Paul Schlesinger

Prahl: Let’s begin with your full name and where and when you were born.
SCHLESINGER: Paul Randall Schlesinger. I was born July 3, 1951, in Salem, Oregon, at Salem General Hospital.

Prahl: Tell us a little bit about the household that you were born into. Who lived in that house with you, and . . .?
SCHLESINGER: Born in Salem, Oregon. At the time, it was Mom, Dad, my older brother Barry by two years. Dad was in the clothing business [that was] in his side of the family. My mother, Bernice, was called “Bunny.” She always went by the name “Bunny.” I think this nickname caught on, from my understanding, either in grade school and/or high school, and she went by the name “Bunny” throughout her life. If somebody called her “Bernice,” they did not know my mother.

Prahl: Did she go to grade school and high school in Oregon?
SCHLESINGER: She was born in Portland. I don’t remember the [name of the] grade school. High school, she went to Catlin Gabel. And college, she went all the way across the country to City College, CCNY, in New York.

Prahl: What neighborhood did she grow up in?
SCHLESINGER: They grew up in Southwest.

Prahl: And did your parents meet as kids, as teenagers?
SCHLESINGER: No, they did not meet as kids or teenagers. They met as young adults, post–World War II, on a date, and soon thereafter got married.

Prahl: And your dad, is he also a native Portlander?
SCHLESINGER: Native Portlander, grew up basically in Portland. The family went back and forth, so a fair amount of his young years were in Portland. Then they moved to New York for a short period of time, and moved back to Salem.

Prahl: To open the clothing store there?
SCHLESINGER: Open a clothing store there.

Prahl: Was it Schlesinger’s?
SCHLESINGER: It was not Schlesinger’s. It’ll come to me.

Prahl: That’s okay.
SCHLESINGER: In downtown Salem. It was women’s ready-to-wear. So on Dad’s side of the family was women’s ready-to-wear clothing. On Mom’s side of the family it was men’s wear, and the store was called Weiner’s.

Prahl: And that was your mother’s last name?
SCHLESINGER: That was my mother’s last name.

Prahl: Were both of your parents the children of immigrants?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. Both sides of the family came over late-1800s or so. Grandparents and great-grandparents, all of them except for one, came through Ellis Island. The one that did not come through Ellis Island was my grandfather and his family, and they came through Montreal.

Prahl: Which grandfather?
SCHLESINGER: That was Josh Weiner. They spent some time in Canada and then headed south to New York, Baltimore, and then headed west.

Prahl: Do you know what brought those two families west?
SCHLESINGER: As far as I can understand, [it was] the “Galveston Act,” which said, not to Eastern European Jews or Jews in general, but to immigrants that came across and just basically landed on the East Coast, that the US government said we need to get people west of the Hudson River. They called it the Galveston Act, and they started moving people west. [Ed.: This was actually called the Galveston Movement or Galveston Plan. It was not an act of Congress but an initiative supported by the Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau.]

Prahl: Did you meet those grandparents? Did you know them growing up?
SCHLESINGER: I knew Josh and Annie Weiner. I knew, vaguely, Max Schlesinger. I didn’t know his wife Pearl. Pearl passed away in, I think, April of 1951. I’m born July ’51, and the tradition in Ashkenazi Jewry, is you name . . .

Prahl: So you’re Paul for Pearl.
SCHLESINGER: Yes. And then my younger brother Mark is named after Max Schlesinger. One of his children is named Max Schlesinger. So there’s this tradition of naming offspring . . .

Prahl: Was it a family that told stories about the past? Did you get the stories of life in the old country or how they came here? Or what were the family stories?
SCHLESINGER: Not a lot of stories from Europe. In fact, very, very little that I can even remember. It’s kind of, we get to the United States, or we get to Montreal, Canada, and we set up a life here. The stories are of moving ever westward, setting up clothing stores, whether it was in Salem or Portland, and the transitions, from my grandparents and to my parents. My grandfather, Josh Weiner, passed away late ’50s, so I do have memories of him. Short in stature. His hair was white, not gray, not anything in between. It was white. He started his clothing stores in downtown Portland, moved them to Fifth and Washington, remodeled the building, and started men’s suits, sportswear.

Prahl: Do you know how he decided to open a store? And what was his training?
SCHLESINGER: His training was the usual story of — I and my family are peddlers. We’re in soft goods. It just kind of grew from being a tailor, sewing the suit or sewing the slacks, and actually moving into soft goods.

Prahl: Did the whole family work in the store?
SCHLESINGER: Josh and Annie Weiner had three children: Uncle Sid, Uncle Abe, and my mother, Bunny. The two uncles worked in the business, and as Josh passed away, the two uncles and soon-to-be my father started running the business. So it was basically clothing and also the real estate. They owned the building that the store was in. In fact, it’s still in the family portfolio. It’s no longer a clothing store, though it does have retail. It’s a parking garage and a hotel.

Prahl: Were there any stories about how they accumulated enough capital to buy the building, to start a business, just by being a tailor? Do you know how?
SCHLESINGER: Again, he started as a tailor, had a little, basically walk-in, did his tailoring, and accumulated enough capital — and I think that’s a great definition of what it is. You accumulate the capital through sales of clothing, and then you’re able to purchase a corner building, remodel it, and expand it and turn it into what it was before. It was called Weiner’s. There were five stories. They sold suits, sports jackets, slacks, shoes, uniforms. My Uncle Sid handled uniforms. So if you were a policeman, a sheriff, if you were in the military, and you needed a specific shirt or slacks or jacket, you’d come to Weiner’s and you’d get outfitted.

Prahl: Do you know if they were bringing everything in? Or were they buying uniforms from a company here that made them?
SCHLESINGER: I think they did both. My memory, and I think it’s a memory just because of the color of the uniform, a Multnomah sheriff’s. It’s this somewhat odd green, or at least it was. It was probably not something you would pick off the rack. So there were special orders. It was always fascinating going to the uniform floor because they’d have patches for police, sheriffs, and again, the military. They’d have these shirts, the khaki slacks, on and on and on. It was almost a made-to-order part of the store, where these police, sheriffs, military would come in and get a special-order uniform.

Prahl: Was the Ralph Schlesinger/Bunny Weiner match a good match?
SCHLESINGER: They were married for however many years, so it must have been a good match.

Prahl: Were both sides of the family happy about it?
SCHLESINGER: The Schlesingers came from southern Germany, so you have that side of the family coming from [Schlesseswig?], which is southern Germany, and then you have the Weiners coming from the Russian Pale. Somewhat close in proximity but different countries, different entities. So here’s a nice German Jew marrying a nice Russian Jew. Way back when, did it always get looked on positively or negatively? Who knows?

Prahl: Were both families observant?
SCHLESINGER: Dad’s family belonged to Neveh Zedek. Mom’s family were some of the originating families of Shaarie Torah. I would consider them, at the time, observant.

Prahl: And what about your family in Salem? What was the religious practice in your family?
SCHLESINGER: Conservative Jews.

Prahl: There was no synagogue in Salem, was there?
SCHLESINGER: Not really. And again, at the time, they were living in Portland. Another interesting tale. Dad’s 13, getting ready to do his bar mitzvah at Neveh Zedek, and Max, his father, turns ill. So right up to whatever the date was, they’re getting ready for this young son, bar mitzvah, and they had to cancel it. So it was never done.

Prahl: He never had it?
SCHLESINGER: He never had a bar mitzvah.

Prahl: Did Max recover?
SCHLESINGER: He did recover. Again, Max lived to 1954, so he did recover. But for some odd reason, the bar mitzvah didn’t recover. So fast forward to Mom and Dad and friends in Israel. Dad turns, “I never got bar mitzvahed.” So they did a quick — here are these Americans. You can go to the wall, get somebody to do a prayer, and you’re bar mitzvahed.

Prahl: Somebody gave him a pen and pencil set, and it was done.
SCHLESINGER: Probably something like that, yes. But those are some of the stories of parents, growing up, and . . .

Prahl: So from Salem, did you come back to Portland for the holidays? What was your religious connection when you were living in Salem? How long did you live there?
SCHLESINGER: We moved here in 1955, so I was around five. I was a little guy. The Schlesingers just had the first Schlesinger reunion, and I should send you some photos.

Prahl: We’d love to have them.
SCHLESINGER: We went from house to house in Salem and looked at houses. Sid and Aileen Schlesinger — Sid was Dad’s older brother — their two houses. We went by the house that I grew up in, that all three brothers were born and grew up in. We weren’t going to go inside, but I went and knocked on the door. This was around a month or so ago. The owner of the house happens to work out of the house, so he gave us a tour. Interestingly enough, he had original blueprints of this house that Mom and Dad built. I should try and get a copy of those.

Prahl: That’s great.
SCHLESINGER: For the file. Again, they’re the original blueprints, not like what you see today. And it’s “Residence for Ralph and” — I’ll have to check to see if it says Bernice or Bunny — “Schlesinger in Salem.”

Prahl: So they were established in Salem. They built houses; they had some extended family.
SCHLESINGER: Yes.

Prahl: Why did they leave?
SCHLESINGER: The business, Dad was doing it, it was there, but it wasn’t continuing. They held on to the real estate. The name was Sally’s.

Prahl: Sally’s. Thank you.
SCHLESINGER: And Dad . . .

Prahl: So Sally’s closed.
SCHLESINGER: Basically, Sally’s closed. They, I think, also sold the property. My uncles were doing other things, Dad was moving on to doing his business, and they moved to Portland. Dad set up a floor at Weiner’s that did women’s ready-to-wear. So it shifted.

Prahl: So Weiner’s became a store that sold both men’s and women’s clothing.
SCHLESINGER: Around 1955, ’56. They continued to do men’s wear but now had women’s wear also.

Prahl: And that’s the same building where you have your office now?
SCHLESINGER: No.

Prahl: What was the address?
SCHLESINGER: Southwest Sixth and Washington. It’s where there’s a nice parking garage and Office Depot and TJ Maxx, and on the other part of the block is a Marriott hotel. It stayed under Weiner’s until the mid-’60s, and the family didn’t sell the building but sold the business, went out of the clothing business. Basically, Dad and Mom had control of the real estate. They turned it into the Western Business College. So a complete remodel, and it became an educational building.

That continued until Western Business College decided to move to Vancouver, and then the three boys — Barry, Paul and Mark — “What are we going to do with this building?” It was too old, needed way too much to retrofit it because of code and all that, so we decided to move it from what the building was, and we acquired other parcels on that block and turned it into retailing and a parking garage and a hotel, and that was in the mid-1990s. 1995, ’96.

Prahl: All right. So now let’s do five-year-old Paul moving from Salem to Portland. What do you remember about that move?
SCHLESINGER: Mom and Dad built this house in Salem, were there for around five, six years, and then decided to transition to Portland. Looked at various neighborhoods, looked at Dunthorpe as, “This looks kind of like where we were in Salem,” found a lot there, again designed a house and built the house. I remember visiting with Mom and Dad and the architect, what kind of house this was going to be, how big the rooms were, on and on and on. One of my first memories was going out there and, “Here’s the plot of land, here’s the design, and here’s where the bedrooms are. Okay, boys, you can pick bedrooms.”

Prahl: With no walls.
SCHLESINGER: No, there were no walls. It was basically not even forms yet, just two-by-fours and ready for excavation, but here’s roughly where the rooms were. So Barry picked a room, I picked a room, Mark picked a room, and there was the master bedroom for Mom and Dad, and the kitchen and the living room and the rest. So we watched this house get built.

Prahl: Where were you living while it was happening?
SCHLESINGER: Mom and Dad rented a home right across the street from the main entrance to Lewis and Clark College, so we were in the neighborhood but down the street.

Prahl: Did you already have friends or other relatives who were up here?
SCHLESINGER: My two uncles, Abe and Sid, their families were here.

Prahl: Were there cousins your age?
SCHLESINGER: There were cousins, older but contemporaries. Sid and Aileen Schlesinger were still living in Salem. They transitioned a few years later up to Portland. But here we are, this young family of five, building a house. It was the typical post-war family, moving — here we did a little bit different move — from one city to another, but post-war, coming back from the war, setting up the family’s new roots. And we did that. We just moved from Salem to Portland versus, say, Portland to a suburb. So we transitioned. Went to Riverdale School, either walked or took this little — wasn’t a yellow school bus. It was this beige-gray bus, and it was like a commuter bus but also doubled as a school bus. We’d either walk to school or take the bus. There were times that Dad would take the bus into Portland. And so here’s this family growing up.

Prahl: Were there other Jews at Riverdale?
SCHLESINGER: There were a few, maybe a handful.

Prahl: Were they particular friends of yours, people that you stayed friends with?
SCHLESINGER: People that we knew. Again, these were families transitioning from close-in Portland to a close-in suburb.

Prahl: I want to go back for a second. Your parents got married after the war. Was your dad in the service?
SCHLESINGER: Dad was in the service. He was a buck private. He graduated from Willamette during the war and then went into the Army, did not serve overseas. He did clerical work in Texas at an Army base there. We have some video of Uncle Sid Schlesinger and Dad home on leave. They’re in their khaki uniforms. Unfortunately, it’s in black and white and there’s no sound, and I’m not really good at reading lips, but it’s a fascinating video of that time.

Prahl: And then, as soon as they came back, they just plugged right into the family businesses?
SCHLESINGER: Exactly. Did their service, came back post-war, went right back into the family businesses.

Prahl: You said your mom’s brothers went right in. Was she not included in that because she was a girl?
SCHLESINGER: She was a girl, and true to form — she was college-educated. That was important for that time.

Prahl: Did she ever work?
SCHLESINGER: She worked in the store, in Weiner’s, doing clerical work. My memory, during sales and special events she would be at the store, but for the most part she was a homemaker. She did volunteer work and philanthropy here and there.

Prahl: Synagogue?
SCHLESINGER: She did probably some synagogue work at Shaarie Torah and probably at Temple. I don’t remember exactly what.

Prahl: Where did they join as a family?
SCHLESINGER: Pop Josh Weiner, as his family grew, belonged to Shaarie Torah and also belonged to Temple. The connection there is, “Okay, we’re in an Orthodox situation that’s pretty much male-oriented. I want my daughter to have a Jewish education also. She can get that at Temple.” So they belonged to both places.

Prahl: Do you know if there were ever hard feelings between the synagogues on that? Or was it pretty common for people to be in two places at once?
SCHLESINGER: My guess, it was fairly common. Again, going back to Dad growing up, they belonged to Neveh Zedek, but here’s this transition to Temple also. I felt comfortable when I was a kid, being mostly at Temple and getting my Jewish background there, but also at Shaarie Torah. My grandmother lived to 90-some-odd years, so she made sure that we celebrated the holidays. On Rosh Hashanah, she did the dinner at her apartment in a kitchen maybe a little bit bigger than this room. She would have both sides of the family for Rosh Hashanah, for break-fast on Yom Kippur, Passover. Both seders were at the apartment, and she turned the kitchen over. She kept a kosher home throughout her life, and Portland was not the easiest place to keep kosher.

Prahl: How about your mom? Did she keep a kosher home?
SCHLESINGER: We did not keep a kosher home. We celebrated Friday night at Nana’s, Friday night dinner. Chicken or fish, lamb. Every once in a while when Mom and Dad were in LA, or my younger brother who finished up his college degree and did work down in LA, when they would come up, they would either ship or bring a large box or boxes of kosher meat. And every once in a while I would get a phone call, “We’re shipping a box of kosher meat. You need to pick it up.” At either the train station or somewhere.

Prahl: Yes, it was hard to come by here.
SCHLESINGER: Yes. There were kosher butchers here, but they ebbed and flowed. The supply wasn’t like you could find in Los Angeles or bigger cities.

Prahl: Was there anything in particular that your grandmother made that you remember? That you looked forward to?
SCHLESINGER: She was very good at chicken soup. She was very good at chicken. She would make a lamb stew with lima beans that was pretty amazing. She made challahs almost every Shabbat, and we all three grandsons got challahs made for our bar mitzvahs. As a little kid, these challahs were almost as big as we were; they were huge. She made those for the bar mitzvahs. And the tradition of baking cookies or like that. If we were really good and she had time, again in this tiny kitchen, she’d make a challah for Shabbat, she’d make bialys. We had to be really good. On really good days.

Prahl: Boiled and everything?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. That was amazing. Every once in a while as a kid growing up, being there Friday during the day and watching her in this cubbyhole of a kitchen put this magnificent Shabbat dinner together, or the break-fast or two seders. And turning it over, taking the dishes out, putting the Passover dishes in, getting basically two tables to encompass both families, making a gigantic seder dinner. Sometimes it was turkey, sometimes chicken, brisket, and everything that was included in what would be a seder dinner.

Prahl: Who did that pass down to after she died? Who took on the dinners?
SCHLESINGER: Nana passed away at 92. She continued to . . .

Prahl: She was cooking all that time?
SCHLESINGER: Not quite. She would do these dinners and holiday dinners into her 80s. And again, being with Mom at either a pre-Shabbat or a pre-holiday, Mom would ask, “So what’s the recipe here?” And it wasn’t written down. These were from one generation to another, “Well, I put a pinch of this and a pinch of that.” It was just this typical story of that generation that had the recipes in their heads, basically, and knew how to do it because it was done time and time out, nothing written down. It was extremely frustrating to Mom to just watch her mother make either a lamb stew or whatever the main dish was and really not know the specific portion of ingredients.

Prahl: Right. Did she ever duplicate those dishes for you?
SCHLESINGER: She tried. She tried.

Prahl: Not the same?
SCHLESINGER: She was met with some success, and others not, but . . .

Prahl: So what was your circle of friends when you were a kid? Was it your neighbors and the kids at Riverdale? Or was it your friends from Sunday school? Or . . .?
SCHLESINGER: Mostly kids from Riverdale. We did go to Sunday school at Temple Beth Israel, so there was a group of friends there to a lesser degree, at least myself. Some friends from Shaarie Torah. It was what I would define as a mixture of friendships, starting in a very secular school and neighborhood, but also being sure that we had a Jewish upbringing.

Prahl: Do you remember any incidents of antisemitism on the playground or in school?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. This was later on. Being called a Jew in a derogatory fashion.

Prahl: More high school?
SCHLESINGER: More high school. But it was there. Every once in a while, “Christ Killer.” I thought we were somewhat past that, but it showed up every once in a while.

Prahl: Let’s talk about high school. You didn’t stay at Riverdale.
SCHLESINGER: No. Riverdale was K-8. The high school would have been — my older brother went to Lincoln and then Catlin.

Prahl: Riverdale High School didn’t open until after you . . .
SCHLESINGER: Way after. So the choices were — Riverdale transitioned from Lincoln to Lake Oswego, and Barry went for a year at Lincoln and then went to Catlin Gabel. I went for a year at Catlin Gabel and then went to Oregon Episcopal School.

Prahl: Which had a different name at the time.
SCHLESINGER: It was St. Helens Hall for the women’s side and Bishop Dagwell Hall for the men’s side.

Prahl: Why did you leave Catlin?
SCHLESINGER: Just a better fit at Bishop Dagwell Hall.

Prahl: Were you playing lacrosse by then?
SCHLESINGER: That’s where I picked up the lacrosse. Catlin Gabel had a headmaster and Bishop Dagwell Hall had a headmaster from back east, and they both felt that a high school should have lacrosse, so the two prep schools plus the University of Oregon . . .

Prahl: So that was all the lacrosse in Portland?
SCHLESINGER: That was all the lacrosse in Portland, in Oregon. There was a little bit in Washington and probably a little bit in California, but not a lot.

Prahl: So they couldn’t teach it to you by showing you how the big kids play it.
SCHLESINGER: No, we were the big kids. My class was one of the first classes that was taught the sport of lacrosse. At the time, we played with wooden sticks. It isn’t the sport that it is today with titanium and plastics.

Prahl: We have one of those wooden sticks here in our collection.
SCHLESINGER: And a uniform, maybe two. So it was not the sport that we see today.

Prahl: But you took right to it.
SCHLESINGER: Took right to it. Heck, here you have a stick, and you’d hit people with it, and almost do it legally. There are rules what you can and cannot do. But show me a sport, even now, where you can hit the opposing team with a stick.

Prahl: That does sound appealing.
SCHLESINGER: Yes. Very appealing.

Prahl: What kind of student were you in high school? What were your skills?
SCHLESINGER: I was good at lacrosse. I was a fair student.

Prahl: And it was a rigorous education.
SCHLESINGER: It was rigorous. If I went to a public school, maybe my grades would have been better. Excelled in history, did okay in English, not too good in math or the sciences, and okay in Spanish. I got good enough grades to get into college.

Prahl: Did your parents have the three of you in different schools because of your individual needs? Or because of the timing of when you went to school?
SCHLESINGER: In high school?

Prahl: Yes.
SCHLESINGER: It was more timing than anything else. My younger brother went to Bishop Dagwell Hall also, we both graduated from there, and all three of us went off to college. My older brother went to Washington University in St. Louis. I started at Menlo College in California, bringing my lacrosse equipment with me, and then transferred up to Whitworth College in Spokane and graduated there.

Prahl: What did you study?
SCHLESINGER: Got a degree in US History. My thesis is in the economic history of the United States. I got a BA in History along with a BS in Business Management.

Prahl: Did your parents have aspirations for you boys that they let you know about, what they wanted you to do?
SCHLESINGER: Both Mom and Dad wanted us to have college educations. Was there something that said, “You’re going to go to college and you’re going to get a degree in x?” No. They just said, “You’re going to college and you’re going to get a degree.”

Prahl: They never told you that you had to be a doctor?
SCHLESINGER: No, none of us looked at that, or a lawyer. That would have been a bonus, I guess, but . . .

Prahl: Was the expectation that you would come back and work in the business?
SCHLESINGER: There was the expectation, “Go and get your college education, and it would be great for you to come back and be a part of the business.”

Prahl: How did you feel about it?
SCHLESINGER: I guess I was okay with it. Out of the three sons, I’m the one with a business degree. Barry was in psychology. Mark went to the University of Puget Sound and then went to Art Center down in Los Angeles and became a commercial photographer. Barry came back from St. Louis to do carpentry, and he became a commercial fisherman off the coast of Oregon, Washington.

Prahl: I bet that was something your parents never considered for him.
SCHLESINGER: No, it wasn’t. But they were really happy when he would come back from the coast and here was this huge Chinook salmon, “Here.” Or right before Passover, he’d bring a salmon back and then probably roll his eyes knowing that part of that salmon would turn into gefilte fish. My grandmother’s eyes got big knowing that here comes Passover, and hopefully her grandson is going to offer a salmon and I can turn it into gefilte fish.

Prahl: Are you more or less observant than your brothers? Did you all end up in about the same place?
SCHLESINGER: If the two brothers were here, they’d probably agree that I’m the more religious out of the three.

Prahl: What do you think accounts for that?
SCHLESINGER: I just enjoy the religion. I was president of Shaarie Torah for a while. I and the family, we’re observant. We’re observant in our own way.

Prahl: Have you done any adult education or continued studies?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. I continued studies both locally, Melton, and also was a Wexner Scholar, and along with being the president of a shul, one does . . .

Prahl: It’s an education in itself.
SCHLESINGER: It’s an education in a whole host of ways. So I continued the education of being a Jew, of being observant during the holidays. Friday night dinners. Do I go to services? I’m sure my rabbis would want me to go more often, but we go and I enjoy it.

Prahl: That’s great. [To the other interviewer who is also present] So are we asking questions that you’re in line with here? Feel free to . . .
Crangle: Yes. Just going back slightly, you mentioned your brothers both pursued careers outside of the family business. I was wondering, generally, do you think your parents felt okay about that? Or was there some disappointment there that they didn’t go into the business like you did?
SCHLESINGER: Eventually, both brothers went into the business. All three of us continue to be in the business. The “r-word” of retiring is now in our vocabulary, but Mark shifted from being a commercial photographer in Los Angeles, and in the early ’80s, transitioned up here and became full-time in the family business of real estate. And Barry transitioned from being a commercial fisherman to being a carpenter to transitioning into the business also. So around early ’80s, mid-’80s, the three of us were working in the business.

Prahl: And have you all three contributed to the next generation that will take it over when you retire?
SCHLESINGER: We’re now working on the fourth generation, so the “r-word” becomes even more prevalent. Barry’s three sons all work in the business. Josh, the oldest son, is CEO of the business now.

Prahl: Was he named for your grandfather?
SCHLESINGER: He is named after my grandfather.

Prahl: Nice.
SCHLESINGER: Caleb has been in the business and manages the parking management side of the business. And Bran, the youngest son, is a general contractor, has just gone into his own contracting business, but is affiliated with the company.

Crangle: And is that important for you, to keep it feeling like a family business?
SCHLESINGER: Yes, it is. Family businesses, and they’ve been studied — not just our business, but a general comment here — family businesses start in one form or another, in one type of business or another, and there comes the second generation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But somewhere in the mid-90 percent, once the business transitions from first generation to second, it rarely continues. It’s a huge drop-off. So to get it into the third generation, and now into the fourth generation, is two things: incredibly rare, and it says a lot about the family. Here are businesses that can show, historically, their roots. Specific to our businesses: [roots] in the mid-’30s, transitioning through depression, through a major war and a lot of minor wars, recessions, differences of what one wants to do or one not wanting to do, but having it continue, so . . .

Prahl: Do you think there’s something about the original company, the first generation, the way that they set the tone of it, that it was able to carry on? Or was it each generation putting their own stamp on it?
SCHLESINGER: I think it’s a bit of both. Definitely, looking at, at least on the Weiner side — here is a stamp of moving from a peddler, basically, to a tailor, to owning one shop and expanding it to where it was. There’s that, as you said, stamp. Moving to the next generation, my uncles and my father, “OK, we’re going to take it another step.” And some of that includes the ready-to-wear, whether men’s or women’s, and then looking at what Dad did transitioning into his own company, of still dealing with retailing but also going into real estate development, and transitioning out of retailing into being a real estate developer, which is where the company is now. And then every once in a while Barry goes fishing, and every once in a while Mark does some photography.

Prahl: What was your first job?
SCHLESINGER: My first job? Working in the business doing demolition of old offices and transitioning to new office space.

Prahl: Like wielding a sledgehammer?
SCHLESINGER: Wielding a sledgehammer, wielding a crowbar, getting down and dirty doing this type of stuff. Another summer job that I had was working at Bishop Dagwell on the athletic fields: reseeding, irrigation.

Prahl: Getting down and dirty there too.
SCHLESINGER: Demolition. Getting a school transitioning from summer into fall. And then working in the business as a college student, and working full time and going to school full time.

Prahl: What about up in Washington? Charles Berg? Or [Russ Anne’s?]?
SCHLESINGER: It was both. When I was working in college in Spokane, we had clothing stores in Spokane, Seattle. We expanded a chain of three stores in Spokane to 14 stores in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and when we sold the chain, they were in all of those states.

Prahl: And which chain was that?
SCHLESINGER: This was both Russ Anne’s and Charles F. Berg. Charles F. Berg were the stores in Portland, and the rest of them were called Russ Anne’s, up in Washington, Idaho, Montana.

Prahl: Did your parents expect you to be working while you were in college?
SCHLESINGER: No.

Prahl: Something you wanted to do.
SCHLESINGER: Something that I transitioned into. And it worked out for Dad in that, “OK, I have a son, and he can work up into being the general manager of that division of the company.” Then, around 1979, we got an offer from a Canadian company that wanted to get a foothold in the US, and they came up with a price. Dad and I negotiated with them, and we sold the stores. I stayed on for a few months in transition and then started working full time in the real estate business.

Prahl: And you came back to Portland.
SCHLESINGER: Yes.

Prahl: When did you meet your wife?
SCHLESINGER: Which one?

Prahl: The first one.
SCHLESINGER: I met the first one up in Spokane. She was going to Gonzaga; I was going to Whitworth. Her name was Marla. Our lawyer at the time introduced us to each other. Married for a short period of time. We were living here in Portland, and then I was single, and then got married again, and . . .

Prahl: And how did you meet Fern?
SCHLESINGER: I met Fern through her older brother and also knew her . . .

Prahl: What’s their family name?
SCHLESINGER: Winkler. So knew them in high school via Shaarie Torah. Both families belonged there. And married Fern for a while, and . .

Prahl: Were you married at Shaarie Torah?
SCHLESINGER: We were married at Shaarie Torah.

Prahl: Had some kids.
SCHLESINGER: Fern had a daughter from a previous marriage. We have a daughter together. Rachel, the older daughter, lives in New York, and Jessica lives here.

Prahl: And then you were single again?
SCHLESINGER: Single again, and now I’m in a partnership. The interesting story of Mom and Dad, one being a German Jew and one being a Russian Jew — my partner, Janice Shleifer Rosenfeld, she comes from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic. Right now, she’s making Sephardic dishes for Rosh Hashanah. So we have another mixed partnership. I bring in the Ashkenazi side, and Janice is extremely proud of her Sephardic side, though she also, her parents were both Ashkenazi and Sephardic.

Prahl: She’s a couple of generations Portlander too, isn’t she?
SCHLESINGER: She’s probably third generation.

Prahl: I’ll have to interview her too.
SCHLESINGER: I’ll have to talk to her about that. Her family was in the furniture business, and she probably worked a little bit in the furniture business. But her work, post-graduate, was in education, and she was a pre-K teacher at the Foundation School and retired a little over three years ago so she could bring up her granddaughter. And her mom, Leah Shleifer Funes, is still alive, so she juggles, as I define it, the “helicopter generation,” taking care of her daughters, who are both married, and a granddaughter, and a soon-to-be-another granddaughter, and her mom.

Prahl: Wow. She’s got her hands full in retirement.
SCHLESINGER: Janice keeps saying that she retired but she doesn’t feel like she’s retired.

Prahl: Let’s talk about politics a little bit. Were your parents political people? Were your grandparents?
SCHLESINGER: I don’t remember about my grandparents. Tales about Mom and Dad living in Salem post–World War II. In Oregon history there was a politician running for governor on the Republican side — I forget the name — who was extremely antisemitic. Mom and Dad were Democrats, and at the time you either voted Republican or you voted Democrat. So they switched allegiance to the Republican party to vote against this person.

Prahl: So that they could vote in the primary?
SCHLESINGER: Yes.

Prahl: Wow.
SCHLESINGER: And they forgot to switch back [laughter].

Prahl: So they have been voting Republican since then?
SCHLESINGER: Well, I don’t know how they voted, but they were Republicans. And in Oregon, up until a short time ago in the primaries, you either voted Democrat or you voted Republican. That was your ballot. They never switched back.

Prahl: Were there political conversations at your dinner table? What were your dinner table conversations like?
SCHLESINGER: There were discussions on a whole host of things, whether it was politics, whether it was the story of the day, things going on in the business world, some discussion on the company.

Prahl: Disagreements?
SCHLESINGER: If there were, they shielded them from us. Meals were not quiet; there was discussion. What went on, whether it was politics or elections or whatever, that was all part of the weave of discussions. “How did you do in school?” “What project?” “You’ve got a temperature.” “You are not going to go play lacrosse” [laughter].

Prahl: Were they Zionists?
SCHLESINGER: I would say that my grandfather Josh would probably be defined as a Zionist. To a certain extent, yes. Mom and Dad got connected with the Israel Tennis Centers, so they did a fair amount of work and philanthropy with the Israeli Tennis Centers, basically teaching the sport of tennis.

Prahl: Were they active in Portland playing tennis as well?
SCHLESINGER: They were.

Prahl: What clubs did they play?
SCHLESINGER: Irvington Tennis Club. Both Mom and Dad played tennis. Mom played golf, speaking of sports. She tried to get the three sons to play golf, which none of us did.

Prahl: Did they play at Tualatin?
SCHLESINGER: Mom played all over. I don’t know if they ever belonged.

Prahl: I don’t think she could have belonged anywhere else.
SCHLESINGER: Yes. Not Portland, not Waverly. I remember her taking us to public links, and we said, “No, we are not going to play golf.”

Prahl: And tennis? Were there clubs that Jews could belong to?
SCHLESINGER: Irvington. The three sons took up tennis; we just didn’t take up golf. But when I turned 60 I kind of started thinking about golf. Playing lacrosse, most of the guys would also play golf, and I just tagged along. It wasn’t until Janice and I started being in a partnership. She and her brother learned how to play golf as kids. I am left-handed, and Dennis, Janice’s older brother, is left-handed, so he gave me a set of clubs. When we were down at the beach, I was trying to figure out how to play with the left-handed clubs, and Janice looked at me and said, “You’re trying to play right-handed golf with left-handed clubs. There’s a difference.” How would I know? So around 64, all of a sudden I started taking up the sport. And Janice says, in her own words, “I’ve created a monster” [laughter]. I have fallen in love with the sport.

Prahl: And you play everywhere?
SCHLESINGER: I try. I’ve played in Portland. I’ve played in Washington, Hawaii. We were just in Italy, and for my 67th birthday we played at the Perugia Golf Club, so I can say that I have played in Europe.

Prahl: Where [did you play] at the beach?
SCHLESINGER: Gearhart.

Prahl: When you were growing up, did your family vacation at the beach?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. That was the summer vacation, usually, at Seaside.

Prahl: Did they rent a house or stay in a hotel?
SCHLESINGER: Mostly, growing up, we would stay in a hotel. I remember staying in hotels, motels in Seaside and Gearhart, the old Gearhart Hotel. Mom always wanted a house at the beach. Around 1992, they found a parcel in Gearhart, and again, built another house. Luckily, Dad got to spend a year at the house before he passed away.

Prahl: That’s great. You have the house now?
SCHLESINGER: We still have the house. I think the next generations can say that Mom an Dad were really smart about this. In both of their wills they said, “You can get rid of this, that, and everything else, except for one thing. The beach house will stay in the family.” So it has.

Prahl: What about the house they built when you were five?
SCHLESINGER: They sold that. I was living back here, so late ’70s. And they built a condo up in Northwest [Northwest Portland].

Prahl: More convenient?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. So politics. I’ve been a member of AIPAC, involved early on with the Oregon chapter, and have worked with various politicians and candidates, one being Vera Katz.

Prahl: You want to talk a bit about what the goals were of AIPAC?
SCHLESINGER: AIPAC is about having a strong relationship between the United States and Israel. American/Israel Public Affairs Committee. It is not a PAC. They’re for education and for making sure that Israel is a strong country.

Prahl: Did you travel to Israel as part of that?
SCHLESINGER: Yes, I did. I traveled fairly often at the time, both as a member of our Federation, and as past-president of the Federation here, and along with my ties with AIPAC at the time.

Prahl: Did you see changes happen? Did you feel like there was some impact being made?
SCHLESINGER: I think so. I think my volunteerism, both with Federation and with AIPAC, built a stronger relationship between the state of Oregon and the country of Israel. An interesting memory that I had forgotten about was the trip that Dad happened to become a bar mitzvah. The real reason for this trip was a trade mission that, at the time, Governor Tom McCall did with various people in the timber/lumber business. There was a relationship between Governor McCall and Mom and Dad. They were part of this timber/lumber mission over to Israel. Israel is not exactly known for its timber products.

Prahl: No, they tend to keep their trees.
SCHLESINGER: For the most part, they grow them and they just let them grow. The cypresses over there are a lot smaller than anything that we grow, whether it’s first generation timber, or we’re now working on second- and third-generation timber. I have photos of that mission. Here’s this mission from the state of Oregon dealing with lumber and timber issues, and we’ll show them a sawmill in Israel. Well, sawmills in Oregon, in the northwest, are a lot different than ones in Israel. But they are some great photos of Mom and Dad and Governor McCall and others having a tour of the country.

Prahl: I think you’re in the right frame of mind now, considering the “r” word [retirement], to look at big pictures and sweeping changes that you’ve seen in the Jewish community in Portland, or in the business community in Portland. What are the changes that you can note?
SCHLESINGER: Growing up as a kid, there was Neveh Zedek, Ahavai Sholom, Temple Beth Israel, maybe one or two other . . .

Prahl: Shaarie Torah.
SCHLESINGER: Shaarie Torah. Those were the congregations. You fast-forward to 2018 — Neveh Zedek and Ahavai Sholom are now joined, Shaarie Torah continues to change. It went from traditional Orthodox to Modern Orthodox to now being considered a Conservative congregation. Temple Beth Israel continues. You have Kesser, you have the southwest congregation, you have the eastside havurah, P’nai Or. I forget the count.

Prahl: I think at one time they said 18, but I think some of those have closed.
SCHLESINGER: Right. So you have, give or take, somewhere between 12 and 17 synagogues. And you have havurot here and there. You now have congregations in Ashland, in Central Oregon, Eastern Oregon, Vancouver. So there is a multitude, where growing up there was a Conservative, multiple traditional, and Reform. Huge growth. You have a number that are totally unaffiliated. You have the issues of a Jewish community. Do you belong? Do you not belong? Mixed marriage, and on and on. These were there growing up but have amplified. And you have a Jewish population that continues to grow. All good things. Someone who’s now 67, what I grew up with in our Jewish community is a totally different photograph than what it is now.

Prahl: Are you optimistic for the future?
SCHLESINGER: You have to be. Yes. Growing from a very small community in the small community of Portland to a fairly large community, whether it’s Reform, Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative. There’s a Sephardic congregation here. How many communities have that, especially on the West Coast? So, optimistic? Definitely. How many communities have a museum like what we have here?

Prahl: I wondered if you would take a little bit of time here to talk about your time both volunteering and being on the board of the museum, to talk about what you did with the real estate.
SCHLESINGER: I became involved when the museum was down the street in a space basically just a little bit larger than a shoebox. There was a little bit of shared office, maybe a reception area, and kind of a closet that doubled as an archive and a place to show exhibits. That was it. There was talk at the time, “Maybe we’ll just close and do this electronically.” We started looking for space. That’s when I became involved with the museum. Judith and others asking, “Can you help us find some space?” We started looking and looking, and we were coming to our wits’ end. A realtor showed us a space up on Northwest Kearney that was built in the mid-’30s as an office space for Universal Studios. It had office space, it had archives space to store films, and it had its own theater. At the time, the building was used by an architect who had moved out, so it was vacant. Judith Margles, myself, and others said, “This is it.” So we leased it and moved in.

We thought it was the best thing for us since sliced bread. We went from less than 2,000 feet to roughly 6,000 feet, a parking lot too. We moved in, did the first term of the lease, did the second term of the lease. We went into the third term of lease and said, “We should talk to the owners and see if we can purchase this building.” They are very good at owning, not very good at selling. Again, we started looking, and one of the first places that came on our plate was where we’re at now. So one of the best things that I’ve done, both on the non-profit and philanthropy, was being on the board here, and being able to find not one, but two spaces, and work on design, work on construction, and find the right space for the museum.

Prahl: You make it sound like it was all so easy.
Crangle: You mean it wasn’t? [Laughter.]
SCHLESINGER: For the most part it was easy. Compared to a lot of other things that I’ve done in the business world, finding space for the museum — it had its pitfalls, but they were fairly easy real estate deals.

Crangle: What motivated you to get involved with the museum in the first place?
SCHLESINGER: Having a board member, Phyllis Oster, say, “We need some help in finding a larger space.”

Prahl: That was your unique skillset that we needed.
SCHLESINGER: Yes, it was being in the real estate development side that brought me in as a board member and as somebody working with the museum to find the space up in NW Kearney.

Prahl: I have asked all the questions that I had for you. Do you have any, Jack?
Crangle: I have one more. I was just curious as to whether anybody in your family ever returned to Germany or Russia and sought out your places of origin, or if that wasn’t something that anyone did.
SCHLESINGER: They have. I did a trip to Poland. We went and saw the birthplace of some of the family. My cousin Arnold Weiner, who lives in Baltimore — he’s a lawyer and also a photographer and world traveler — and he and his wife Arlene did get back to the birthplace of my grandmother Annie. He has photos of what’s basically now fields and a few houses. If it wasn’t for her family and my grandfather’s family immigrating to the US, no telling if I’d be around.

Prahl: Where did the grandparents learn English? Did they learn English while they were still in New York?
SCHLESINGER: Yes, on the East Coast.

Prahl: So by the time they got to Portland they could use English?
SCHLESINGER: They were speaking English. The story, as you bring up, Anne, that’s so often — Friday night dinners, the grandparents and the parents are speaking in English, and then all of a sudden, it’s in Yiddish. It transitioned on a dime and continued.

Prahl: Where they were saying something for you not to hear?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. Again, the Forward. I remember my grandfather, Josh Weiner, getting the Forward. It was not like this [sound of rattling newspaper]. It was written in Yiddish, and it probably took days for him to get his copies.

Prahl: Did they make any use of the Neighborhood House? I know that there were Yiddish books at the library there in South Portland too.
SCHLESINGER: They did.

Prahl: But you didn’t spend any time at Neighborhood House? It was already pretty much done.
SCHLESINGER: It was pretty much done. The Jewish Community Center was up in South Portland, right across from Ahavai Sholom. I learned how to swim there and kind of learned how to play basketball there.

Prahl: Do you remember when it moved to Southwest Portland?
SCHLESINGER: Yes. Those things are in the memory bank of — here’s 405, the freeway that takes out Shaarie Torah, that takes out the Jewish Community Center, Ahavai Sholom, butcher shop, bagel shop, on and on and on. So here’s a South Portland that’s basically urban renewal. Old enough definitely to have seen that neighborhood transition into something a lot different.

Prahl: All right. I think we’re done. Thank you so much for doing this with us today.
SCHLESINGER: I enjoyed it. Thank you.