there is anything embarrassing, any embarrassing thoughts I had, mother would say, “For heaven’s sakes don’t write that essay at school.” In other words, a lot of mother’s energy was, “Don’t embarrass the family.” These were times I wanted to write a paper or an essay. I’m talking about high school and early adult years or I would want to write a satire and mother would be so afraid that I would go out in left field somewhere and embarrass the family. 

Tanzer: Did they have that general feeling about everything that anyone did within the family? 
COHN: Well, let’s see. Dad was a conservative Republican and at times his sister Elinor made him very nervous because her politics were completely different and sometimes I would hear things like, “Elinor’s going; she’s turning Red. She’s becoming pinko.” And stuff like that. There were times that I would get the message, spoken or otherwise, of, “Lookout! You’re going to be just as rabble rousing as your Auntie El.” My mother would say that to me. 

Tanzer: So would you consider your mother as being conservative also? 
COHN: Oh yes, yes. Mother was a conservative WASP. Her parents were from New England originally and they settled in Eastern Washington She was never one to rock the boat. And Dad had his reasons for me not wanting to rock the boat. Of course, he had a sister who did rock the boat. Oh, I remember some pretty hairy arguments at the dinner table when Ted and El would come to visit and Ted would start to have heart palpitations or whatever and he would have to get up from the table. 

Tanzer: What were the conversations about? 
COHN: Politics. Oh, God, they would get going on Wayne Morse too. I can’t remember the substance of it. Anyway, Dad was minimally political and El, at the time… She should have been a student activist in the ‘60s is all I can say. She would have been right in keeping with the times. This was in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s I’m talking about, where I would hear these clashes, but the message I always got was, “Make a low profile. Don’t make any waves. Be a good little girl.” 

Tanzer: Do you suppose that that’s a reflection on the Jewishness? 
COHN: I think, unspoken with Dad, it was. There was also … I came back from a number of years living in New York and I was talking with my hands and Dad took my hands down and he said, “I notice you’re talking with your hands again.” I said, “Well, Dad, that’s a way of life.” I said, “After all the Italians talk with their hands too, for God’s sake. So I gesticulate now and don’t think a damn thing about it.” But I wasn’t even conscious of it until I would catch Dad putting my hands down when I would really get into a conversation, you know, really getting with it. I always had the message from him, “Don’t be completely yourself, because somehow you’ll embarrass me,” And so I asked Mother. I didn’t really realize that there was an ethnic connotation until Mother told me what it was all about. 

Tanzer: What did she say? 
COHN: I can’t remember her exact words, but she said, “Some Jewish people talk a lot with their hands and Dad finds it embarrassing. Like his cousin Abe, you notice how Abe gets when he’s excited.” Of course, Dad’s cousin Abe Blackman did have obnoxious mannerisms which I would say was just typically Abe and no one else in particular. And so anytime there was any obnoxious image or something, reference would always be made to Dad’s cousin Abe, who also had another trait which was he couldn’t handle his booze. I think he had a hangup about being so short. Well, let’s face it, I think that some of my negative feelings about myself came from height because when I was in the fourth grade I was the tallest kid in the class and then I started maturing early, about 10 or 11, and my height slowed down and all my peers caught up with me and they started towering above me and I didn’t like that one bit being next to the shortest kid in the class. I still make cracks about being short and all that. 

Tanzer: Let me ask you about your mother’s family? How did your parents meet? 
COHN: Mother came over to Heppner to teach. Her first teaching job. She came, I think, from Ellensburg Normal School, which is Central Washington College now. Mother had a distant relative in New England who lived in Heppner, Addie Patterson. Addie and Ben had the old Patterson Drug Store there in Heppner and Ben and Addle and Dad’s folks and Dad were friends of the Pattersons. The Pattersons sent Dad down to the train depot to pick Mom up off the train and that’s how they met. They were dating for a while and Dad’s folks, I think he went away to the University of Oregon for about a year and then they popped him off to Berkeley, also to meet a suitable Jewish girl. Well, there was a chafing dish that used to be in the family. It was never used and I asked Mama about that and she said that it was a present that Dad gave his girlfriend in California and she gave it back to him when they broke up. That didn’t work out and Dad came back. I don’t know whether he flunked out of Berkeley or just quit. I don’t know whether he went to work for Grandpa in the warehouse or what, but Mom, I think in the meantime went off and taught in Idaho and Montana and then she came back to Heppner and I heard from Mom that Dad’s folks were upset about Mom and Dad being interested in each other and mother’s folks weren’t too happy about it, because mother’s parents were raised in New England at the time when there was not only anti-Jewish feelings, but a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment and there were two messages that Mom and her siblings got which is, “Don’t marry a Jew and don’t marry a Catholic.” Well, mother’s sister married a Catholic guy. Dr. O’Shea out in Lake Oswego is the result of that. And so Mom and Dad got sick and tired of all this fuss about it, and they just simply eloped and got married in The Dalles by a Methodist minister. After the fallout was over, finally, the families got to accepting them and Mom said when she was pregnant with Philip first, Grandma Cohn kept stuffing her all the time, “Eat, eat, eat.” Well, I don’t know whether this is just my little kid’s interpretation or what, but Mom lost her first baby. And I don’t know whether it was because she was overweight. I think that it probably had something to do with the fact that she was a gym major and she was teaching a lot of gym and sometimes when you are that athletic and you have your first pregnancy, there can be complications. So anyway, when Grandma Cohn started stuffing Mom, I figured that was acceptance. They accepted Mom and I don’t know too much about Grandma and Grandpa Ames over in Ellensburg. You see, both sets of Grandparents died before I was born, but they initially got over the running off to get married. Eventually they got over it. 

Tanzer: What was the practicing religion in the household? 
COHN: Episcopalian. Dad just sat back and took a back seat and let Mom raise the kids and she sent Phil to Sunday School and she sent me. Let’s see, I started resisting when I was in high school. Mom would give me a choice, either Sunday School or church today and sometimes I would say Sunday School because it was less time, but I went to an Episcopal Summer Camp up near LaGrande every summer and I started liking church when I was about 16 or so because of some positive experiences in camp. Then I was going to St. Helen’s Hall. We didn’t like going to Trinity because Dr. Kempton was a boring old so and so, so the seniors would always sit in the back and put the freshmen up front with the House Mothers. And we would slip out during the sermon and go smoke in the john. But during Lent the seniors had the option of going to St. Marks over on 21st and Marshall. That was high church– lots of ceremony and so on– and having gone to Catholic boarding school in the sixth grade, I really liked it there and I was really sad when Mom pulled me out and put me back in public school. Finances were the reasons I learned later, so I immediately was really taken with St. Marks and when I came back as a young adult that’s where I went to church, St. Marks Episcopal. I liked it and I was very active in the Episcopal Church up until I went to New York and while I was teaching in a real ghetto neighborhood, blacks and Puerto Ricans near the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, you’ve seen pictures of it. It looks bombed out, like bombed out Berlin, well, I found this Episcopal Church, which is entirely West Indian blacks. I loved it there and I didn’t like the Episcopal parish in my neighborhood. In other words, white upper middle class parishes, I didn’t feel good in it anymore. Well, one thing led to another over the years and I found that whatever denomination I was attracted to the ghetto congregations, so I came back here to Portland and years ago I wanted to go into the Catholic church and I knew that Mom would just have a snit, so I waited and waited and in the meantime I came to like the church I was brought up in. But then later on I became attracted to Catholicism again, so five years ago, and Dad never knew it and El doesn’t know it to this day, I was received into the Catholic Church. They didn’t re-baptize me or anything and that’s where I am and I’m very happy there. But I don’t go to Madeline. I live close to Madeline. I live close to St. Rose. They are white, upper-middle-class parishes. I’m happy in a ghetto parish of St. Andrews. It’s right over in Albina. They’ve got everything right there. And I’m quite happy. 

Tanzer: Tell me about the sixth grade boarding school. 
COHN: St. Joseph’s Academy in Pendleton. 

Tanzer: Why were you sent there originally? 
COHN: Because Mother was concerned about academic standards. Apparently, things weren’t too good in the Heppner Grade School at the time. There were quite a few parents who pulled their kids out and put them in the Academy. Well, Elinor Shank put her daughter Jane in a Catholic school down at Coos Bay for a time for very similar reasons. When the public schools slip academically, there are a lot of parents, it didn’t matter what the religion was. It was true, there was that saying, “By God, the sisters really make you learn.” They did make me learn and so mother put me in the Academy. 

Tanzer: It was a boarding school. 
COHN: Yes, it was a boarding situation at the time. 

Tanzer: Did you come home on weekends? 
COHN: Not until the spring. Most of the time I was there weekends, and of course, during certain parts of Advent and Lent, there were week day masses and during the month of May, that’s when I really, I really saw things in full swing, because we went to mass every day. We would all troop down to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Pendleton and we would go there and of course the kids would sing. We would sing all the …

Tanzer: Sally, how did your parents feel about this Catholic experience? 
COHN: Well, Mother was very nervous when I slipped off. I had a friend of mine order the Baltimore Catechism and I picked it up where my friend’s mother worked and I even made a false bottom desk in the 7th grade and kept the Catechism down there and study it in secret. I made the mistake of telling a person who I thought was my best friend and she spread it around the whole school and one of mother’s Catholic friends came and told Mom one day and she confronted me with it and my world, the bottom dropped out. I was panicky and shaking, depressed and kept avoiding the issue and oh, Mom didn’t like it one bit. She really squelched it so I never tried that again. But I always thought, “Well, I’ll just wait until I’m grown up. When I’m of age then I can do what I jolly well please.” Of course, by the time I was 21 I wasn’t thinking that much about the Catholic Church. I was happy with the Episcopal Church and theologically there isn’t that much difference between the two. In fact, they’ve come even closer and closer and now that the Mass is in English, the only thing that I notice is when I say the Creed I have to think and read it in modern English because I learned it in Elizabethan English. So I always have to keep my eye on the book or I’ll revert to the Elizabethan English when I say the Creed. Mom didn’t like it. She didn’t tell Dad. Dad didn’t know about this catechism incident. It was Mom and my little secret and so the implication I got from that was that Dad would have really hit the ceiling. 

Tanzer: Did you ever consider Judaism? 
COHN: Never did. And I wouldn’t today either. My Aunt El, sometimes I think she was pushing it on me. And of course the more El tried to motivate me with anything, the more resistive I would get because she has a certain penance on your quality when she gets going and it would just make me recoil. You know, she was always giving me an implication. The inference from El was always, “Harold and Helen didn’t do right by you, religiously.” That was the unspoken message. She never stated it in so many words, but I picked it up. I was happy with what I had and so I stuck with it. I always had this in comfortable feeling, “Gee, if I let people know what my background is, they’re going to try to convert me.” I did some reading on it and I found out well, the emphasis isn’t on conversion. There isn’t this proselytizing quality in Judaism that some evangelistic religions have and so I stopped worrying about it. Every once in awhile I would have this feeling if some of the Jewish people I’m working around knew what the background was that I would get other negative vibes like, “She’s a bastard.” That type of thing. So I finally, you know, when I’m comfortable about something I’ll make a joke of myself. I think I told you like the guy I was working with as a caseworker; he had been in a Rabbinical seminary. He was a Minnesota boy. In fact, he looked like Mark Spitz, a dead wringer for him. We were caseworkers together at Kings County in Brooklyn. So one day I kiddingly said to him, “Yes, I’m a little bastard.” He had quite a sense of humor and he said, “Well, I was never thinking that way about you.” But I said it before presumably he had a chance to say it, or even think it. 

Tanzer: What religion did you consider yourself to be when you were growing up? 
COHN: Episcopalian. Of course, nowadays I consider myself a Christian. Christian first, Catholic second, but in those days I considered myself an Episcopalian. Once in a while kids would make remarks and I didn’t really know. I didn’t realize that there was an ethnic identity and a religious identity. I hadn’t put that altogether and it took a lot of reading to put that together. 

Tanzer: Now that you look back on your religious experiences, and your background first, and your experiences, and you would put yourself perhaps in the parental place rather than in the child’s place, how would you have done the bringing up? 
COHN: Oh brother. Well if I had been in Dad’s boots, I would have taken a little more active role. At least in telling the kids something. He just kind of panicked and didn’t say anything, one way or the other. I got the feeling from him that it was always, you know, “This is our little secret. Let’s keep it a secret; don’t advertise.” I would have given the kids an exposure. I would have brought them on field trips to Portland and I would have let them visit various places. Lord, I would have let them tour South Portland. I wish I could have toured that when I was younger and it was still intact. I did plenty of touring when I was in my early 20s when they started tearing it down. I would have done that if I had been in Dad’s place. In Mom’s place I would have done exactly what my mom did. I would have brought the kids up in the church of my choice. At least expose them. Actually, if I had been my mom, I would have encouraged Phil and me to try every church in town, like we did in the Girl Scout troop. Every year, on a Scout Sunday we attended a different church. I would have done that. 

Tanzer: Then, are you advocating a broader and perhaps more honest knowledge of who and what you are? 
COHN: Yes. Mother actually told me more, I think, at one point than Dad did and of course I picked up a few things in Sunday School, you know, all these Old Testament stories that we had in Sunday School. It took me a long time to connect it, that there was a connection between that and my aunt’s religion. Finally that connection came. 

Tanzer: So you really considered Judaism being your Aunt Elinor’s religion? 
COHN: Yes, that was that, Ted and Elinor’s religion and I really didn’t know too much about it until El started telling me things when I would go visiting around like Thanksgiving and Easter vacations. I would go visit her down at Coos Bay. She would tell me all kinds of things, and of course she had a, (how do you say it?) an axe to grind. 

Tanzer: What was that? 
COHN: Well, let’s say it, nobody is Simon pure. When you get back into history, one clan is always doing another one in. One religion is always doing another religion in, you know, the good guys and the bad guys. Well, actually, the white hats are just as tainted as the black hats and I heard from her, “Isn’t it God-awful what those Christians did, especially at the time of the Crusade?” I read that Christianity in its history has not been Simon pure, at least the people who were Christians had not been Simon pure and they’ve certainly done their share, how do you say, horrendous things. So you know, she would always be getting real antsy about that and tearing, well not literally tearing her hair out, but mentally. 

Tanzer: It’s interesting because she has been very concerned of the problems of antisemitism for a very long tire. 
COHN: Well, sometimes I had the feeling that she was seeing it where it wasn’t, you know, being so intense. I grant, it’s still there, but I had sometimes had the feeling that she was seeing more of it than there was in particular situations. Go ahead, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. 

Tanzer: No, no, I was just interested, because here she had been raised in one small town and then she had gone to live in a small city where she had certainly been the only Jew or one of the very few Jews and she has great concerns about antisemitism and I wondered whether you had some of the same feelings? 
COHN: Well, I had some feelings for sometimes be a very low profile or whether one of the kids would start all teasing and making cracks. There were times when I would simply keep my mouth shut, but I found myself doing the same thing around Jewish people when I was down here and when I lived in New York. I would do the same thing; keep my mouth shut because I was afraid I would get nasty cracks of one sort or another. Now, El, did you ever know a lady by the name of Pauline Sachter? I met her a few years ago up at the Forestry Museum and we took her to dinner at the Quality Pie Shop and when she found out I was from Heppner. I was very quiet at first. I just drew her out and then she related how El was a few years behind or ahead of her in school and somebody made an antisemitic remark to Pauline and El was comforting her. The teacher made some kind of crack and El stood up to the teacher. I remember Pauline telling me about that when they were kids in the grade school there and I don’t know whether Pauline is still alive or not, but I know that she has had her share of problems. 

Tanzer: I wonder where Elinor developed this courage in her isolation? 
COHN: Elinor was always a gutsy little lady. I think she would make a good woman’s libber these days too. I don’t know where she would get it but El was a tomboy at one point. People say that in some respects I take after her. She swore like a trouper when she was a teenager I was told, and my observation when I was a little kid, she was in her 40s, or 30s; well, she was still swearing like a trouper. She has mellowed over the years and in that respect I take after her. I don’t know what gave her her gutsiness. Maybe because it was that her brothers were older and they were out of the way and they weren’t there to modify her or tone her down. 

Tanzer: Did your Father ever reflect upon antisemitism? 
COHN: No, he didn’t. He never made any reflections on it, but I know that there were certain people like his cousin Abe that just embarrassed the hell out of him. And Dad had a streak of sadism in him and he would tell about certain little tricks he would play. One time, let’s see, there was a railroad cafeteria one time up at Tinkle, the Union Pacific, and Dad did a lot of business with the railroads and he would eat in the cafeteria and he said he was going on describing this “little short, very loud mouthed, typically Jewish fellow who was sitting down at the counter.” The whole idea was this guy ordered something and nobody said anything because they knew it contained pork, so they just let [it be]; everyone was in on the gag and they went ahead and let this little fellow order and then he finally asked what it was and he told him and Dad was getting a sadistic kick out of that. I was a young adult when he told me that story. 

Tanzer: What was your reaction to the story at that time? 
COHN: Mixed feelings. I didn’t know that he could be such a son-of-a-bitch and the other part of my feeling was laughing. I often get in situations where I have mixed feelings. I’m both horrified and want to laugh too, like my Halloween party I had last fall. One of the people came in a costume and carried a big old wooden cross, she was in a white robe with a simulated beard and she laid the cross up against the fireplace mantel. Well, I had two feelings, one was, “This wasn’t exactly in good taste.” And the other was, “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” And of course, should I say this in the recording? I had had a brownie cookie; a special brownie and I imagine I was feeling a little more ha, ha than I normally would have felt. 

Tanzer: I wonder about your reaction to your Father’s telling the story, whether you were concerned about his own self-image as a Jew? 
COHN: I think he was uncomfortable with it and I think he underplayed it as much as possible, but when he talked about his doing little jokes and so on and even [Roy] Alexander would share verbal jokes and so on, he seemed to tell these with pleasure. Oh, I wish to heck he was still alive because we could get him going on all kinds of stories about these guys over in Pendleton. 

Tanzer: Now, Mr. Alexander and Mr. Levy were the two Jewish men from Pendleton? 
COHN: From Pendleton. Dad may have had some dealings with Max Gorfkle, I don’t know. He may have gotten some things over at his clothing store, but mainly with Lou Levy and Roy Alexander. 

Tanzer: Are the families still in Pendleton? 
COHN: Gosh, I don’t know. I haven’t been up to Pendleton in so many years. I don’t know who is left up there. 

Tanzer: So there really wasn’t any relationship. 
COHN: No relationship, just [a] business relationship and sort of a conspiratorial joke about how much each one would contribute to various Jewish organizations. Roy Alexander had some joke about being a 50% contributor because he was 50% Jewish, and stuff life that and I have a little joke about being one-third Manischewitz, one-third Scotch whiskey and let’s see, one third Stout. I have a similar little joke and of course I have good feelings about old Senator Barry Goldwater. I don’t feel like such an oddity. 

Tanzer:  What are your good feelings about him? 
COHN: Well, that I’m not the only person, with a partially Jewish background. Sometimes, I originally felt like, you know, I was the only [one]; like people discover they’re gay and they think they are the only person like that and then they discover that there are other people like them. Well, I used to feel that I was the only person half-Jewish around. Of course, before Barry Goldwater started his political career I had run into other people like that, you know, these people in New York would start coming on real strong you know, about what’s your background, practically backing me up to the wall. I could always say well, I’ve got the same kind of a background as Senator Goldwater and that would sort of ease them off a little bit. 

Tanzer: Let me ask whether you were the object of any particular antisemitism? 
COHN: Me, in particular? Oh, once in awhile in grade school. I remember a boy made a remark one day. He happened to be hopping over the fence in the schoolyard and I kicked him and my foot happened to connect in the right place. Well, I kicked him where it hurt and I think he had it coming. I was at scout camp. We had a scout troop in Heppner, and we would take the bus down to Portland and then we would go to the same scout camp that the Portland troops went to and one day, this gal, she’s Greek and her dad was a big cheese in the Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola industry here I didn’t know it at the time, but she said, “Are there any Jews here?” And I said, oh, oh, something, I was ten or eleven. I thought, “Oh, Oh. I had better keep my mouth shut.” I just, you know I had that gut level feeling. “Keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything.” One of my co-troop members from Heppner didn’t have the sense to keep her damn mouth shut, you know. I couldn’t go and say, “Shut up.” And she pointed at me. So this Greek girl started with, “How come the Jews own all the department stores in Portland? Nobody else can own a store in Portland. You’ve got to be a Jew to own a department store in Portland.” Well I wasn’t an adult then and I didn’t have enough hindsight or knowledge to come back with, “Well how come the Greeks have such a strangle hold on the Pepsi and Coke in this town?” Those are two incidents that stood out. I can’t remember any more. Oh yes, I was 14. We were having band practice. I was a freshman in high school and there was, there still is a very strong Assembly of God congregation in Heppner – Holy Rollers. And this one kid was kind of on the dull side and he was trying to get my goat. Apparently there had been a real rabble-rousing, antisemitic, anti-Catholic, anti-everything sermon in a revival meeting recently and this kid was obviously affected by it and he said to me, “How come they haven’t shipped you over to Jerusalem yet?” And I gathered that the preacher must have made some remark like, “They ought to round them all up and ship them back to Israel” type of thing. I didn’t like that one bit. I started hitting that kid, 14-year-old dignity and all. I just dropped it and I went after this kid and I hit him. 

Tanzer: What about your college experiences? 
COHN: Nothing ever happened, because I didn’t let it happen. I never would say anything. In fact I found other people with Jewish background. It was sort of an unspoken, we know but we don’t say anything. The Weinberg family over in Vancouver, one of their daughters went to St. Helens Hall with me. It was just one of those unspoken things. You knew but you didn’t say anything. When I got down to the Delta Zeta House we had quite a few people at the DZ House and I always wondered but I was afraid to ask and I have a feeling that they wondered about me, but were afraid to ask. Let’s see, a lot of these people practicing Unitarians and I would get very nervous when our House would be paired off with the Sammy House. Those guys from up there. There was one guy, Bob Cramer, he was a pre-med student and he was a very fresh-mouthed boy and he particularly made me nervous. Never would say boo, but I always had the feeling that some of these boys in the Sammy House would put down, especially Bob Cramer. You couldn’t say shit around him without him putting you down. So I would get very uptight when there would be any of the Sammy’s around and I had the misfortune of being in a biology lab where several of them were and these fellows ‘they were damn good academically. I felt very inferior academically at that point and I remember one time I was in one of the study rooms at the library and I was trying to cram for an exam and one Sammy was in there with his girl friend, supposedly seminaring and they weren’t seminaring, they were pitching and cooing and carrying on, gigging and distracting the hell out of me and I didn’t have the nerve to say shut up. 

Tanzer: Were you questioned because you obviously have a Jewish name, about the name Cohn? 
COHN:  Not much. In fact the funny thing that was, a lot of Jewish people in New York, it just slid right over them. That was sort of my private joke. Like I felt I could be completely invisible and there were a lot of times I’m surprised the number of people it just slides right over. They don’t connect and once in awhile, with tongue in cheek it would come up later, by degrees I’ll let them know, you know and they would say, “Oh, I had no idea.” You know, it just rides right over their head. I don’t know why and I think, “God, some people must be ignorant.” 

Tanzer: What about your brother? How did he accommodate himself to his religion? 
COHN: Well, he was brought up Episcopalian. I don’t know what his religious believes are now. I don’t think he even goes to Easter Sunday once a year, or even more. He got ticked off at the Rector up at Ellensburg because of liberal tendencies, because the Rector was into sensitivity training sessions and stuff like that. My brother is so conservative it isn’t funny. But when he was in Hermiston, he was fairly active in the Episcopal Church there and the kids were baptized there. I remember my niece Sher was baptized as a baby. She dirtied her diaper, because I remember the Rector’s wife in the next room after it was over. She was helping Marian change the diaper. Anyway, Phil was always active in the Vestry. He was always elected to that. You know, it’s like the Board of Directors, so I imagine it’s his business sense that get’s him elected to vestries. God, he sits on the Boards of I don’t know how many things. That’s why he comes to Portland so often, but I don’t think he is that active in the Episcopal Church anymore. He’s just on the roll, but he’s faded off like a lot of people who are just nominal members of churches. 

Tanzer: Have you ever discussed your Jewishness with him? 
COHN: No 

Tanzer: Has he ever discussed it with you? 
COHN: No. Once in awhile, like we were in a restaurant one time with some other people and he was telling us somebody made a crack about him looking like a Rabbi. Well, my brother has grown a beard the last three years and it’s salt and pepper gray and he looks like Edward G. Robinson with that beard. Well, Uncle Hen looked like Edward G. Robinson too and so that’s the only remark he’s ever made and he was quoting somebody. No, he doesn’t say boo. I don’t know what he and Marian have told the kids. They’ve never said much to me and I haven’t said much to them. I told Theresa about being interviewed here and she said, well that’s real nice, etc. I talked to my brother on the phone yesterday and I told him I had rounded up pictures and things and brought them over here and he said, well, that’s real nice, etc. I didn’t tell him that I need help on the genealogy table. 

Tanzer: What do you remember about the family and the conversation about the Heppner family? 
COHN: Very little. I remember practically nothing. I think it might be wise to get my Aunt Elinor in to interview her for that. She would have more memory of that than I would. 

Tanzer: Well, tell me about your father’s business, what it was and how it progressed? 
COHN: Well, he was a Dodge Dealer after he and Mom got married and then the Depression came along and somebody defaulted on a loan he had made to them and apparently their collateral was a band of sheep, so when they defaulted, Dad got the sheep and I don’t know whether he liquidated the Dodge Dealership or whether he got wiped out in the Depression, but anyway he switched from dealing cars and teaching people to drive, to raising sheep and buying sheep and selling them and he became quite a dealer in sheep and we had a joke at one time, later on when I was in high school, the odometer on Dad’s car had just as much mileage as the Episcopal Bishop of Eastern Oregon, who also put a lot of mileage on his car. Dad did a lot of his business on the phone and by car. He would have to go out and help sort, help load them, unload them, look over, he was buying bands of ewes here and there and he would have to look them over and so I remember a lot of times sitting out in the car, outside dusty stockyards, and of course, you know what they smell like and when my brother finished college at Whitman, he and Dad went together and Dad helped set him up in a feed lot in Echo, that’s when the emphasis was shifting the sheep business from grazing in open grange land to feed lot production where you can control what they are eating more and put hormones in the feed, and all other kinds of things. “Excuse me. You can control the growth of your product more.” So Dad and Phil were partners in that. 

Tanzer: And were they in the business for the wool or for the meat? 
COHN:Both. Dad sold a lot of wool, especially to Pendleton Woolen Mills and he was very active in the woolgrowers association. Mother was active in the woolgrower’s auxiliary, when I was a little kid, and of course, that organization is much smaller now. They still have their meetings in Portland, but I went to one about four years ago. The last one that Dad had gone to. I noticed how their conventions were much smaller. A lot of people have gotten wiped out in the sheep business and Dad and Phil also went into cattle to some degree. Let’s see, then Phil sold the little feed lot down at Echo and got a bigger one, he built a bigger one near Hermiston, C & B Livestock and Dad was close to retirement at that time, but they put him on the payroll and I forget just what his function was, but he was plenty busy. 

Dad was a workaholic, let’s face it and my brother is a workaholic. Let’s see, well Oregon State University had some kind of an experimental station there, in the feedlot too. I’m not sure just what the focus of their experimental project was, but they had something there. Well, Dad was on the payroll and my brother took in a partner, Ronald Baker, and then when my brother started to get into the meat packing business in Ellensburg, the Federal government started hassling, because you can’t be vertically integrated in the sheep business, like you can in the poultry business. Don’t ask me why, but you can’t and there is a conflict of interest or some darn thing and I asked my brother and he said, meat packers have had a tainted image for many years because of some underhanded practices that have gone on in the meat packing industry, so the government watches them more closely, so my brother had to divest himself of his interest in the feed lot and so he sold out to his partner Ronald Baker. As I understand a lot of the sheep and cattle that my brother slaughters in his meat packing thing still comes from C & B. That’s not the only place, but he still does business with C & B, but he’s not an owner anymore. 

Tanzer: Now, actually would you consider his part of the business as packinghouse? 
COHN: Yes, my brother’s major business now is running a meatpacking house and Dad was still a sheep dealer when he died. He had scaled down his business quite a bit. His phone was still ringing. He still had a business going. 

Tanzer: How large a ranch operation would you say they had? 
COHN: In terms of acres? Well, probably it was, and this is just a rough estimate, the one in Echo was probably about four acres and the one in Hermiston, I would have no way of knowing, as I am not sure where C & B leaves off and Pendleton Grain Growers begins, but Pendleton Grain Growers has an elevator right next door practically. 

Tanzer: Now does the Pendleton Grain Growers belong to your dad? 
COHN: No, it didn’t, but they had a big – – –