3rd Annual History of the Catskills Conference August 29 - Sept 1, 1997

Schedule of Events Friday, August 29 8:30-10:00PM Introduction—Phil Brown & Shalom Goldman Return to the Mountains—a short story by Phil Brown; performed by the Sunny Oaks Troubadours

Saturday, August 30 11:00-12:30PM Henry Foner—From the Bandstand: Stories from a Catskills Musician

2:00-3:00PM Irwin Richman—A Bungalow Colony Slide Show

3:00-5:00PM Ellen Halbert (Raleigh Hotel) & Carrie Komito (Aladdin)—Hotel Owners Keeping Alive the Catskills

8:30-10:00PM Vivian Gornick—The Culture of the Catskills

10:15-11:45PM Film: Sweet Lorraine

Sunday, September 1 10:00-11:00AM Jenna Weissman Joselit—Summer Resort Judaism and the Relaxation of Ritual

11:30-1:00PM Shalom Goldman—Isaac Bashevis Singer in the Catskills: A Literary & Personal Turning Point

2:30-3:00PM Film: A Singles Weekend at the Concord (from WCBV-TV, Boston)

3:30-5:00PM Clarence Steinberg—Jewish Farmers in the Catskills

6:00-7:00PM Film: The Rise & Fall of the Borscht Belt

9:00-11:00PM Klezmer Concert

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3rd Annual Conference: Recap by Irwin Richman

The seduction began before we could even register. What "Catskillphile" could resist the blandishments of Sal's bazaar. Yiddish music poured from the phonograph and many of us were immediately wrapped in a veil of nostalgia. We were sitting ducks. With the exception of part of Friday night when it rained, the entrance to the Main House at Sunny Oaks Hotel, our conference headquarters, was flanked with temptations. All the records filling the air were for sale, as were books and memorabilia. Judaica-collector-and-peddler- extraordinaire Salo Kluger offered some amazingly up to date merchandize and a vast array of older books. There were books on the old neighborhoods, books on entertainers, books on the remotely Jewish. Who could resist. Few of us even tried. We all needed more books and more records. To say nothing about a business card from a hotel in Ulster Heights where one's brother played in a band in 1948. Phil Brown got first dibs on the memorabilia, collecting choice menus and business cards for the Catskill Institute Collection. Where but at Sal's would an Aaron Lebedeff record stare at you; the one featuring "In Odess[a]" which was never the hit that his signature nostalgia song "Romania" was. But one simply also had to listen to the Yinglish "A Yiddish Maidel Darf a Yiddish Boy." Festivities officially began at six with a welcoming "happy hour" where we nibbled, drank and met up with people we hadn't seen since the last conference. After a very non-traditional Shabbat Dinner our program rolled into action. Phil Brown and Shalom Goldman officially welcomed us and brought us up to date on Institute happenings. Then we were ready for the evening's star turn, a dramatic reading of Phil's short story "Return to the Mountains" performed by the eclectic and never-to-be-ready-for-prime-time "Sunny Oaks Troubadors" a pick up crew that included Phil's son, Michael, as a busboy (He has worked as a busboy, Phil noted quickly adding, "On the Cape, not the Catskills." With too many of us going to the Cape and the Hamptons the Catskills declined.). Deborah Dash Moore even appeared in costume. M. Susan Richman neglected to bring her tiara to add a touch of verisimilitude to her role as a hotel guest in the "Golden Age." Other performers included Phil, Irwin Richman, Deborah Dash Moore and Jerry Schwartz. A mysterious hackie picks up an odd assortment of 1990's characters and takes them to work at the Brigadoon-like "Greenstein's Meadow View Hotel," where they share mysterious and life altering experiences. Daniel Goldman once again ran the Ping Pong Tournament. The prize was a 10% discount on the winner's hotel bill, courtesy of the Arenson family. Saturday's program began with a talk "Musicians in the Catskills" presented with great wit and charm by Henry Foner whose family, including the well-known scholar Philip Foner played in Catskill bands and were active in many left wing causes of the 1930's. While working at the Arrowhead Lodge in Ellenville in 1941, Foner wrote the song "Shoot the Strudel to me, Yudel!" Lorraine Foner, Henry's wife of almost fifty years was in the audience, and this Saturday (August 31) was the 50th anniversary of their meeting—in the Catskills, naturally—and they got a big mazel tov. After the now traditional cold borscht lunch, Irwin Richman from Penn State Harrisburg presented "A Bungalow Colony Slide Show" which briefly traced the growth of the resort industry of the Catskills from the visions of Hudson River school artists including Thomas Cole and Fredrick Church. Then using the imagery of other artists and photographers he explored the conditions of the new Jewish immigration which led to the growth of "The Jewish Alps." Turning to the story of the bungalow colonies he showed many images that will not be appearing in his forthcoming book, Borscht Belt Bungalows: Memories of Catskill Summers to be published in January 1998 by Temple University Press. Irwin's wife, Susan, perked up when he showed a slide of a group of day camp counselors, identifying a long past summer romance. His mother Bertha was especially interested in the next session "Hotel Owners Keeping Alive the Mountains" because as a relative kid herself (81 years old), she is a long-time acquaintance of Carrie Komito who at 92 still runs the Aladdin Hotel in Woodbourne which Carrie saved by adding many bungalows to her operation. Carrie Komito is the model for Mrs. Mandheimer in her son-in-law Sidney Offit's novel He Had It Made, (1959). Ellen Halbert of the Raleigh Hotel talked about the problems of getting people to put aside their negative stereotypes about the Catskills and to get them to come to her hotel, which, she believes, offers a lot of value for the money. "Three meals a day and facilities starting at $60 a day." A daughter of the owner of the Raleigh, she is a dynamic businesswoman, mother of a young daughter and wife of the man who

2 now runs the kitchen of the family's resort. Both the Aladdin and the Raleigh are among the very few Catskill hotels that are current on their taxes. After a cocktail party and a dinner that offered guests gefilte fish, brisket, and kasha, we enjoyed a reading and commentary by author Vivian Gornick, who spent childhood summers in bungalows and college summers working at hotels. In Fierce Attachments, a memoir, she recalls stories her mother told her about life at a leftist kuchalein in the 1930's. Most intriguing was her account of traveling spiritualists who visited kuchaleins and who profited by entertaining or terrifying the guests. She also read from "The Catskills Remembered," an essay in her collection Approaching Eye Level (1996), which recall with irony, insight and flashes of anger her summers working at various hotels, most notably at a hotel she later identified as being Grossinger's. After Ms. Gornick's session we were treated to a concert by two fine young classically trained musicians, Amy and Jonathan, friends of the Arenson family. Following this unannounced delight, the hardiest among us watched the best Catskill film to date Sweet Lorraine. Sunday morning, building on his triumphal reading at last year's conference of Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Yearning Heifer," Shalom Goldman now of Emory University, presented an insightful paper "Isaac Bashevis Singer in the Catskills: A Literary and Personal Turning Point" in which he noted that within mere miles from where we were meeting, Singer would meet his future wife (then inconveniently married to another man) and here too he would decide to write about the American themes that introduced him to the larger world. While Singer in his later years, carefully cultivated the image of the sweet old man, those who knew him, knew him to be a SOB. Next, Jenna Weissman Joselit, a very insightful author of many books on American Jewish culture including The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950 (1994) discussed the Jewish attitude toward vacations (positive, even among those of the pre-War European Jewry who could afford them) and rabbinical and conservative organizational American commentators who deplored the fact that the ever more popular vacations caused synagogue attendance to drop during the summer. Other observers worried about the vulgar images vacationing Jews might present to the non-Jewish World. After lunch we watched two films on the same subject "A Single Weekend at the Concord." In an eerie coincidence both featured the same bizarre dentist who was looking for "a woman with perfect teeth" among the interviewees the film makers and reporters followed. Clarence Steinberg, co-author (with Abraham Lavender) of Jewish Farmers of the Catskills talked about the lives of Jewish farmers, successful Jewish-organized co-ops, and Jewish farmers' problems with government farm programs. Steinberg who grew up on his parent's farm in the Catskills has just retired as a Public Affairs Specialist with the Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC. The next day there was a very nice account of his talk in the Middletown Times Herald Record complete with a fine picture. Next, we watched the film The Rise and Fall of the Borscht with its marvelous mix of interviews with hotel keepers, Catskill comics, and bungalow guests, and ending in the performance of a "mock marriage," once the quintessential Borscht Belt entertainment. After dinner, the Conference rolled on to a spectacular conclusion. Unlike many scholarly meetings this writer has endured, our Conference didn't peter out from exhaustion but ended like a long exquisitely choreographed fireworks and laser show. Instead of such easy ingredients, we had talent and food. No one who was there will ever forget, lively sprightly 80-year-old Henry Foner singing his 1941 song "Shoot the Strudel to me, Yudel" accompanied by his friend, the very accomplished musician Alice Levinson. Henry followed with a surprise encore of another of his compositions "She's More to Be Pitied Than Censured," which told the tale of an unfortunate maiden and a Catskill waiter. Foner passed out the words for the chorus so we could join the general sing along. This would have been dayenu. But there was more great stuff to come. We were treated to the Sullivan County premier of Phil Brown's original Catskill song, "Yener Welt" performed by him and his 15- year-old son, Michael Littenberg-Brown. On to the Klezmer concert featuring New York's Metropolitan Klezmer with Eve Sicular on drums, Ismail Butera on accordion, and vocalist Debbie Karpel. Philadelphia's KlezMs' Susan Watts Sandler on the trumpet was 3 a surprise addition. They really cooked, spicing the klezmer songbook with a couple of torch numbers. Right on cue, as the klezmorim played their "Oriental Dance," hotel proprietor Julie Arenson performed a belly dance as her proud family looked on. On this Sunday of Labor Day weekend, it is obligatory to end the day with a Midnight supper—and we celebrated tradition, except that at Sunny Oakes the midnight supper was at 11:30 P.M. Bagels, cream cheese and lox were there. Fixings were there. Fruit and drinks were there. Who could ask for anything else. As always Creative Seminars recorded the individual presentations, and new this year, the Moores videotaped many of the features for our archives. The Conference was a success and on Monday the Advisory Board met to plan for next year. Remember "Next Year in Woodridge, Again. God Willing."

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Conference Talk: “From the Bandstand” by Henry Foner

Those of you who know something about the later careers of the Foner family would probably believe that I, as the youngest of the four brothers, grew up in a household steeped in history and social activism. You couldn't be farther from the truth. The fact is that my early upbringing in the Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn took place against a background of music and comedy. This is not nearly as strange as it sounds. The late 1920s and early 1930s, when I was making my tentative way into teenhood and adolescence, were the years of the Great Depression, and young Jewish men who were determined to achieve a college education had to seek ways of contributing to the family coffers and providing funds to sustain them during their pursuit of bachelor's or master's degrees. More often than not, they turned to music. Bands were in great demands in those days. Dancing was a dual rather than individual activity, and scarcely a week-end went by without a plentiful supply of dances sponsored by social clubs and other organizations. Not surprisingly, then, my older twin brothers, Jack and Phil became musicians—Jack on the drums and Phil on the alto saxophone. Years later, when their careers demanded that they acquire middle names, they used the names of their instruments as keys—Jack selected "Donald" with a D, and Phil "Sheldon" with an S. At any rate, they soon organized a band that was ready to take on all comers. They had a tactical advantage over their competition. We had two cousins who were undertakers—the Jeffer brothers, Irwin and Norman. Perhaps you may not readily see the connection between funeral directing and music, but a moment's contemplation will make it clear. Undertakers had to join all manner of fraternal and social organizations in order to guarantee that they would be selected to officiate when one of the members passed on. For the Jeffers, this resulted in jurisdictional spheres of influence that made those of the European imperialist powers seem like child's play in comparison. If the deceased, for example, was a member of the Bielsker Bruderlicher Untertstitzen Verein, then it was Irwin's call to perform the rites. On the other hand, if it was a member of the Apex Social Club on Eastern Parkway, between Nostrand and New York Avenues in Brooklyn, then it was Norman's Community Chapel that provided the final tribute. But the live members of the Apex Social Club loved to dance, and every weekend their walls rang with live music—no disc jockeys for these terpsichores! It required just a minor strategic manipulation for Norman to inveigle himself onto the Apex social committee and thence to recommend his cousins' orchestra for the weekly dances. So deeply entrenched did our family become in this enterprise that the baton was passed, so to speak, from Jack and Phil to Moe, and finally to me. I'm sure there is a doctoral dissertation waiting to be written about the relationship between the activities of the various Foner orchestras and the death rates of members of the Apex Social Club, but I leave that for some other scholar to pursue. All of this, however, is simply prologue to my main thesis, which has to do with music in the Catskills. There was a wide open field of hundreds of summer hotels waiting to be filled with the music of four- or five- piece orchestras. Jack and Phil gravitated to the Royalton House in Monticello. But hotels like the Royalton, unlike Grossinger's, the Flagler, or the Raleigh, could not afford a full-fledged social staff with a social director, or "tummeler," as he was called. As a result, it usually fell to the orchestra to provide, not only the music, but the shows as well. To prepare for each year's summer stint, I was assigned the task of listening to and recording the jokes of Ed Wynn, Phil Baker, Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd, and a host of other comedians. It was during this period that I created my first orig-inal joke. It went something like this: One herring was berating another for not tak- ing care of its family, to which the other replied, "Listen, I'm not my brother's kip-per." You can imagine my excitement when, two weeks later, the joke turned up in Ed Wynn's weekly routine, somewhat enhanced. This time, it was a hen for whose care the herring was asked to be responsible, and the reply was "I'm not my brooder's kipper."

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My favorites, by far, however, were Smith and Dale. You may remember them as the prototypes for Neil Simon's comedy, "The Sunshine Boys," in which he shamelessly repeated some of their famous routines. Two that he overlooked were, first, the doctor's scene dialogue which went: "What kind of beverages do you drink?" "You mean like coffee or milk?" "Yes." "I drink tea." "How much tea do you drink?" "Twelve or fourteen saucers a day." "Why don't you drink from the cup?" "The spoon hits me in the eye." "Why don't you take out the spoon?" "How am I going to keep the lemon down?" Or my all-time favorite, which I have adopted as part of my philosophy of life. The scene is a restaurant and the waiter comes into the kitchen and asks the owner: "Is Phil Brown good for a meal? Owner: "Did he eat it or did he order it?" Waiter: "He ate it." Owner: "He's good for it!" This brings me, inevitably and at length, to my own Catskill experiences as a musician. My first such job was in 1934. I was 15 and somehow I was hired as part of a 4-piece band at the Linden Lawn House near Mountaindale. More impor-tantly, it was just down the hill from my family's summer home. And so, when, after four weeks, Mr. Silver decided that the guest list was insufficient to support the band, all I had to do was pack up my saxophone and walk up the hill to my mother's tender ministrations. The next year, however, was different. Now, I was much more confident, and I was supported by a pianist, violinist and drummer who were able to cover up my deficiencies. We played at the Hotel Turey in Harris, one stop beyond Monticello on Route 17. The Turey was owned by the Turetsky family, and most of its affairs were handled by their son, Morris, who, I learned, later wound up in jail for some malfeasance or other. To us, he showed his true colors about midway into the summer. As was not unusual at the time, the band slept in the social hall or casino. After our evening chores were completed and the last guest had left, we would move our folding beds out from backstage and go to bed. One Friday evening, we were asked by the International Workers' Order in Monticello if we would donate our services after we finished our night's work for a benefit show they were presenting in town. Since we were all progressive-minded individuals, we agreed, and all went well until we returned to the hotel and found a note on the door of the social hall, which read: "Sorry, boys, we're overbooked for the weekend and had to use your room." As you can imagine, this affront served to stir our combined revolutionary ardor. We spent the rest of the night alternating between resting in the violinist's car and walking on the road, planning our counterattack. The next morning, we marched into the kitchen and announced that we were too tired to play for lunch that day. Playing for Saturday lunch was part of the agreed-upon work week for the band, for which we each received the sum of $4.00 a week. If the truth be told, the guests were only too glad not to have their herring and borscht disrupted by our version of the "Poet and Peasant's Overture." But there was a matter of principle involved, and we were forthwith fired. Not to worry, though. An employment agency in Monticello dispatched us forthwith to the White Sulphur Springs House, where we were to receive $7 a week each. We could hardly believe our ears. What a break! The White Sulphur Springs House was a welcome departure from the Turey, and the owner took to us as if we were his own children. The only problem was that the band outnumbered the guests, and after two weeks, the owner told us he would be glad to keep us on as non-paying guests, but he couldn't pay us. 6

By now, we had become experienced in the ways of Catskill hotels. We learned that the Turey had not been able to replace us, so we succeeded in negotiating a return engagement at the rate of $7 per week per man, and with two rooms of our own in the main house. You can imagine our triumphant journey back to Harris, where we concluded the season in glory. In one respect, however, our victory was incomplete. The band, in those days, ate at a table separate from the guests, and we were constantly on the alert to make sure that we were getting the same food as the guests. One day, we overheard one guest asking another to pass the pitcher of sweet cream. Sweet cream! We had never had our table graced with a pitcher of sweet cream. We immediately dispatched a delegation to the kitchen to demand sweet cream for our table. Turetsky, however, was no fool and knew with whom he was dealing. He motioned to the kitchen and said, "O.K. Help yourself to the sweet cream." We were dumfounded. To us, sweet cream was a demand; none of us had ever had it and we couldn't pick it out for the life of us. The owner grinned malevolently as we slunk, defeated, from the kitchen. The following year, 1936, found the same combination that had graced the Turey ensconced at the Lake Huntington Lodge. We had, by now, graduated to $7 per week as a regular recompense, and we also had a social staff (a director and an actress) with whom to work. More important as far as I was concerned, however, was the fact that the hotel's bookkeeper was the brother of Dale of the Smith and Dale comedy team, and I was constantly besieging him with questions about their routines. I think he was glad when Labor Day rolled around that that pest of a saxophone player stopped bothering him. By 1937, I had linked up with my brother, Moe, and we were playing together at the Saxon Hotel outside of Monticello—myself on the alto, he on the tenor saxophone. I later wrote deprecatingly about him that "Moe played the tenor as if it were two fivers." By then, we had advanced to the point where we received $10 a week and were independent enough to insist that any hotel we played at had to have a decent tennis court. The advertisement for the Saxon Hotel had grossly exaggerated its facilities, and by the time we were four weeks into the season, we had decided that it was not for us. But here we were faced with a dilemma. The contract we had signed, on the back of a paper bag in which I had brought my lunch to the audition, provided that we could be fired but could not quit. However, we thought we were ingenious enough to solve the problem. One Saturday night, at the height of the festivities, each member of the band took out a different number—not only a different number, but a different rhythm. Thus, one of us took out a waltz, one a fox-trot, one a rumba, and one a tango— and we proceeded to impose this horrifying cacophony of sound out onto the ears of our listeners. In the midst of it all, the owner walked into the social hall, with his favorite perennial guest on his arm. He paused at the door, listened for a moment, and then turned to his companion. "You see," he said, proudly, "when they want to, they can play!" P. S. We finished the season at the Saxon. By far the most rewarding and productive years of my Catskill experience took place at Arrowhead Lodge in Ellenville, which was owned by one wing of the ubiquitous Slutsky family. In 1940 and 1941, the Rapp-Coudert Committee, a forerunner of the McCarthy Committee, conducted a sweeping witch hunt at New York's city colleges, and when it was finished with its labors, three of my brothers, Phil, Jack and Moe—all of whom were on the staff at City College, two as history professors and one in the registrar's office—were its victims. At the time, I was a substitute teacher in Pitman stenography and typewriting in the New York City high schools, so, even though I was questioned by the committee, my tenure as a teacher was not immediately threatened. Still, by any standard, the Committee was batting .750—three out of four—as far as the Foner family was concerned. We decided to reconstitute the orchestra, with Jack on the drums, Moe on the tenor sax, and myself on the alto. Phil, at the time, was employed as educational director of the Fur Floor Workers' Union, so he did not enjoy the perquisites of a summer vacation. We were searching for a name for our band, when Leonard Lyons, the columnist for the New York Post, came to our rescue. He announced in one of his columns that a group of teachers who had been suspended from City College had formed an orchestra and were calling themselves "Suspended Swing"—and so, "Suspended Swing" it became. In the summer of 1941, we were hired at Arrowhead Lodge. One of my colleagues at Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, and a long-standing friend of the family, was a Spanish teacher named Sam Levenson. We persuaded the Slutskys to hire him as an MC—he had, we told them, a limitless supply of stories, and besides, he could play the violin. He was hired for free room and board for himself and his wife, as opposed to the $15 per week the rest of us were getting. This was Sam's first commercial engagement—he had previously entertained at Teachers' Union parties, but now he was exposed to the general 7 public. I need not tell you that his career took off from there, and I'm sure that most of you are familiar with the results. Sam Levenson was not the only comic of note whose career our orchestra was instrumental in launching. Earlier that year, we were playing at a dance tendered by the Daily Worker chapter of the Newspaper Guild, and that evening marked the first public performance of an aspiring young comic named Zero Mostel. Years later, when I was the president of the Fur Workers' Union, I was walking along Seventh Avenue with a prominent fur manufacturer, when I saw Zero approaching on his way to his painting studio then located on the fringe of the fur market. What an opportunity to make an impression! As he came near, I accosted him, "Zero," I said. "How would you like a job as a fur floor boy?" "Listen, Foner," he replied. "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" My consternation was only momentary. The fur manufacturer was overwhelmed. "He knows you!" he exclaimed. But back to Arrowhead Lodge. The summer of 1941 was a total success. The shows we put on were so well received that the inhabitants of "kuchaleins" all around the area flocked to the Arrowhead social hall for their evening entertainment. Of course, honesty compels me to report that both the Nevele and the Fallsview Hotels, which adjoined Arrowhead, had guards at their gates to keep out all non-guests. Norman Franklin and I wrote a number of original arrangements, and we presented them at the annual band contest held at the Flagler in those years, with remarkable results. That summer, I also composed the song, "Shoot the Shtrudel to Me Yudel," dedicated to Yudel Slutzky, which was published in the latest issue of the Catskill Institute's Newsletter, and which I hope to present later this weekend. By the following summer, however, Moe, Jack and I, along with Norman Franklin, were in the United States Army, and we had to wait until 1946 to be re-united and to reconstitute the Foner Orchestra. By this time, the title, "Suspended Swing" was outdated, so we now called ourselves, "The Foner Orchestra and Their Topical Rhythms." We learned that Arrowhead Lodge had entered into an arrangement with the Jefferson School of Social Science, whose faculty was made up mainly of victims of the Rapp-Coudert Committee. Guests would sign up for a week's stay at Arrowhead, beginning on a Sunday, and during the week, they would, in addition to all the other facilities of Arrowhead (including our band), attend lectures by such scholars as Doxey Wilkerson, Howard Selsam, Frederick Ewen, Morris U. Schappes, Philip and Jack Foner, and others. The result was that the hotel was practically filled up throughout the season. Incidentally, included among Jack's family at Arrowhead was his then 5-year-old son, Eric, who, even at that early date, was already displaying signs of his budding historical talents. When Jack would complete his own lecture, he would introduce Eric for a lecture on China. Eric would ascend (or be lifted to) the podium and deliver the learned tones the pronouncement that "China is a big country!" By this time, our weekly salaries had ballooned to $95.00, but since we had full responsibility for all social activities, we did not consider ourselves overpaid. Of course, we had a distinct advantage over other hotel staffs, since the clientele changed each week and we felt no constraints about repeating our numbers. Another advantage we enjoyed lay in the abundant supply of intelligence and talent possessed by the Arrowhead guests. A special feature of the week's program was an evening of sketches presented by the guests at the various tables in the dining room. Some of these were of such high quality that we adopted them as part of our own repertoire. The arrangement with the Jefferson School continued through the summers of 1946, 1947 and 1948. They were fruitful in more ways than one. During the Labor Day weekend of 1947—just 50 years ago this weekend— my wife, Lorraine came up as a guest, and the following March, we were married. So, in a sense, this weekend is our Golden Anniversary. Also, during that same summer of 1947, Norman Franklin and I were commissioned to write a musical comedy for the Department Store Employees Union, and the result, Thursdays 'Til Nine, ran for four nights during the Thanksgiving Weekend of 1947. Our advisory committee consisted of Arthur Miller, Norman Rosten, Martin Ritt and Millard Lampell, and the opening night's performance was attended by Irving Berlin, among other notables. I am told his comment was "Too political!" The summer of 1948 marked the end of the Foner Orchestra as a cultural force, but it did not conclude my relationship with the Catskills. At the end of the school term, I received the news that the New York State Commissioner of Education had turned down my appeal from the decision of the Board of Examiners to deny 8 me a teaching license because of "insufficiently meritorious record"—but really because I had offended the sensibilities of the Rapp-Coudert Committee." My brother, Phil, was at that time writing the history of the fur and leather workers' union, and he introduced me to the leaders of the union, as a result of which I was hired as educational director of the Fur Dressers & Dyers Joint Board. As luck would have it, one of the first union projects after I came aboard was to build a hotel at White Lake in the Catskills for the vacation use of the fur workers and their families. Unfortunately, Ben Gold, then head of the union, did not reckon with the fact that the summer was the busy season of the fur industry during which styles and garments were prepared for the following fall and winter. As a result, relatively few fur workers were able to take advantage of the resort's facilities, but large numbers of the general public did. Since my past experience was known to the union's leadership, I was given an important role in fashioning the programs at the Fur Workers' Resort, as it was called. One of which I was and am particularly proud was that presented when Paul Robeson came to the resort in the summer of 1949—the summer of the famous Peekskill concert and the infamous attack upon its attendees. For Robeson's appearance, I wrote a special script that served as an introduction, and one of the mementos I shall treasure is his autograph on the script with the inscription, "Thanks a million, Paul." I shall pass it around for you to see. I cannot let this mention of Paul Robeson pass without calling attention to the fact that next year will mark the centennial of the birth of this great American artist and fighter for freedom. I am privileged to serve on the Board of the Directors of the Paul Robeson Foundation, which is planning wide variety of events to mark that auspicious occasion. I shall also pass around a picture of the Foner Orchestra in which you can see my brother Jack on the drum, and the saxophone section consisting of myself, my brother, Moe, and Norman Franklin. There are also two pictures taken when the we made our final appearance during a weekend at the Fur Workers' Resort. In both of them, you can you can see my brother Jack and myself, and in one of them, the trumpet player is the actor, Lou Guss, whom you may have seen with Cher in "Moonstruck." In the other, the man with the hat and the fiddle is Allan Tresser, who is still, fifty years later, holding forth as the MC, or "tummler," at the Fallsview Hotel in Ellenville. I think all of us owe a debt of gratitude to Phil Brown, Shalom Goldman, and the Catskill Institute for initiating these Annual Conferences. For me, it has provided an opportunity to relive some of the most exciting and gratifying experiences of my life. I hope that sharing them here today has given you, as well, a picture of what it meant to be a musician in the Catskills during the heyday of its existence.

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