..inte: Herman H. Lange ..intr: Dorothy Pickelner ..da: 1984 ..ca: ..ftxt: An Interview with Herman H. Lange September 24, 1984 Transcriptionist: Carol Ruttan Interviewer: Dorothy Pickelner Arizona Jewish Historical Society Log For Herman H. Lange Interview September 24, 1984. Jewish life in early Douglas, Arizona. Taken at the Lange home. Pages 1- 2 Arrival of Lange family; father, mother, daughter. Date 1905 from Chicago. Herman Lange born 1912 in Douglas, Arizona. 2 Parents: Michael Max Lange; Anna Lange (died young). Sister: Beatrice. Younger brother: Harry, born 1914. Uncle Zeitlin important to family. 3 Why did they choose Douglas? 2- 3 Trade: Cigar makers. Copper City Cigars, factory. 3 Father goes back to Chicago, but returns, 1907. 3- 4 What Douglas was like in those years. 4- 6 Found other Jewish citizens; Leon Levy (later member of Regents), Jake Levy, Ben Levy, Aaron Levy in mercantile business. Moses Klein in furniture business. 5- 6 Among early Jewish settlers - "Old Man" Cohen, Morris Davis, David Davis. 6- 7 Jews never worked in physical labor, or mines or smelters. All were business people. 7 Fleischer family. Mrs. Fleischer's father "Old Man Blumenthal", whose son wrote the first Arizona State song. Whole family of musicians. 7- 8 Schools and education in Douglas. Black schools were segregated. Rich and poor were segregated; didn't socialize. 8- 9 Separate Mexican school, though the wealthy ones got to go to "White" school. 9 Location of Douglas significant. Early settlers were Texans. 9-10 Unified "White school", from age 6 to 18 years. 500 students. 10 Herman's graduating class of 75. Herman returned later and taught math and science for 12 years. 10-11 Jewish life very weak. 11 No congregation except on High Holidays. Services in a hall. Many went to Tucson or El Paso. 11-12 Jewishness in home? No Jewish education in Douglas. Very little. Mother tried. 12-13 Father cared only for Turnverein. 13 Father's family not observant even in the 80's. much intermarriage. 14 Jewish poker club. 14-15 Activity during World War II. Important of air base. Many enlisted Jewish men and officers. Friday night services at the base. Jewish women and men provided Oneg Shabbats. 16-17 Where did you meet Judith, your wife? In Temple in Tucson at University of Arizona. Married Judith Friedlander, 1934, while teaching in Douglas. Set up housekeeping there. 17 Friedlander family also from Chicago. Moved to Tucson and Phoenix. 18 Judith's father had been in the Jewish Legion in Palestine. Ardent Zionist; important in Zionist movement in Arizona. Became painting contractor. 18-19 Were any of the Jews in Douglas among the 'leading' citizens? Not of civic importance, but none were "troublemakers"; good citizens. 20 Did any of the Jews hold public office? No, can't recall any. Stratified by wealth and social position. 20-21 Alfred Levy, popular young man. Aaron Levy, Alfred's cousin, encouraged Herman to go to college. 21 Jewish fraternity at the University of Arizona. Leon Levy played center on football team. Levys prominent citizens. 22 The Leslie Farber family outstanding students - highly respected family. 23-24 Tell us of your own fine family: 5 Lange sons all exceptional students and are scattered: Dr. David Lange Ph.D. Dr. Robert Lange Ph.D. Professor at Brandeis. Michael Lange Biologist with U.S. Wild Life Service in Texas. Jonathan Lange Union organizer for Textile Workers Union; lives in Tennessee. Philip Lange - Art teacher in Rochester, NY. 24 Judith Lange; mother; fine painter. Herman Lange; high school teacher; Scottsdale, Arizona; science, math. 24-25 Returns to Douglas to class reunion of Mexican students he once taught. 25 General impression of Douglas. Didn't consider it a "frontier town. Proud of the city. 26-27 Parents never considered themselves "pioneers". 27 Father, Max, lived there from 1911 to 1951. Died in Douglas and buried there. Herman Lange Interview I am here today to thank you for allowing us to tape your experiences as an early settler of Arizona. PICKELNER: When did you come to Arizona and with whom? LANGE: I was born here. PICKELNER: And did your whole family come at one time? LANGE: Yes, they came out here at that time in the -- I think it was the Fall of 1911 but they had been here previously as early as 1905. PICKELNER: Did they remain? LANGE: They remained after this time; they never left Arizona after that. PICKELNER: Where did you come to? What city? LANGE: We came to Douglas. PICKELNER: Who was in your family at the time? LANGE: When they first came here it was my father and mother and they had their one year old daughter. Then they left about two and a half years later and returned a short time before I was born. At that time my sister was about seven and a half and then later, about two and a half years later, my brother was born there. That was the entire family. PICKELNER: And you came to Douglas? LANGE: To Douglas. PICKELNER: In 1905? LANGE: No, the family came in 1905. PICKELNER: And you were born? LANGE: I was born in 1912. PICKELNER: Would you give me the names of your mother and father and your brothers and sisters. LANGE: My father's name was Michael Max Lange and my mother was Anna Lange. My sister is Beatrice Lange and my brother was Harry Lange. PICKELNER: The younger brother? LANGE: Uh-huh. He was born in 1914. PICKELNER: Why did they come to Douglas? LANGE: That's a long story. I had an aunt, my mother's only sister, who was married to Max Zeitlin. PICKELNER: Zeitlin? LANGE: Zeitlin. Z-e-i-t-l-i-n. And Max Zeitlin was a bookkeeper. His health wasn't that good and he came out to Douglas about sometime in late 1904 and went to Bisbee first. He worked for Phelps Dodge there. Douglas was just starting, maybe about two years old. The railroad had just come in. He, Max, was quite an enterprising individual, a promoter you might say. His wife and my mother, the sisters, and my father were all cigar makers. The days when all cigars were rolled by hand. There wasn't a cigar factory according to him. Now, there may have been one someplace in Arizona but there was none in southern Arizona. No cigar factory. So he saw an opportunity to go into a business that was certainly not overcrowded. First he got his family to come out. Then he wrote back for his sister-in-law and brother-in-law and their infant daughter to come out; that there was opportunity here. So they came out and started the Copper City Cigars and that's why they came to Arizona. PICKELNER: Did the factory last a long time? LANGE: The factory was in business for about two years. They hired some local help and they got their Havana fillers and stuff like that from Cuba. Then my father got typhoid fever. He was a little man anyway, a little wiry individual, very athletic. And he went down to way under 100 pounds and just couldn't recuperate so in 1907 they left. As I recall from the stories later on that ended the Copper City Cigars because Max Zeitlin was not a cigar maker. His wife was and my mother and father both were, but that closed the Copper City Cigars. So he went into another business. He did not leave. The Zeitlins went back to Chicago and that was supposedly the end of their Arizona adventures. PICKELNER: Have you heard any stories of what Douglas was like, what it looked like, what it consisted of? LANGE: I've heard lots of stories. of course I was quite young when most of these stories were supposed to have been taking place. But it was a wide open town, particularly for the cigar manufacturer, because the big customers were the saloons and the gambling houses and so forth in Douglas. PICKELNER: How big a town was it? LANGE: I really don't know. That's a matter of history. I mean that can be checked anyplace. I think that Douglas kind of burgeoned out and blossomed early and then never went anywhere after that. I know that even now Douglas is not more than maybe -- it isn't twice the size of what it was in those days. I know in 1920 it was only a little over 9,000. I don't know what the official population is; as I say that's a matter of historical record. PICKELNER: Did they find any Jewish people here at all besides Mr. Zeitlin? LANGE: Oh, yes; yes. There were -- I don't know who they found here but everybody knows about the Levys; and the Levys had opened their mercantile store there. PICKELNER: What was the name? Levys, L-e-v-y? LANGE: L-e-v-y. Leon Levy was the only one living in Arizona -- no, there was Sam Levy too, his cousin. Leon was a member of the Board of Regents a few years back. His brother, Aaron, was prominent at the University of Arizona for many years. PICKELNER: Were they in Douglas? LANGE: They were in Douglas. The original Levy brothers were Jake Levy and his quite a bit younger brother, Ben Levy. That was the original Levy brothers that started a store in Douglas back in 1904, 1905, somewhere along in there, about the same time. Because Aaron Levy was born in 1905. I don't know whether he was born in Douglas, but I've heard stories about him when he was an infant that he was -- PICKELNER: Did they start a regular mercantile business? LANGE: Well, what they did -- the stories go that they started on a shoestring, literally. It was that kind of a business, a dry goods business. They had stores later, in fact they took over a store in Bisbee later. They took over Myers & Bloom and built it up into a store in Tucson, a big store in Tucson. There are others who can tell you more about all that than I can because I was not particularly interested in that, you know, to follow it up. But I know, I grew up in it. There were other families. There was Moses Klein. I think he was there about that time. PICKELNER: What was his name? LANGE: Moses Klein. Incidentally, Moses Klein's sons -there was Nathan and there was Isidore. Isidore lived here in Phoenix for many years. He married a Newman from Glendale, I think it was. Saul Klein lived here. In fact Saul's first wife was Bert Klein, who taught at Beth El when we first came here, down around 4th and Fillmore. Moses Klein had a furniture store there. There were lot of Jewish families. I can remember names, I was just a youngster, but I don't -- PICKELNER: The names are important to us. LANGE: Well, there was -- see, Douglas had a fairly large Jewish population during each war, during each World War and between the World Wars most of them, except the old old timers, had left. The Levy family was represented by more names than just Levy. There was "Old Man" Cohen who was the Levy brothers' stepfather. In later years they had brought Morris Davis, who was married to one of Mrs. Levy's sisters. And David Davis, who recently passed away, was the only son of that family. But the Levy family was really kind of a three-tiered family so to speak. And the Klein family -- I'm kind of hazy on that -- there was more than one Klein family, in other words, second husband or second wife or something. PICKELNER: Were they all involved in the business? LANGE: They were all in business. My father in later years -- we can get to that later as to how that happened -my father was in business there until 1929. PICKELNER: But they were not farmers? LANGE: None of them were farmers. I can't think of any of them that worked in the smelter. I was practically the only Jew -- in fact people were so surprised that during the summer I would work in the smelter as a summer job. Many of them were mercantile. I remember names. I don't know just exactly who they were. PICKELNER: They didn't work in the mines? LANGE: None of them worked in the -- well, the mines were not in Douglas anyway. The mines were all in Bisbee. The smelter was the only thing. In fact, there were two smelters in Douglas for a good many years. The Phelps Dodge Copper Queen and the Calumet Arizona and Calumet Michigan. PICKELNER: Those were the -- LANGE: Those were the two big mining companies that had smelters in Douglas. They later merged and closed one of the smelters. Those things are a matter of historical fact. Those are easily traced down elsewhere. Let me see if I can think of a few more. Oh, yes. I remember other names that were prominent. There was the Fleischer family. As I recall Mrs. Fleischer's father was "Old Man" Blumenthal, who was the bearded patriarch of the area. One of his sons was a musician, a violinist. I remember that, because anyone who played violin was godlike to me. And Morey Blumenthal wrote the music for the first Arizona State song. PICKELNER: That's Blumenthal's son? LANGE: Yeah. Morey Blumenthal was his name, I'm pretty sure. That State song was the State song for a good many years. I don't know if it ever was supplanted. The words were written by somebody up in the Valley here, but he wrote the music. PICKELNER: What was it like as a youngster growing up going to school there? What were the schools like? Was it a one room school? LANGE: Oh, no. No. Actually, Douglas, by my earliest recollection of the schools in Douglas, the first school I went to, it was quite a big school system. After all, it was a town of 9,000 people. There were no one-room -- yes. There was one one-room school, I will grant you that. That was the Black school. It was completely segregated from first grade through high school. PICKELNER: Were there many Blacks? LANGE: No. Any enterprising Black, anybody who lived there, and there were very few, anybody who lived there sent their children away to school. There was a little two room school down on, as I recall, Second Street School it was called, where they tried to teach the Blacks equal but separate from first grade through high school. It was a completely segregated school district. We had two White elementary schools, first through fifth, fourth, fifth, called Clauson and A Avenue on opposite sides of town; identical schools. Both had the same architecture and the same format. There was of course big rivalries scholastically and everything between the elementary schools. I attended both of them. I attended Clauson School my first year because we lived downtown back of the store and although it's quite a ways off, I had to pass the Seventh Street School because it was the Mexican school. PICKELNER: The Seventh Street was White, but Mexican? LANGE: Not White. Mexican. Not at all White. It was Mexican. She wasn't Jewish so I don't know if it's relevant here but Sarah Marley was the principal of that school and she did everything she could for her little Mexican children. But it was really segregated. Of course the reason given for the segregation was that they needed it for the language, but it was segregated clear up through the fourth grade, or fifth grade. They didn't go to the other school unless you were a very, very wealthy Mexican. I remember there was some Mexican families who didn't go to Seventh Street or Fifteenth Street School. Two schools on the opposite sides of town for Mexicans. If you were very wealthy -- I can remember the names of those Mexican families, which is probably not of a great deal of interest in this interview. PICKELNER: That would be fine. LANGE: The Ratone family and the Gonzalez family. They went to Clauson and A Avenue. Of course they spoke Mexican or they spoke Spanish in the home just like the others. PICKELNER: They managed to go to the White school. LANGE: They went to what they called the "White" school. The Black was such a complete segregation that most of us were not even aware that there was one. PICKELNER: White was completely separate? LANGE: Completely separate. You see, down in the southeastern corner of the state, it's on the Mexican border and only about, a straight line, about 20 miles from the New Mexico line, maybe 25. The earliest settlers were mostly from Texas. Well, that gives you the setup for the two segregations. PICKELNER: Was there a good high school? LANGE: There was an excellent high school for the White. Now, the Mexicans did go to the high school. After fifth grade we all went to the Grammar School, which is now Joe Carlson School. But that was called the Grammar School. It was sixth, seventh and eighth. It was all the Unified School District. Everybody went to the Grammar School because that was the only seventh and eighth at least, and mostly sixth and then into high school, which was the only high school at that time. The building is now a junior high school and they have a large new high school built out farther east. But the high school was a high school of about 500 and it stayed that way from the time I was in school until, oh -- PICKELNER: As many as 500 students? LANGE: Oh, yes. Yes, there was about 500 students. My graduating class was 75 seniors. In fact, I could show you that annual here. A little later on you may want to see it. I have all the annuals. I taught in that school for 12 years -- 11 years. I taught one year under Sarah Marley and 11 years in the high school. So, the school was good, the high school was good. It turned out a very large number considering its size and the fact that it was predominantly, I imagine even then it was probably 40 percent Mexican because there was a huge dropout of the Mexican students. But now I imagine the high school is probably even over 50 percent Hispanic. PICKELNER: To come back to the social life of the community, were you separated as a Jewish community from the rest of the town? LANGE: No. There was a Jewish community. During the first World War my mother was very active in things Jewish because there were so many young Jewish soldiers at Camp Jones. So there was an organization that was a welfare organization. But in between the wars and even during the second World War again we were active. There was a big air base there and there were a lot of Jewish soldiers and several of us got together to see that they had a certain amount of Jewish life in town. But it was only during the wars. Other times there was a Jewish community, but it was -- in fact, I would say that there were probably two Jewish communities. Those who were well-heeled and those that weren't so affluent. PICKELNER: It was a decided demarcation? LANGE: Oh, yes. It was very definite. Very definitely. Social life -- it's hard to describe without sounding -well, I wasn't bitter, I didn't care. But there were some who were a bit bitter about the way that was divided. PICKELNER: Was there any kind of congregation? LANGE: There was no kind of congregation. We were strictly Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashonah Jews. There were services up above in maybe the Masonic Hall or something on Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur. And they wouldn't even bother sometimes to get in a rabbi. As I say, old man Blumenthal would carry on a service but only during the High Holidays. And that was only actually during the period when there was a sizeable number of Jewish families there. A lot of them used to go to Tucson or El Paso for the holidays. There was never an active, I would say -- now, somebody may disagree with me because I grew up knowing I was Jewish and that was just about it. PICKELNER: There was no Jewish education? LANGE: There was no Jewish education locally at all. Several of my Jewish friends -- there were the Farbers. My closest friend was Leslie Farber and he had a brother, David and Manny. The Farbers went to El Paso to study a little while to be bar mitzvahed. I don't remember where the Levy boys went but Alfred Levy was bar mitzvahed; I remember that. PICKELNER: Is that what they did, they went to one of the bigger cities for training? LANGE: It wasn't extended training. It was a token, a token training, as I recall. Now, I was not in on that so I may be wrong on how thorough their Jewish education was. PICKELNER: Was there any kind of Jewishness in your house? I don't mean kosher necessarily. LANGE: Yes, there was. We observed Rosh Hashonah, and a little later on I tried fasting at Yom Kippur and things like that, but we were not extremely Jewish. My mother would have been probably had there been more of a Jewish community there. For a long time she used to see that herring was ordered, the milk herring so that they could have pickled herring and things like that, because we had a grocery store. But I think my mother regretted a bit -- I'm not really sure because she died when I was only 14 -- and I think she regretted a big that there wasn't more Jewish life. My father couldn't have cared less, I believe, although I don't know why. His family in Chicago was very, very Jewish. I don't think they were conforming kosher Jews but they were very, very Jewish. And the frowned on dating and stuff like that, which was not in the Jewish community. But my father was not -- in fact, his great interest when he was young has been as a member of an athletic Turnverein and of course that was not Jewish, that was German. In Chicago he belonged to a Turnverein which was very active; had done very well in national competition and stuff. His family, although they were very, very conscious of their Jewishness, did not observer PICKELNER: They were not observant? LANGE: I don't think my father got any Jewish education even as far back -- and he was born in 1879 and I don't think he had any Jewish education; in fact, I know he didn't have any Jewish education so I am not the one to ask about things like that. Because not having any I was interested, don't get me wrong, I was interested, but had not had any opportunity. PICKELNER: Very little Jewish opportunity LANGE: In our family. PICKELNER: Were any of the other families LANGE: Well, I don't know. There are indications that whatever they had didn't hold too well anyway. For instance, they may have been bar mitzvahed, they may have been this, that and the other, but none of them married Jewish -- none of them really married Jewish girls, except Saul. Saul Klein did. And Isidore Klein, the Klein family, but I mean of the other families I knew they all drifted away from Jewishness. PICKELNER: On Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur did they get together as a community? LANGE: Well, they got together upstairs above a store in downtown Douglas and they had an orthodox service all in Hebrew which -- PICKELNER: The upstairs of your store? LANGE: Not our store, no, not our store. No, we never were underneath that. I don't know if you know how these small towns, there are the Masonic Hall and the Oddfellows Hall are upstairs, they're all upstairs. The service was all in Hebrew, everything was in Hebrew. It was perfectly meaningless to me, except that we'd go; we'd stay home from school and we'd go to Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur services. That was the extent of our participation and as far as I could tell -- oh well, there was a certain amount of Jewish community life. The families would get together to play poker and the poker game would be all Jews. There were stores downtown, two or three or four Jewish stores and some of them were open on Sunday. And my father would go down to work in his store which was not open on Sunday, but he would go down to work there and he would go out across the street to the California store or the El Paso store. The El Paso store was a branch of Levys run by Mr. Davis. The California store was the Farbers. Moses Klein's store was a big furniture store; he wasn't open at those times, but there'd be a certain amount of community life there. PICKELNER: Did the influx of Jewish soldiers in World War II make any difference in your community? LANGE: Oh, yes. The thing that stands out in my memory of that period was the services which were held, it didn't seem to me that it was every Friday night, it may have been every other Friday night or maybe only once a month. PICKELNER: Friday night? LANGE: Friday night services at the base and the services were conducted by very active young enlisted men. Moses Klein was the stalwart for this thing. He saw to it that there was an Oneg Shabbats, you know, things like that. But there was a stratified community even there. You see, the military installation was an air base and so all the officers were flyers with their wings, and the enlisted men were squadron men; maintenance, supply, things like that. We attended the services more with the enlisted men than we did with the officers. Some officers and their wives would come. Wives were there, because it was on this side, you know; they hadn't been shipped over yet. But the officers, as I recall, the things that I recall about that was that most of the affairs with the officers were purely social and with the enlisted men it would be somewhat the religious services plus social. I remember names, which of course are meaningless now, of young enlisted men and young officers. But I've never heard of any of them since. Now, of course, they're all men of 60, 65 years old. They were a little younger than I, that's all. They were all just a little younger than I. PICKELNER: You were pretty grown by this time in World War II? LANGE: Oh, sure. In World War II, when the war started in '41 I was almost 30 years old. PICKELNER: Let's go on to your own personal life. was there any special ambition that you had growing up in this little tiny community? LANGE: I don't think so. PICKELNER: Well, if you were that old you must have had romantic ideas at any rate. When did you get married and how did you meet your wife? LANGE: Well, I married long before the war. I was at the University in Tucson, the University of Arizona and I met Judy at Temple. I met her in Temple and after Temple there used to be different young married couples there, established folks there, used to have us over to their homes after services and that's where we got started. We met about my sophomore year in college and dated off and on for a couple of years, I guess. Then when I graduated, Judy's family left and went back to Chicago and that was it. That was it. But her mother was not well. I went to teach in Douglas and I got a letter toward the end of that first year from Tucson. Judy had brought her mother back because she was not well and so that summer -- PICKELNER: What was the name, Judith? LANGE: Judith Friedlander. Many of the people here in the community knew her father, Phillip. But I worked that summer in the office of the smelter, for a summer job -- I was teaching. And I traveled back and forth as much as I could and that fall we married. The fall of '34. So we were both quite young. PICKELNER: '34 was it? LANGE: 1934. I wasn't 23 yet. PICKELNER: You were teaching in Douglas? LANGE: I taught in Douglas. I taught there for the following 11 years. We left there in '45. PICKELNER: Can you tell us something about the Friedlanders? Was it Friedland, Friedlander? LANGE: Friedlander. You knew them. PICKELNER: Yes, I knew them. LANGE: Anyway, that's why we came to Phoenix. That is not of any interest historically. In '45 Judith's two brothers were both medical doctors. They had been working with their father in the painting business for years, but they were both medical doctors and they were going their way. One of the brothers suggested that I should move over here and help Phillip Friedlander in the business. He was a painter and a businessman, but he couldn't read blueprints, he couldn't keep his books. They had done those things for him all the time. So that's why we came here in 1945. And I worked with him for four years and then went back to teaching. But that's not of any value historically. PICKELNER: What was Phillip Friedlander like? Was he an interesting man? LANGE: Of course he was an interesting man. PICKELNER: Tell us about him. LANGE: There are a lot of people here who can tell you much more about him because they would have a more objective view of him. You know, if you want to be a friend with your father-in-law you don't go to work for him. So let's leave it there. He was really a very interesting man. Oh, Phillip Friedlander, there are people here who could tell you about Phillip Friedlander. He was in the Jewish Legion in Palestine back in World War I. In fact he had land, he and his brother had land which was designated for them. He never went there to take it up; his brother Sam did. Phillip was an ardent Zionist and a strong supporter of the Zionist cause. In fact, it was practically one issue to him. That was the thing. He made it a point to live it as well as mouth it. There are so many in any community who are ardent Zionists but when the chips are down there are very, very few that do what Phillip Friedlander did. I think it would be better to have somebody else tell you about Phillip Friedlander. PICKELNER: Looking back on your experiences as a youngster and growing up in Douglas, which was an out of the way corner of the world, certainly for Jews, would you say that Jews as a whole made any important contributions to the city of Douglas and the state of Arizona? LANGE: I don't know as they made terrific contributions in that corner as Jews. It was a Mexican, Mormon, Texan, what else could we say -- fundamentalist community. Where would you place a Jew in such a community that you would make a tremendous contribution unless -- I would say this, that none of the Jews there were ever considered the troublemakers, let's put it that way. But that's a tradition of the Jewish family no matter where you go. PICKELNER: Were any of them outstanding in the community, were they any leaders; I think that's important. LANGE: Oh, yes. We all did well in school, with rare exception. And whether that was considered a contribution to the community by our peers I'm not so sure because you know how that works. I never felt the real bite of anti-Semitism, but I always felt it was there. PICKELNER: It was not overt? LANGE: Oh, it was overt to some extent, yes. There would be flare-ups. We had an active Klan group there once. They paraded at night with their hoods and their hats and so on and so forth. I'll never forget there was a young fellow by the name of Culver Moon who was a Klansman, and then there was Bill Critchley, a Catholic, and there was a young Black man there that was an athlete, but he didn't go to school there. And there was Arthur Pine, a Jew, and the three of them got together once and got hold of Culver and scared the wits out of him. PICKELNER: Now, Culver was the leader? LANGE: He wasn't a leader, he was just a member of the Klan. And I'll never forget how they took him aside and told him, "Look who you're getting after." But there was an active Klan there, during the early '20s, you probably remember that. It was nationwide. But we had it; we had our little problems. PICKELNER: Were any of the Jews leaders in the community? Did they hold office, you know, that sort of thing? LANGE: I'm trying to think in the secular community if there were -- not really, I'm trying to think of anybody who -they didn't hold elective office in the city, they didn't -no, I can't think of any of them who aspired to it. PICKELNER: Did they take part in such social activity as -- LANGE: It was stratified. The wealthy had -- they weren't-I don't recall they're being members of the country club but I wasn't interested enough to find out. But there was only -- no, there was -- the only family that seemed to be accepted by the powers that be were the Levys and it was strictly a matter of -- well, Alfred was a very popular man through school always. PICKELNER: Alfred Levy? LANGE: Alfred Levy. He died very young. He died in his 50's. Alfred really went to town every place. You probably know of David Susskind. PICKELNER: Yes. LANGE: Well, Alfred and David Susskind originated Talent Associates, and the only time I ever saw Frank Sinatra, let's say in person, was when he came to Douglas and was at the Top Hat Club that Alfred had opened. He wasn't there as an entertainer; he was there as his guest. Because for a short time, I think, I'm not real sure, but I think he was his manager. So in that field Alfred Levy was probably the most outstanding. PICKELNER: Of the old-timers when you first came to Douglas? LANGE: I thought the world of Aaron Levy who was Alfred's cousin, oldest cousin. In fact, Aaron helped me really to make up my mind to go to the University of Arizona when I thought I couldn't by co-signing a note for me at the bank. At that time it was the First National Bank; later it was Valley National. But he co-signed a note for me, which I paid off shortly after that when I got to school and I got a job. But I don't think his interest in me was that personal. I think he was interested that I should go there and belong to the fraternity because my scholarship was high. That's what I really believe. Now, I may be doing him an injustice. He may have had an interest other than that. The fraternity at the University of Arizona back in those days was considered quite a playboy fraternity -- the Zeta Beta Tau. In fact, the whole time I was at the University we were always -- for a Jewish fraternity it was actually a real shame -- because we were always at the bottom of the scholarship list instead of at the top. PICKELNER: They were scholarship students or not scholarship? LANGE: Not. We were at the bottom of the scholarship list. So this was my only contact with Aaron Levy. Leon and I later became friends at the University, but not that close. Leon was a very good athlete. He was a center on the University of Arizona football team for a couple of years. And as I say he was later on the Board of Regents and a very prominent alumnus. I was an active student but nothing outstanding and I didn't have a great deal of contact. PICKELNER: Well, who were your friends? LANGE: There was one Jewish friend I had for years and years - Leslie Farber. PICKELNER: Leslie? LANGE: Leslie. The Farbers were really quite a worthwhile family scholastically, very definitely. Leslie became a psychiatrist in Washington and New York. His brother David was a psychiatrist in San Francisco and then later in New York. Manny is now, the last I talked to Manny, the third brother, he teaches film arts at the University of California San Diego and he was never really educated for that. He was a carpenter by trade, and got into it through another way in New York and then went back to San Diego. But Leslie was my closest friend among the Jews. I had other friends, none as close as Leslie. Leslie had a lot to him, you know, he was the salutatorian of our class. I was fourth and he was second in the class. PICKELNER: Is he still living? LANGE: No. Leslie passed away about three or four years ago. He wasn't even 70 yet. He died of -- he had a stroke and he was in bad shape quite a few years. We kept in touch a little bit through the years. I went to see him in Washington D.C. once. He came here to visit me in Phoenix. But we were much closer than such activity would indicate. PICKELNER: Herman, tell me about your immediate family. Would you like to tell me about your children, who they are now and where they are? LANGE: Well, the five boys are all over the United States. There's only one of them west of the Mississippi. Well, let's start with the oldest. David is a research neurophysiologist at the National Institute of Health in Washington D.C. Bob is a professor of physics at Brandeis University. Then there's a big gap in there, about 14 years down the line there's Michael. And Michael is a biologist with the Wild Life Service at a wild life station southwest of Houston, Texas. Jonathan is with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in -- he's the Assistant Director of organizers in the Southeastern Region. PICKELNER: For which textile -- LANGE: ACTWU, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. And Phillip has just started a full time job in the Rochester, New York schools as a teacher of art. PICKELNER: Like his grandfather. LANGE: Well, like his mother. PICKELNER: Mother? LANGE: His mother didn't teach and his grandfather didn't teach but they were all artists. PICKELNER: Where did you say Phillip is now? LANGE: Rochester, New York. PICKELNER: They sound like a beautiful family. LANGE: Well, they worked hard and they all got educated. PICKELNER: They're all musical too, aren't they? LANGE: Yes, they all played something. In fact, Bob is still playing -- I think, yes, he's the only one who's still active in music -- he plays with a chamber group in Boston, Plays the cello. He and David played in the Phoenix Symphony while they were in high school. of course, the Phoenix Symphony was a different orchestra than it is now. It wasn't nearly as professional. PICKELNER: You didn't tell us enough about your own career. What did you teach when you were -- LANGE: Well, the last 13 years I taught physics and introductory physical science at Scottsdale High School. Then I was 9 years away from teaching as a painting contractor and before that I taught 6 years at Phoenix Elementary at Kenilworth School as a science and math teacher for eighth grade. I was 4 years away from teaching before that and then 11 years I was at Douglas High School as physics and chemistry and general science. And one year I taught fourth grade under Sarah Marley at this Mexican school we mentioned earlier. PICKELNER: That must have been interesting. LANGE: That was a very interesting job. It was terrific in a way because I have gone back to two reunions at Douglas High School in recent years, the last five or six years. What has happened to some of those youngsters is interesting and gratifying because so many of them have gone on ahead and done something with their lives; doctors, a couple of them, Mexican kids that got away from there and went to medical school, one of them in Mexico City. And engineers and all kinds of professional people, far out of proportion to their numbers. It said some pretty good things for the Douglas school system and it changed too. It finally desegregated you know. But it says some pretty good things if you managed to get through the Mexican desegregation and go through high school. In later years -- I don't know, I never taught any Blacks there, never. Because when I left there in '45 they still didn't have any Blacks in the high school. None. I think about two years later they did. They did desegregate. PICKELNER: As you look back on your Douglas experience do you think your life would have been different if you had, say, lived it in an ordinary urban center somewhere in the United States instead of this pioneer community on the frontiers of the United States? LANGE: I love the way you keep talking about the frontiers. You know, we did have paved streets and electric lights. PICKELNER: Oh, you did? LANGE: Oh, yes. We had paved streets and electric lights. And we had a water system and a sewer system. Douglas wasn't that kind -- we never considered it a frontier. My parents came there when it was new. Who can say what would have happened? You know, you can't say. It's impossible to say. Oh sure, it would have been entirely different if I had grown up where my grandmother and grandfather were - my grandmother was in Chicago. or if I had moved to Los Angeles in 1918 when my uncle max and his wife moved away from Douglas. Sure, it would have been different, but how can you even conjecture as to what would have been. It's impossible really. Sure, it would have been different. It would have been much different for all of us if we had grown up in the Jewish community and if we'd grown up in a large city. PICKELNER: We certainly must say something about the fortitude of your family, of your mother and father, who came out to what must have been a very tough experience. And I must say your mother, the women deserve that special thanks too. LANGE: As I say I was only 14 when my mother died. I can just see my mother who never considered herself a pioneer woman, because they came back to Arizona, they came back. They didn't only come to Arizona, they came back. As my father -- well, I remember one remark he made once that shows how he felt about this pioneer bit. A sister-in-law of his or someone, I forget who it was-- no, it was a sister-in-law of my uncle Max who was not related to my father at all, came out and they came down to the store one day from our home in Douglas. While they were at the store a huge rainstorm, as only southern Arizona rainstorms can be, came on and they couldn't get the car started to get home, a 1917 Ford. So she said, "Well, can't we just walk." Father drew himself up to his full five foot three and said, "What do you think, we live in a two by four town, do you know how far it is to walk from here to our house?". So that was his reaction to this pioneer bit. He lived in a town, in a city. PICKELNER: Any they were proud of Douglas? LANGE: Oh, yeah. He was particularly. He died there in '51. PICKELNER: Your father died in Douglas in '51? LANGE: Yes. He was not quite 72 when he died. And he had lived there from 1911. He lived there 40 years. He lived no place else in all that time -- oh well, yes he did. He did go back to Chicago for about three years in the early '30s. PICKELNER: And you say he died in '51? LANGE: Yeah. He went back to Chicago when his mother wasn't well and stayed there until after she died, but by that time he had been widowed for years. We were all grown and there was nothing to keep him in Douglas, but he came back to Douglas after that. PICKELNER: Well, thank you very much, Herman. It was very interesting. Do you have any memorabilia or anything at all of old, old Douglas that you'd like to contribute to our -old newspapers or anything? LANGE: No, I haven't anything like that. PICKELNER: Thank you. We appreciate you letting us come. [end of transcript]