<Begin Segment 3>

BF: And then your father's side?

AS: Yeah, my father was born in Lithuania, again in a little town, and... probably a village, and he, at that... let's see, when he was a young adult, teenager, probably a child even, Russia had conquered Lithuania, so it was under Russian control. And so there were the same concerns about life there. It was, and everybody was really -- well, I can't say everybody -- but my father's family was very poor, and there was a lot of poverty. And Lithuania was a very religious, Jewish, and the Jewish people there were very Orthodox. And, but, so my father got a good education in Judaism, I guess with the idea of teaching when he, being a teacher. And his older brother, though, came to the United States probably, it must have been several years. Several years before my father... my father didn't leave until I think about 1916. I should know, 'cause I recently looked at papers of his. And it would have been about 1916, his brother had, older brother had come earlier, and his -- and was living in Bellingham -- and the older brother wrote to him, he said, "You need to get a trade when you come to America. They have too many Jewish teachers here." [Laughs]

BF: Already at that point?

AS: At that point already, there were that many Jews here. [Laughs] So my father was trained as a tailor -- [coughs] excuse me -- and, and I have to tell you, he hated it. [Laughs] But he was good, so he did have a trade when he came to the country. Of course, none of them, nobody knew English. They came, they were really foreigners. And so at the beginning, he lived with his older brother and his family. Oh yes, by the time my father came to this country, his brother had moved from Bellingham to Mount Vernon, and so I remember hearing that my father had a, must have had a horse and buggy, and would peddle, buy things from people and sell things to people, just going around that way. So I don't know how -- it couldn't have been too long, because he, he enlisted, well, the World War II had started...

BF: World War I.

AS: One, excuse me. Definitely. World War I had started, and he felt very strong about democracy, and was really bitter about the totalitarian, living in the other countries. And so he volunteered, and he was then sent to France, and fortunately he survived that war and came back. And it was after he -- oh, before he left, though, he met my mother, so he must have made his way down to Seattle as did my uncle. He kept moving from Bellingham, Mount Vernon -- this is my, my father's older brother -- then to Everett, so I don't know how long they were in each place, and then to Seattle. And so my father met my mother when she was working at, I think it was a dry cleaning shop. And so they corresponded when he went off to France to fight. And when they, when he came back, then they were married in 1919. So that's how he came to this country.

BF: Now, the, you said that both of the sets of grandparents spoke Yiddish, right?

AS: Yeah, right.

BF: When they arrived, as well as I assume maybe Russian?

AS: Yes, they also spoke Russian, and I suppose my father... oh, I know there would be a Lithuanian language. I would assume he was probably speaking Lithuanian, but I don't know.

BF: So when he went, when he enlisted and was fighting, I wonder how good his English was.

AS: You know, I never even thought of it. So he'd been here then probably a couple of years by that time. I've got to check those, his papers, the documents.

BF: Now, you had said in another interview I read that Abrams wasn't...

AS: That's right.

BF: ...his original name. What's the story?

AS: Right. It was Abramovitz, which I guess in Russian, "vitz" is "son," "son of Abram." So when he entered, he enlisted for the, to the army, they actually made him a citizen, which was amazing.

BF: Just for enlisting?

AS: Yeah, I'm quite sure he got his citizenship that way. And if I'm wrong, somebody will have to tell me. But anyway, and then they said, "Well, would you like to change, shorten your name?" And so he went from Abramovitz to Abrams. So that's how he got the name.

BF: Was that fairly common among Jewish immigrants?

AS: Fairly common.

BF: To shorten the name?

AS: Yeah, fairly common. Not always. Not, because, well, I know many people, when they came to America, I know those who went through Ellis Island, but I suppose it could be other places, too, if the immigration worker didn't understand what the name was or how you spell it, would change the name to something they understood. So there are many people here with names that were given by somebody at Ellis Island. [Laughs]

BF: Right. Now your, so your father and mother, they met, and after the war, after he came back from World War I, so did he continue in his line of work as a tailor?

AS: Yeah, then he, in Seattle he was able to get a job as a tailor, and so he worked as a tailor for several years, and then my mother said, "Well, why don't you open your own business?" And so he did. So I don't know what year that would have been. Well, I know by the time he must have been, I must have been about, whether it was before I was twelve years old or eleven years old, I'm not sure, but I was born in 1924, so I'm sure it was in the late '20s, he probably opened the store.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.