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PART TWO: Washington

I moved to Oakton, Virginia, part of the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area in June of 1978. I was hurting and needed a change of scenery after my divorce was finalized and found the Washington area everything Philadelphia was not. It was a vibrant city that had restaurants from all the corners of the globe, from Cuba, Bulgaria, Turkey, Ethiopia, Vietnam and many other countries. Philadelphia was the typical city that had Chinese and Italian restaurants and was just beginning to have its first French restaurants. The television news in the metro D.C. area had a lot more international content than did Philly, perhaps because it was centered in our nations capitol and having been a political science major in college as well as a current events junkie I was in heaven. Washington had somewhat of a European flavor with restaurants that had seating outdoors. I read somewhere that the government employed more engineers, lawyers, and scientists than anywhere else and this helped make the Washington area a highly educated workforce and the high end restaurants and shopping malls catered to this clientele. Because it was a transient area where people moved in and out all the time it had a totally different type of population than Philly which was a city you were born in, retired, and died.

When I was in Philly most of the people I knew never traveled beyond Atlantic City, New Jersey or the seashore and even New York to them was a foreign place. I had met very few Philadelphians who traveled to other cities in America and few if any who visited other countries. Philly was known as a blue collar town where fights routinely broke out at sporting events, and even the local hockey team, the Flyers, was known more at that time by their moniker, “The Broad Street Bullies” for all the fights their players started in games where pummeling their opponents and leaving them bloodied at times seemed more important than winning the game. Washington was not that kind of town. It had an international flair, with embassies from a hundred different countries, dozens of restaurants from different countries, and an educated workforce more in tune with what was going on the world, and not just their own neighborhood.

June was a strange time to move as it was the beginning of the summer when most people took their vacation. The sweltering heat of August in Washington was one thing it did not have in favor of Philly. I somehow became used to September as the beginning of change more than Spring or any other season. Perhaps this was due to twelve years of elementary and high school and five years of college and graduate school beginning in September. It just seemed as though everything began in September. The Supreme Court began its sessions the first Monday of every October but in September people looked forward to the start of the courts upcoming session and the possibility that the upcoming Court session could result in a decision that might fundamentally change the way we lived. Spring was always a welcome relief from winter, especially a harsh winter, but few things begin in Spring. The superb college basketball playoffs are coming to a conclusion by the end of March and springtime was a month that came after the end of the football season. The weather was great in Spring but more often than not Spring seemed to symbolize the end of Winter and just a short few months until the summer vacation season began. Washington was a great football town and it was exciting to be a part of the community, especially during the Redskins championship run. It was the one thing that brought the entire communities of Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. together, with everyone having a common interest in seeing the Redskins victorious and people desiring seasons tickets had their names put on a waiting list that was eleven years long.

September seemed to be the beginning of things. Families were back from their vacations, their kids started elementary and high school, and college semesters began. The summer was a time to relax and forget one’s troubles and take a break from the maddening crowd. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge was routinely backed up for miles as thousands of Washingtonians made their weekly trips to Ocean City, Maryland every Friday during the summer. Most companies did not bring on new hires during the summer months and waited until September. In many ways September seemed to be the harbinger of change and everything new, whether it was a new job, a student entering a new school year with different teachers and books, businesses ramping up to close out the year in as big a way as possible, and government beginning as well as the federal government’s fiscal year ended September 30th and the new budget would signify changes to come. Everything in September seem to be geared to change. You are saying goodbye to vacation time, and the days are growing shorter and shorter as the summer draws to a close. I always found that saying goodbye is never a happy thing and that there is no sadder word than “goodbye” and September seemed to signify saying goodbye and beginning something new at the same time.

I loved living in the Washington area because of the constant change. There was building going on all the time, whether it was new businesses or homes. It never seemed to be roads, unfortunately, and the traffic in the Washington area always seemed to get worse and worse. It was one of the few places I lived where working seven miles away entailed an hour sitting in my car every morning. Washington did not have everything over Philly, however. There was no feeling of ethnicity to the Washington area. Unlike a Philly or a Baltimore it was not a city of neighborhoods. Philly had its Chinese, Black, Italian, Irish, and Jewish neighborhoods that all contributed something unique to the flavor of the city. Where the Washington area was more of a monolith, Philly was much more culturally significant. Every race or culture that has moved to America eventually assimilated into the melting pot but what Philly had and the Washington area lacked was the unique and obvious contributions of all the different ethnic groups that made the city what America was supposed to be all about. In Philly, each ethnic group indelibly left its mark on the entire area. In Washington, it almost seemed like everyone strove to hide their background and without ethnicity and the different cultures blending together while keeping their intrinsic uniqueness Washington was in some ways very bland. While there are those who decry taking pride in our different cultural backgrounds and who believe that we are all just plain Americans, and not Black Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Chinese Americans, etc. by striving to erase what makes us all unique and special makes the melting pot of America very bland. A city of neighborhoods, which Philly was, and Washington never will be, is what made Philly special, and the contributions of each ethnic group were evident in everything the city had to offer. Assimilation never meant forgetting who you were and denying your heritage, your culture, your customs, or your beliefs. One can be a proud American and still practice and live your ethnicity. It is not short sighted nor is it prejudiced in any way. What made America different from every other country is all the many, many different peoples who came here from around the world, whether fleeing persecution or for a better life economically who brought part of their culture into America and made it part of America, not by hiding or sublimating it, or denying it. America became richer as a country because it was able to blend so many different cultures, religions, customs and traditions into a whole that was made indelibly richer by the sum of its parts. When a city or area lacks identity, as the metropolitan Washington area did, a sense of belonging and family and community just isn’t there.

The one thing I did miss when I moved to Washington was being part of a community. The Washington area had no sense of community other than rooting for the Redskins. Nothing else brought people together. Unlike a Philly or Baltimore there were no Jewish neighborhoods and the Washington area Jewish community was quite apathetic. The weekly Jewish newspapers in Baltimore and Philadelphia averaged seventy five or more pages every Friday and sometimes much more where the Washington Jewish newspaper was a paltry six or seven pages. I could never understand how it could be a community newspaper when it did not post announcements for births, engagements, weddings, and bar mitzvahs as well as obituaries. In Philadelphia, and in Baltimore these weekly announcements were important to the readers and they informed the community about what was going on. If your son or daughter was engaged you want it listed along with a photo and if a loved one passed away you always wanted to have the notice in the local Jewish newspaper. The Washington Jewish newspaper was more like a newsletter where the others were full fledged newspapers filled with announcements, the latest news affecting the Jewish community, and special articles written about Israel, as well as ads for Jewish singles wanting to meet other Jewish singles to date. Washington had none of that and not having this led to the sense that no Jewish community existed in the metropolitan Washington area.

While Philly did have an active Jewish community and while Philly was city of neighborhoods with sections where Blacks, Jews, Italians, and Irish lived one negative Philly had, as I assume most large cities had, was that is was a very racist town, with both black and white racism. When callers would call the city’s top rated sports talk show and criticize a black athlete on the basketball or football team the phone lines would be lit up with black callers accusing the white callers of racism. Any criticism whatsoever of a black athlete would cause this to happen. Likewise, you could tell there were many white callers who harbored deep prejudices against African Americans. One of the best examples of the racial divide in Philly were the elections for mayor. It seemed that whenever a black candidate ran against a white candidate black voters voted 90% to 10% for the black candidate and white voters voted 80% to 20% for the white candidate. I remember many years later watching the academy award winning picture “Crash” and thought it accurately depicted the racial environment I was familiar with in Philadelphia. Although the movie took place in Los Angeles it definitely reminded me of Philadelphia. Confrontations, like the ones depicted in “Crash” seemed likely to happen in Philly at any time and it seemed that racial tension was always in the air. When I was in elementary school almost all of my friends were Black. I used to walk home from school every day with another little boy named Willy. Willy used to stutter quite severely but I learned he never stuttered before I met him. One day when Willy’s parents were not at home his little sister was trying to cook some food for herself and her brother and in a disaster caught on fire and burned to death as her brother watched in horror. Willy was a gentle soul and I never once asked him about what happened. All his fellow classmates were aware of what happened but I never knew how Willie was dealing with his pain and the tragedy he witnessed. There have been many times over these many, many years when suddenly he would come into my thoughts and I would wonder how he was doing, how he was able to deal with his pain. I wondered what Willy was doing today and hoped that whatever he was doing and where ever he was that he was happy and found some comfort and peace in his life.

When I arrived in Washington in June of 1978 I didn’t know anyone and called the local Jewish Community Relations Council to find out about singles groups I could join where I could meet women to date and make new friends. I joined a B’nai Birth singles group and was fortunate to make a number of friends, some of whom I have to this very day, more than thirty years later. It was exciting to meet new people and when I became president of the group I met many different women that I dated. I was dining at exciting new restaurants, visiting the different monuments and memorials, attending events at the Kennedy Center, and meeting exciting new people all the time. I was twenty eight and having the time of my life. My parents lived in Philly and were nearing retirement age, my dad was sixty four and my mom was sixty when I moved. Because my dad had lost his business and had no pension he still worked as a pharmacist for other people and would do so for several more years. In the late seventies pharmacists made a fraction of what they earn now. Today there are few independent pharmacies and most cities have the national or regional chain operations. A pharmacist today earns close to a six figure income and has a nice pension and medical benefits, three things my dad never had. My mom would be retiring about five years later after being a high school counselor for several years. My folks would visit my sisters who had moved to Israel in 1972, and especially did so after 1978 when they became grandparents for the first time. My folks also traveled around the world at times with another couple who were their best friends. My mom had a childhood friend since she was twelve years old who was like a sister to her and when that friend married her husband became like a brother to my dad.

I would travel back home to see my folks for Passover and join them at their home, the home where I grew up, every year. In 1980 my parents decided to sell their home. My dad was sixty six, my mom sixty two, and with my two sisters living six thousand miles away and my living in the Washington area, it made no sense to maintain a home with four bedrooms, especially when my mom had to go down a flight of steps to the cellar to do the laundry. The home was showing its age and it was time to leave. I remember when I went to see my folks after they told me they sold our house. I remember walking into my old room and standing there closing my eyes as my mind danced thru a ton of different memories. This was the only home I had ever known, the home I had come back to every day from elementary and high school, the home I would come back to every Christmas break and every summer when I was in college and graduate school, the home I lived in when my grandparents were alive and after they passed away, the home where my sisters and I entertained our friends, a good number of whom always seemed to enjoy chatting with our parents when they visited, a home that enveloped me in its embrace of family and belonging. When I was ready to return to Washington I remember hugging my parents as I said goodbye to them, knowing that although I would see them again, as tears flowed from my eyes I said goodbye to the only true home I had ever known that was now about to become a part of my past. While I had not lived there for seven years it was always the home I came back to. It was my home. When my folks moved into an apartment in Philly and I would visit them I always felt that their apartment was their home, not mine. The only home I had ever known was now just a memory.

After my parents became grandparents for the first time they began to visit my sisters more often. Over the next eight years my sister had two more children and my other sister married and had two children of her own. My folks had nine reasons to visit Israel more often as they had two daughters, two son-in-laws, and five grandchildren living six thousand miles away. My folks gave serious thought towards retiring in Israel and I of course understood why. I was still single, and out of ten members of their family, nine lived in Israel and one lived in America. The travel back and forth and the twelve thousand mile roundtrip air flight and expense would become more difficult as my folks got older. If my father had not became sick with leukemia my parents would have most likely moved to Israel but everything changed when he became ill.

During the time I lived in Washington I also had the opportunity to work in Baltimore. Baltimore was a city quite similar to Philadelphia, a city of neighborhoods where each ethnic group brought their unique flavor to the city, but Baltimore was much smaller. It was once a quite seedy, dull town, but because of an aggressive mayor who loved the city and was able to forcibly enact changes Baltimore became a major tourist spot and a city where people enjoyed visiting and living. Unlike Philadelphia whose sole major effort to rejuvenate the city was the Kimmel Center, a place where concerts were held, Baltimore built the inner harbor with Pavilions that housed dozens of trendy shops, and the National Aquarium was built in Baltimore as well which attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists. Baltimore would later build its football and baseball stadiums in the center of the city. Unlike Philadelphia, which built their stadiums on the outskirts of town which made people attending games get into their cars and drive back home to the suburbs after a game, in Baltimore you could go for a drink or dinner before or after the game and having the two stadiums in town further rejuvenated the city, as did building a beautiful airport on the outskirts of the city. Baltimore had everything Philly did not leadership that worked hard to rebuild the center of the city in a way that benefited the city across the nation and made it a welcome tourist attraction. Philadelphia had Independence Hall but no real reason for visitors to want to see the city other than that or its fabulous art museum. There was an area called Penn’s Landing but it never was built up like the Inner Harbor. One store would open but eventually close because people would not make a special trip just for one restaurant or shop. Opening dozens of new stores like Baltimore did just didn’t seem to be something the leadership of Philly was capable of doing. Philly’s claim to fame is now casino gambling, but all that does is give some people an incentive to gamble their money away and not spend it on local restaurants, taverns, or theater. Baltimore seemed to me the promise of what a city could become whereas Philadelphia always seemed to be a city of what once was that was not able to adapt to changing times and tastes.

I had various sales jobs while I lived in Washington and had finally, at the age of thirty five, straightened myself out and was no longer going from job to job to try and prove myself. I was working for a rapidly growing software company and was on the top five of the national sales force when I was called into the vice presidents office in February of 1986, three months after my father had passed away. He offered me the position of sales manager of their new Detroit office. I told him I wanted to go home and sleep on it and he agreed. That night I tossed and turned the entire evening and could not get to sleep. After thirteen years in sales the thought of being a sales manager with my own staff was something incredibly enticing. During the evening as I lay in bed and wrestled with my decision for the first time in my life I began to think of something other than myself. I knew my sisters lived thousands of miles away and my mom was now alone. I worried about not being able to get to Philadelphia from Detroit if the weather was bad because Detroit was notorious for bad winters. To this very day, whether it was divine intervention or not, I thank God all the time that I made the correct decision, and went into the office the next day and told the Vice President I could not accept the position and turned it down. Not being used to anyone doing that he was not very happy, but he accepted my decision. A close friend suggested I contact the president of the company because she felt that if I did not explain to him why I turned the promotion down I would never get one again. The company was rapidly growing and their sales were increasing every year by phenomenal numbers and turning down a promotion was something you did not do if you desired a career with the company. Nervous and worried about going around the Vice President I called the President who was based out of their headquarters in New York. I explained why I turned the promotion down and he was very polite and we ended our conversation on a pleasant note. I never sought a promotion and was happy to remain in sales. I lived close enough to Philly to get home in an emergency and had every expectation my life would be the same tomorrow as it was today.

One week after I spoke with the president of the company the vice president walked into my office in McLean, Virginia and stated “The president told me to offer you the new Philadelphia office” (which was based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey), and I accepted. The vice president told me quite clearly that he most definitely did not appreciate it that I did an end around him and then left my office. I immediately called my mom with the news that I was returning home and still can hear the happiness in her voice. She was not alone anymore.