ROZ BORNSTEIN:  This is Roz Bornstein, and I’m in Seattle, Washington.  I am here interviewing Dorothy Muscatel. It is April 10th, I believe.

DOROTHY MUSCATEL:  No, April 12th.

RB:  I’m sorry, it’s April 12, 2001.  I’m here to interview her for the Weaving Women’s Words project for the Seattle site.  First of all, Dorothy, I’m wanting to know if I have your permission to interview you and tape you.

DM:  Yes, you have.

RB:  Thank you very much.  Well, we’re here today to talk about your life experiences.  Why don’t we start out with your grandparents?

DM:  I never knew my grandparents except for my mother’s mother who came to this country in 1910 or between 1910 and 1911.  She followed my mother who came in 1910.  Anyhow, she was the true matriarch of a Sephardic community.  She was widowed at thirty-three.  Left with four children.  Her husband was a rabbi from the island of Rhodes and he was tzadik.  If you don’t know what a tzadik is, it’s a scribe, the people that write the Hebrew in the Torahs and the Talmud.  He was quite an unusual man, I understand.  He died at about the age of about forty-two, forty-three of ruptured appendix.  She was widowed at thirty-three and had to raise these children by herself.  Her youngest was a year old.  Anyway, when she came to this country she was – she saw that there was no synagogue, nothing.  So she quickly organized a few men together here and they found a little tiny place to have services and then eventually my father became first President of the Ezra Bessaroth but took a year off his work to raise money to build the Ezra Bessaroth.  So this family was very solid in work.  My grandmother was President of the Ezra Bessaroth Women for ten years.  She was President of the Red Cross for ten years.  She organized the Red Cross ten years.  She got a few women together.  Until her death, she made the shrouds for the brotherhood, for all the Jewish people, all the Sephardics.  She had a group of women that she’d get together.  They used to do it at my house, in our dining room, so I remember that like yesterday.

RB:  That’s remarkable.  So, she arrived in Seattle at what age?

DM:  I would say was – oh, let’s see.  She was seventeen years older than my mother, and my mother came here at about twenty-five about.  Well, let’s see, she was about forty.

RB:  What was your grandmother’s name?

DM:  Leah Mossafer, M-O-S-S-A-F-E-R.  Her husband was Rabbi Nessim Mossafer – Mossafer.  She was the most remarkable woman you could ever hope to meet.  She used to go door to door collecting money for the poor.  Nobody would ever say no to her because they knew what she was doing.  She was walking the city to get money to help the poor people, to send to Jerusalem, Palestine, and this was her life.

RB:  Now, did you go with her on these occasions?

DM:  Oh, on many times.  Many times as a child.  I used to love my grandma.  Oh, I loved my grandma.  I would just go with her any place.  Any place.  There were a lot of young women like Mary DeLeon Capeloto and Grace Caston Israel from both synagogues who would come with her like a secretary, so that they could write down whoever gave what.  She would incorporate both the women in both synagogues.  She was just an amazing, amazing woman.  If you want to know a little more about her, she was wonderful with herbs.  She was a healer.  Everybody used to come to our house.  I mean, it was like a hospital.  I can remember my grandma walking on people's backs like a chiropractor, pulling their legs up and pulling their arms out. [laughter] And actually healing everybody.

RB:  Were these Sephardic folk curing customs or?

DM:  Were they Sephardics?

RB:  Sephardic customs?

DM:  They were probably old country customs.  I mean, they didn’t have doctors, so they had to be healers.

RB:  Wonderful.

DM:  She was a whiz with herbs.  She could make anybody well.  And she did.  She was a fantastic woman.  Fantastic woman.  And as you can tell by how much I adored her.

RB:  Absolutely.

DM:  She had grandchildren who just adored her, and when the boys – when the war started, World War II, all her grandsons were in the war.  All of them.  She would go every morning – she lived on 31st and Yesler.  She would go every morning to the Synagogue on 15th and light candles or whatever and pray for her grandchildren every single solitary day.  Now my mother was a teacher in her father’s cheder at the age of ten.  She used to teach children her age.  She could recite that – not the Torah but the books that you use in the Holy Days.  She knew them by rote.  She didn’t even have to read them.  She knew exactly what was in them.  She would just be going on and on and on and on.

RB:  This was in Rhodes, is that right?

DM:  Here.

RB:  Oh, here.

DM:  In Seattle.  This is all in Seattle.  

RB:  Oh my gosh.  Okay.  But your mother was born in Rhodes?

DM:  Yes.  And she left there.  She was married at twenty-three, and she left when she was twenty-five years old.  She had my brother, John, who was less than one year old and came here.  My father came before.  Year before.

RB:  I see.

DM:  And by the time she came he had and he had only been here a little over a year and he had already made friends with a big realtor, Henry Broderick.  Did you ever hear of him?

RB:  Yes.

DM:  And at that time, he was just a salesman.  But he was just starting a public market, a Pike Place Market.  They were having a failure in trying to get tenants who could put the thing together.  So my dad said to Mr. Broderick – he met him – believe it or not, he met him at a shoeshine stand because when my dad got off the train, he walked up to the Bush Hotel, and the boss said, “Do you want a job?”  He said, “Yes.”  They said, “Well, I’ve got the stand.  Will you run it?”  He said, “Sure.”  My Dad was a merchant, and he had money when he came, but he wanted to learn the language, and he wanted to look for opportunities.  So, one of the first persons he met was Henry Broderick.  My dad could speak different languages, and they were able to communicate.  So, Henry Broderick was saying, “Gee, I wish I had a good merchant that could get this place going.”  My father says, “Give it to me.  I will get it going.”  So Mr. Broderick put up five hundred dollars of his own money, and my dad put up five hundred dollars.  So, he was the first tenant in the – not in the farmer’s part – in the other part.  Just before you get there, the Corner Market.  From the day he went, he made nothing but money since he knew how to buy, he knew how to merchandise, he was a merchant.  

RB:  Could you tell me your parents’ names?

DM:  My mother’s name was Bolissa Franco, Bolissa Mossafer Franco.  My father’s name was Marco Franco.  But my mother – we found out later in her marriage license – we used to call her – we used to say R, Rose Bolissa because Bolissa isn’t really a name; it’s a title kind of a thing.

RB:  What do you mean?  What title is that?

DM:  Well, Bolissa means – in Spanish, it means old [inaudible] sort of.  But her name was really Rozula, R-O-Z-U-L-A.  That was on her marriage license, and I just had it deciphered. [laughter] That’s not the real word, but it was in old Ladino; it was hard to get somebody to who could transcribe it.  But anyway, that’s what it is R-O-Z-U-L-A Bolissa Mossafer Franco.  Marco Franco.

RB:  And they were both born in?

DM:  In Rhodes.

RB:  And they married in?

DM:  They married in Rhodes.  But my father, at the age of eleven, was apprenticed by his father to Greece, where his mother’s brother lived.  He was a big merchant.  So they sent my father there, and he lived there for eleven years riding up into the hills of Greece with donkeys and things like that, taking merchandise and – you know how they used to – in the old days, and that how he learned how to be a merchant.  He didn’t come back to Rhodes until he was twenty-two years old.  Then he met my mother.  They were married, and then he came to this country.

RB:  Do you know anything about their marriage or the circumstances?

DM:  Well, I don’t know what can I tell you.  All I know is my mother said in those days synagogues, there were several synagogues there.  The one that my grandfather was rabbi of was a couple of blocks from where they lived.  So the procession always went by foot.  She remembers the walk over with the bridesmaids.  They even had bridesmaids and all the relatives and everybody singing and all until they go to the synagogue.  Have you ever been to Rhodes?

RB:  Never.

DM:  Well, if you went to Rhodes now, that’s the synagogue that he was – that’s where she was married.  It was very joyous.  They went back into the homes, and they had dancing and food.  It was probably even better than it is today.  More cohesive.

RB:  So he came over first after?

DM:  He came over.  My brother John – they were married in 1908, August of 1908.  Or July.  The end of July, August, yeah.  And then John was born the following year in May.  Right after he was born, my father was already making plans to go, and he came.  That was 1909.  And then, John was about nine months old, ten months old, something like that.  Then my mother came.  And my mother brought with her young brother, who was seven years old at the time.  That’s Dr. Isaac Mossafer – became a dentist later.  She brought him with her and left my mother and my aunt, Mrs. Hanan, Matilda Hanan.  Do you know Albert Hanan?  Did ever know him?  Morris Hanan.  Well, anyway, my Aunt Matilda wasn’t married then.  My Uncle Dave Mossafer – that’s my mother’s brother – had come at the time that my – had come a little bit before, I think before my dad did and he went to Atlanta and was there at the time but didn’t like it.  So he came to Seattle.  So they met in Seattle.

RB:  Did your mom ever talk about what it was like traveling here with a baby?

DM:  Yes, she did.  It’s really very humorous.  My father sent her a second-class stateroom.  With two beds and so she, you know, not steerage, stateroom because he was already making money anyhow.  So, she said all the time that she was on that boat, she never slept.  She had John in her arms because he couldn’t sleep, and she would be lying down with him in her arms, and my Uncle Isaac, Dr. Mossafer, would be fast asleep, and she had to watch him all the time.  He was seven years old, running all over the place and picking up language like that.  You know how kids are.  She said she had such a time.  She was very cute.  Such a time.  All the guys, the single guys, kept playing up to her [inaudible].  She said she was so scared.  I said, “You stay right here.  Don’t you go from here.” [laughter] So then she got to New York, and you know how they had the Immigrant Aid Society there.  She didn’t want to stay overnight.  “Just put me on the train and send me to [inaudible].”  All the way across, she said she sat up with the baby in her arms and my uncle.  They used to have double seats know like this.  He would be fast asleep there, and she would try to rest.  But you know there tons, millions of single men.  It was all single men.  And God almighty until she got across that boat and across the country – [laughter]

RB:  Actually, it sounds quite courageous.  Think about it.  With two kids.

DM:  Oh, she was very courageous.  It’s hard for these young girls.  They were young, and they were pretty.  They didn’t know the language, although my mother spoke several languages.

RB:  She did.  What languages?

DM:  Well, she spoke some Italian.  She spoke Turkish.  She spoke Greek very well.  She spoke fluent Hebrew and a few words of English.

RB:  She sounds like she was quite educated.  

DM:  Oh, she was.  In fact highly educated.  Highly educated.

RB:  Where did she get her education?

DM:  Well, I’ll tell you what.  Now remember my grandfather – her father was a rabbi – chief rabbi in Rhodes.  At that time, that was before Baron Rothschild started the French schools for Jewish women.  My grandfather did not want her to grow up uneducated.  I mean, he knew Hebrew.  She was like a rabbi.  So, he sent her – there was an Italian convent on the island, and he sent her there.  Talked to the Mother Superior and the Italian nuns, and she was educated there.  Not for a whole long time, but enough to get a nice education and learn how to speak these different languages and read and write and things like that.  Now, that’s pretty courageous.  

RB:  That’s right.

DM:  Very broad-minded for her father and her mother to send her there.

RB:  Yes.  Right.  To a convent.

DM:  Now her sister, Mrs. Hanan, Matilda, she was seven years younger, so by the time she got to the age where she could go to school like that, the Baron Edmund Rothschild had a summer home in Rhodes, and he started the first of the Alliance Francaise schools for the girls.  Boys, too, later, but boys had other ways to get educated.  The girls didn’t.  So that’s why so many of our Sephardic women speak French because they went to the French school of the Baron Rothschild.  Those Rothschilds were wonderful people.  Another very interesting thing is my mother said one of their neighbors was the inventor of the Singer sewing machine.

RB:  In Rhodes?

DM:  In Rhodes.  That was their summer home.  See, Rhodes was where Alexander the Great had his headquarters and the rampart and the windmill and all that; it’s all part of the Colossus of Rhodes.  That was all part of Alexander the Great’s empire.  There was a lot going on in that area.  A lot of nationals came from all over and used that area for their vacations, so to speak.  Oh, it’s a beautiful place.

RB:  I bet.  I’d love to go there.

DM:  Very beautiful.  

RB:  Why did people choose to leave?

DM:  Because of economics.  For one thing, economics.  But more important, up until about 1900, the Jews had no legal rights.  I mean, they could do anything, and they were loved and beloved by the Turks they really were.  They led wonderful lives under the Turks.  But they could not be legal citizens.  That meant that they didn’t have to serve in wars or anything else.  Well, when [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk – have you ever heard of Ataturk?

RB:  Yes. 

DM:  When he came into power, he wanted the Jews to have equal everything.  That meant they all had to serve in the Army.  When you went into the Turkish Army, that was it.  You were never heard from again.  I mean, you got in there, they kept you in for thirty years.  A lot of the young men didn’t want to – and then economics were bad.  Europe was going through a very bad recession.  So, the two combined drove everybody out of there.  

RB:  Did they talk much about the difficulty in getting tickets or a ship?

DM:  No, no, my mother said no problem there.  If you could get the money together.  And it was only – what did she say?  Steerage was maybe fifty bucks to come to this country.  But even then, it was hardship for a lot of people.  Like I said, my father sold his business in Rhodes, so he already had money.  And then he came here.  The first year he already made a big success.  So he sent back all this money to bring everybody over.  But his own father and mother and his sister didn’t want to come.  But my mother’s family – yes.  They weren’t about to stay there.  

RB:  They were ready.

DM:  Yeah.  They’ve never regretted it.  They’ve always loved it here.  They always loved America first.  All that kind of stuff.  

RB:  Now, you mentioned earlier, before we actually started the interview, how proud you are of your parents and your grandmother.

DM:  Oh yes.

RB:  I wondered if you could tell us about, describe that on tape for us.

DM:  Right.  My Grandmother.  First, I’ll start with my grandma, Leah Mossafer, who was the true matriarch in the Sephardic community.  Bar none.  You can ask anybody, and they will tell you that.  If you just call the Ezra Bessaroth and get one of the past issues of The Clarion, they had a big write-up on her.  I mean, she was everything in this community, and she came here at a very young.  She was about forty, I think she was.  No, she wasn’t that old.  Maybe thirty-eight or thirty-nine, something like that.  She was founder of what was to become the Ezra Bessaroth.

RB:  Let’s stop for a second because people outside of Seattle may not know what the Ezra Bessaroth is.

DM:  All right.  The Ezra Bessaroth is the congregation founded by the people from Rhodes. 

RB:  So, the Jewish –

DM:  Jewish Sephardic people who came from Rhodes.  Ezra Bessaroth means – I used to know.  I can’t think of it.  I can’t remember.  You can look that up, I think.  So she organized – War World I came.  Now, she served ten years.  She organized a Women’s Auxiliary [at] the Ezra Bessaroth.  She served ten years.  Then she put my mother in [for] ten more years.  Then she put my aunt in for five years.  Then, my other aunt. [laughter] She wanted to be sure that that organization was going concern.  Then, she served – when World War II – before America went in, she had already organized a Red Cross unit.  All this was taking place at my mother’s house because my mother was very active in the Red Cross, and she used to march in the parades and all that kind of stuff with her uniform.  So, my grandma was ten years the head of that.  

RB:  And the first.  

DM:  The first.  She was the first Sephardic woman to do anything.  And then, right behind her was my mother because when my grandma used to – my grandma could pull all of us into everything. [laughter] But that’s the way my family was.  That’s why we learned from my grandma.

RB:  What specific values did you learn or beliefs did you learn from her?

DM:  Well, for one thing, tenacity.  Stay with it.  Another thing, work hard, but don’t expect people to thank you for this.  You do it because you want to do it.  That was my father’s philosophy, my mother’s philosophy, and my grandma’s philosophy.  You do what’s right, and you do it not for thanks but because it’s the right thing to do.  Then I learned to be kind to people.  To be gracious.  My father, my mother, and my grandmother were three prime examples, and you can tell from the love of my voice that they were wonderful people to be around and wonderful achievers [unclear].  Achievers.  I don’t know how else to describe them.  

RB:  Did they ever talk to you about their love of community?

DM:  Oh, always.  Their love of community was so evident.  But it wasn’t only just community.  I mean, they were workers for Sephardics, Ashkenazim, gentiles – didn’t make any difference.  They believed in service.  They were ready to serve anybody.  My dad worked with the Blacks, the Indians, with the Seattle University Milk Fund, orthopedic – he loved them – money-raising committees for all these things.  Plus, the World’s Fair.  Plus, was one of the founding members of Seattle Talmud Torah.  He never sent us there because he organized the Sephardic Talmud Torah.  But he believed in Jewish education for all children.  We used to go to the Temple De Hirsch, and we went to the Ezra Bessaroth.  I’ll tell you how we started going to the Temple De Hirsch.

RB:  Can we take a step back just for a second? 

DM:  Yeah, go back.

RB:  Your father was really one of the founding members of –

DM:  Ezra Bessaroth.

RB:  Ezra Bessaroth.  He was also the first President, is that right?

DM:  Right.

RB:  Of Ezra Bessaroth.

DM:  In the new building.

RB:  In the new building.  What year was it, do you know?

DM:  1917.  The year that I was born.  November 1917.

RB:  That’s great.  And at the same time, he really believed in exposing you to different people and different Jewish people.

DM:  Always.  Always.

RB:  So Temple De Hirsch, can you describe to those who –?

DM:  Temple De Hirsch, when they wanted to raise money for the Ezra Bessaroth, and they didn’t have any money – there weren’t that many people here – my father, you know, through his business and all came in contact with Rabbi Koch, Samuel Koch from Temple De Hirsch.  

RB:  Temple De Hirsch was the Reform?

DM:  The Reform temple.

RB:  Ashkenazic Temple.  German.

DM:  German Reform.  They became very fast friends.  My dad said, “Rabbi we need to build a synagogue.  How shall we go about it?  How should we go about trying to raise funds for this?”  There were just so few of them.  So Rabbi Koch said, we’ll get a bid, and you’ll try to raise half, and I will try to raise the other half through the members of the Temple De Hirsch.  So, these people had bazaars.  They had different affairs to raise funds for the Ezra Bessaroth, who they didn’t even know.  But Rabbi Koch was very cognizant of the accomplishments and contributions of the Sephardics in Spain originally.  He followed that history, and he knew everything.  Everything that had gone on from the Inquisition.  He explained this to his congregation, and they raised half of the money for the Ezra Bessaroth.  So, with the members that had a few bucks at the Ezra Bessaroth, they were able to build it.  And my father – my brother, John, remembers very clearly – he took a year off.  All he would do is go early in the morning and buy for all the markets, and the rest of the time, he would be huddled with the architects and going from place to place, raising money and all that until they built the Ezra Bessaroth.  Now, as a thank you – because he appreciated it so much – my dad appreciated so much what they did – he, Nessim Alhadeff, and my Uncle Morris Hanan became members of the Temple De Hirsch as a thank you, as an appreciation.  Do you know, Roz, that every second day of Rosh Hashanah – the first day, the Reforms would spend in their synagogue.  On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, my dad always had a front row cleared, and Aubrey Levy, Eugene Levy, Otto Guthman, Otto Grunbaum, Nathan Eckstein, Rabbi Koch – all the big shots from the Temple would come on the second day to the Ezra Bessaroth, and they would sit there for the service on the second day.  Afterward – and this is so clear in my memory – they would come to our house.  Our house was sort of the guest place.  My mother always had a guest room for any out-of-town guest, all in white French.  Anyway, they would come, and my mother would have a tray.  She had this big tray.  She would put the water and the Charopi – do you know what the names of any of the Sephardic sweets were?

RB:  Well, I think it would be great if you could describe this custom.  

DM:  All right.  This was something – this was a very gracious custom, especially if you had guests.  Special guests.  You carried a tray, and you went from guest to guest, and on this tray, there were little glasses of water, and there was Charopi, which was a kind of a candy type of thing made with sugar and whites of egg [and] water and stuff like that.  Then there was bimbrio, which was quince, made of quince.  It was cut up in little squares, you know.  There was baklava.  This kind of stuff.  And you had all this.  So, I was a little girl.  I can remember clearly as if it were right today.  My mother would be behind me holding – and I would go from place to place, and they would each eat whatever they wanted to eat.  And they always say, “Pretty little Dorothy.”  You know [what] you say to a little kid.  Every second day of Rosh Hashanah, for as many years as I can remember, these men came.  

RB:  That’s marvelous.

DM:  I can’t remember all of them that came.  But there were different ones sometimes.  But they came as a thank you to my dad, too.  This was something you don’t forget.

RB:  Absolutely.  It sounds like they were very close in their relationship.

DM:  Very close.  Very close.  When my father died in 1967, there were over a thousand people at his funeral.  The mayor, the governor, Senator Magnuson, Senator Jackson, Representative Brock Adams, the head of the council – the different people that were sitting on the council.  All the dignitaries in the city were at that funeral.  It’s the only funeral that has ever been held at the Ezra Bessaroth – the first and only and never since.  They didn’t even have the sanctuary; they just had the hall at the time.  It was jammed-packed.  They were standing outside.  That’s how big it was.  But they came from everywhere.  From Father LeMieux from Seattle University – I can’t even begin – the owners of the Fisher Flour Mill.  The owners of – I don’t know.  All the dignitaries were there.  That’s the kind of a man he was.

  

RB:  They really recognized him and greatly appreciated—

DM:  He was a leader.  I mean, he was a leader.  He didn’t push himself forward.  He did all the background.

  

RB:  Now, tell me, just out of curiosity, how your mother must have been, I’m imagining, incredibly supportive.  What was her role in all of this?  Tell me about her.

DM:  About her?  She was a little marshmallow.  

RB:  What do you mean?

DM:  My dad was strong and disciplined.  He was a disciplinary.  And my mother, in the first place, highly intelligent.

RB:  Right.

DM:  Highly supportive.  A real worker.  My father always provided maids and help.  He wanted her to be an official hostess besides having five children, my grandmother, my uncle, and my father’s brother who lived there.  I don’t have to tell you – ten, twelve people every night.  Fifteen people for dinner.  But he wanted her – he had one bedroom set aside in the house.  We had five bedrooms.  Her bedroom and this other bedroom were all done in white French.  Beautiful furniture.  I wish I had it today.  That bedroom housed all the dignitaries that came to visit the Sephardic community.  Did you ever hear of Dr. David de Sola Pool?

RB:  Yes.

DM:  When he first came here, he stayed with us.  I can go on and on [about the] dignitaries that stayed at our house.  So, my mother had to be available to do a lot of things.  This is what my father wanted.  She was an incredible hostess.

RB:  I can imagine.

DM:  Just an incredible hostess.  I can remember that we had a washing machine.  My mother used to wash some blankets once in a while.  But to go back to those days, there was a dry-wash service.  You send for the laundry, they washed it, they brought it back to be ironed, and she had a woman who ironed the stuff because she had a big family.  But you can’t be a hostess in the forefront and do everything.  My dad was wonderful that way, and my mother was remarkable.  She was just remarkable.  My father was very active in the Boy Scouts.  My brothers were in there.  My mother was very active in the Blue Birds because my sister and I were there.  We used to go to the summer camps.  My folks would come to visit us on the Sundays, and Vashon Island was the one camp and Bainbridge Island where the boys were. [laughter] I don’t know how they did all the things.  They gave us everything.  Everything.  Thank God they were able to do it, but they encouraged us to do it.  My mother and dad had another child.  He was born after she got to this country with John.  His name was Nissim.  They used to call him Ned.  He was three years old, and my brother, Bob, had just been born, had been born in April.  This happened the end of July of 1914.  He was walking across the street.  My mother was on the corner of 15th and Yesler.  They had this Collins Playfield over a block away.  My mother was there watching them.  They went across the street.  My brother, John, and my little brother.  He was three years old.  Just three years old.  And a friend.  They had him between them.  They walked across the street.  My mother saw them go.  She turned and then all of a sudden she heard a screech of brakes.  She turned back, and my little brother – he had a little ball in his hand, and it got loose, so he tore away from the boys and ran to get the ball and the streetcar killed him right there.  Right in front of my mother.  Well, I guess she absolutely went insane, needless to say. 

 

RB:  How awful.

DM:  Horrible.  Horrible.  They had to get some way to lift the cable off his body.  Oh, it was horrible.  Terrible thing.  But aside from that – so she always lived in fear for the children.  But my dad refused to let us live in fear.  So he was up there teaching us how to go off diving boards and how to swim.  My brothers used to swim across the lake and back.  Lifted somebody into the boat.  My mother would be screaming on the shore.  My father would say, “Let them be.  I don’t want you to make them …” [laughter] It’s hard.  It wasn’t easy.  

RB:  That must have been an incredibly traumatic and hard time for your mom and your dad.

DM:  Horrible.

RB:  And siblings.

DM:  The only time my mother would dwell on it – I mean, I knew she was dwelling on it – was on the day of his birthday and the day he was killed, which were the same week.  She didn’t want to go anywhere.  She just wanted to be left alone to the day she died.  

RB:  Is that right?

DM:  And then, in death throes, she relived the whole thing.  

RB:  She did.  What do you mean?

DM:  Well, she got very, very sick.  She was dying.  She had gone into a coma, and we were all sitting there and couldn’t bring her back.  We knew she was dying.  But all of a sudden, we were sitting there, and she reared herself up in bed at the Providence Hospital, and she opened her eyes wide.  Now, she was in a coma.  She said in Spanish, “Mama.”  She’s talking to her mother.  “Take me out of this fire.  I’ve been burning in hell long enough.”  She laid back, and she died within a short time.  It was so terrible.  My brother John said, “My God,” and my mother never said boo to us.  Never yelled at us.  She’d gather us in because of what had happened.  My brother John said, “My God, I haven’t heard Mama – I haven’t heard her yell like that since Nissan was killed.”  That screaming.  That screaming.  All the doctors and everybody were trying to console her.  They were amazed that she came out of the coma.  But then she died.  But the funny thing is that I was leaning over her, and she thought I was her mother.  So, she started to slap me.  Because apparently, her mother was slapping her to get her out of this screaming that she was doing at the time of Nissan’s death.  She thought that I was her mother.  She called me, “Bolissa, Bolissa, stop it.  Stop it.”  Then she died.  Yeah, so that was the one tragedy in my mother’s life.  It was something she couldn’t forget because of the way it happened.  It was a horrible thing that happened.  And right in front of her.  It was a terrible thing.  But for the rest, she was a wonderful mother, I’ll tell you.  

RB:  She sounds like it.

DM:  She was.  My grandmother, my mother, and my dad were superior people.  You can ask almost anybody.  You can ask anybody from Calvo – anybody related [inaudible] Anyone will tell you.  I’m sure your mother would tell you.

RB:  Yes.

DM:  Your grandmother, I meant.

RB:  They’re very well known.  Your parents.

DM:  It isn’t only well known but highly respected.

RB:  Highly respected.

DM:  Because they deserved the respect.  They were unusual people.

RB:  That’s right.

DM:  Well, anyway, that gives you an insight into my parents.  I can tell you so many stories, though.

RB:  So much to be proud of.

DM:  Yeah. [laughter] I’ve got so many wonderful stories to tell you about.   But I don’t want to take all this time.

RB:  Oh no, it’s great.

DM:  Well, I’ll tell you something that I thought was very cute.  My father had this big company that he had, and he used to service the Japanese boats, the Russian boats, and the Greek boats that came into this area, providing them with fruits and vegetables and all that kind of stuff – exotic fruits and stuff.  So, when the Russian boat – one Russian boat – and he became very familiar with the pursers and the stewards and all the different people.  This man brought him some gray fox furs from Russia.  Now, gray fox, not silver fox, but gray fox was very unusual.  So, he says, “I want you…”.  Now, my dad used to bring these people to the house all the time.  And my mother had [inaudible].  That’s why I said this is the way I grew up.  Just constantly with people there.

RB:  Very generous.

DM:  Oh, that’s the way my dad wanted to live.  That’s the way my mother did.  So, he says, “I brought these beautiful furs, and I want you to make something beautiful for your wife.”  My dad says, “Great.”  Now, there was a Mr. Steinberg who was a master tailor, and my dad called him to the house.  So, Mr. Steinberg said, “Oh, my god, I haven’t seen things like this…”.   He came from Russia.  I haven’t seen this kind of stuff.  Let me think.  Now, my mother was a small woman.  Anyway, he designed a coat for her in – I don’t know if it was cashmere.  I think was a cashmere [inaudible,] but it was darker than royal, but not navy, that beautiful (elder?) blue.  He made a coat for her, which just came out of Dr. Zhivago.  Fur all around the bottom.  A milliner, Ethel Young, who was just starting out, made her a hat.  Found the velour to exactly match it and made her a hat.  It came up off her face and higher to give her height.  I can still remember when I went with her to get the dress; they were making up a dress at Frederick and Nelson.  They used to have a custom place there.  They made a dress for her.  She wore it the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and she came out, walking – did you ever go?  You wouldn’t know the old Ezra Bessaroth.

RB:  Not the old one, the new one.

DM:  The new one.  She came up the stairs, and she was at the other end in the front row.  When she was walking, I was walking right behind her.  All the women turned around to stare.  She looked like a princess.  I mean, a princess.  When she sat down afterward, “Oh, Bolissa, Bolissa, where did you get that?  How?  I never saw such an outfit.  I never saw anything like this.”  But this is the way my dad loved her to be.  But that particular outfit, I tell you, I could draw it for you.  You know what I mean?  It was so gorgeous.

RB:  Do you still have it?

DM:  Oh god, no.  I don’t know what she did with it.  I was just a little girl.  Maybe five-years-old.  Something like that.  Six-years-old, something like that.  But I was always right there. [laughter] I had to be a part of everything.  You know what I mean?  Whether it was my dad or my mother, I was right there.  I can remember things that none of the family would even remember, especially boys; they did know from nothing.  And my sister was two years younger.  My cousin Julia Hanan Freidman was a year older than I was.  So, the two of us were always involved in anything.  Everything we have [of] the family comes from my mother, and Julia and me, who remembered everything and wrote it all down.  But that’s the way we were raised.  Beautiful things.  My father loved antiques.  So, he used to furnish the house with the most beautiful antiques.  I talked with Mary Ovadia who could tell you – beautiful stuff.  The davenports were not – tapestry made in petit point.  She had chairs like this, all in petit point, all marble top tables.  We had two original – we had one original Charles Russell, another Fred Remington – you probably don’t know anything about them.  But the O.K. Corral – you’ve heard of those?  These were originals painted by the artist, which today would be worth millions.  But my mother eventually thought she wanted to go modern; she was tired of so many antiques.  She had so many antiques – the whole house.  The minute anything would come out, my father would buy it.  The minute – whatever.  We had player pianos.  In our house, we had a pass-through from the kitchen to the dining room, so the maid could take things from.  We had living room, music room, dining room – all in oak floors – and doors that separated certain rooms for privacy.  We had player pianos.  The first one – and I’ll tell you one thing about my folks, my dad loved ¬– and my mother too – they used to go to the Metropolitan Theatre.  Now that is where the front – you know where the drive-in entrance is to the Olympic?  That used to be the Metropolitan Theatre.

RB:  So the Olympic Hotel in downtown Seattle – Four Seasons it’s called now – was originally –

DM:  Was the Metropolitan Theatre.  Was where the drive-in entrance is to the Olympic.  My father used to have a box there on the side.  They took me a couple times, so I know.  When Enrico Caruso came, when Sarah Bernhardt came, when Madame Schumann Heink, the great singer came – whatever celebrity came, they went.  Now, they were the only ones who really and truly loved going and doing.

RB:  And appreciated.

DM:  And appreciated it.

RB:  Now, you have quite a flair for creative design in your background, and I can’t help but wonder if you picked that up from your parents.  The love of art and design?

DM:  Oh yes, I did.  Well, I learned a lot from my mother.  Now, my mother was a wonderful seamstress.  Nobody taught.  In those days, you pick things up.  I used to watch my mother take old hats and steam them and redo them for me, for my cousins.  I watched her, and she showed me how to use a coffee can as a block.  In those days, they didn’t have blocks.  Then, as I got older, when I got married, and even before, I used to make fabric types of hats.  And then, when I got married, my mother said, “Why don’t you go to Edison Vocational and take a few months course to show you how to work with the steam irons?”  So, I did.  My husband said, “Sure, go ahead.”  He let me do anything.  He was like my father; I could do anything.  So, I went.  I took a course, and I made beautiful hats.  You can ask around the community.  I made not only hats, but I made whole weddings, crowns, mothers of the bride, bridesmaids.

RB:  Do you have pictures or the real thing?

DM:  I did have.  I don’t know.  Everything got kind of lost.

RB:  Any pictures, do you think?

DM:  Of what I made?

RB:  Yeah.

DM:  Isn’t that awful?

RB:  It would be wonderful to have.

DM:  Yes, it would be.  It’s just too bad.  

RB:  It’s too bad.

DM:  I made beautiful things.  A lot of brides like – do you know who Fern Meltzer is?  All right.  You call Fern.  Fern died.  Her daughter, Bobbie.  Do you know Bobbie?

RB:  I know the name.

DM:  Bobbie Stern.  She still has the – she still has a fur hat I made for her for her going away.  I don’t think she had the bridal thing.  I think Linda Morgan – it’s Linda Rogers Morgan – well, she still has something I made.  I don’t know who else might have.

RB:  We might be able to call those women to see if we could take a picture.

DM:  Bobbie might still have it.  She had it the last time I knew.  In fact, I made myself a mink hat.  I went to Frederick and Nelson.  I used to always go to the fur department for that, you know.  So, there was a woman who was buying something, and she said, “That’s what I want.  One like she’s got.”  So the buyer knew me, and he said, “Where did you get that Mrs. Muscatel?  Who made that for you?”  I said, “I made it myself.”  This woman said, “Will you make me one.”  I told her, “Give me some fur, some scraps, and I’ll see what I can do.”  So I made her a hat, and she was thrilled to death.  Then I made countless fur hats.  I had the needles and I knew how to sew.  I watched my mother do these things, and I became a very excellent seamstress strictly on my own.

RB:  This was after you were married or before?

DM:  After I was married.  I was only married a short while.  A couple years, three years, four years.  But I kept doing it all the way.  And then one day – like I say, I love to sew, and so I said to my husband, “You know what I’m going do?”  Northwest Harvest, which is Northwest Harvest now – at that time, it was called Neighbors in Need.  They were desperate for money.  I said, “You know what I’m going to do?  I’m going to make some handbags.”  Fabric handbags.  That was before they started to come out.  I went to Hancock Fabrics.  They used to be on Empire Way.  I told them what I wanted to do.  “I want to make these.  I’m going to sell them and give all the money to the Neighbors in Need.”  So, they gave me all kinds of pieces.  I bought a lot of it too.  But whenever they had little short pieces, they gave me, and I was able to put them together.  So, I made twelve handbags, every one different.  I took them in a box out to Glendale Country Club because I was playing golf on Tuesday.  Afterward, I came into where the girls were playing cards.  I said, “Now girls, I made these, and I’m going to start to make them, and I’m going to raise money for Neighbors in Need.”  My husband said, “For God's sake, just give them the money.”  “No, I’ve got to do this.  This is something I have to do.”  So, I opened up the box, and there were tons of girls around.  So they all came to look at them.  “Oh, I’ll take this one.  I’ll take this one.”  I said, “I’m going to charge ten dollars.  And it’s all going to go …”.  Well, before I got out of there, I must have had an order for a hundred bags.  You know Jay Jacobs, the store Jay Jacobs?  Well Rosie, his wife, said, “I’m going to take one for each of my daughters.”  “Rosie,” I said, “You’ve got a store.”  “I don’t care.  These are originals.  These are different.”  I don’t even know how much I made.  They raised two thousand dollars on that stuff.  I gave part of the money to Neighbors in Need, and I gave part of the money to Kline Galland.  I gave part of the money to different charities.

RB:  Neighbors in Need, what organization – what do they serve?

DM:  Well, that’s what became Northwest Harvest. 

RB:  So, for people outside of Seattle, is Northwest Harvest –?

DM:  Northwest Harvest is now the agency that raises food for the homeless and the hungry. 

RB:  It was called Neighbors in Need.

DM:  It was called Neighbors in Need.  That’s the way it started.  So, then I was –I’d just make handbags.  All the organizations would ask me would I make some for donations for raffles and things.  I made tons of them.  Countless numbers.  My husband would stand there and watch me.  “God, you’re a glutton for punishment.  You’re just like the rest of your family.  You never stop.” [laughter]

RB:  What’s remarkable is that you found a way to balance your creative side –

DM:  I had to.

RB:  – with your philanthropic desires.

DM:  I had to do this.  When graduated from high school, I was enrolled at the University of Washington.  My father had two people in law school, one in medical school, and then the Depression was starting to get bad.  He had to close a lot of places because he couldn’t manage them all over the state.  So, I started, and they said, “Dorothy, would you mind putting that on hold for a year?”  And he says, “I have a friend who says he will take you in business college for a few months because I’ve got a good job for you.  The next year, you can go all the time.”  I didn’t care.  Listen, it was plenty difficult to send all those kids.  So I said, “Sure.”  So, I did.  I got the job right away.  And then my cousin, who was already in college – she said, “Look, they’re offering this course where you audit the classes, and it’s part of the University of Washington.  They’re going to have the classes at the Edison Vocational part of it set aside for that – psychology, creative writing, different things – and you’ll get credit for those.  And at night.  Three nights a week.”  So, I did that for as long as I could, but it’s kind of hard when you’re working.  So, I did it as long as I could.  I had to be creative because I wanted to be a costume designer, and I was very good at it.  I used to do all the artwork for the Girl’s Club in Garfield High School.

RB:  Garfield was where you went to high school.

DM:  I went to Garfield High School.  Leschi Grade School.  Garfield High School.  I was chairman of the arts, and I had a wonderful time.  I just loved everything I did with art.  I found ways to be creative by making hats, by doing brides, by sewing, and then I started to do paintings – oil paintings and things like this for several years.  So, it was good.  It was fulfilling.  It was okay.  But now my grandchildren, some of them are very creative, too, very artistic.

RB:  Is that right?

DM:  Yeah.

RB:  So it’s been passed on from your –?

DM:  My son John’s second daughter right now is a sophomore at Syracuse University, and she is in costume design.  She is doing very well.  She brings everything to me and shows me.  I was proud of the way she is learning how to sew and do these things.

RB:  Is that right?

DM:  I think she is going to go far.  One of my little granddaughters – well, that painting back there – she is graduating from Lakeside School next month.  She’s a great athlete, and she’s a fine little painter.

RB:  This painting.

DM:  No, straight back.

RB:  I’ll have to take a look.

DM:  You’ll see it when you go.

RB:  That’s marvelous.

DM:  Yeah, so they’re seven wonderful grandkids, really.  Yeah.

RB:  Well, we should take a step back.  How are you doing?  Are you doing okay?

DM:  I’m fine.

RB:  Great.  Let’s see.  So you have five siblings, is that right?  

DM:  Four.  Five all together.  

RB:  Could you name your siblings for us?

DM:  Yes.  My brother is John Franco.  He was a practicing attorney.  After World War II, his law partner was killed.  He never did like law anyhow, and my father already was in the restaurant business.  Franco’s Hidden Harbor on Westlake.  So, he stepped in there, and my dad wanted to retire, so John took it over and rebuilt it.  And then after six months, my dad couldn’t stand it, so he went back to the restaurant, and they ran it together – it’s a very highly touted restaurant.  Everybody went there.  And did very well there.  He liked that better than the law.  Then, my second brother, Bob – Robert – a surgeon.  He just retired now – a couple years ago.  He lives in Richland, Washington.  My third brother is Albert Franco, who is an attorney.  He’s kind of semi-retired.  He still goes to the office every day, but he’s gone three, four months out of the year.  And then I’m the fourth one.  I was married to Jack Muscatel, who was a businessman with the family business and later in furniture manufacturing.  And then my sister Toddy, the baby.  She was married to an attorney, Mike Horowitz, who was the head of the legal department – well, the government part of the legal department at Boeing.  He had a very prestigious position there.  I have three children.  John Muscatel married to Debbie Posner.  They have three children: Kim – Kimberly, JJ – Jeffrey Jacob, and Lisa.  My son Kenneth, Dr. Kenneth Muscatel.  He is a hydroplane driver. [laughter]  Have you ever heard the name?  

RB:  Isn’t that something?

DM:  Anyhow, he has one child, Jillian.  My daughter Laurie is married to Dr. David Goldman, a dermatologist.  They have three children: Jacqueline, who is graduating from Lakeside this summer; Danny, who is sixteen; and Adam, who is twelve.  That’s seven lovely, caring grandchildren.

RB:  That’s wonderful.  Wonderful.  Now, you were born in –?

DM:  November 10, 1917.  My husband was born November 10, [1914], and my brother Albert was born November 10, [1915].  All three of us.

RB:  Oh, you’re kidding?  So you and your brother are twins?

DM:  No, we’re not.  Two years apart.

RB:  Two years apart.

DM:  But on the same day.

RB:  On the same day.  Now, one of the things that was striking to me is that you have spent so much of your life in philanthropic work and have made so many contributions to our community.

DM:  Thank you.

RB:  Both local, our Sephardic community in Seattle and also our local secular community and nationally and internationally. [laughter] I mean, I was going through the list of all of your volunteer work, and I couldn’t believe it.  There is so much.

DM:  Oh, that isn’t even half of it.  

RB:  So, I wondered if you could talk about that a bit.

DM:  Well, when I was a freshman – well, even before, my dad used to take me, little, tiny kids – I was always – 1928, I was just ten, going on eleven there.  Al Smith was running for President against Herbert Hoover.  I can remember very clearly standing out all over Leschi, handing out paraphernalia for Al Smith in the rain.  It didn’t make any difference.  I was out there because I knew that he was a Democrat, and we were Democrats, and we wanted Al Smith.  So, even at that age, I was already working stuff.  Then, later on, my dad was a Sephardic liaison for the Jewish Welfare Board for thirty-five years.  So everything that went on in the Sephardic community pertaining to anything that was welfare-related went through my dad.  And so naturally, going through my dad, he had to set up everything at home.  So I can remember tons, tons.  But, of course, I would never divulge any of that.  Anyhow, the Welfare Board had an office in the Prefontaine Building on Third Avenue and Yesler.  Do you know where the Prefontaine Building is?  Right on the corner; it’s a little triangle place there.  He said, “Look, Miss Goldsmith, May Goldsmith” – that was the only paid employee they had – “She needs help.”  I said, “Pa, I don’t even know how to type yet.”  “Doesn’t make any difference.  You go down there.  On certain days after school, you are to go.  Take the streetcar.  It takes you right to the door.  I’ll pick you up on the way home.  You stay there, you file, and you do whatever Miss Goldsmith tells you.”  I did it for years.  Years.  In fact, Miss Goldsmith was at my wedding.  Whenever she needed me, I was there.  But at least once a week.  Never failed.  And that’s just one instance.  But my dad was – I don’t know how he did all the things he did.  I just don’t know.  But he did it.  He made us – never had to force us because he just had to tell us.  This is what he wanted us to do, and we did it.  That’s all.

RB:  It’s sounds like philanthropic work was a natural part of your family.  

DM:  Very natural.  Very natural.  Very natural.  We were brought up with this.  I mean, my father was a great money-raiser.  But you can’t go out and raise money if you don’t put your money behind you.  This is one thing that I learned.  You’re going to work for the community, but you have to be there with your own money too.  You still need people to get out there and raise the funds.  My dad was the greatest when it came to that.  The greatest.  And my grandma.  

RB:  And you also, when you were even younger – is this right? – you would go from door to door with your grandma.

DM:  With my grandma.  She had boxes, and I’d go with her.  People would drop a nickel, a dime whatever they could.  I would be with her all the time.  I loved being with her.  I would go with her everywhere.  And later on, when I could drive, I drove her everywhere.  

RB:  There is this process of – your volunteer work has really gone from generation to generation to generation down your family.  It’s so beautiful.  One of the most special projects that I’ve learned about that you’ve been involved in recently has to do with the Seattle Sephardic –

DM:  Sisterhood.

RB:  Well, the chapel and the cemetery renovation. 

DM:  Right.

RB:  And what’s remarkable to me is that your grandmother was so active in volunteering way back when for this.  Then your father was so instrumental and your mother.  And now you.  Could you tell us that history and where you are at now with it?

DM:  Well, let’s see.  Do you want me to tell you what I was president of?  Shall we work on the Brotherhood?

RB:  Well, starting with your grandmother, she would make shrouds, is that right?

DM:  She would make shrouds for the cemetery, which was really the beginning of the committee to do this – a part of the cemetery committee.  Now, my father was the head.  Since 1935 to the day he died in ’67, he was the overseer of the whole cemetery.  He found the land.  He got the money to build a chapel, which was the first of the chapels to be built.  Herzl and Bikur Cholim came later.  My dad got the money for this.  He saw the need of it.  He had to get the people out of the rain once in a while.  And got out there and raised the funds for the gates and everything.  So, until the day he went to the hospital and died a week later, he went out there to talk to Mr. Quiring from the monuments and different people to be sure everything was good while he was in the hospital.  He was eighty-six years old at that time.  It’s a remarkable thing.  I was president of the Seattle Sephardic Sisterhood at one time for several years.  I happened to – I was out at the – I was always very interested because my family is so involved always.  I went out to the cemetery one day and said, “This place has to be fixed up.”

RB:  When was this?  When did you go out there and think about it?

DM:  Well, about five years ago.  Five, six years ago, I think it was.  I came home, and I told my brother Albert, “We’ve got to do something about the cemetery.”  My brother John had been out there, too, and he said the same thing.  So I called Tommy Bensussen, who was President of the Brotherhood.

RB:  The Sephardic Brotherhood.

DM:  Sephardic Brotherhood, I’m sorry.  I said, “Tommy, we should try to raise some funds and enlarge the chapel, fix up some of those graves.”  Because my dad was on top of everything, but he had been gone since ’67.  If you’re not a full-time volunteer out there, things will fall apart.  That’s how this whole thing got started.  

RB:  Really?

DM:  Well, I’m sure other people might have had the idea, but I was the one that instigated the whole thing.  I got people starting thinking that way.  So now they are going ahead, and they’re really going to fix it up really nice.  They’re spending a lot of money, and they’ve got – listen, land sinks, tombstones topple, and all kinds of things.  Vandals have been out there.  Anyway, it’s going to be very nice.  

RB:  So the plan now is to enlarge the chapel and to –

DM:  A little bit.  But they’re going to fix it up real good.   But in the meantime, they’re going to have a great big marble wall all the way across with all the names, and then certain families will give one hundred thousand here, one hundred thousand.  They’re trying to raise a million.  I think they’re trying to raise 1,700,000.  They’ll get it.  They’ve probably got it all ready.  They’ve taken a lot of the tombstones out and refixing the land and filling in, and then they’re going to reset them.  A lot of work.  Lots of work.  But it will be very, very nice because they did it in the old cemetery, and they redid it.  We all chipped in, and they didn’t even have to – they sent out a letter, and everybody came forward, put up the money, and they fixed the whole little cemetery.

RB:  But you provided the leadership for this?

DM:  Well, I just happened to mention it. [laughter]

RB:  But they listened to you.

DM:  I just mentioned it to Tommy, and he says, “Yes, you’re absolutely right.”  And then my brother John said, “Don’t talk too much or they’re going to expect you to put up the whole money.”  I said, “I haven’t got the money.  I just think everybody in the community should put up money, and let’s fix these things up.”  You can’t neglect it.  It’s got to be done.  

RB:  Wasn’t there a famous quote of your father’s, something about the upkeep of the cemetery?  You tell me the quote.

DM:  I can’t think of it.

RB:  Something about the community.

DM:  Yup.  You can tell a community by its cemetery.

RB:  That’s the quote.

DM:  You can tell the community by its cemetery.  He lived by that rule.  Because if you went to a community with a rundown cemetery, the community was rundown.  It was not run well.  But if you kept your cemetery up, the community was behind everything.  He lived by that rule.  He was a very dedicated man.  Very dedicated.  The people at the Brotherhood – I mean, most of them are dead now, but most of the ones that are living know his contributions.   They know how important it was that he was there.  There wasn’t anybody else who could do it, that’s all.  He had the expertise.  He had the knowledge.  He had the patience and the dedication.  That’s the whole thing – the dedication.  

RB:  That’s what counts.

DM:  You’ve got to stay with it, that’s all.

RB:  Well, our tape is almost running out, so I’m going to stop the tape for a minute, and hopefully, we’ll be back.  Okay?

DM:  Wonderful.

RB:  I’ll just stop it for a second.  Thank you so much.

[END OF TAPE 1 OF 3]

RB:  Hi, this is Roz Bornstein, and I’m back with Dorothy Muscatel on April 12, 2001.  We’re on disc two.  Dorothy, do I have your permission to tape you?

DM:  Yes, of course.

RB:  Thank you.  We’re wanting to talk a little bit about more of your –

DM:  Activities?

RB:  Yes.  So please describe them.

DM:  Okay.  Now, when I was in high school, I was an officer of the Junior Hadassah.  That was a lot of fun.  I was Sweetheart of the Junior Sephardic League, [laughter] which was also a lot of fun.

RB:  What was the Jewish –?

DM:  Junior Sephardic League.

RB:  What was that?

DM:  Well, it was just kind of an offshoot.  Like the AZA, except it was Sephardic.  I was involved with the AZA, of course, but the Junior Sephardic League was an offshoot of the Seattle Progressive Fraternity, which later became the Seattle Sephardic Brotherhood.  We were the young Sephardics.  We had wonderful, wonderful times.  

RB:  This was for high school?

DM:  Well, it started in high school, and it went on until we got married.  And then, trying to see what else I did.  Oh, while I was in high school, I was a member of the Garfield High School Board and all that – cabinet and all that.  And then, I was president of an organization in high school, [a] sorority called the Spinsters.  Now, it encompassed all the high schools in the city: Ballard, Roosevelt, Lincoln, West Seattle.  I was named the first president.  

RB:  What did the Spinsters do?

DM:  Well, besides being social, we raised money for philanthropic things as much as young people could.  Almost anything that I was involved in, we always were raising funds for something – for people who needed – and don’t forget these were Depression years, and the need was great.  Not that anybody had much, but whatever we had, if nothing else, we just would volunteer to help out to do things.  You know what I mean?  When somebody needed help, we’d go.  I can remember some of us went to clean somebody’s house who was very ill.  She lived in West Seattle – the Spinsters.  So we used to do all these kind of things.  We were all brought up well, and we knew the need was there.  We had our dances and our parties, but we’d do philanthropic work, too.  

RB:  And the Spinsters, was it a secular group of kids?

DM:  Yes.  In fact, I think I was the only Jewish member if I recall.  Not because of any reason but because I just happened to be – that’s all.  

RB:  What was that like for you, being the only Jewish –?

DM:  I never even thought about it.

RB:  So, it wasn’t an issue at all?

DM:  There was no issue in those days.  You were Jewish; you were gentile, you were Italian, you were Black, you were white.  We didn’t even think about it.  I had tons of Jewish friends.  I had tons of gentile friends.  I had Asian friends.  I had Black friends.  It’s not like today, where everything becomes so stereotyped.   We didn’t think that way in those days.  

RB:  What do you think the difference is now?

DM:  Well, for one thing, I think there is too much publicity.  I don’t think there were that many prejudices.  I mean, I just never thought about it.  I don’t know.  I used to go out with Jewish boys, gentile boys.  I belonged to – I was the president of the East Madison Junior Orthopedic Guild when I was in high school.  That encompassed a lot of people that lived in Broadmoor and different things different places.  I don’t know.  George Gunn’s daughter, Cleata Gunn was there.  And John Loor Locke from Fisher Flour Mill – she belonged.  I don’t know.  Tons of people.  There were a few Jewish people.  There weren’t that many Jewish girls who were involved, who even wanted to be involved.

RB:  Is that right?

DM:  Yeah.  I don’t know whether they were just shy or just didn’t – probably because they were shy and their parents were – they never did see the example.  But I saw it, and I saw my parents were always involved – Jews and gentile alike.  My brothers and all of us were taught this way.  That’s the way we grew up.  So then there was – oh, let me see, I’m trying to think.  Of course, I told you that, in 1940, when I first got married, I was asked to be a co-chairman with a Mrs. Utter.  Judge Robert Utter – his mother.  So, I worked with her on price control, and it was just beginning now, just starting – the rumbles of the war to come.  So, they were cutting back – you had to have stamps and all this kind of stuff.  So I worked with her through Hadassah because they appointed me to do it, so I worked with her for quite a while on that.  I was very active in the National Council of Jewish Women.  I did most of the decorating.  I loved decorating.  I did murals.  They had a thrift shop down in the market, so I did the murals on the walls of the women, and I loved doing things like that.  For twenty-five years, I did all the decorations at Glendale Country Club for the golfers, for the parties, for everything.  Then, when I was pregnant with my second son, Kenny, I was the Mobilization Day chairman for the Federation, Jewish Federation.  In those days, you didn’t send in your money; somebody went to your door to collect.  

RB:  Right to the door.  Wow.

DM:  Well, I got people to go to all these neighborhoods, so that was okay.  But nobody would go from 12th Avenue to 20th Avenue because everybody had moved away, except there were some people.

RB:  You might want to describe the neighborhoods that you were working with because for people outside of Seattle, they may not –

DM:  They may not know.  All right.  It was originally predominantly Jewish, white – 

RB:  Which area?

DM:  In the central area in Seattle.  

RB:  Could you give us some boundaries, maybe?

DM:  I would say from 12th Avenue to 20th Avenue.  About six blocks this way, [laughter] and eight blocks this way.

RB:  North, south, east, and west?

DM:  Yes.  From 12th East to 20th.  From 20th North to Jefferson and then Jefferson West down to 12th again.  They were all Jewish homes.

  

RB:  Was it Sephardic, or was it Ashkenazic?

DM:  Well, it was a mixture.  There were Gentiles, too.  This was mixed.  Sephardic and Ashkenazic because this was a Federated Jewish Fund, which we call the Jewish Federation today.  So, I was the M-Day chairman, they called them.  I was pregnant about six months, I think, seven months with my second boy.  Nobody would go in that area.  So, I said, “All right, I will take it.”  I went to every card in that area of Jewish people who lived there.  I remember two particular incidents.  One was a Mrs. Mendelsohn.  Do you know Art Mendelsohn?  No, he was married to Josie Benveniste.  They used to live on the corner of 16th and Yesler.  I went there.  I was wearing high heels. [laughter] In those days, I always wore high heels – pregnant or not pregnant.  I went to her door.  I told her what I was there for, and she was stunned.  She says, “Nobody ever comes here anymore.  Nobody even knows any of us are here.”  I said, “Well, I know.”  I said, “I’ve got your card, Mrs. Mendelsohn.”  And she says, “You know, my darling, you’re pregnant, and you’re coming, and you’re walking and all these stairs and everything.”  So she says, “I’m going to give you a dollar.”  Now, a dollar was a lot in those days for this woman – for a lot of women.  She gave me that dollar, and she blessed me a hundred times.  Then I went to some other homes, and people weren’t there.  I ended up – across the street from the Sephardic Bikur Cholim was the shamas from the synagogue, the Bikur Cholim Synagogue.  They lived across the street.  And Mrs. Barlia – now, here there was no money.  They lived on practically nothing.  It was a Friday.  A hell of a day to go.  But it was the only day I could go.  By that time, it must have been about five o’clock.  Friday at five o’clock.  But it was late spring.  It was in May, June.  My son was born in August.  She opened the door, and she knew who I was, of course, right away.  “What are you doing here?  My God, you’re [inaudible] pregnant.”  I told her, “Mrs. Barlia, I could not leave you out because I wouldn’t do that.”  I’d rather that they said no but give them the option of refusing.  She had tears in her eyes.  “Oh,” she says.  I can’t tell you in Spanish.

RB:  Well, tell us in Spanish.  And you translate.

DM:  I’ll tell you first in Spanish.  “Sus bendicha hija de bendicha madre” – means “You’re a blessed daughter of a blessed mother.”  So, she insisted that I come in.  She had just baked.  Everything was fresh.  Smelled like a million dollars.  The house was immaculate.  She could have put the food on the floor, and I would have eaten it.  It was just linoleums.  Do you know what I mean?  So I sat down.  I had a cup of tea with her and a piece of (desayuno?).  And she gave me twenty-five cents.  Now, that twenty-five cents from Mrs. Barlia was like twenty-five dollars from somebody else.  The fact that I sat with her, and we had coffee or tea together, and she was – I will never forget.  To the day she died – I went to her funeral – I will never forget that woman.  She was so kind and so happy.  When I came back, and I told the committee – I said, “This must not go on.  These people have to be contacted constantly.  Just because they don’t live in the neighborhood where other people moved out, that’s no excuse.  You don’t forget these people.”  From that time on, they were always contacted even if they gave a nickel.  Even if they couldn’t give anything.  Give them the courtesy of calling them.  That was a very memorable occasion to me in my heart.  Made me feel wonderful.

RB:  Can I just stop you here for a minute?

DM:  Yes.

RB:  There are two things that really strike me here.  One is the sense that people wouldn’t go to the neighborhood.  Why weren’t they going into the neighborhood?

DM:  Well, because maybe Blacks had moved in.  I don’t know.  Because they didn’t want to bother.

RB:  What years are you referring to?

DM:  1948.

RB:  So, once Jewish people started moving out of the old neighborhood –

DM:  Yeah, they started going on the other side of 23rd.  Started to go to 24th, 25th.  Me, I was born on 31st, and there was nobody there.  We were raised to begin with a lot of Gentile people.  Most of the Jewish people were centered in that area from 12th to 23rd before.  And then they started to move down.  But you know – lazy.  I have a friend [inaudible] “I don’t have to go in those neighborhoods.  I’ll go where I know I’m going to get money,” and that was the whole thing.  “Because you’ll go, and they’ll say no, and it’s just a waste of time. “ Well, I don’t feel that way.  My folks never felt that way.

RB:  That was the other thing that really struck me here.  Is your sense of paying someone the dignity –

DM:  To do what?

RB:  To give someone the dignity

DM:  Of course.

RB:  Can you tell us more about that?

DM:  Well, it’s what can I tell you.  It started when my dad was taking all these matzahs, and he certainly was a wealthy man.  He didn’t have to go around door-to-door delivering matzahs.  I mean, for nothing.  I mean, he paid for this matzah.  He made a deal with Manshevitz, and he got the matzahs for the people who couldn’t afford it.  And sent it to Palestine, to Hebron.  His uncles were rabbis there.  And to the people here who didn’t have the money to buy it.  He went door to door to all those people and made sure that everybody was covered with matzahs, that no Sephardic family was left without matzahs.

RB:  For Passover.

DM:  For Passover, absolutely.  So, he taught us – and my mother taught us – they always said, “It doesn’t hurt to say – it doesn’t cost you a penny to say a nice word and to show affection for somebody.”  You give person dignity.  Just because they’re poor and they – there but for the grace of God go I.  Used to say that all the time.  I always remember – to the day I die, I’ll never forget these women – how much they appreciated it.  They just absolutely – they were just beside themselves.  So, Mrs. Barlia called my mother-in-law, and she says, “I want to tell you your daughter-in-law was here.  Sus bendicha hija de bendicha madre.”

RB:  What does that mean in English?

DM:  Bendiche means blessed.  Bendicha hija is daughter.  Bendicha madre is blessed mother.  Because she had such great respect for my mother and my father.  My folks were everything in the community.  But those words – and she put her – like my grandmother used to do, her hand on my head to bless me.  That is so meaningful.

RB:  How so?  How so?  I see tears in your eyes.  Tell me.

DM:  I think about it.  I can see it.  I can even tell you what I was wearing.  Dark brown, lightweight crepe dress.  They were so grateful to think about it.  There were so many things.  I can’t even tell you.  There is one thing that comes to my mind – I’m looking here.  Talmud Torah.  I joined the Talmud Torah right away because I was involved with everything.  I didn’t even have kids at that time.  But I knew so many Ashkenazic girls.  My father was one of the founders of the Seattle Talmud Torah.  One day, they were having a meeting.  They were going to have to a meeting, and they said to me, “Gee, I’d love to hear your mother talk.”  I said, “Oh, my mother can’t give a speech.  My mother speaks in broken English.”  Well, no, they wanted for the meeting.  So, maybe twenty-five women come.  So, I said to my mother, “Ma, they want you to give a little something about the Torah or something.”  My mother could tell every story in the Bible without ever referring to anything.  “Can you do it?”  She says, “Yeah, I can do it.  I’ll enjoy it.”  I said, “Okay.”  So, I said, “All right.”  Well, I didn’t know that word of mouth – this one told the other, “Mrs. Franco’s coming.”  Well, we went.  My mother and I went.  Where did they come from?  From the normal twenty, twenty-five, there must have been a hundred and fifty people there.  My God.  My mother said, “I thought you said it was a little meeting.”  I said, “It’s always a little meeting.”  Anyhow, they introduced [her].  So, she got up.  I’ll tell you, I was overwhelmed.  I was overwhelmed.  She spoke almost without an accent.  She told stories about the Bible, about different things, how things interacted with other things, and about miracles.  She had everybody like this.  She must have spoken for over an hour, an hour and one half.  I don’t know.  The applause she got.  The people that kept calling my dad – oh my God.  “She was wonderful.” [inaudible] [laughter] No notes, no nothing.  I mean, just strictly what she knew.  

RB:  Natural.

DM:  Oh, I’ll tell you, that was a very memorable day for me.  I was stunned.  I came home.  I told Jack, I told my brother, “My God, where did this all come from?”  My father and my mother had a pact when they first came to this country.  My brother John was just learning how to talk.  He was calling my father “Marco,” and he was calling my mother “Bolissa.”  And they said, “You can’t do that.  It’s mama, papa, mama, papa.”  So, my dad says, “You know what?  I’ll call you, mama.  You call me papa, so he’ll learn.”  They never called each other their first names again. [laughter] They were always mama and papa to each other.  It wasn’t until the day that my dad died and she went to the hearse to bless the casket because we were on the way to the cemetery.  She says, “Marco” – that was the first time I ever heard her call him Marco.  She says, “I came to say goodbye.”  Oh, I’ll tell you.  That was another memorable day.  

RB:  Your mother sounds incredibly learned.

DM:  Oh, she was.

RB:  And also loved and revered by –

DM:  Everybody.  Everybody.  I mean, you couldn’t say one thing about my mother that wasn’t just loving and caring and adorable.  She was so good.  She was such a marshmallow; you could get anything out of her. [laughter] Well, I’ll tell you a few things that I did.  I think it was 1953.  I think it was something like that.  Wait a minute.  Well, let me start with – I was President of the Sephardic Sisterhood.  During that time, we established the Israel Tea.  We got a letter during my presidency that there was an orphanage that needed help desperately in Israel – in Palestine.  It wasn’t Israel at that time.  Oh, yes, it was Israel.  I said, “Why don’t we have a little tea, and we’ll get pretty linens, and we got beautiful service.”  We went out and bought that stuff.  “Let’s have a really nice affair.  And everybody has to bring a shower gift for this orphanage.”  That’s how we started.  So, the whole community came from both synagogues, and it was a gorgeous affair.

RB:  From both synagogues, meaning Ezra Bessaroth –

DM:  Ezra Bessaroth and Sephardic Bikur Cholim.  That was the beginning of the Brotherhood.  We had just started the Brotherhood.  It was a wonderful affair, and we got a mountain of gifts.  All kinds of baby gifts.  It was a baby orphanage.  So, we shipped them all to Israel.  In the meantime, a lot of people gave money too.  So we collected that all [and] sent that all to Israel.  That was the beginning of the Israel Tea.  After that, people just made donations, and we bought what they needed.  They’re still going on.  It’s still going on.  I’m just trying to think here.  Then the Mizrachi Women – I don’t even know – they’re in existence, but I think they call themselves AMIT Women.  I became active in that.  I had just built my house in 1950.  Bessie Gottesfeld, who was the founder of the Mizrachi Women in Israel, was coming to the Northwest, so we had a tea at my house.  It was kind of a brunch, I guess I’d call it.  It was in the summer, and it was on the water.  My first affair at the house.  I remember when Bessie Gottesfeld came in.  She said, “This is such a beautiful house.  On the water.  So beautiful.”  She hadn’t seen anything like this.  It was a beautiful affair, and I became very active in that.  Very active.  Served in many capacities, whatever they needed.  Then, in – let’s see, Laurie was about two years old – about 1955, I served as the co-chairman of the March of Dimes in the city.  We had the area from Madison almost to Renton just before Rainer South.  It was a job.  Oh, it was a job.  I had police cars lined in front of my house because everybody had to bring the money they collected.  The police had to guard that money for the March of Dimes.  

RB:  Oh my gosh.

DM:  It’d be all the volunteers.  Trying to get volunteers.  I was very good [at finding] volunteers.  I’ll tell you something, my husband – he didn’t like to go to a lot of parties and stuff, but I’ll tell you, he was always there for me.  Whatever I wanted to do, he didn’t say no.  

RB:  It sounds like he was very supportive.

DM:  He was very supportive.  He didn’t want to have anything to do with all this stuff.  He said, “You do enough for everybody.”  But he knew I came from that kind of a family, and he wasn’t going to argue.  You know he’d actually stand behind with money, too.  You volunteer; you’ve got to have money to be in there. [inaudible] be there where your mouth is.

RB:  So, he supported you not just financially but emotionally.

DM:  Emotionally, that’s right.

RB:  In every sense, it sounds like.

DM:  Right.  Right.  The only thing he didn’t like was to go to a lot of parties, and I did. [laughter] I was an extrovert, and he was an introvert. [laughter] We had our arguments.  But the other thing I cannot – I cannot ever say anything.  Then, I was president of the Sephardic Bikur Cholim.  I served a few years in that, and up until recently when I got sick, I was always like your grandma; we were always baking and cooking and holding – we were all there for everything.  You must admit that the women of both synagogues, Ezra Bessaroth and Bikur Cholim. are very hard workers.

RB:  Very hardworking.  One thing is significant here – there is a number of significant things, but one is that you became president of the Sephardic Bikur Cholim Sisterhood.  Now, how did you make the switch from Ezra Bessaroth –? 

DM:  Well, because my husband belonged to Bikur Cholim.

RB:  When you courted and married, how was that for your family to marry –?

DM:  Nothing.  All the kids were married from both synagogues or Ashkenazim.

RB:  Your family was very cosmopolitan.  

DM:  Oh, sure.  Cosmopolitan.  My parents were so involved with both synagogues.  My father was a member of both synagogues.  

RB:  And Temple De Hirsch?

DM:  And Temple De Hirsch.  

RB:  So, three?

DM:  And I am, too.  I belong to all three synagogues.  I pay dues at all three synagogues.  I still do after all this time.  I still do because I feel, in my heart, I just can’t drop Temple.  I think to myself, “What am I doing?”   But I can’t do it.

RB:  How come?

DM:  Well, so many things.  Rabbi Koch was very influential in my life.  He used to come to our house a lot.  He took me by the hand at five years of age and put me in the first grade at Temple.  Now, I was a year younger than everybody else in that class, but he wanted me there.  He loved our kids.  He just loved us.  And all through, they used to have Hanukah at Temple De Hirsch, and the folks and the relatives would all send gifts ahead.  They used to have two great big menorahs.  Have you ever been to Temple De Hirsch?  And you know, in the Schoenfeld Chapel, they have these two great big menorahs.  They used to have them on the stage at the Temple.  Then, Rabbi Koch would call names because all the gifts – people would leave their gifts there.  They had entertainment and refreshments.  I can remember how many times I used to go up and get my gifts, and he always –he’d pat me – “My pretty little Dorothy.  Such a good girl.  Such a good girl.”  When I got married – before I got married, he was terribly sick.  I mean really sick.  Just a few days before I got married, my father went to the hospital to see him, and I was standing in the receiving line after I got married at the Olympic Hotel, Spanish Ballroom.  I look up, and there is Rabbi Koch.  I said, “Rabbi, what are you doing here?  My father was just at the hospital to see you?”  He says, “Dorothy, I could not see you getting married without coming here.”  He went from there back to the hospital and died a few days later.  He came to my wedding as sick as he was.

RB:  It meant so much to him.

DM    It meant so much to him because he was so close with our family, and what it meant to me, I can’t tell you.  I never ever – these are moments that you just don’t forget.  If nothing else, just for his memory.  Rabbi Levine was very, very close to our family, too.  Of course, my dad worked very hard for every organization effort – for Temple, for everyone.  It didn’t make any difference if they were Conservative or Reform or Orthodox; he was there for [inaudible], and so was my mother.  My mother was a member of everything.  

RB:  Right along with him.

DM:  Yes.  That’s why I belong there.  Let me see.  Then I have City of Hope.  Fern Meltzer called me up one day, and she said – and we’ve been very close friends.  She said, “I just came home from Portland.”  Her family lived there.  She said, “And they’re forming a City of Hope Chapter.”  It happened that my brother, Bob – the doctor – was the chief resident of City of Hope.  She said, “What do you say you and I start a chapter?”  I said, “Okay, I’ll call Bob, and I’ll ask him to send me some information, and we’ll take a look.”  So, he sent us a whole bunch of stuff.  We sorted through it, and she said, “I’ll call up four other girls.”  She knew who they were.  “We’ll see if we can do something.”  So, we did.  We got together at her house.  Then, the girls were willing to go along.  So, we said, “I’ll tell you what?  There are six of us.  Let’s each be responsible for getting ten members.”  So we got a nucleus of sixty, and I remember that meeting was at my house.  We had enough to form a chapter.  You had to have sixty.  We started City of Hope.  We worked plenty hard until we got it all going.  We got it all going, and then there were other things that we had to work on, too.  There a lot of people that came into the City of Hope who really never did anything anyplace.  And this gave them a nice outlet.  So, I’ve always been a member and always active, but we laid back on that after we got it going.  

RB:  So, this is another example of where you had an idea, either you or a friend, and the two of you made it happen.

DM:  Fern.  Oh yeah, if I was involved in anything – and Fern.  We were great.  We could make anything happen.  We both had connections.

RB:  Marvelous.

DM:  [In the] first place, we were not afraid to work.  Second place, we made time.  She used to drag her kids, too, and I used to drag my kid.  We were very dedicated.  If we said we were going to do something, we were going to do it.  I would never take any kind of project if I couldn’t finish it.  I have refused different things because I know unless I can finish that project, I don’t want to take it.  I’m not going to dump it on somebody else.  Then there was the Guide Dogs for the Blind.  My girlfriend, Jackie Cobarr, who letter married Sidney Rosenberg in California, had two children.  She was divorced.  She used to do public relations for Emil Sick from Rainier Beer.  She got a call from New York, and I can’t remember whether it was J.P. Morgan, the financier – whether it was his daughter-in-law or his niece – I can’t remember, but it was connected to him.  She was starting this Guide Dogs for the Blind around the country.  So, she called Jackie.  She said they’d like to start a chapter out there.  “Can you help us?”  She says, “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”  She [inaudible] calls me up as if I don’t have enough things to do.  I said, “Okay, come on over, and we’ll see what we can do.”  She had a friend who was a charming woman who died of cancer a short while later with a beautiful home in Magnolia.  Jackie lived in Magnolia.  They had money.  She got Marie to come to – Marie [inaudible].  We had the paraphernalia with no money.  I mean, we had no budget.  No nothing.  So, we went to the Olympic Hotel, and we told them what we wanted.  “Would they let us have a room, and if we made any money, we’d pay them.  If we didn’t, would they donate it?”  As I recall, I think they donated it.  I can’t really remember exactly.  So Marie [inaudible] said, “All right, I’ll take care of the invitations.”  We each made a list [of] people that we were pretty sure that we could get to come.  Do you know we got two hundred women?  Three of us.

  

RB:  Two hundred.

DM:  How in the world?  I don’t know how we did it.  No budget.  No money at all.  Jackie said, “I’ll take care of all the publicity.”  Boy, she got us on the radio stations, on everything.  You name it, we were there.  Every newspaper.  Then I said, “All right.  I’ll take care of all the decorations.”  So this was in the ’50s.  I went down to my husband’s factory.  He was a furniture manufacturer.  I took the foreman off the job.  I said, “I drew a dog.”  I said, “I want you to make me like fifty of these.  Cut me out fifty of these dogs.”  So, he did – and a stand with a thing so we could stand the dog up.  I went to what is now Ace Novelty; it was another place.  They had little tiny hydrants, so I got the little hydrants.  I went to Chubby and Tubby’s, and a lot of stuff I got donated because I was a good customer.  I bought chains.  I made little leather straps.  I painted the dogs on both sides just like real dogs.  Put the little leather collar with the chain attached to the hydrant and put it on – and Display Novelty and Supply – I used to do so much decorating for Glendale and everyplace else – they gave me all this artificial grass, and they cut it out for me.  I put them – for every centerpiece.  Anyway, we made a big success.  At that time, it was only two dollars or three dollars, but it had a prestigious name.  You know what I mean?  Knowing that this famous woman was coming and going to talk to them, a lot of people were very interested.  So, after the affair – well, during the affair – her name wasn’t Morgan, but she was a daughter, I think, or a niece or something.  I can’t remember.  She made reference to the centerpieces, and she that she had been to so many, and they just put a little something there.  But this shows real love and commitment to the occasion, Guide Dogs for the Blind.  So, after the affair, she said, “Do you mind if I take these with me around the country and use them at all these different luncheons?”  I said, “No, I’m thrilled to death.  What am I going to do with those darn things?”  So she took them, and she showed them, and they used those everywhere.  That’s how we started Guide Dogs for the Blind, and we did a tremendous job.  Then, once we got it going, I put my sights on someplace else to start things.  We were pretty good starter uppers.  

RB:  I can hear that.  What was your driving force?  Was religion –?

DM:  I don’t know.

RB:  Was it family values?  What were some of the –?

DM:  Oh, I don’t know.  Just things that I knew were necessary.  I was just committed to doing good because I used to see it.  My folks do it.  If a project was worthwhile and I knew it was worthwhile, I would commit to do it.  I was happy to do it.  I served on the Education Board in Temple De Hirsch because my kids were going there, and that was very necessary.  And at Bikur Cholim, at the Ezra Bessaroth – whatever.  Then, I was the Israel Bonds chairman, the Women’s Division, and I served for a long time on that.  But there again, you’ve to have a husband who’s going to come with you to give you the money to do these things because you can be these things if you don’t come forward.  You can’t go and ask somebody, “Give me five thousand dollars,” if you can’t back it.  

RB:  How was it juggling motherhood?

DM:  Oh, I did it.

RB:  Yeah, how did you do it?  Give us some advice here.

DM:  Well, for the first six years when I was in the house – before that, I was in an apartment – I had a woman.  Because I was very sick after Laurie.  I was sick with each one.  I had Caesareans, and I had all kinds of complications.  So, I had Mrs. Wakefield, who was a trained nurse, but she wanted to get out of that kind of stuff.  It just happened that after I had Laurie and I was really very sick, she was available.  She came, fell in love with my kids, and that was it.  For six years, she helped me with the little one.  Although, I took Laurie with me lots of times.  I didn’t want to neglect her.  It just becomes second nature.  I was a den mother.  I was this.  I was that.  All the time, I was doing everything else.  I used to say to my dad, “How can you do so much?”  He said to me, “How can you do so much?”  “I don’t know.  I just do it.” [laughter] My father said, “You never stay.  You never stop.”  Sometimes, Jack would say, “Don’t you ever stop.” [laughter] But I don’t know.  It was just part of my life.  That’s all.

RB:  What were the rewards?  What are the rewards?  You are still working.  What are the rewards?

DM:  Well, I’ll tell you, one of the rewards is I’m an up person.  I don’t get depressed because I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot for myself.  For myself.  My father used to say you don’t do it for other people; you do it for yourself.  If you enjoy it, and I enjoyed it very much.  I loved doing these things.  I loved working with people.  I like interacting with people.  I liked the artistic part of it.  I just loved everything I did all my whole life.  I’ve loved everything.  I like the people I’ve met.  I don’t think I’ve ever met a person I didn’t like.  Really, rich or poor, I didn’t care.  That didn’t matter.  If they were nice people, they were nice people.  I love your grandmother, Rose.  She’s a sweetheart.  She’s a real sweetheart.  You can tell her I said so, too.

RB:  Well, the feeling is mutual.  What I’m thinking, excuse me, Dorothy, I’m so sorry to interrupt you.  

DM:  No, that’s okay.

RB:  But I’m thinking that maybe what we should do is stop here and meet a second time to finish this up.

DM:  All right.  Oh, I haven’t even begun.

RB:  I know.  It’s great.

DM:  I’ve got to tell you about when we were kids with the boats and the Lexington.  My dad had so much influence on the waterfront with the Navy and everything.  Stories to tell.  I’ve got so much here to tell.

RB:  I can’t wait.  I just can’t wait.  All right.

DM:  Okay.  Well, we’ll let it go to another time.  Are you almost through?

RB:  Let me stop the tape, and then we’ll set up a date, okay?

DM:  Am I talking too much?

RB:  Not at all.  Not at all.

[END OF TAPE 2 OF 3 SIDE 1]

RB:  This is Roz Bornstein, and I am here today again with Dorothy Muscatel.  It is April 19, 2001.  I am here to continue gathering Dorothy’s oral history for the Weaving Women’s Word project in Seattle, Washington.  Dorothy, do I have your permission to tape you again today?

DM:  Yes, you do.

RB:  Thank you very much.  So, why don’t we start with where we left off before?  I believe that it was with your young adulthood, right after you graduated, beyond childhood.  Can you tell us a little bit about your –?

DM:  After I graduated from school?

RB:  Sure, tell us about it.

DM:  Well, not too much.  I worked a little bit.  I’ll go to the part where I met Jack.  I didn’t know him.  I knew his family slightly.  I met him at a wedding, and he asked me out.  That was in August.  He kept asking me out, and we ended up getting engaged on November 10, 1939.  We both had our birthdays at that time.  We got married April 13, 1940, at the Spanish Ballroom at the Olympic Hotel.  We had about seven hundred people. [laughter] I know it sounds terrible.  It was just a magnificent affair.  I wonder sometimes how – I was still young.  I had just turned twenty-two – how in the world I knew what to do?  I mean, after all, my in-laws had never put on anything like this.  My folks had never put on anything like this, nor had anybody else.  But I did have a very, very beautiful wedding.  I have pictures.  The men wore black, not tuxedos, but full dress.  Top hats.  I wore hoop skirts, and my bridesmaids had hoop skirts.  And Rosaia’s did all the flowers.  They did a beautiful, beautiful, job. We had Jackie Souder's full orchestra, and then we had – it was just hors d’oeuvre, all the way down the Spanish Ballroom.  It was a memorable evening.  

RB:  Sounds like it.

DM:  Then, I’ll tell you something very funny.  We left at six o’clock in the morning to go by plane back East.  It was a very limited – they were very limited numbers of planes.  There was only one plane a day that went from Seattle to Chicago, and we were on that plane.  We hadn’t eaten the night before.  We hadn’t eaten breakfast.  The minute I got on there, I got deathly ill.  I mean, ill.  I think there were maybe ten to twelve men on the plane, not like today where they have a stewardess who knows what she is doing even.  Anyway, I got terribly ill.  The plane took fifteen hours to go from Seattle to Chicago.  It went up, down, up, down.  It made all the stops all the way to Chicago – all the different cities.  By the time we got to Billings, Montana.  My husband Jack said to the pilot, “I married her last night.  I’m going to bury her tomorrow.  Please get us off of here.”  He said, “We’re bringing on a nurse, and we’re going to give her oxygen.”  There was no oxygen in those flights.  “I’m sure she’ll make it.”  Jack said, “I hope so.”  Anyhow, they brought on a nurse.

RB:  So you were really sick.  You’re not joking.  You were really sick.

DM:  Oh, I was so ill.  You cannot believe how sick I was.  They put oxygen on me.  When they give you oxygen in the cabins are not [unclear], you swell.  My feet got swollen like balloons.  Anyway, they gave me a shot.  Put me to sleep.  We finally got to Chicago.  They get me up.  I couldn’t get into any shoes or anything.  So, the pilot gave me a pair of slippers that he had.  Put them on my feet.  The nurse on one side, the pilot on the other side, Jack bringing up the rear, and the men that were on the plane, that had been on the plane, came along.  All of sudden, we’re going into the terminal.  A little tiny place.  1940, you can imagine.  There were a couple of planes a day.  All of a sudden, I hear, “Here comes the bride,” with an orchestra.  I just kind of lifted my head to see what was going on.  Here is this little orchestra following me.  It turns out that one of the men on the plane was at the Olympic Hotel the night before, and he met Jack.  He said, “What is going on?”  Jack says, “It’s my wedding.  Come on in and have some drinks and stuff.”  So, he did.  So he called to Chicago, and he was an orchestra leader.  He called to Chicago, and he told his orchestra, “We’re coming on this plane tomorrow.  Be there and meet us.”  It was already nighttime.  Who knows what time it was?  Anyhow, they were all sick.  The men themselves had been vomiting all the time, too.  But anyway, this was my welcome to Chicago.  We went to the Palmer House, where we were staying.  I was so ill.  You can’t believe it.  I came down with pneumonia.  

RB:  So, it was pneumonia that had made you ill on the airplane?

DM:  Yeah, but all the treatments and all the cold packs and air blowing, and we were there for a whole week.  I was sick in bed at the Palmer House for one whole week.  I finally got well enough, and Jack called his father at home in Seattle, and he says, “I’m buying a car in Flint, Michigan, tomorrow, and we’re driving the rest of the time.”  We were gone for two and one-half months.  I had no idea we were going to be gone that long.  But he just made up his mind/. He knew he was going to have to get back and work real hard.  He was going to go to Alaska and do packing and all kinds of stuff.  H says, “I’m going to take it now.”  So, we went in a car. We went to Flint, Michigan, by train and got a car, a big Buick Roadmaster, I’ll never forget it.  It was dark wine color, and we toured the whole country.

RB:  The whole country.

DM:  Everywhere.

RB:  What was that like for you?  To be out of Seattle –?

DM:  Oh, it was very exciting because I had never been to anything.  But of course, I wasn’t feeling so hot.  But it was very exciting.  I can’t tell you.  Gee, we went through the floods in Ohio.  We spent Passover in Montgomery, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia, with my relatives.  Then we went to Florida.  We went everywhere – New Orleans, Tennessee.  We went everywhere.  Just everywhere.  And then we went into Mexico, and in those days, who knew from nothing?  We just went.  We didn’t know that you were supposed to take shots or anything else.  We went in.  I still have a dress, and I’ll show it to you, that I brought back from Mexico sixty-one years ago.

RB:  Really?  I would love to see that.

DM:  And my kids’ children have used it for costumes and everything else.  But I kept it anyway.  And then, eventually, we got into Los Angeles.  My cousins lived there and got me an apartment.  We recuperated for two weeks there and had a wonderful time with all the young people that we knew.  Then we went up the coast to San Francisco and stayed there for a little bit.  We got married April 13th, and we got back on the 22nd of June.  That was maybe two months and twelve days or something like that.  Anyhow.  In the Depression.  

RB:  That’s right.  Wow.

DM:  It was great.  It was something I have never forgotten.  I had a wonderful time.  I am so happy because I would never had the opportunity to go into all these cities around the country.  

RB:  Was that a typical type of honeymoon?  I can’t imagine it would be.

DM:  Oh, no.  You mean a typical honeymoon?  No.  Most of the people went to Vancouver or Portland, something like that.  We were supposed to have gone to Hawaii.  Now, there again, I didn’t know, but he had plans to go by boat to Hawaii – 1940.  Then, he was advised against it because there were rumbles of war with Japan.  So, he said to me – then he told me that he had the tickets, but we’re not going to go to Hawaii.  Oh, okay.  Gee, I was all excited.  But we’re going to do something else.  I said, “Okay, you the boss.  You go ahead.  Whatever you want to do.”  Then he told me just a couple of days before that we were going to go back East.  I told my folks that he wanted to take a long time and see everything.  He wanted to make a few calls here and there and pick up some ideas on business or something.  He told his folks, “Don’t expect me until you see me.”  And that’s [inaudible]. [laughter]

RB:  Wow.  What a whirlwind.  So, it was a surprise.  The whole honeymoon.

DM:  I didn’t know where we were going.  I had no idea.  And I didn’t care.  Whatever. [laughter]  Because he was accustomed – he was only twenty-five years old, and that’s still a kid.  But he was already very worldly about a lot of things.  I mean, he was accustomed to traveling a lot.  

RB:  How so?

DM:  Because he was in business with his dad, but he was at School of Fisheries at the University of Washington.  But he was already a businessman, do you know what I mean?

RB:  At a young age.

DM:  As a kid.

RB:  He worked from the time he was twelve years old in his father’s little reconditioning factory – cannery.  He was very bright.  He knew his formulas, and he knew the people.  He had people all over the country that he called on that he did business with at twenty-five years of age.  You don’t see that today.

RB:  Right.

DM:  People were more aggressive in those days.

RB:  You think so.

DM:  Yeah.  

RB:  Tell me, if you don’t mind taking a step back a little bit, tell me a little bit about how you met and what were the conditions like for women your age at that time for courtship.  Were there any expectations that your family placed on you as far as when to marry and how to marry?

DM:  Well, I was going with a bunch of different guys. [laughter] Some more seriously.  But everybody I was going with thought that I was their steady.  Do you know what I mean?  It was something.  When somebody went to Washington State University once a month when he come in, I’d go with him.  Somebody lived in Portland, and when he’d come in, we’d go to see foreign films, and that was my date with him.  Anyway, this was the kind of thing.  And my mother and my dad were saying, “Look, you can’t go with everybody.  For heaven’s sake, settle down to something.  Make a decision.”  I said, “Well, I’m not ready,” and I still wasn’t ready.  But I don’t know.  All my girlfriends were getting married, and that isn’t why I did it.  But Jack sort of pursued me.  Like I say, he was more aggressive, and he was a little bit more worldly.  You know what I mean?  He loved to give gifts and court a little more.  Not that he ever did that so much later because later, all he ever did was give me money for gifts.  But before that, he used to shop a little bit.  Anyway, as I said, I really didn’t know him.  I knew his family.  I knew his brother.  Just casually, I knew his father and mother.  I’d seen them.  I really didn’t know them.  Like I say, I met him at a wedding, and he asked me out.  He came after me.  I guess I was just ready, that’s all.  I was ready, and that was it.  Yeah.

RB:  So it sounds as though your family didn’t put – they asked you what your plans were –?

DM:  No, they didn’t put any pressure on me.  

RB:  No pressures.

DM:  No, no.

RB:  For other women at the time, was it the same?

DM:  I don’t know.  Well, it was.  Don’t forget this was The Depression.  Most of the girls had jobs, in all honesty.  Nobody made a lot of money – fifteen or twenty dollars a week, but they all had jobs, and everybody did everything.  You know what I mean?  I don’t know that there were – there were a few incidents that I know where the mothers put pressure on their daughters.  They wanted them to get married and marry this guy.  They didn’t want to marry this guy.  But you’ve got to marry this guy.  So, there were a few instances.  But most of the girls made their own choices.  So, it was easy.  They were not under pressure, as far as I know.  Most of the girls made nice marriages. 

RB:  You were able to marry the man you loved.

DM:  Well, I going to tell you truthfully.  This was not a matter of marrying the man I loved because I could not make up my mind between half a dozen guys I was going with.  But this was the one who was the most aggressive.  I could see he was going to let me do things that I wanted to do because some of the others were comme ci comme ça.  I wasn’t sure that – I had a mind of my own, and I liked to do certain things my way.  Jack let me do them. Even when we were engaged, he didn’t care.  “You go ahead.  Anything you want to do is all right with me.”  I felt the same way.  I always let him do whatever he wanted to do.  I never said, “Don’t do it.”  He never said, “Don’t do it” to me.  So that made for a comfortable marriage.  Do you know what I mean?

RB:  Yes.  So it sounds as though you were very independent –

DM:  Oh, I was.

RB:  – minded and that you saw that he respected that quality.  He wasn’t going to try to control you.

DM:  Right.  Well, his father used to let his mother do anything she wanted.  She really had control there.  He learned that.  He said, “Well, if my mother can do it, my wife will do it.”  That’s all.  Like I say, there were times when things would blow up, and they weren’t so hot.  But not about that.  Other things.  Other things that come in a marriage.  But as far as controlling me, no.  I didn’t control him.  I didn’t care.  He would say he was going to play eighteen holes of golf and end up playing thirty-eight holes of golf and stay.  But that used to drive me crazy because he would come home so tired he wouldn’t want to go to a party and there I was all dressed up.  I’d have to call – I couldn’t go, or I’d have to go by myself.  That was a whole argument in our marriage, was that.  That was our argument. [laughter]

RB:  In what way?  You were more sociable?

DM:  Yes.  Well, sure, I was more social, and he didn’t like to go to parties and all that kind of stuff.  But he was great when he was there.  He was a great dancer.  But to get him to go – and he had asthma, and it would bother him.  Then he’d stay out on that golf course until he got so tired he couldn’t even move.  He’d get home and lie down and bang, that’s it.  I’d be dressed up ready to go someplace.  So, that was a bone of contention.  I’m not going to whitewash anything.  Because that’s ridiculous.  Because anybody who hears it would say, “That wouldn’t be true.”  But this is the way it was.  But other times, he was just wonderful.  He would go and do things.  Always welcomed people to his home.  And always gave me plenty of money to do whatever I wanted to do.  Because you know yourself that if you are going to become involved in community work or any kind of work, you have to be there with a couple of bucks behind you because you can’t go ask other people to give money if you’re not going to give.  I didn’t work.  He had to back me up.  He always did.  Listen, what’s right is right.  What’s true is true.  So, that goes without saying, you know.  I don’t know what else.

RB:  It sounds like there was a lot of mutual respect in your marriage.

DM:  Oh, yeah.  He respected me, and I respected him.  Like I say, except when it came to parties and things.  If he liked the people, he never said no.  But if it was just to go to be seen, “Oh, I don’t want to go.  I’m too tired.  You go.”  I’d say, “No, I’m not going to go.”  “You got to go.  If you don’t go, they’re going to forget about you.”  Of course, so many of the couples were our friends.  The men worked hard, so lots of times, the women would go on their own with other people.  Oh, yeah.  Yeah.  There was a lot of that.

RB:  So, it wasn’t a situation where women had to be with their husbands?

DM:  No.

RB:  Women could go to events.

DM:  Yeah.  If I did that, I’d never go anyplace. [laughter] No, there were a lot of us.  Like I said, their husband traveled, or he was working hard, and the girls would go.  That’s all.  They were sick or something, so we’d go because it was a shame that the hostess went to all this trouble.  I remember he used to push me out of the door many times.  “You’ve got to go.”  “I don’t want to go.”  “You’re going to go.” [laughter] So I’d go.  

RB:  How did it work out for you?

DM:  Fine, fine.  And thank God.  It taught me to be to be independent.  So when he died, I was already accustomed to doing things on my own, do you know what I mean?  So, I just continued to do these things.  I was always involved in a million and one things, and he knew it, and I just continued the same way.  I was okay.

RB:  Remind me the year that he died?

DM:  The what?

RB:  What year did he die?

DM:  1977.  May of 1977.  May 26th.  It’s going to be twenty-four years in May.  He died very quickly.  He had an asthmatic attack downtown, and he went to the hospital.  He never would go to the hospital.  I finally got him there.  They called me and told me he was there.  He was there for ten days.  I just went home.  I was going to pick him up.  He started to cough.  He choked and coughed and coughed.  All of sudden, I guess with the cough, he must have ruptured something in his heart.  His eyes just rolled back.  He was drinking a glass of water at the time, and God.  He was right there in the hospital.  And they worked on him right away.  They brought him back.  He faded away again.  Yeah.  It was a shocker.  Listen, that’s part of –

RB:  How was that for you?  After thirty-seven years of marriage, is that right?

DM:  Thirty-seven, yeah.  Thirty-seven.  Right.  That’s right.  It was awful.  Terrible.  That was the last thing I expected was for him to die.  But he had a bad history.  His father died in 1951 of a heart attack.  Bang.  Like that.  At the age of 60.  His brother, Dave, Esther’s husband, died at fifty-two of a heart attack on the sidewalk.  He had had a couple of heart attacks.  But he was just going to the doctor.  Esther had just driven him in the car, and my husband was in the car behind.  They were going to go have lunch or something.  Dave got out of the car and just dropped dead right there in front of the Medical Dental Building.  And then his brother, Solly, the baby, had a heart attack like that at thirty-six.

RB:  A fatal heart attack?

DM:  Fatal.

RB:  Oh, how tragic.

DM:  My mother-in-law had lost those two, so Jack and I did everything for my mother-in-law.  We just took care of her.  But when Jack died, she died about three months later of really a broken heart.  

RB:  Is that right?

DM:  I kept telling her, “Don’t worry, Mom.”  I was there every single day.  “I’ll take care of you.”  “No,” she says.  “I know you will.  But it’s not fair.  You can’t do everything, Dorothy.”  And I did everything for my mother-in-law.  I think your grandmother would tell you that.  I took care of her.  I did everything for her.  Everything.  Day and night.  But she, I went to see her.  She died like that, too.  But she was eight-seven, thank God.  She had a life.  But she lost three children.  That’s a terrible thing.

RB:  That’s a terrible thing.  It’s unimaginable.

DM:  Awful.  Any mother to lose three children like that.

RB:  Inconceivable.

DM:  Terrible, really.

RB:  So, you were very close to your mother-in-law?

DM:  Yeah.  My mother-in-law was really a very nice woman.  She was selfish because she was raised – not raised that way.  Her husband made her that way.  He gave her everything.  He always had help for her.  He always went with her to buy beautiful clothes.  He made sure she had the best of everything.  The boys would have to come after school and clean, although she always had help in the house to do everything.  My husband says his mother drove him crazy.  Every Friday, he’d have to come home from high school and mop all the floors and wax all the floors.  That’s the way she made these kids do.  But she didn’t want one thing out of place as long as she wasn’t doing it.  She had other people doing it.  She had four sons, so when we first got married, it was hard for her to let go because she was the queen bee.  But eventually, she had to.  She had to start realizing these boys were married, and they had wives.  After that, everything was okay.  That’s part of life.  But we got along fine.  Very good.  Right to the end.  I was with her when she died.  

RB:  Is that right?

DM:  It was the strangest thing.  She was in Kline Galland Home for a few months.  She had fractured her arm the day before.  So, I called.  I was there when she did it.  Then, the next day, my mother-in-law said, “Don’t come tomorrow.  That’s Tuesday.  You go and play a little cards to Glendale with your friends, for God’s sake.  You can’t be here every single minute.”  We were playing, and it was raining hard.  I said to the girls, “You know, girls, my mother-in-law needs me.  I’m going to go.”  They said, “You just talked to her a little while ago.”  “I know, but I just know she needs me.  I’m going to go.”  

RB:  You intuited it.

DM:  So, I left Glendale – pardon me – in Bellevue, went to Kline Galland, which you know where it is.  She wasn’t in her room.  I said to the nurse, “Where is my mother-in-law?”  “Oh, she’s okay.  She’s over in the activity room.  She just had her dinner.”  I said, “Oh great.”  So, I just went over there.  I had just bought her a pink quilted robe.  They had her arm in a little sling.  A pink ribbon in her hair.  Oh, she looked up, and she saw me.  “Oh, I was thinking about you.  I was thinking about you.”  I said, “I know it.  I knew you were thinking about me.”  She said, “Why did you come in this rain?”  I said, “Well, I just knew that you wanted me to come.”  So, we were talking a little bit.  And then she took my hand, and she said, “Dorothy, all I have left are you and God.”  Those were her exact words.  I said, “Oh, don’t say that.  I mean, you have grandchildren, nieces – lots of people.”  And she says, “No.”  Then she looked over my shoulder.  She went like this – with an incredulous look like she saw somebody standing behind me that she couldn’t believe was there.  I turned my head, and there was nobody behind me.  I turned back, and she looked right at me.  Then, her head dropped.  In that moment, she died.  I don’t know who she saw.  I don’t know what she saw.  She saw something.  In that moment, she died.  I started to scream for help.  They came right away.  I was holding her against me.  They said, “She’s gone.”  I couldn’t believe it.  I just couldn’t believe it.  But she saw something.  Somebody.  I don’t know what it was.  

RB:  What was that experience like for you?

DM:  Oh, God.

RB:  I mean from Glendale, which – for people outside of Seattle, Glendale is –

DM:  Is in Bellevue.  It’s a country club where we play golf.  

RB:  Is it a general country club?

DM:  Well, it was a Jewish club.  And then now it’s become integrated.

RB:  Jewish Club.

DM:  Like all clubs have become.  It’s the strangest thing.  I didn’t get a chance to play very much, but I know –

RB:  Something.

DM:  – I knew instinctively that something was – that she wanted me, and she needed me.  I just picked up, and the girls said, “Dorothy, you just talked an hour ago. You talked to her.”  I said, “I know, but she needs me.  I know she needs me.”  I went there.  Thank God I got there.  She saw me.  So she didn’t die alone.

RB:  What was that like to be there with her?

DM:  I’ll tell you, it really broke me up.

RB:  How so?

DM:  Terribly.  Even worse than when my husband died.  I don’t know.  Maybe because my heart just broke that anyone should lose three children like this.  She, in the final analysis, couldn’t take anything with her, like nobody can.  I thought, “What an awful ending.”  I mean, to die heartsick.  I think she died of a broken heart.  I still maintain that she died of a broken heart.  I feel that whatever she saw behind me, maybe was her husband, maybe it was her boys – I don’t know, but she saw something.  If you could have seen the look on her face, that incredulous look – I don't know what it was.  

RB:  It stayed with you, though, that memory.

DM:  Very sad.  I felt very sad for her.  I really did.  Very, very sad.  It was a sad moment.  So, I always say nobody deserves that.  Nobody in the world deserves that.  But that’s the way the world goes, I guess.  So, that takes care of that anyhow.

RB:  You know we’ve talked some about your meeting Jack and marrying him.  We haven’t spent a lot of time talking about motherhood and having children.

DM:  I’ll tell you.  I had Johnny in 1943, October of 1943.  Jack had been turned down by the Army because he had asthma and he had broken his leg.  He had been in a cast for a year, and he could hardly – limping a little bit.  He tried to get into the Navy.  He was accepted into the ensign program, but they found he had a tumor on his spine.  Now, I was pregnant with Johnny, seven months pregnant.  So, they told him that he could have surgery, and then they would take – they gave him a couple of months or three months, and then they were going to take him in.  And, of course, I’ve never discussed this with anybody in the family ever.  He didn’t tell me, though.  He didn’t tell me he was going to go.  He told me he was going out of town.  So, I said, “Well, I’ll drive you.”  I was seven months pregnant.

RB:  Excuse me, and this is with your first child?

DM:  My first child.  I insisted on driving him.  Then, he told me he had to go to the hospital.  So, I drove him to Providence Hospital, and that’s when I found out he was having surgery.  At that time, all the surgeons were gone.  He had to have another doctor do it, who did a terrible, terrible job.  Terrible job.  When they brought me into the room where he was going to be, they told me – took me aside – the doctors and the nurses.  “Now, we only have one bed.  He has to share it with somebody else.  But I want you to know one thing: if you don’t think he can take this, I want you to tell us now.”  The person who is sharing the room was horribly burned in the Frye Meat Company fire.  A terrible fire had destroyed it and killed almost everybody in it.  This one man survived, and he was just burned beyond recognition, practically.  That was the only bed in the hospital.  I think they had it closed off.  I didn’t see it.  I said, “How can he go?  How can we put him in there?”  And then I thought, “If I know Jack, he’s very stoic, and he has a great kindness for things like this, great sympathy.”

RB:  It sounds like he was very compassionate.

DM:  He had compassion for things like this.  He was very good about things like this.  I said, “Well, you have to put him in there, that’s all.  We’ll just keep the curtain closed.”  But I don’t like to keep the curtain closed because the poor guy who is lying there dying practically and no ears, no nose left.  No nothing.  It was so tragic.  And here I am, seven months pregnant.  If my mother knew I was even going to look at this thing, she would just go out of her mind.  But I waited until they brought him down, and they put him in the bed.  They still had the curtain closed.  And so the doctor and I explained to him when he came to.  He said, “Open up the curtain.”  So, they opened up the curtain.  That was the first time I’d seen the man.  Oh my god, I almost dropped dead myself.  He was already coming out of the anesthetic, and he says – I still remember.  He says, “Hi, my name is Jack Muscatel.  What’s yours?”  This fellow answered him.  I can’t remember what his name was.  And do you know that – it was awful.  After a while, I got accustomed to it.  It was just terrible because he was there for about two, three weeks.  But he talked to him all the time.  All the time.  After he got out of the hospital, he used to go back to see him all the time. 

 

RB:  Really?

DM:  Used to go back to see him.  He eventually died.  But he went back to see him all the time.  The best he could.

RB:  How did that impact you?

DM:  I knew that he had a lot of sympathy for the underdog.  I was really proud of him.  

RB:  You felt really proud.

DM:  I don’t think anybody else could have lived close to that situation.  And to go back to see him all the time.  But, of course, I had my baby, and I was terribly ill.  My doctor had left to go into the service.  So, I had another doctor.  He had to take over Dr. (Fine’s?) cases.  He was not watching me too well – and a couple of other people.  He kind of resented the fact that we didn’t go to him first.  Anyway, my doctor told him before he left, “She’s very small, and I think she’s going to have to have a cesarean, so watch her very carefully.”  I guess I was in my seventh month.  Well, it was just about the same time of this accident.  Right at that same time that I changed doctors.  Two months later, I had Johnny.  Well, he put me into early labor, and I couldn’t conceive.  You’ve had children.  You know.  I was in labor for about two weeks.  Horrible.  My water had broken.  I was just in terrible shape.  I finally got into the hospital, and I was there for one day and one night beyond all this time of laboring before.  I finally had him not by cesarean but regularly.  But the afterbirth did not come out.  It split, and I had peritonitis.  Now, there were not any miracle drugs in those days – 1943.  October of 1943.  They got me back to my room.  I came to.  I could see I’m swollen, just swollen like a balloon.  The nun –  this was at Providence Hospital in Seattle, and she says, “When are you expecting your baby?”  I said, “I had it.  I think.”  So, then the doctor came in, Dr. (Friedman?).  He was not the one that delivered, but he came in with Jack.   This other doctor had called him in because he said, “Something is happening here, and I don’t know what it is.”  Dr. (Friedman?) came in to diagnose and see what had happened.  “She’s got peritonitis.  We’ll have to do the best we can.”  He told Jack and my folks, “I don’t know if she can survive, but we’re going to try.”  As luck would have it, people kept coming up to give me blood transfusions.  And their blood wouldn’t – you had to have [inaudible] blood in those days.  And none of them matched.  They took what they could from my dad.  They took from my sister because that matched, but they didn’t have enough.  As luck would have it, my brother, John, who was in the South Pacific, his ship came into San Francisco for repairs, and he called my mother.  My mother said, “Get up here, please right away.  Dorothy needs blood.”  The Navy sent him up.  He was an officer.  They flew him up to Seattle.  They took, I don’t how much, blood from him.  He passed out cold for quite a while.  That turned it.  Saved my life.  So, I was very sick.  It was four weeks in the hospital, and then I got up, five weeks, five weeks.  Then they took me home.  I had a pidyon haben.  You know a pidyon haben?

  

RB:  Why don’t you describe it for the people –?

DM:  Well, the pidyon haben is when the first-born boy – at the end of the month, they have this – 

RB:  Ceremony?

DM:  Not a service, but it’s a – what would you call it?

RB:  A ceremony.

DM:  Ceremony.  And you buy back the child.  Well, they had to wait five weeks to do it for me, and then I had to go back to the hospital again.  But we did it.  I had a nurse for about two months after that.  Boy.  The next two were born by Caesarean.  No more trying.  He waited too long, the doctor.  He should have taken it by Caesarean.  

RB:  I can only imagine how terrifying it must have felt to –

DM:  I was.  I still remember like it was yesterday.  They had me strapped down on the bed.  They had transfusions going, trying to give me the blood on both arms.  I think this was about three weeks after he was born.  I had a quilted satin robe, which they put across my bed in case they needed it.  The nun came in, and she – you know, soothing me and talking to me.  She says, “Oh, everything is going to be all right, my darling.  Just have faith.”  She says, “Oh, what a beautiful robe.”  She said, “May I put it over me?”  And I says, “Yes, like this.”  I still remember her.  She took that robe, and she put it over her habit, and it was pink – pink satin quilted.  Part of my trousseau.  “Oh, isn’t it beautiful?”  I went like this.  I said, “Do you see those windows over there?”  They had to put bars on them – no, play windows up above.  I says, “After you leave, I’m going to jump out.”  I can remember it just like it happened just now.  She put down that robe, and she runs to the door, and she calls somebody, “Quick, bar these windows.”  And they did.  I was just teasing.  I was teasing, I was so desperate.  I was so tired.

RB:  But she took you seriously.

DM:  Oh absolutely.  Absolutely.  I was so sick.  I had peritonitis.  I was really so sick.  Anyway, I went through a lot of –

RB:  What was it like?  I mean, how were you feeling about the baby at that point?

DM:  Oh, I only saw him once.

RB:  From the time he was born.

DM:  From the time he was born.  I saw this darling little thing.  Lots of black hair.  Deep dimple right here and eyelashes that came down even with his nose.  I had never seen anybody with lashes.  If you saw him now, today at age fifty-seven, you’d say you’ve never saw anybody with lashes like that.  Dr. (Kline?) who was my pediatrician wrote down a notation, “Longest lashes of any baby I’ve ever …”. You can ask around, and they’ll tell you.  Even today.  But I never saw him.  I saw him that one time.  

RB:  Why is that?

DM:  Well, I was so sick.  I was on oxygen and all this kind of stuff.  I couldn’t.

RB:  So, who was taking care of the baby then?

DM:  Well, the nurses.

RB:  The nurses did.

DM:  In the hospital.

RB:  Was he bottle-fed or nursed?

DM: Bottle-fed.  All three of mine were bottle-fed.

RB:  So, at that time, was that common?

DM:  Oh there was a lot of bottle-fed.  And at that time, the doctors went into the bottle-fed business.  I mean, more kids were bottle-fed than were nursed.  And then afterward, went back to nursing again.  If they held him at the door sometimes, maybe they did.  I don’t remember.  To tell you the truth.

RB:  You were that sick?

DM:  I was running high fevers.  Very difficult.  But I do remember him when they brought him after he was born and I looked at that little cute face.  “My God, can you believe all that hair and those lashes?  A deep cleft in his chin.”  And then, like I say, I didn’t see him again until I went home.

RB:  What was that like for you to go home a month or so later, a little more than a month?

DM:  Like I say, I was so sick it didn’t matter.  But I was glad to get out of the hospital.

RB:  I bet.

DM:  I’ll tell you something.  I had this woman with me.  I didn’t handle the baby.  I didn’t handle him until he was three months old.  I didn’t change him or nothing.  So, then she finally had to leave.  He was three months old.  I had to change him, and I was so scared.  He started to cry when I was putting a little shirt on him.  I grabbed him, and I ran down – I was living in a court.  I ran to my neighbor. “Help me, Rose.  He’s crying.”  She says, “Don’t worry.  Don’t worry.”  He was already about twelve pounds, I swear.  So, she showed me how to do it.  Nobody had showed me how to dress him or do anything.

RB:  Why is that?

DM:  Oh, because I was so sick.  That’s all.

RB:  They were really concerned about your health?

DM:  Oh yeah.  I was really in bad shape there for a while.

RB:  It sounds like it.

DM:  Yeah, I was really pretty sick.  But anyway, the nurse was there.  

RB:  Of course.

DM:  And once I did it, after that, it was nothing.

RB:  Of course.

DM:  You know.  You’ve had three children.  

RB:  You learn, of course

DM:  But today, they send them home the first day.  How in the world do you handle these kids?  How do you handle little babies?  Five pounds, six pounds?  Well, my God, I didn’t handle mine until my kids were all eight pounds.  And then, with each one, I was very lucky.  When I would come home – I was in the hospital for a couple weeks.  I always had help at home, and they would stay for at least a month or two months or whatever because I was having a lot of trouble because of the first – I had all kids of little tumors inside my whole body, and I had to have them burned out.  It took a long time to clear out my system inside.  So I had trouble with each delivery, and so I always had to have help there to help me.  It was easier, of course, after that.

  

RB:  Now, with your first, actually going back in time, was your husband recovered by then?  By the time your son was born?

DM:  No, he had to have, as a result of that first accident – I mean, that first surgery on his back, which was really a botched job – when my brother Bob came back from the war, and then there was Dr. Sheridan, who was his friend – each of them operated – I don’t know how many times on him.  If they closed it up, he would pass out.  If they opened it up to drain, it was just a constant thing.  How in the world he kept going and working so hard, I don’t know.  Eventually, it took maybe seven years before it healed – finally healed.  My brother is a surgeon, and he was watching him very carefully.  Eventually, it healed.  It took a long time, though. 

RB:  So those were hard times health wise.

DM:  Yeah, it was very traumatic.  But everything is.  Life is traumatic.  You go through all these experiences.  Once they’re over, something else happens.  [laughter]

RB:  What was it like being a young mother for you?  What was your –?

DM:  Oh, I loved it.  He was a cute little boy and a sweet little boy.  But one thing about my son Johnny, he loved adventure.  At the age of one, when he started to walk, I couldn’t watch him.  Before I knew it, he was gone.  No matter how I tied him up or where I put him.  Before I knew it, he was gone.

RB:  He was an active kid.

DM:  Oh, he drove me crazy.  But he got over that. [laughter] Oh, he got over that.  And the other two were much easier to raise.  I was still in an apartment with the first one.  With the other ones, I was in a big house, and I had a housekeeper.  Then I could take the kids, and it was a little different.

RB:  It was an easier time.  How far apart are your children?

DM:  My children are four years and nine months apart.  I know it’s a spread, but the doctor didn’t want – after the first one, after I had all those little tumors and lesions and things, he wanted me to wait a certain length of time.  And then I had Kenny, and then I didn’t think I was going to have anymore.  I was having bad pains in my back.  Terrible pains.  I went to several doctors – and stomach pains.  They couldn’t find it.  They thought it was gallstones, and it wasn’t it.  Finally this Dr. Weinstein – Sydney Weinstein said, “Why don’t you go upstairs and see Charlie Fine, Dr. Fine,” who was my gynecologist.  “Maybe he can figure out what’s wrong.”  Sure enough, he takes one look, “Dorothy.  You’re three months pregnant.”  See, I never came regularly.  Every three months, I’d menstruate.  So that’s how I found out.  My mother said to me, “You’re going to have a girl.”  Because my mother could tell you right away what you were going to have.  She says, “When you don’t know and aren’t aware, it’s a change of a sex.”

RB:  Of gender.  I see.

DM:  So, that’s her idea.  And I had a girl.

RB:  And you have a girl.  Isn’t that something?

DM:  And oh my God, Jack was so happy.  Because he’s one of four boys, and his father never had sisters.  Esther had Morrey, and I had Johnny, and Sue had Allen.  We said, “Oh, nothing but boys again.”  All boys.  But we all ended up with girls, too.  That was good.

RB:  It felt extra special.  

DM:  Yeah, right, extra special.  That’s about all.  That takes care of all the births. [laughter]

RB:  How would you describe your parenting style?  How does it compare with, for example, your mother’s style?  

DM:  My mother’s style was much classier than mine was.

RB:  What do you mean?  How so?

DM:  My folks really spent an awful lot of time with us.  You know what I mean?  Not that my husband and I didn’t spend time with our kids all the time.  But it was a little different because we had so many distractions, and they didn’t.  Outside of work and going – my folks would go to meetings and clubs and some fine productions that would come into town.  But they were more at home.  I mean, we were, too, but it’s kind of hard to explain.  It’s just that, in my generation, parents spent more time with their kids, and we spent time on the golf courses, on the tennis courts.  The kids were already being driven from here to there, to there.  Today, there’s just no end to it.  But when my kids were little, that was already starting then.  I was always in a car driving them someplace.  The parenting was better in my generation.

RB:  That’s how you see it?

DM:  The mothers didn’t drive.  So, they were always there.  Like I said, my father was an exceptional father, and so there was a difference.  A definite difference.

RB:  What advice would you give mothers today?

DM:  Well, I’ll tell you the truth.  I don’t know other than to spend as much time with kids as you can.  I mean, this is very important.  I know all of you work.  Everybody works today.  And many families have to have two incomes just to get by.  It’s just too bad that kids have to do everything.  But they do.  They are involved in every sport.  Isn’t that right?  You name a sport, they’re involved.  In my generation, that wasn’t the way it was.  Mothers didn’t have to get involved in all that stuff.  And neither did fathers.  They were just certain individuals who liked to be Scout Masters and captains and things, and they would take over all the groups for kids.  But today, parents have to be involved in everything.  And I mean involved.  I’m speaking to you because I know – I’m talking to you because I know you’re away from your kids, and you’re working.  You’re just typical of everybody.  I have a daughter.  I have daughters-in-law.  I know that’s the way life is.

RB:  Time is much more spread out.

DM:  Right.

RB:  You also have grandchildren, is that right?

DM:  Yes, I have.  My son John is married to Debbie Posner.  I have three grandchildren.  Kimberly, who just got married in November to Alan Waldbaum.  She is graduating from Law School now.  She already has a job.  Which is nice.  He is a lawyer.  

RB:  Wonderful.

DM:  Second child is Jeffrey Jacob – J.J.  He still has a year of school, of college, but he’s working this year.  He couldn’t decide what to do, so he is working for one year.  And then his youngest is Lisa, and she’s twenty.  She goes to Syracuse University, and she is studying to be a costume designer/fashion designer.  She’s very good, incidentally.  She’s very talented.  Then, I have my son Kenneth, who is a neuropsychologist – forensic.  He graduated in architecture and urban planning, and then he decided he wanted to go to this.  He went back for eight more years.

RB:  What a switch.

DM:  Yeah.  He’s divorced, unfortunately.  But he has a daughter, Jillian who is fifteen and one-half.  And then, my daughter Laurie, Laurel Ann, graduated from Washington in business, and then she went to UCLA for four years.  She has two Master’s.  One is hospital administration, and one in health services or something.  She is married to a dermatologist, Dr. David Goldman.  She has three children – Jacqui, Jacqueline – the artist that you saw that picture over there.  She is graduating from Lakeside School next month.  Then, the second child is Danny.  And Danny is sixteen and a half.  And Adam is twelve and one-half.  

RB:  That’s wonderful.

DM:  That’s my three kids and seven grandchildren.

RB:  Many blessings.

DM:  And wonderful kids.

RB:  What are the greatest rewards of being a grandmother?

DM:  Oh, I don’t know.  Just having the grandchildren calling me and saying, “Grandma, I love you.”  I think that is a great thing. [laughter] Because I used to say it to my grandmother all the time.  “Grandma, I love you.”  I just love hearing my grandkids call me, and then they’ll say, “I love you, Grandma.”  It doesn’t matter what you give them.  I mean, you can give them a lot, or you can give them nothing.  But if you show them attention, you’re there for them.  I’m always there for these kids.  Always.  They appreciate it.  I think the appreciation to me is the greatest thing in the world.

RB:  So, the love that you felt for your grandmother, you are now seeing.

DM:  Right, I’m seeing it from my grandchildren.  I think that is so rewarding.

RB:  A beautiful gift.  A beautiful gift.  

DM:  Yeah, it is.  Wonderful.  Like I say, money doesn’t mean anything.  It’s wonderful if you have it.  You want to give them something.  But it’s just knowing that they appreciate everything.  

RB:  Appreciate you for who you are.

DM:  That’s right.  Appreciate me.  Appreciate whatever little I do for them.  They’re most appreciative.  They send me letters all the time.  Everything.  For everything.  If I give them one little thing, right away, I get a note back.  That’s very nice.  Their mothers trained them right.  

RB:  That’s right.

DM:  It isn’t their fathers that train them.  It’s their mothers that train them.  

RB:  I imagine that coming from you they really appreciate that connection to you?

DM:  Right.  They remember how I treated my mother, my grandmother, and my mother-in-law.  They didn’t know my grandmother.  But they remember that.  And they hear about that.  And they talk about it, too.  I think that’s very important.

  

RB:  They are important lessons that you’ve shared with them.

DM:  Right.

RB:  Well, you know, our time is almost up for today.  I’m sad to say.  I’ve enjoyed this so much.

DM:  Oh, I had so many things I was going to tell you.

RB:  Well, is there one more story that you would like to share?  You tell me because this is your time.

DM:  After Jack died, I had a lot of fun down at Pioneer Square.  I helped start the Pioneer Square Theater down there.  Do remember Angry Housewives?

RB:  Yes.

DM:  It’s in my buildings.  So, I was very, very involved with that.  Very much.  Just had a wonderful time.  And then we had – right next door, we opened up a cabaret.  Did you ever hear that?  With all the fantastic music.  I’ll tell you, until I got sick, I just loved every single second of this.  I was the one that was involved in this.  

RB:  I believe it.

DM:  And then I went to a health farm several years ago, and we met Sally Struthers there and got very friendly with her and Elena Verdugo.  Elena Verdugo played the nurse on Marcus Welby, M.D.  So, we got very friendly.  I got a lot of letters from them here.  When I was making bags, I sent them each bags, and they used them.  Elena Verdugo used hers on some commercials.  I saw them.  She wrote me and called me.  “You watch this commercial I’m going to be on.”  Sally Struthers invited me to several parties down there and got friendly with my daughter.  So, we’ve been good friends for many years.

RB:  Isn’t that something?

DM:  There are so many things that are so interesting.  I don’t know what to tell you first.

RB:  I think that so many things strike me about you, Dorothy.  The one thing that really stands out is what an incredible leader and organizer you were.  

DM:  Well, I loved that.

RB:  You have a way of making things happen.

DM:  I do.  I do.  Not because I’m saying it.  Because I like things to happen.  

RB:  And it’s true, isn’t it?

DM:  I can put things together very quickly.  I love people.  I love people to like each other.  We just have all kinds of things going all the time.  

RB:  What is your next project, do you think?

DM:  Well, if I can get my breath back.

RB:  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

DM:  Well, there’s not much to tell.  I just got very, very sick on July 3, 1998.  I was stricken with a terrible virus.  The pain in my back was like stilettos going through my back in my chest.  It was three o’clock in the morning.  I started to scream.  I was vomiting and leaning over my banister vomiting.  I had a young man living downstairs [since] my husband died, so I wouldn’t be alone.  He heard me.  Thank God.  He came running upstairs.  He had keys.  Took one look, got help – the Fire Department and everybody.  They got me to a hospital, and I was arching.  I couldn’t put my back against anything.

RB:  You couldn’t straighten up.

DM:  Oh, it was horrible.  I didn’t know that pain like that existed.  They got me there.  They got a hold of my kids.  And they couldn’t do anything with me.  I was screaming, “Stat, stat.”  Stat means emergency in medical terms.  I don’t even know why I was saying it.  They didn’t want to give me morphine or anything until they knew what happened.  But they finally had to give me something, and they calmed me down.  Then, I began running this high fever, about 105, for almost a full week.  They were sure I was never going to make it.  My brother came.  I made my will.  I had already had my will, but I made a few changes when I could.  And they tried.  They had me in and out of testing – of everything.  Not one MRI, not one scan, but three of everything.  I have the biggest – what do you call that? – medical history –

FB:  File.

DM:  File.  Of anybody any of these doctors have treated.  They had doctors from Swedish and Northwest and from Providence and everywhere.  For everything they were looking for.  Cancer.  They were looking for everything.  They still have not been able to find a thing.  And yet, every couple of weeks, I take blood.  And every couple of weeks, the inflammation there – they know it’s there.  They cannot do anything until they got me on every kind of medication.  They’d take me off one [and] put me on another.  So many things that are happening inside.  They figured that – the final analysis is that maybe from the pains in my back that it may have pushed my spine into my lungs.  We’re just grasping at straws here.  It stopped and just cut my lung power.  So, I only have up like to here.  Oxygen didn’t help.  Nothing helps.  It’s just terrible for somebody who is so active.  This has nothing to do with age, Roz.  You can be active at one hundred, and you can be non-active at fifty.  

RB:  That’s right.

DM:  I’m one that’s active in everything.  In my mind, I just want to do so many things.  I just can’t do it.  I’m just out of breath all the time.

RB:  What is that like for you?

DM:  Terrible.

RB:  How so?

DM:  It’s just terrible.  It’s the most frustrating thing in the world.  I love to walk.  I love to do – oh, especially where I am here, where it’s all around me.  I can just walk and do so many wonderful things.  I can’t do anything.  I couldn’t play golf anymore.  I couldn’t paint anymore.  I couldn’t sew anymore.  I couldn’t hardly cook anymore.  I couldn’t walk anymore.  I couldn’t do anything anymore.

RB:  It just wipes out your energy.

DM:  Practically wiped out my whole life.

RB:  It’s really kept you from doing so much that you love to do.

DM:  Oh, gosh.  There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to do them.  I mean, it’s not like I’m without legs or limbs or something.  It’s not anything that should deter me from doing these things.  But I can’t do them because you can see – I walk to the kitchen and back, and I’m just wiped out.  

RB:  Out of breath.

DM:  I’m just wiped out.  So I’m just hoping to God for a miracle, that’s all.

RB:  Yes, me too.

DM:  But every doctor, every specialist, everywhere – and they said everything that can be done is being done, but nothing concrete.  They can’t cut into me and find – to look for what?  They were thinking of it for a while there at the hospital.  But I said, “Listen, you’re not going to cut me unless we know what we are looking for.”  They even went through my legs.  They went up through my – all the way up through my body, up into my heart to repair some stuff.  They expected me not to survive, and I survived them all.  But they can’t find – they just don’t know what it is.  But one particular doctor for diseases thinks that something bit me.  He feels that I was somewhere and something bit me, and that’s what got into me.  Of course, it’s logical.  Because things like this do happen.  But what?  They thought maybe something I breathed in.  Possible.  From what?  I don’t know.  They tested me for everything.  There is nothing left.  Nobody can find – I know I am eighty-three years of age, but that has nothing to do with me, personally.  If it wasn’t for the breathing, I could do anything, and I would be doing anything.  But I don’t know.  It’s very frustrating.  It drives me crazy.

RB:  I’m sure.  I’m sure it does.  I wish you tons of health and recovery with all this.  I’ll be thinking of you.

DM:  Thank you, sweetheart.  Thank you.

RB:  Wishing that for you.

DM:  From your mouth to God’s ears. [laughter]

RB:  I really will.  Until then, it’s clear that your mind is – you’re still churning out compassionate ideas and designs.

DM:  All kinds of things.

RB:  Which we can all look forward to.

DM:  Right.  If you ever want any more information about things that people might like to know about the Market Days or about the Bremerton or the Lexington, the cruisers and the battleship and all that, I have wonderful stories to tell you about those things.

RB:  So if we would like to come back, you’d –

DM:  Oh yes, I can tell you some wonderful stories.  

RB:  Thank you so much.

DM:  It would be nice to put on tape so young people today would know what went on in those days.

RB:  That would be terrific.

DM:  Because I have all that in the back of my mind.

RB:  Thank you so much.  We’ll remember that and keep that in mind.  Historically, it sounds very important.

DM:  Yeah, it really is.  My dad helped build a church for the Black people and different things.  There are so many stories that really should be told.  You know what I mean?  

RB:  Yes, absolutely.  

DM:  Not because they’re from me, but because they should be told so people will know what went on in those days.  

RB:  Yes, of course.

DM:  I thank you very much for listening to me.

RB:  No, thank you.  It’s been such a pleasure and an honor.  Thank you so much.

DM:  Oh, sweetheart.  Are we all done now?

RB:  All done for now.

[END OF INTERVIEW]