Irwin Holzman

Weinstein: I am going to start by asking a few basic questions. Tell us your birthdate.
HOLZMAN: I was born on January 4th.

Weinstein: You are not going to tell us what year?
HOLZMAN: I am 39 years old [laughter]. January 4, 1930.

Weinstein: Irwin, tell us, were you born in Portland? Where did your folks live?
HOLZMAN: Yes. They lived in an apartment on NW 21st, about 21st and Couch, I think. Six months later they moved to a house on Westover, just off of Burnside. Shortly after that they moved to Arden Road, where we lived for many years.

Weinstein: So you grew up in the home on Arden Road. Schools?
HOLZMAN: Ainsworth, Lincoln, University of Oregon, University of Washington.

Weinstein: How and when did your family come to Portland?
HOLZMAN: Well, we’ll start with the first ones here. My great grandparents came to Oregon in 1859. They settled in Baker, Oregon and then they moved to Brownsville, just east of Albany. Then they moved to Albany.

Weinstein: Where did they come from?
HOLZMAN: I don’t know. One of my cousins does. He does the genealogy stuff in the family. My great grandparents on my dad’s side came to Portland in the early 1880s. I don’t remember where they came from either. My great grandmother is buried here in Portland. My great grandfather is buried in Chicago, I think.

Weinstein: Do you know which cemetery your great grandmother is buried in?
HOLZMAN: Yes. The Shaarie Torah cemetery.

Weinstein: Tell me about their children.
HOLZMAN: My grandfather on my mother’s side came to the United States in the late 1880s. His name was Henry Kleinberg. My mother was born in Ellensberg, Washington. My grandfather on my Dad’s side came to Portland in the early 1880s and is buried here at Temple Beth Israel Cemetery. He was Isaac B. Holzman. I was named after him. My grandmother, his wife, was from Denver. She is buried here in Portland, of course. I don’t know when they got married.

Weinstein: What was her maiden name?
HOLZMAN: Mook. She died about 1933 or ‘34.

Weinstein: Do you know where she died?
HOLZMAN: She died here in Portland.

Weinstein: OK, so let’s concentrate on your dad’s side. Did he have any siblings?
[phone rings]
HOLZMAN: No, he was an only child.

Weinstein: Did he ever talk about that? Tell me about him.
HOLZMAN: No. He was a doctor, a physician and a surgeon. He started in practice here in Portland in the 1920s. [wanders a bit] He and Arthur Goldsmith were the head of the JEA, the Jewish Education Association. They rotated being head for about 15 or 20 years because nobody else would take the job.

Weinstein: If I remember correctly Dr. Brill was also involved in Jewish education.
HOLZMAN: Yes.

Weinstein: What do you think prompted your dad and Arthur Goldsmith to promote the idea of Jewish education?
HOLZMAN: I don’t know.

Weinstein: Was there a Jewish atmosphere in your home? How did you observe the religion?
HOLZMAN: We observed the holidays. My mother was not too religious. My dad was more so. We celebrated all the Jewish holidays.

Weinstein: Did you go to religious school?
HOLZMAN: Yes, at Temple Beth Israel. I went through confirmation. They didn’t do bar mitzvahs at that time.

Weinstein: It is interesting that your dad was really involved in Jewish education. Do you know anything about how his family observed the religion?
HOLZMAN: No, my grandmother died when I was three or four years old and my grandfather died when I was seven. So I don’t really remember. I do remember one thing. My grandfather was instrumental in merging the Temple with some other synagogue in Portland but I don’t know the name of it.

Weinstein: I don’t know about that. It must have been another Reform congregation.
HOLZMAN: I am not sure because my great grandmother was buried in Shaarie Torah. She might have been much more religious than my great grandfather.

Weinstein: Yes. And her name was Mook?
HOLZMAN: No, that was my grandmother’s name. I don’t know what my great grandmother’s name was other than Holzman. But she spelled it with a ‘t’, Holtzman. My grandfather and the other Holzmans changed the spelling but I don’t know when they did that.

Weinstein: How was Sylvia Holzman related to you?
HOLZMAN: Her father was a brother of my grandfather. I think that would make her a second or third cousin.

Weinstein: She was an interesting woman. I met her. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I may have interviewed her years ago.
HOLZMAN: She had an advertising agency for many years.

Weinstein: Yes. Pretty unusual for that time. Where did your dad have his office?
HOLZMAN: The Medical Arts Building at SW 11th and Taylor.

Weinstein: Did you ever go on house calls or hospital visits with him?
HOLZMAN: No. But I was in his office regularly. I would be there visiting. I didn’t do any work there or any diagnostics [laughs].

Weinstein: Now let’s get to your mother’s family. You said they lived in Ellensburg? That was the Kleinberg family.
HOLZMAN: Yes.

Weinstein: Did they remain in Ellensberg?
HOLZMAN: No. When Mom got to be ten or twelve they moved to Seattle because they wanted her to have Jewish roots, so to speak. Then she lived in Seattle until she got married around 1926.

Weinstein: Did your mom go to college? Did she have any higher education?
HOLZMAN: Yes, she went to Mills College in California. She was a very intelligent person.

Weinstein: And wise. Besides being intelligent she was wise.
HOLZMAN: Let’s say she had good horse sense. I probably shouldn’t say this but I will. She took the entrance examination at Mills College and got the highest score that anyone had ever gotten at the school at that time. She was very smart.

Weinstein: Well she always seemed to me to be very curious about all kinds of things so Mills would have been a good school for her because it is the liberal arts college and that is a grounding for a lot of other things. So your folks were married around 1926 and settled in Portland. Tell me. Was your dad involved at Temple?
HOLZMAN: Yes. Everybody is on the board at some time or another.

Weinstein: And you certainly have been involved at Temple.
HOLZMAN: Yes I was one of the many that has been on the board.

Weinstein: Was that a good experience?
HOLZMAN: Probably.

Weinstein: I imagine that was a good experience for the Temple because you are a fixer-upper, no-nonsense kind of guy.
HOLZMAN: Well, it is very interesting. When I am on these boards I make suggestions here and there, whether they are good or bad, that is beside the point. Seldom does anyone listen to me in the Jewish community. Yet in the business community, with all the associations they have,
The Portland Leaders Exchange, the Oregon Consumer Finance Association, and the American Financial Services Association. All of these organizations listen to me, not every time obviously, but they have made several changes, because…

Weinstein: …of these suggestions – you’ve been president of all of those associations.
HOLZMAN: Yes, and also the Washington State association. I have wondered why the Jewish community has reacted the way they do, not that it makes any difference to me, but it is odd however.

Weinstein: It might just be a cultural thing that everyone wants to be a general and they don’t want to listen to the supreme commander to use a military metaphor.
HOLZMAN: I don’t know what it is but I will say this, the Robison Home and the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation did listen to me but they’re the only Jewish organization, well not the only but primarily.

Weinstein: So tell me the Jewish organizations you’ve been involved in besides Temple and Robison.
HOLZMAN: Temple, Robison Home, Oregon Jewish Community Foundation, Jewish Education Association, the Federation to an extent, and of course our foundation, we make contributions to most of them.

Weinstein: I want to get into that a little bit later. I need to just get some more personal data from you and tell me who you married.
HOLZMAN: Renee Holzman, she was Renee Rosenberg before she was married. She had two sisters; M’liss and Toinette, M’liss Gilbert and Toinette Menashe. And she’s been involved in many different organizations. The non-Jewish as well as Jewish organizations and she has been the head of most of them. We have three sons.

Weinstein: Their names?
HOLZMAN: Jay, Larry and Lee. Jay has been interested in the Jewish community. He lives in Seattle at the present time. Lee’s been involved with two or three Jewish organizations. Larry has been on the board of a couple of them here in Portland.

Weinstein: And he lives?
HOLZMAN: He lives in Vancouver, Washington. And Lee is running the company now and he won’t get on any boards because he has a full time job with the business and he wants to be with his kids also. Being on a board means that much less time with his kids.

Weinstein: So tell me about his family. Who is he married to?
HOLZMAN: He’s married to Becky Goldberg who is from California. They have three three kids, Ian who is named after me, and I was named after my grandfather, and Rachel, and Max. Max is three years old.

Weinstein: I’m sure they’re cute
HOLZMAN: Of course.

Weinstein: They’re wonderful children
HOLZMAN: Max is the boss of the family. He thinks. Lee and Becky met at Camp Solomon Shechter.

Weinstein: That’s an interesting story.
HOLZMAN: Lee was a counselor and Becky was a camper. They got together. And eventually got married.

Weinstein: It’s interesting because I know that your nephew David Menashe met his wife Debby, who’s name was also Goldberg, wasn’t it? They met each other also at Camp Solomon Schechter which is the conservative camp in the state of Washington. So that’s an interesting coincidence.
HOLZMAN: Well that’s one of the perpetuation of Judaism. It can only be done if you marry a Jewish person. I mean it can be done otherwise. But it generally isn’t.

Weinstein: Well it’s more difficult.
HOLZMAN: Yes, it’s just a rock in the road so to speak.

Weinstein: Well it brings to mind about your grandparents, the Kleinbergs who literally moved their family from Ellensberg to Seattle so that their daughter could have a Jewish connection. There were other families that also lived in more rural remote places, thinking of the foster family. Marge Saltzman and her sisters. They grew up in Idaho and they moved to have more Jewish connections for their daughters.
HOLZMAN: I think in my grandmother’s case there was only one other Jewish family in Ellensberg.

Weinstein: Do you happen to know the name of the family? Because that would be interesting to know.
HOLZMAN: I don’t know and I don’t know if we have it anyplace either because they are not in the family tree as they were not part of the family.

Weinstein: Well we could look it up in a city registry from around that time. Tell me about your education. You said you went to Ainsworth.
HOLZMAN: Yes. I had schooling education and I had horse sense education which is basically logic. And I went to Ainsworth, then I went to Lincoln, and then I went to the University of Oregon, and then I went in the service. When I came back I went to the University of Washington for one term for graduate school. I then went back into the army to go to Intelligence school so if I got called back again I could do something that I liked to do. If I’d known ahead of time what the casualty ratio was for infantry second lieutenants then I’m sure I wouldn’t have been an Infantry Second Lieutenant. It’s about a sixty percent casualty rate. Anyway when I was in Korea, I was basically assigned to the Korean army as an advisor, and then I came home. After that I got a job at a finance company here in Portland and I was there for about two and a half years and then I went to work for another company for about six months or so and then Renee and I got married and I started Reliable Credit at that time.

Weinstein: Did you think you would ultimately go into the finance business before you started working for that company?
HOLZMAN: No, the reason I started working there was I got back from the Intelligence school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and my dad and I were talking and he said why don’t you get a job in the finance business. The worst that happens is that you don’t like it and you go into something else.

Weinstein: And you were a young man. This was in the fifties probably.
HOLZMAN: Yes. I’m still a young man…I’m 39 years old, remember.

Weinstein: Again, still and forever.
HOLZMAN: Anyway I went to work for Commercial Credit, they have now merged with another company, CIT. Then I worked for this consumer finance company, Doug Gerow Finance, which also merged with a big company.

Weinstein: That was in Portland, because that’s a good reference.
HOLZMAN: I figured that I probably would go into business some place along the line because I like to do what I want to do and sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t when you work for another company. You’re limited in other words. I started the company in 1958 and it’s gone from nothing to what it is now.

Weinstein: So how did you feel when you started the business? Did you feel confident?
HOLZMAN: Oh yes, I had a plan made out this was the third business I’d been in. When I was nine years old I had a chipmunk business.

Weinstein: Chipmunks. OK, you need to explain that for the listening audience.
HOLZMAN: Well I would trap chipmunks in Central Oregon and bring them back to the pet stores in Portland and they would sell them. I learned about supply and demand at that time. I had a lot of supply but there wasn’t much demand. And then when I was about 14 or so I had some packhorses that I packed water and food and so forth up to the forest service ranger on Black Butte. I did that for several years.

Weinstein: So who paid you, the Forestry Service?
HOLZMAN: Yes, the Forest Service. And that was during the war years so they couldn’t get anybody else and I was only 14. Anyway about four years later I had a lot more horses that I used as rental horses and would take people on pack trips into the Cascades for fishing or sightseeing or whatever, and also hunting. However the hunting was during school so I could only pack them in on one weekend and then I’d have to go back and get them the following weekend. They couldn’t do a two or three day pack trip.

Weinstein: They were okay with that? They camped out. So, you were an entrepeneur.
HOLZMAN: Well, I had three businesses.

Weinstein: Irwin, did you make these horses available from your family property over there, did you keep the horses right there or did you board them?
HOLZMAN: Well in the summertime we had a larger pasture and I pastured them there and on the property we had. But the problem with the horse business was that you have a season three months long and the horses have to eat the other nine months. It poses a problem. I didn’t lose money but I didn’t make it either because there was too much overhead.

Weinstein: Well this might be a good time to come in and talk about your family property in Central Oregon. Your folks.
HOLZMAN: My parents bought ten acres up there in 1944 at Camp Sherman on Lake Creek which is a tributary of the Metolius river and it’s about 400 yards south of where the two come together and we have had horses there since 1944. I’ve had a horse since about 1941 but we kept it at a farmer’s place nearby and he fed it in the winter time. Then when I had multiple horses, I still have multiple horses but not as many as I had, I take them to the other side of Sisters to winter pasture . Somebody feeds them if they need to be fed and if they don’t, there is plenty of grass they can eat they are just basically out in the range. If it snows someone has to feed them. And then in May I’ll go get them and bring them back to Camp Sherman.

Weinstein: So they’re tough horses to get through the winter with a minimum of attention?
HOLZMAN: Yes but horses have been doing that for thousands of years, hundreds of years anyway. Some of them survive and some of them don’t of course.

Weinstein: Did you spend a lot of time up at the Metolius at Camp Sherman as a young boy?
HOLZMAN: Yes. We spent almost the whole summer up there. However, in those days it took about six hours from Portland to Camp Sherman. That was before the Santiam Pass was put in. When they put the Santiam Pass in, it was about four or five hours. We saved an hour because we didn’t have to go through The Dalles. Now you can come across the south side of the mountain, Mt. Hood, and you couldn’t do that before either, you had to go to The Dalles, and then south. The Santiam Pass road was very interesting. Where the Santiam Dam is there was the road about 10 or 15 feet wide and it had turnouts so if you met a truck or a car one of you had to back up to use a turnout so the other could get by. That part of the road is under water now because of the Detroit Dam.

Weinstein: That time and those experiences are probably what helped you develop what you call your horse sense because you had to manipulate, you had to invent ways of dealing with issues, with problems. Traffic, a road road ten feet wide.
HOLZMAN: Well that doesn’t take much to figure out you’ve got to get out of the way of a big truck.

Weinstein: You know what I mean…
HOLZMAN: Well yes, but no matter what anybody does they’ve got to first of all figure out what the problem is, then you adapt to that and solve the problem. Then you’ve taken care of whatever that problem was originally.

Weinstein: Well some people are so sheltered that they never learn those kinds of coping skills.
HOLZMAN: Well some people, not most people but many people don’t go to the basic thing of what they are trying to accomplish. One thing that I learned in the army, in fact I still use a field manual because it’s so good at analyzing something. They have five different steps that you do when you make an analysis of something. First of all is the mission which you are trying to accomplish, second are the facts involved in the thing, then there’s discussion of them; then you have your conclusion, [and lastley, the actions that should have been taken]. And as I say I’ve used that manual and I still use it. It’s a staff officer’s field manual 101-5 in case you’re interested.

Weinstein: Thank you
HOLZMAN: Anyway that is very helpful in analyzing a situation.

Weinstein: And taking it in that order.
HOLZMAN: Well, it’s very concise is what it is and they have what they call an ‘estimate of the situation,’ which is basically the same thing only two or three, or four things are involved in that but basically you have to know what the problem is. Then when you know what the problem is you then try to solve it.

Weinstein: Well, and by discussion you have to be willing to listen to different options to solving the problem.
HOLZMAN: Yes, you learn much more by listening than talking, and a lot of people don’t do that, but a lot of people do, probably the majority of people do.

Weinstein: I’d like to know more about the Camp Sherman experience. Your dad must have been there just on weekends.
HOLZMAN: Yes, he was there on long weekends. [He would also periodically come up and stay for a week or two]. He was a fisherman. He would come up on a Thursday and go back on Monday. For the time it took to get up there and back it was basically a full day. For all practical purposes a full day in each directions. We rented horses, at that time, I didn’t have a horse. We have a picture of me when I was four years old on a horse and surprisingly I still remember the horses name, Good Enough, and he was very gentle for a four year old obviously he had to be, I’ve had many horses since then.

Weinstein: So when you were there with your mother, now I forgot to mention you have a brother. Tell us something about your brother.
HOLZMAN: He went to Ainsworth, Lincoln and Stanford and he was a very very good athlete. At high school he was all-city in football and in baseball he was all-state and in baseball and he played on a Lincoln state championship team in basketball. He went to Stanford and only played baseball however his senior year at Stanford he made All Coast honors in baseball. He was going to come into the business. He came up to Portland but his wife didn’t like a lot of things so they moved back to California. And he’s in business down there.

Weinstein: Is he younger than you?
HOLZMAN: Yes, he’s four years younger.

Weinstein: Well I was in the middle of a question when I changed gears a little bit. What was your time spent doing when you there during the middle of the week. Did you and your brother just go out and explore or where there a lot of duties to take care of?
HOLZMAN: Well, for the first ten years we went up there we were renting cabins and I spent most of my time with the rental horses. Mickey, my brother, worked at the store up there and Dad would go fishing and very often I would go with him. I didn’t fish particularly, I would just walk along.

Weinstein: That didn’t appeal to you?
HOLZMAN: The river was too swift and basically it wasn’t safe. In fact when I was about six years old I was with Dad and he was fishing in the Metolius gorge and he stepped on a log that was wedged in with some other logs and he stepped on it and it went down under some other logs. He fell in the river. Just below where the logs were there was a big whirlpool about twelve feet across, a real big one, and just as he was going down, the log swung around and he grabbed ahold of it and he and the log finally got out of the whirlpool. He yelled wait there and I’ll be back. So I waited there. He floated down the river about a quarter of a mile and then the log got hung up on some rocks in the middle of the river. Then I don’t know whether he took his boots off or not, but he worked his way to the bank, but it was on the other side of the river from where I was. He came back up the river; we each went up the river on both sides and we came to a log that came across the river on both sides, and he came across the river to get me and the car. I can still remember the little place, the little sand beach I was playing in when he went in. He never went fishing in the gorge after that. And I haven’t been down there either.

Weinstein: It was just too traumatic and the fact that you remember it so vividly all these years.
HOLZMAN: Well, nobody had ever gotten out of the gorge if they fell in and if it wasn’t for that log swinging around when it did he wouldn’t have gotten out either. Anyway as I said I still remember that little beach I was playing on, I was only six years old at the time.
[Comment by interviewer which I could not decipher]

Weinstein: Okay so now I’d like to talk about the Holzman foundation and I’m going to ask when it started, why it started, what the activities are and talk something about your philosophy about charitable giving. But tell us about the foundation.

[Interview pauses and resumes]

Weinstein: Okay we’re going to talk about the Holzman foundation and Irwin is going to read a quotation of the mission of the Holzman foundation, the inspiration for it.
HOLZMAN: This is basically the inspiration why we set up the foundation. I don’t know who wrote the passage but what it says is, “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now, let me not defer it or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.” This saying is of course basically why the foundation was set up, so that we could accomplish something while we’re alive. The foundation basically tries to give at least 60% to Jewish organizations and we also try to give to the ones that are taking care of people such as the Robison Home and Jewish Family and Child Service. They should get large contributions because of the work they do. Other organizations get funds also, primarily other Jewish organizations, also but they’re generally for different purposes and many of them are to perpetuate the Jewish religion which is one of the other goals we want to do.

Weinstein: So do you give any money for operating funds or are you more interested in innovation and progamming?
HOLZMAN: We don’t like giving for operating expenses. We want specific programs and two of the programs – well let me back up a minute. Renee does all of the legwork, site visits and follows up and so forth and I do the bookkeeping. She does a very good job. We’ve had several very successful programs that have worked very well. The Hillel program at the University of Oregon, we got feedback from one of the parents that his daughter was never particularly Jewish but now that the Hillel program is going with a dinner and service every Friday night she is now participating and identifies as Jewish and she’s only one of many. They have many kids coming on a weekly basis. Renee also worked with the Melton Foundation. The Melton School. That has been extremely successful. They don’t do as much fund raising as they should but the program has been extremely successful, and for several years. There are others that have been very successful also. Our foundation isn’t very large so we can’t do a lot of things that we’d like to. In fact it’s a little dinky one for that matter.

Weinstein: What about the secular community?
HOLZMAN: We give to that group also. We try to give the majority to the Jewish organizations but Renee has been very active in the Symphony for many years and that’s one reason why we contribute there. Also the primary reason is that she likes the symphony. She’s been on the board for many years and that’s an impetus to make contributions there. [We primarily give to organizations that are] helping people rather than a program for drug addiction which does help people but the majority of people helped end up back there again. That’s kind of a waste of funds as far as we’re concerned because they aren’t able to take care of themselves and they keep coming back.

Weinstein: But you do other medical projects?
HOLZMAN: Yes, we’ve done quite a bit for the hospitals, the different programs they have such as a cancer program, and other programs that they have.

Weinstein: Well the deaf and the blind, there’s a camp…
HOLZMAN: Well we did that and it was successful until the government got involved. I forgot the name of the organization.

Weinstein: I think it was Camp Collins, it was several years ago.
HOLZMAN: Yes, it was something to do with the blind but I don’t remember the name of the organization. Basically the foundation is a way of making contributions to society now rather than when we die.

Weinstein: Well and also the reality is that there aren’t the amount of public funds available
And so it’s an opportunity for a foundation to jump in when for whatever reason the government funds aren’t available to keep these going.
HOLZMAN: Well, what happens many times is that the government comes in and helps the organization and the organization expects the help to continue which does in some instances but in many instances they don’t. That the organization is doing fine and then all of a sudden the government withdraws their funds, and they aren’t able to raise the amount that they need under such short notice. The fact that the government helps well, that’s great but you can never count on it.

Weinstein: So do you feel that it’s a result of political pressure for government projects to shift from one area to another?
HOLZMAN: No, I think it’s budgetary and I think that to an extent it’s political but generally that they don’t have enough money and most representatives in order to get re-elected or elected have to give something to the people and that’s fine if you’ve got the money but if you don’t have the money you can’t do it. There’s an interesting thing that I read within the last several months. It was a history of democracy and it said that democracy cannot survive and it said that you have different levels. You have the initial entreprenurial organization then it goes to the next level and it gets to a level where there’s apathy with the population. Then when you have that you have people who have found out they can get free money from the government and then the only way anybody can get re-elected is to give money out. Then you run out of money. Then you no longer have a democracy and it also is interesting that a dictator ship always follows a democracy. And what is most interesting to me is that this article was written three hundred years ago. It isn’t something recently written.

Weinstein: So there’s a pattern; that if you don’t learn from history you are going to repeat it.
HOLZMAN: That’s right.

Weinstein: And all those cliches. But it’s really true.
HOLZMAN: It is and these different steps; I think there were eight or tn different steps and you said originally we shouldn’t be talking politically, which I agree with, but you can’t have a budget that is over the amount of funds you have by X number of trillion dollars and expect to survive. What has happened over the years is that groups have been giving money away for this, this, this and this and then there is a huge amount of outgoing funds. Then the government has to print more money to pay for it all. Well you can only print so much. Anyway I think we have major problems with the funding of government programs because they’ve got to live within their means. Families, if they don’t have enough money to buy a car they can finance it of course, [but they still must have the resources to make the payment. If they don’t they don’t get it but if they want to buy furniture or something like that they generally have the money to pay for it or they don’t get it until they do have the money. Our government does not work that way, unfortunately.

Weinstein: There’s also a great imbalance in the wealth that is also partially responsible for the fiscal situation the country is in.
HOLZMAN: I am not sure that is the case. There is a lot of wealth, a tremendous amount. However the fact that that wealth was able to accumulate, that’s what capitalism in a democracy allows. And everybody can’t have a tremendous amount of money.

Weinstein: I think most people understand that.
HOLZMAN: My grandfather had a very interesting saying as far as what a socialist is. And it’s very very true. A socialist is somebody who doesn’t have anything but wants to share it with everybody else. And that’s true. That’s basically the same thing that was written 300 hundred years ago. You get to the point where people find out they can get free money from the government and then the only way you can get re-elected is to pass out more money that you don’t have.

Weinstein: Well there’s a huge shift one way or the other that has to be made for us to survive.
HOLZMAN: It’s not an easy situation.

Weinstein: No. And with the world as flat as it is now because of communication and technology it’s doubly difficult because everything, everyone, everywhere is interconnected. And interdependent and you are right. It’s a very difficult and scary place.
HOLZMAN: A government as Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government there is. Ahead of everything else.” And of course that’s true. The thing that government can’t do, I mean they could but they won’t because it isn’t politically advantageous to them, they are not able to run any program properly. The Social Security program, all insurance companies have to set up reserves and have enough to cover the amount of funds that are going to be paid out at a later time, [but our government does not think how to do this. Then they run out of money to pay what has been promised to the population.]

Weinstein: By law
HOLZMAN: That’s right. By regulation and by law. The Federal government, has social security and they don’t have any reserves and they’re running out of money to pay these amounts that have been paid in for 60 years, or whatever it is. That also goes for Medicare, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. All of these organizations take a tremendous amount of money and we have no reserves for them. And that’s just irresponsible. I don’t know what the solution is other than someplace along the line they are going to have to cut the budget. This new health care thing, I don’t think that anybody disagrees that everybody should have the availability of health care, but if you can’t afford it then you can’t do it.

Weinstein: I think it was proposed as a starting point.
HOLZMAN: Not the way it was because what it’s doing is that in 20 or 25 years there will be no private health care insurance companies because the Federal government will be there at a cheaper rate because they don’t pay taxes, they don’t set up reserves, and they will have all the health care insurance with no reserves to cover it. That is just an astronomical figure that they are going to have.

Weinstein: What I meant was that the bill that was passed and signed, I do feel is viewed as a starting point for it will be modified many many times before it finally kicks in. They’ve got until 2014 to even have it start to take effect. And between now and then I truly believe that there will be many many modifications.
HOLZMAN: I agree with you.

Weinstein: And I hope that there are. Just for the sake of democracy.
HOLZMAN: Well in my opinion the problem is once again you’re taking something, you’re accomplishing something very worthwhile, but if you haven’t got any money, you aren’t setting up any money, to cover the expenses and the costs of these things is just astronomical. Social Security basically is a Ponzi game. They take the money in and spend it by giving it back to the people but they don’t go on the basis of what the population is. And they have no reserves so that they have to take these huge amounts of money out of the budget and it really shouldn’t be in the budget in the first place.

Weinstein: It’s an interesting discussion, seemingly hopeless situation but if the parties will sit down and talk, that’s the only way anything is going to change or become effective. That’s the bottom line.
HOLZMAN: Everybody should realize what’s happening. If they know what the problem is then they have a chance of correcting it. But the big problem is, in my opinion of course, is that our representatives whether they be city or federal, their primary concern is getting re-elected.
And that is a very bad situation because the only way they can get re-elected is to give people additional “free” money or free this or free that.

Weinstein: And we are talking kind of in the abstract because if a family is homeless and without food or anything how can you say no. I mean that’s a critical need that has to be met.
HOLZMAN: There’s no question about that but the cost of welfare is not anywhere what the cost of Social Security is, or this new health care program, or the two real estate organizations, or Medicare. You’re talking about huge amounts of money in these programs and the cost of welfare by comparison isn’t that great. I mean it’s a large amount but you’re talking about trillions in one and billions in the other.

Weinstein: Well that’s where politics enters in because the poor and the homeless don’t really have a voice. And so the people with the most vested interest generally are paid attention to before the people who can’t afford anything. They don’t have a voice…
HOLZMAN: Well, they can vote but they very often vote the wrong direction as far as the welfare of the country is concerned.

Weinstein: Well, they’re thinking of their empty stomachs.
HOLZMAN: That’s right. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be supporting them. But it’s again the social security, medicare and so forth. This health care thing, they didn’t have to do those things. They’re very worthwhile but if they did it right it would be fine but they didn’t do it right….

Weinstein: That’s the thing. It’s was wonderful thing to do but they didn’t do it right. It’s not that they didn’t have to do it, it was in the middle of a depression…it was the same situation.
HOLZMAN: It is, but the government has a record of not being able to run things properly.

Weinstein: Yes, I agree with that.
HOLZMAN: … and then we add more things to that and then the fall of democracy is a sure thing unfortunately.

Weinstein: Just for the sake of time I’m going to change gears a little bit and go back to something I wanted to talk about earlier and that is the feeling you have of growing up in a Jewish family, in a secular community, maintaining your Jewish identity. Did you experience any discrimination or feelings of otherness growing up or in the military? In athletics?
HOLZMAN: When I was growing up I didn’t have any reaction at all in fact I’ve had very little antisemitism. In the army there was one liuetenant colonel who couldn’t stand Blacks. He never said anything about Jews but he was so vehement about Blacks, I’m sure he didn’t like Jews either. He and I just didn’t get along. The majority of which was his fault, however I didn’t help things any.

Weinstein: Well, you probably reacted to what he said.
HOLZMAN: Well, he wanted to do something which was wrong and I had the ability to stop him. I did and he had a heart attack because he was the executive officer of the unit and when he said something he expected it to be done. Well that’s fine and that should be the case but in this instance it was a personal thing and he was 100% wrong. But he was the only one that I can remember.

Weinstein: So among the troops, the people that you associated with were people pretty…
HOLZMAN: I didn’t have. I mean there might have been and I didn’t realize it. I don’t remember anything. The only thing I do remember is several organizations in Portland wouldn’t allow Jews to be members and now that you can be a member I won’t be a member. Just on general principles. The Multnomah Athletic Club, the Arlington Club, the University Club,

Weinstein: …Waverly Country Club…
HOLZMAN: The different golf courses. That’s why they set up Tualatin because it was a Jewish golf course. That’s basically the only thing…well I know that one other thing, Jewish doctors, difficulty getting the services of the hospitals.

Weinstein: It was limited you mean?
HOLZMAN: They restricted them. Dad taught at the medical school. Of course he didn’t use the medical school hospital but he and about 10 other doctors, several of them who were not Jewish bought the Coffey Medical Hospital and changed the name to Physicians and Surgeons so that they would have a place to practice medicine and it was primarily the surgical part of it that they had the problem with.

Weinstein: Probably Millard Rosenblatt was one of them?
HOLZMAN: He could have been…I’m not sure. I think that the thing was before he was here but I’m not sure. I do remember that there were several doctors who were not Jewish who were also involved in getting the hospital. The hospital now is part of Good Samaritan. But those are about the only things.

Weinstein: It sounds like you were comfortable in your Jewishness.
HOLZMAN: Yes. Now that I think about it I think somebody who was at Ainsworth was antisemitic but, it was only one person. The reason I think that is because this guy was about twice my size and he wanted to get into a fight and of course you don’t fight with somebody twice your size. However I was going to but I would have lost, that’s for sure. But one of my friends who was large fought the guy instead. That was one who was probably antisemitic, and one who was not antisemitic.

Weinstein: What about within the Jewish community? When you were growing up did you realize the difference between the different Jewish cultures, like the Orthodox, or the European Jews, the eastern European Jews, the Sephardic Jews. Did you notice or were you aware?
HOLZMAN: I didn’t know there were variations. I don’t remember anything about Conservative or Orthodox even.

Weinstein: Did you socialize, when you were with Jewish kids, did you just socialize across the board?
HOLZMAN: Well at Ainsworth I was the only Jewish one there.

Weinstein: Oh.
HOLZMAN: Well, excuse me, there were two of us. The other one, I went into the Sunday school class one time and he was there he told me not to say anything to anybody at school because he didn’t want them to know he was Jewish.

Weinstein: Interesting.
HOLZMAN: But that was Ainsworth. I think that when I was in 7th or 8th grade there were a couple more Jews in the school.

Weinstein: Of course Lincoln had a lot of Jewish students.
HOLZMAN: Lincoln did. And then again they had the different fraternities or whatever they were called, that wouldn’t allow Jews in most of them. And then the Jewish kids got their own organizations.

Weinstein: So how did you feel about being with people who were only Jewish or did you have friends in the general community? Was it an issue for you?
HOLZMAN: I don’t think it was because I didn’t react one way or another. I don’t think I knew that there was a difference between Conservative and the Temple where everybody was Jewish…

Weinstein: Did you have friends that were not Jewish?
HOLZMAN: Yes. Probably more friends that were not Jewish.

Weinstein: OK. And that might have come from your Ainsworth experience because there were not a lot of Jews to pal around with so…
HOLZMAN: That’s right and sad. Several kids in the class made a special effort to be friendly with me, we’d do things together. Looking back on it I think that was reverse of antisemitism, that they were trying to do otherwise.

Weinstein: Boys especially, I think.
HOLZMAN: Yes. And I really didn’t know the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazic, I didn’t even know what they were.

Weinstein: In Portland that’s especially true. I run into that a lot in the interviews. Seattle was a different situation, where I grew up.
HOLZMAN: There were more Sephardic Jews?

Weinstein: More Sephardic, and you know there’s like a social hierarchy in any culture. The first guys that got here are at the top of the heap. And then there’s a pecking order. Never mind what their skills and abilities are, so…it’s just a cultural thing.
HOLZMAN: Human nature.

Weinstein: Maybe. For better or for worse.
HOLZMAN: Yes, you have to have, have to increase your social level I guess is what you call it.
I mean some people do.

Weinstein: Well looking back on our discussion this morning do you feel satisfied that we’ve covered things that you’d like to talk about? I’d be more than happy to come back.
HOLZMAN: I’m fine.

Weinstein: Are there any things you feel didn’t touch on?
HOLZMAN: No, I can’t think of anything.

Weinstein: Well, again I’m referring to this book about your company, a wonderful oral history is what it is. And maybe some of that can be incorporated into the archives at the museum because there’s a lot of wonderful information. There’s wonderful photos. And that would be very good for…
HOLZMAN: One thing about my company, the way that I arrived at the name. I don’t know if anybody cares…

Weinstein: Yes, yes I do.
HOLZMAN: It wasn’t just picking a name out of the blue. My grandfather on my dad’s side, had a pawn shop and it was called Reliable Loan. And obviously that’s where Reliable came from. And the credit part, well I didn’t like the other alternatives, so I ended up with Credit. The association part of the name; I had a brilliant idea that didn’t work, fortunately. But it was a matter of getting an association of dealers who would participate in the company, and that would tie them to the company in order to… obviously to get more business. It was a great idea but what turned out was the dealers wanted the money for their operations rather than for an investment.

Weinstein: That competition factor just got in the way.
HOLZMAN: So anyway, as it turned out I was very lucky that it didn’t work.

Weinstein: Yeh, yeh
HOLZMAN: Anyway that’s how I got the name for the company

Weinstein: It’s also another example of continuity. You’ve told about your great grandparents and your grandparents wanting to have a Jewish identity. And you talk about you being named after a grandfather, and your grandson Ian being named after you and all of this is like a continuity, a chain and that’s I think one of the main ideals that your ancestors had, for continuity.
HOLZMAN: Probably true.

Weinstein: Well it’s nice. You’re probably aware of that and it’s very nice. I didn’t know the reason for Reliable Credit for the name, now you’ve just told me. It’s very
HOLZMAN: Nobody cares other than me.

Weinstein: No, it’s really nice.
HOLZMAN: My grandfather sold the company around 1932 and then I started in ’58 so there was 25, (26) years…when the name was not used.

Weinstein: Well the way you tell us your age I know you can’t count so I’m doing the math for you.
HOLZMAN: I count very well. (laughing) I just can’t count above 39. [more laughing]

Weinstein: I want to thank you.
HOLZMAN: You’re welcome

Weinstein: Very informative and if you want to make any changes or add anything that’s very easily done.
HOLZMAN: OK, well I think that we were very good, both of us very good, we didn’t discuss politics at all.

Weinstein: We got a little close…
HOLZMAN: Well yes but we were agreeing…

Weinstein: Yes.
HOLZMAN: And that’s good.

Weinstein: Thank you.
HOLZMAN: You have a little more feeling toward me now?

Weinstein: Well I think I have a little more understanding. (both laughing). You’re not going to get me, I’m going to turn this machine off. Thank you very much.