Interview of Irving Burg

1. Transcript

1.1. SESSION ONE JANUARY 12, 2009

SEVERAL: This is Michael Several. Today is January 12, 2009. I am with Irving Burg at his home in Corona del Mar and I am going to interview him in connection with his life in Pasadena for the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center History Project.

SEVERAL: First of all where and when were you born?

BURG: March 12th, 1917 in New York City Fordham Hospital

SEVERAL: Which generation prior to your birth came to the Unites States? Was it your parents or was it your grandparents?

BURG: My parents.

SEVERAL: Where did they come from?

BURG: My father came to the Unites States from Russia to Poland depending upon who owned it at the time and he stopped at London. I do not where he learned his trade but he was a dressmaker and from London he came directly to New York. My mother came from Romania, Bucovina and she came directly to New York.

SEVERAL: Do you know what years they came to the Unites States?

BURG: It would have been in the early 1900s.

SEVERAL: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

BURG: I had a brother and he passed away about 15 years ago, no maybe a little longer, maybe 30 years ago and that is the only two members of the family we have, only two siblings.

SEVERAL: How about aunts and uncles?

BURG: I had an uncle that was an immigrant about the same time as my parents and he married my father’s sister, who was an immigrant at about the same time. My uncles and aunts migrated to American in that first big slow in the early 1900s. My uncle, who came from Poland with quite a famous orthodox rabbi in Europe and he settled in New York and had a temple in New York and those days the temple was a storefront and he ran that and he wrote some books and was very revered by the immigrant orthodox society in the eastern part in New York and when you came to the house he was never called the rabbi he was called the roof and in the holidays we came to his home and that is where we celebrated Passover. He is long since gone. All of my uncles are gone. All of my aunts are gone and I believe I am the last first cousin left standing.

SEVERAL: Interesting. Did you grow up in the lower east side then?

BURG: I grew up. My parents separated when I was about 5 or 6, never divorced it was not a sexual separation. It was an economic separation. My father was a very, very union oriented the workman circle as lord and my mother was children oriented in terms of we were going to get an education. Her famous line, which I will never forget “you were not chosen to be born” and every time I wanted to quit school and go to work or something she would remind me that was her responsibility. When my father preferred using a pleasant term walking in the union picket line in the 20s my mother would earn living and there was a little conflict about that and what the kids were supposed to do and they separated so I went to 13 grammar schools in New York and when I was 15 we moved to Chicago.

SEVERAL: Why 13 grammar schools? Your mother was moving?

BURG: My mother did lot of moving and that was her way of maintaining the family. She was a superb seamstress and even in the depression, which was the height of the depression, she had no problem finding work. There were still expensive ties made in those years and they were all hand sown and the ties that were expensive had to hang and pulled in a certain direction I do not know what that means but that was it and my mother had the ability to take poorly made ties and resold them in such a way that they hung and pulled properly and so all of the tie manufactures in city of New York wanted my mother to work and she did that because she could do it at home and that meant that she could cook the meals and make sure that we went to school and she tolerated anything we wanted to do providing report cards showed that we were passing and I do not remember my mother sleeping. When I went, the bed she was working. When I woke up, she was working so that is my background in terms of that.

SEVERAL: Did you have any kind of relationship with your father?

BURG: Yes. We remained cool friends and after I grew up in Chicago from 15 to World War II, I saw him and in my senior year in college he helped me. I still remember I needed $50 to finish paying tuition otherwise I would not graduate and he gave it to me and then when I went to New York after the fall of 1938 I stayed with him rent free in his little apartment in New York and I worked in New York for about five months and I came back to Chicago.

SEVERAL: Is there is any kind of conflict I could see a potential conflict between the labor socialist orientation of your dad and your uncle, who is a rabbi?

BURG: No. On his side, they were very close to each other. I do not know that the roof, I still have to call him that, I never called him uncle, Aunt Rose yes, his wife the [unclear] Aunt Jenny was the [unclear]. She was just a warm and nice human being and he was kind of cold and the only time I saw him sitting down really was at the high holidays. The other times I would visit Aunt Jenny and I do not why I would visit her Except she was one of my favorite aunts. His sisters there were three sisters, Sara, Aunt Jenny and Aunt I cannot remember Uncle Abe’s wife. They were just warm and great. My Aunt Sara’s husband, he was my father’s brother, had a candy store and she gave me my first baseball glove. Uncle Abe he also had a candy store and Uncle Phillip had a candy store and at one time while my mother and father were still together, they had a candy store during this strike and that was really the breaking point of the first separation that I remember. I think I was 5 going on 6. Anyway the politics never really came up that I remember in the senior family my mother’s side or my father’s side but the cousins were very politically oriented. They were basically older, the three youngest were all born in the same month in March and we were born on the 10th, 11th and 12th all in 1917 and I remember when we at a Passover dinner and I guess we were 7 or 8 and at least as I remember that is when we first really understood how babies were born and every time we were together the three of use, which was maybe two or three times a year, we at some point in the evening we would get together in the corner and we would point to the three aunts and we would say you think they got on the phone and said tonight is and the night and then we giggle like hell that was our family joke for the three and I look back on it there were four male cousins that were in the same basically age group. Bill Gerard was I think five months earlier but he was in that and all four of us were in the war of the cousins, if you take all the cousins all of us really in war but all four of us were in combat and all of us came back.

SEVERAL: Uninjured?

BURG: Uninjured.

SEVERAL: Wow. We will get to some of that.

BURG: So answering your political question, I do not remember the senior members being very politically active other than the workmen circle with my father. He was very, very active.

SEVERAL: Your mom moving around, you go into 13 grammar schools, was that all in the lower east side or was that in other parts of New York City.

BURG: I was pretty much every where basically the Bronx and basically the lower east side. The last two years of grammar school I went to PS 47 in the Bronx. It was in the Palm Bay Area, 177th Street I remember and I remember street called the Honeywell but where the hell on the Bronx it was what I do not know. My high school was [unclear] that was down near Union Square and I had to take the 177th Street elevated, which became a subway and then I would transfer at 72nd Street I believe it was and get on the Express and go to 14th and then walk to school and that is the last we stayed in New York that I remember and then we moved to Chicago.

SEVERAL: What was your Jewish education?

BURG: Well. The education came really from two areas. I went to Hader, it was called in a storefront till I was about 11½. I never got the study for the Bar Mitzvah, my brother was.

SEVERAL: You were not Bar Mitzvahed?

BURG: I was not Bar Mitzvahed and I was going to be a major league baseball player and I was pretty good. Hader interfered, New York had at that time maybe they still do but grammar schools were also in a league and I was playing for my grammar school. I was 11 years old and we practiced and played on Friday. I think maybe even Saturday might have been the game anyway baseball interfered with Hader and as I say my mother was tolerant as long as I would go to school and I was very rebellious. I really think about it in terms of social, I was very undisciplined so my deal with my mother was that when the rabbi that was teaching Hader came to her and told her he had to whack me across the knuckles a couple of time because I was very disobedient in class etc. and I was explaining to mom that I had to play on the school baseball team, I was the youngest, I was 11 and we were in a tough neighborhood which is why we won the Bronx Championship and in grammar school we had 15 years old.

SEVERAL: Okay, really?

BURG: Yes.

SEVERAL: Wow.

BURG: I was 11 and I think the next one to me was 13 and this was in 7th grade. Anyway she was willing to go along with it providing that my grade was up and that I would be qualified to apply to Stiveson’s, which at that time and still is one of the premiere high schools in America and that was my deal, you know, you do not handshake with your mother but she gave a little bit and I gave a little bit so I never did finished Hader so my formal Jewish education ended about a year and a half before I became 13. My informal Jewish education came from being raised in an America that was very anti-Semitic. Parks in Chicago at that time had signs on them, no Jews or dogs allowed. Jobs in the depression areas, actually had tag lines near the end, no Jews need apply. I got to play in the minors and in the middle 30s and I was not only the only Jew in any league I played in but even in college no other Illinois league that we played. I would guess that there were not 10 Jewish kids playing baseball and this would include Michigan State Teachers in Kalamazoo, De Calb, Bradley that was a state teachers college in Northern Illinois Naperville so my belligerent Jewish education came about because of the anti-Semitism that I encountered in the job market, in the athletic fields and in the neighborhood. Some of my “best friends” mostly were gentile but it took a little while to become friends and the clincher I think in terms of trying to explain the atmosphere then I was playing at Derim in the Piedmont League and I was the only Jew in the league and we had a very close game and I think 2 to 2 or something like that and I still remember the kids named Cotton Hill was the pitcher came from a little town in Oklahoma called Muskogee, population maybe 3000, this was in the summer of 1938 and we won the game as it was a home game so we won it and we were walking in to the locker room and came off the wound, he was kind of a big guy, I am a little guy and he put his arm around me and said you know you are not a bad guy for a Jew but it was said in the kind of voice that you do not take offence and he is a teammate and I was a catcher. We won a very tough ballgame and I looked up at him as were walking in to the club house and I said Cotton how many Jews do you know and he looked down at me and said how the hell did he put again I want to give it to you because the sentence to me it a typified that era, never met one before but I know I do not like them. That is almost I am willing to bet, I would bet that is word for a word so that of course solidified my Jewishness.

SEVERAL: In terms of identity as a Jew.

BURG: Right and one of the things that it I was to trying evaluate myself as successful it would be that as I grew up and got more involved in work, I found it necessary to somewhere along the line when an opportunity came to let the people I was dealing with knew I was Jewish I just had to through that and that included Westing House, I got to be the head honcho sales for the second largest selling machine manufacturer, lets straighten that out right away Singers were way up here and we were way down here but we were second, White was third.

SEVERAL: I have already heard of Singer never heard of Westinghouse.

BURG: They controlled the world. I remember going to the movies and there was a travel log you know those were the days when you had comedy, travel logs, serials and two movies etc. and I remember one of the travel logs and they were Singer sewing machines in the heart of Africa, no electricity pedals so any Westinghouse was our biggest, we were private label and Westinghouse was our biggest customer and the owners were Jewish. It was a free sewing machine company, head quartered in Rockville, Illinois and they wanted to promote me to being, I had a title that was executive vice president in charge of sales, we did not have marketing directors in those days, we did not have those titles and they wanted to appoint me to that job and the guy they were firing that they had hired from Westinghouse so they wanted to make sure I was in the owners office, the Casser family and the president of the sewing machine company, the son-in-law had me sit down and he picked up the phone and he called the president of Westinghouse supply. They were the retail operation of Westinghouse in those days sewing machines and that was all the appliances but they manufactured their own radios, their own television sets, their own refrigerators etc. and he wanted to know whether they the customer would find a Jewish man acceptable in the chief role. Now this was a Jewish company, Jewish family that owns it and they wanted to get permission from Westinghouse to fire the guy that they had taken from Westinghouse some years previously and replacing with me and I happened to be Jewish and I sat down listening of this wondering if A) They agree would I take the job, I was sales promotion manager at that time or B) Would I tell him take it and shove it. If you do not have guts enough to do it but I sat down and listened and they knew me of course at Westinghouse, I had been there couple of years international as if you want to call sales promotion manager and they said that I would be a wonderful choice and so Jake [unclear] hung up, he said job is yours if you want it and we discussed the job and now I think was the tipping point and from then on I had to, I just had to do it may take the third visit, may take the fifth visit but somewhere I have a chance to let them know that I Jewish and I had to do it. So I consider myself not religious though we joined the temples and our kids were all Bar Mitzvaed and Bat Mitzvahed boy and girl and three of the grandchildren went to Jewish Day School.

SEVERAL: Oh really.

BURG: Oh yeah and all four have been in New York and have been doing Israel and on my daughter’s side the three grandchildren have spent four months in Israel as part of their day school training when they graduate so that is that part of it.

SEVERAL: Did there come a point where things became so acceptable that you did not even have to say you were Jewish that it no longer matter?

BURG: It may have. My kids to do not know what prejudice is, my grandkids so your point is right, it is well taken and I brought it up because the era I was placed in was much different than today and I think in World war II plus the creation of the State of Israel tipped it just like today I am sure Negroes could sit down and say hay we are finally turned to corner. So we turned the corner after World War II and I recognized that and yet to this day I have to there is an opportunity and I am in a group I have to let the group if it is not Jewish and let them know I am Jewish. I cannot rationalize that but I have to do it.

SEVERAL: What Jewish practices were at home? Did your mom keep kosher?

BURG: No she could not and her basic drive and she came of course when [unclear] in Europe. Her basic drive was that her kids get an education and have a better life than she did that was the whole drive. She tried to get her family to leave Europe. She sensed the war coming. She lost a brother. I lost an uncle that I never met. He was in the German army and he was an officer. He was also a math professor at Hamburg University, a big university in Berlin and he was killed on the Russian front in World War I and she had her first son died when he was two years old of pneumonia so when she became pregnant with by brother, who was older than I by 3½ years she went back to her family. She wanted to raise him as he was a baby in the comfort of her family where he would not get pneumonia, I guess. I do know! But, he was born in 1913 and she was back there. War broke out in 1914 and it took her two years to come back to America and how the hell a young woman and she was very attractive with a 2½ or 3 years old kid, how she got up the cross from, book of Vena Romania, which is near the Russian border across to Holland on a boat back to New York during the war, I never know and to this day I am so angry at myself for not having the understanding and I love history to sit down and say “mom how the hell did you do that?” I never found out.

SEVERAL: Did think your mom like [unclear] she brought you.

BURG: I remember that and when she separated and took us, it stopped. I mean she worked all the time. My father was very religious.

SEVERAL: Oh, really!

BURG: Very! This is the old school. His parents wanted him to be a Rabbi so he was very religious and not to the point where he would fight my mother about keeping culture but in terms of the holiday. I remember just before they separated that I say, probably maybe six years old, take back to five, I was six when they separated the first time and they got back together and separated again up to the time I was about 8 or 9. They had been together and separated but always the union problem that came first and my mother children came first and so I decided that when we got Russia Shirley I would fast. I was six years old that I remember. I do not know whether I was on the late side of six or just early six, but I remember Russia Shirley came, so was born in March probably the late side of six, but I was not sure I could do it so on the way to [unclear] I hid apples and in those days when the assembly assembled they would dowel all day and we just sing a song. I do not know that they ever said any words but it was just constant and whenever we get hungry I would sneak out and go get an apple and then come back. My father was so proud of me fasting, I think so poor that he told the Ruff and the Ruff congratulated me the next time I saw him.

SEVERAL: Did you ever confess?

BURG: No.

SEVERAL: Until this moment.

BURG: But I started fasting for real I think when I was 14 and we did not trying joint the temple, my mother did not, but on the high holidays we lit the candles, we did Hannukah, the whole bit.

SEVERAL: Did you go to temple on Shabbat?

BURG: No! My father did and when I was a kid as I say I did fear with a baseball. So, that was a sign of me that I did not do it but I knew I was Jewish and another side of that is that I think the antisemitism solidified by being Jewish. I was not going to be an old Riley. I was not going to be Murphy and/or Smith. My father’s name was Siden Burg. My mother’s maiden name was Burg in English and so my Uncle, Joy Burg came first and when I got signed by Cincinnati I changed my name from Sign Burg to Burg and I think, I am not sure, but I think that if they had accepted me I was a perfect candidate for conversion.

SEVERAL: Really!

BURG: I think so because religion was way back in my head and it was the competitiveness that I had in those years that when they pushed, I pushed back and I still think to this day and I say it to you now that if they wanted to get rid of us, leave us alone and begin to assimilate. I could not fear of that because we would try to change them and get them to be more like the old testament than the new testament but we have the ability to absorb and if you have the ability to absorb, I am not a philosopher, so I do not know how I maybe so full of bull, but I have feeling that you find the accommodation that is comfortable and if you can bring some of the things that you feel very strongly about along with you, I do not know that I could ever be a Catholic, I am sure I could not, but I think that the Protestant could have gotten me. They read the old testament, they believe the parts of Judaism that I am very strong about where the only faith that I know of that tells us that we are suppose to be caring for everybody and I know of no other faith that solicits the old charity bill nature for everybody. Catholics agree that and as long you give it into the Church. Protestants are more broadly.

SEVERAL: [unclear] talks do so are pretty narrow.

BURG: Yeah, Orthodox in all religions. Some of them are actually fanatic. Bond does not think I am Jewish. They want to get a gift for me but they all think I am Jewish.

SEVERAL: I think we are two of a kind because I was also not [unclear].

BURG: Congratulations!

SEVERAL: I grew up in quite a secular household and yet I can imagine myself not begin anything else and actually this is project is a way of I am identifying myself as a Jewish, you know, learning about Jewish history in America.

BURG: Yeah. Michael Several : There are so many ways we can do it.

BURG: And so many ways we have done it.

SEVERAL: Yeah! Now moved to Chicago and you were about 15……

BURG: Going on 16

SEVERAL: And you went through high school there. Oh! Actually you left Stivason.

BURG: I left Stivason and I had a half year to go.

SEVERAL: Okay.

BURG: I got to Chicago in February and I turned 16 and I went to Armor Check, which is, I always wanted to be, if I could not be a baseball player and we had come to this accommodation and to this day I bless her for it. If one of you know can make it, you got to have an education and so her logic was equal to my logic and so that was the whole goal and I wanted to be an engineer and I had a little bit of home. There were no baseball scholarships at that time and the school that had a good engineering identity was Armor Institute of Technology. All it was, was an engineering school. It was a college but it had all of the engineering disciplines; civil, electrical, fire protection the only one in the United States, mechanical, chemical and once I was there they created a Co-Op Program Industry in the Chicago Area. They wanted it and they provided to students. They really encouraged the school to do it. It was the first collaboration and was the Armor Research Institute in which a college or university cooperated doing experiments for industry on a paid basis and industry would say we want, that is the first clean cold experiments that were done was 1935 in Chicago and they are still working a clean cold, so that was the first one they do that and the tuition was $350 a year. I still remember that.

SEVERAL: It feels like a lot.

BURG: It was that.

BURG: I mean I went to Berkeley in 1960 and then student fees were $65.

BURG: …..and plus books.

SEVERAL: Right.

BURG: With Lutheran administration I made 25¢ an hour. That is their way of taking care of important students and small student body including everything. Graduate students, bank school, part-time that makes the school of course and undergraduates, advanced degree graduates, night school and then they were individual courses you could take, believe it or not, on a part time basis at night. I taught one which was machine shop 25¢ an hour and architecture. Five or I think there were six disciplines but they were all engineering and so I went there with my credentials from. Stivason and they accepted me except Dean Haled who later became President and then became President of Fort Foundation.

SEVERAL: Oh really.

BURG: Yeah.

BURG: Fine Man. He was so nice to me and he said that you got to have a high school diploma, so I went to the nearest high school that we were living in the area we lived which was called Sullivan. It had been a junior high school and it just become a senior high school and I was in there first or second class and they did not have any classes for me to take. In that 3½ years at Stivason I had stripped everything they had, so I leaned about study periods and I never had a study period. I took chemistry over again, I took physics over again, I took history over again, I took English over again and then we filled in with study periods and music. I cannot read a note, I cannot play a note so the teacher did not know what to do with me and he said, “Well! You play the base drum”. Okay I got embellish to take out a drum. What I do up here so they taught me that that it is just a solid circle it is one beat, if it is an open circle, it is 2 beats and if it is an open circle with a dot behind it, it is three beats and watch the conductor who is me, the professor/teacher. And so I played the base drum and I blew it with up at graduation when they had Susan watching as you walk in. I am up there. I was supposed to graduate with that class. I have already been accepted at Armor Tech and I got so excited I knocked the drum off the stand so I could not even do that right.

SEVERAL: Lets just kind of jump ahead, after Armor Tech you graduated from Armor Tech?

BURG: I graduated from Armor Tech

SEVERAL: In what

BURG: In 1938 a mechanical engineering degree and then I went off to play my Little League baseball.

SEVERAL: Oh really.

BURG: Yeah.

SEVERAL: I did not graduate on the stage, I left in May, I would signed a contract with since that year they had singed me to a little bonus contract in 1937 when I was in junior with the understanding that I would finish school and the minor league season started in late April and I think I reported they let me take. The school was terrific. The professors let me take early exams so I left Chicago about two weeks before graduation so I do not remember now whether it was the last week in May or maybe the first 10 days of June that I reported to during my start there and anyway I got cut finally. I was not major league quality and so I had a choice of being, they were very nice to me too. They had an invested in me but the head of the minor leagues at that time was a guy by the name of Paul, I cannot think of his last name and he came down to tell me that they were not going to. I have forgotten of how exactly how he put it but what in essence he said was “You can stay and be a minor league bum”, I remember that so vividly but he said I am old enough to be your father and if you are my son you get a college education, I would quit now and in five years will be hiring the minor league bums that did not have sense enough to lead something like that and he said it takes us half a million dollars to bring somebody through the minors. This is pre-war of course. They were only 16 major league teams. They are now 30. They are minor leagues everywhere from D all the way up to triple A.

SEVERAL: I remember.

BURG: Yeah and so the competition was tremendous and he said 140 pounds catchers are not major league. You got a bad D, he and, I learned I could not play everyday. He said so enough in effect he said we are letting you go and my suggestion is that you go get a job.

SEVERAL: So you were under one year or less than a year.

BURG: It was during the year 1938 and they said that in the meantime if you want to we will send you to one step up to circuits and you will be on the bench but you will never get beyond that and you may not stay there and you may go back to Trenton. I was two steps below majors so that night I thought about it though I never drunk I was so small that I felt that I could not smoke or drink and make it. We did not know anything about physical except for no weightlifting. I remember I was told not to swim, not to play golf, (No I am serious), no weightlifting. Oh! That is out. You want be a ball player you do not do any of this stuff. Everything was conditioning but not weight training, not bodybuilding. It was running, stretching, all the good things and so that night I thought about it and I went out and of course I was in a rooming house with other teammates and one of my teammates said well I think you want to go ahead and get drunk. I never drunk, little wine on pass over, but I did not like the taste that I would kind of sip it. We were supposed to drink four glasses.

SEVERAL: Who like the smell of champagne…

BURG: I never even got a fourth of the glass down. I almost touch it. So, I went out with a bottle of scotch and sat down and started out with three of us in the room. All I know is I woke up the next day, the bottle of scotch was empty, the room was empty except for me with no point of my reporting. I think I was supposed to leave at the end of the week, and my head was in half a watermelon and there was a big kitchen knife on the ground next to my bed. Now obviously I passed out. Where the hell I got the watermelon I do not know. Where I got the kitchen knife I do not know. The bottle of scotch was empty and the watermelon half of it was lying on the floor, uneven, the other half was pretty much eaten with my head in it. That is what I remember about that. That when I went back, I finally you know I am done and I did not want to report. He convinced me and I knew it in my heart that I would never be a major league. Today, maybe I could have been because they carry three catchers. I was very good defensively. Offensively in college I was great in the minors as the pitching got better during that. It is AAA now and when I played I think it was A, AA, and AAA that was two steps below and the pitching was good and bad. There were Phil Rizzuto I played against some of the names that made the majors. It was the second basement that made the majors Dutch Neily. He was on my team, anyway. So I concurred, so I went to New York and got a job.

SEVERAL: Doing what?

BURG: As an engineer and I went to work for a fiberboard manufacturer, a waste basket manufacturer made using fiberboard and he needed an engineer because he had a big government contract. This was in the winter of 1938 and he was not getting the production, so I put an ad in the paper. I was staying with my aunt! Yeah I was staying with my aunt Pauline and she had three kids. One of them was the one that was born on the 11th and I was born on the 12th and his name was also Irvie and I got an answer so I went to work for this fiber company and I was the only professionally head. It was a family business and the father had turned it over to the son who had jazzed it up pretty good and it was being run by the foreman who did not want to work. He was directing everybody else and they were supposed to produce, I do not remember the numbers now, but he was in the thousands. I remember they had to produce 3000 a week and they were producing like 2000 and the contract had a termination date. So anyway the kid had sense enough to realizing he needed help and he responded and if I remember rightly I got my cousin at job at $5000. I forgot what I made and my father said why do not you come and live with me I have got a two bedroom apartment, so I took the job and fresh out at school really and still full of ideas. One of the courses I had had was time and motion study, so I put that to work on this and I figured out how to get them to go up. That was my idea and that was that I put all the people and the union bought it. All the people were on a per piece basis, same pay but when they did so many units they could go home and they got the days pay. If you are interested to know we not only met the contract, we beat it.

SEVERAL: Working four hours a day?

BURG: It was amazing out suddenly the foreman got in it. He was the lead, you know you pick up time in motion you got a have a leader. He was the lead. It was interesting. I think they worked till 5 o’clock normally and you said it right around 3 o’clock they were all leaving and we had made the production.

SEVERAL: Did you work fair up to World War II?

BURG: No, I worked there till I think my mother finally convinced me to come back to Chicago in around Christmas Time of 1938. I worked there for about six months and the…it was fine and it was depression I did want to leave but my mother felt I should come back home because my home was going to be in Chicago in that industrial area, so that was that and I went back there and I played a little what they had in those days was semi-pro. They played only on weekends and I had done that during college. I played for the Chicago Firemen. There were three firemen; the rest were either college kids or ex-professions and it was really, you played on Sundays in the afternoon and there were little towns that did not have minor league team and had a town team and if you won you got $15 I remember per band and if you lost you got $5 per band and the firemen and the policemen really had teams doing this all keyed for the big game in White Socks Park of the police playing the firemen for the annul fund raiser in those days. So, I did a little of that and I went to work for a company that did cover separations and they wanted an engineer because they were working with Kodak and if could do more of the color separation in the camera instead of by hand on metal plates you get a better reproduction in the magazine and that is what I did up to World War II.

SEVERAL: Where did you meet your wife?

BURG: I met her here in California, I enlisted on the 8th. I am Jewish. I wanted to go Germany and kill Nazis so I enlisted on the 8th round up being sent to India in the CBI Theater in the fall of 1942 as a bright and shiny second lieutenant engineering officer in B24 foyr engine bombers.

SEVERAL: You were an engineer on the plane?

BURG: No I was an engineer on maintenance and I got there I think around November of 1942 and I flew my first mission in January. Between November and January of 1943, we were the only heavy bombardment group in the India Burma area. There was one in China, which is the CBI and that was our 14th Air Force, we were the 10th Air Force and we were the 7th bomb group, the only heaving bombardment group. We were flying only day missions but we did not have much equipment that whole theater job was defensive. We were to hold the Japanese back coming through Burma into India. They already gotten to the Indian border but in time I got there in 1942. The French did not fight. French Indo-China turned themselves over to the Japanese when the first Japanese soldier got to the border. The British fought. The French did not. They just surrendered right away. So the Japanese got to the Indian border very quickly and when I got there by the fall of winter of 1942 the Japanese had the gun piling up equipment to make the invasion into India and they just wanted to get into the eastern part of India then go North and join the Japanese, who had conquered the eastern part of China and our job was to stop them but we did not have much in the way of equipment. So we had no fighter cover because our nearest target was over five hours away and the idea was still ultimately get to bombing French Indo-China at that time Bangkok, which was the real creator or real center of everything moving west and by the beginning of 1943 we were beginning to lose air planes. The Japanese were very, very violently defending mentally and Rangoon, Rangoon was the key point from the French Indo-China going west into Burma. Rangoon and [unclear] are right opposite to each other on the [unclear] River, which is like the Mississippi for that and about midway into 1943 I flew a couple of missions as a ground officer only to find out what a mission was like, which was crazy. In order to become a better maintenance engineer, each squadron only had one maintenance engineer. They had a lot of crew chiefs and I mentioned that only because the captain, who was in charge of our squadron and I got to talk about things like that and in mid 1943 our losses were so great that we started trying to do night missions. Now one of the problems with flying heavy bombardment is that American crews never miss a target. Now you got a problem. In Europe, there was no problem because everything was so close that a Puerto Rican would follow a bombing mission and you have these fighters with nothing but cameras in them, no guns and they be flying allover this place coming back with pictures, which would kind of tell the photo interpreters what really happened on the ground. Well when your nearest mission is over five hours and your farthest mission is almost 12 hours, fact we got a unit citation for flying the longest mission ever in Word War II either 11:45 or 12 hours and 15 minutes round trip. Anyway we had to do our own photo. Now during the day thing, it was not really that improbable that you get a pretty good report but you did not have any pictures so the captain and I were talking about this because just we were picked our squadron to lead. Eight air planes were going to fly, three from our squadron and the other five from the other three squadrons. I think all four squadrons were supposed to have 12 air planes each, 48. When I came home in the 1945 round about until I met my wife I think we had 37 air planes. We never got to 48 but anyway and we were talking about [unclear] you know we are not going to be able to tell anything that we did because it is at night. We are not going to drop flairs or light up the place. I wish we could take pictures that is the first time he mentioned that. So I said well, captain I am still the second lieutenant. I did that in civilian life, it is easy, how do you do that, have a photoflash bomb, can you get those, oh yeah we had a lot of 100 pounds phosphorus bombs used to illuminate the target at night and then the night guys just saturate so I explained how you would do it and he said well you do that and I said yeah. He said would you do that? I said well lets test it. At that time I was rooming with the group bombardier, who became the group bombardier. Willie Decker, he was the lead bombardier for our squadron and I said Willie you will tell me how to set the things so anyway Willie told me how I can set a photoflash bomb to explode so many feet above the ground and he had tables going to so many thousands feet in the air and you said the fuse, showed me how do all that and he said what do you want. Remember I have never done this. I had no idea. I never even saw on the aerial camera but I am full of bull shit anyway 300 feet, Willie shows me how to set the fumes for 300 feet and regardless of the altitude this will takeoff at 300 feet and he showed me the table to tell me how many seconds that is how you do it. So you put in that many seconds, which relates to many revolving of the propeller around the fuse and within couple of feet or 300 feet this thing will explode so it is like that to do is when the bomb is dropped and dropped my bomb at the same time and my bomb will explode right after they explode so you will see the smoke and you will see where it hit and then if we do it quick enough I can take two or three pictures, we settled on two because we had no place to put this 100-pound bomb so we had it on the waist gun to throw it out of the window one on each side. I sat on one bomb and played waist gunner and the other waist gunner sat on that bomb at which time we threw the bombs out one after the other so we got two pictures and it worked. So I am explaining all this to him and he said well I get some equipment. If I remember my memory is so bad, it is called the K-17 I think. Anyway we turned this mission over Bangkok and we get two very sharp pictures. When the British did it, the lead air plane, they would do a night mission, it was all saturating bombing. The lead air plane would drops flairs layers and that was the target and then the whole maybe 150-200 air planes would drop firebombs that is how they destroyed German towns and they would open the camera when the first bombs were maybe two or three seconds from exploding. They would open their cameras and have the camera in like every third flight of free to be a camera and they would just let the camera run so they got a picture but it was blurry because you have seen those kind of pictures and God damn those photo interpreters were so great that they can interpret. When they saw my pictures, they flipped because they were individual pictures. They were photoflash pictures. Anyway that got me moved up the group, got me promoted etc. and I stayed till March of 1945 and then they rotated me. I came out here to San Anna under RNR and I was drinking pretty good and one morning I woke up and I could not hold the coffee and I felt sorry for myself and I thought I got to know somebody. I have never been vested in Mississippi and now I remember a very dear friend of my brother’s that I knew and he was an attorney. Now you talk about odds. I went to the Yellow Pages semi-sober I guess and I looked up Robert D Ketch, attorney and believe or not there was one in Los Angeles on San Anna in West LA and I called him on a Sunday and I do not how they did it but the Yellow Pages the phone number got me to his home. I do not remember what happen and I reminded him who I was and I go out and he is married to by wife’s cousin. My wife’s mother and Unice’s mother were sisters and that day they are being invited to a barbeque at my wife’s home and she calls her aunt and her aunt says of course I will bring the soldier and that is how I met my wife.

SEVERAL: Did you go back to Chicago? When did you move to Southern California?

BURG: In 1947. We got married in 1946. I got out in November 1945 and came back here, proposed, was accepted and we were married on March 17th St. Patrick’s Day here and after the weeding we went back to Chicago and Ally had trouble in living in Chicago. Two things, one she did not like it, she was born and raised here and the other one is she got ill and they could not diagnose it, it was Crohn’s disease and in the 1940s they did not know much about it. They could not quite recognize it but she lost a lot of weight and she finally wanted to come home so she came home. They did surgery and I had a choice to be getting divorce or moving to California so I quit my job and got into my car and drove out here to get married I mean settled here.

SEVERAL: When did you settle here?

BURG: I am settled here I think February or March of 1947, just about a year after we were married.

SEVERAL: Where did you live in Los Angeles?

BURG: We lived on Beverly and [unclear]. We lived at across the street in Beverly Hills. On the other side of the street was Los Angeles.

SEVERAL: When did you move to Pasadena?

BURG: In 1960.

SEVERAL: In 1960 so between 1947 and 1960 you lived where?

BURG: We lived in that apartment for 2½ years. I worked for Utility Appliance and they were a fan manufacturer, who created the evaporative air cooler among other things, did a lot of cheep metalwork during the war and right after the war created they bought a stove company and enlarged their evaporative air cooler to water heaters and forced air furnaces and stoves and I went to work for their as their sales promotion manager and stayed with them until 1949 and then in 1949 the Jewish family that owned this second largest sewing machine company had enough money to live wherever they wanted to and certainly did not want to say in Rockford, Illinois so they kept the plants there furniture plant and the sewing machine plant, the foundry and then they had bought the furniture also from companies on the east coast but the family itself moved to Beverly Hills and they started creating an executive office there, they bought a building or built it I do not remember in Beverly Hills and I got a job with them.I was offered a job and so I moved “up” and went to work for them as their sales promotion manager and they were across the United States, Utility Appliance was only in the 11 western states and basically their biggest market was Southern California. We never penetrated with the stoves in Northern California and I stayed with them till the last portion of 1959. A very dear friend anyway I met him he was a plumbing supply distributor and he had moved in his office, left his father-in-law, created his own plumbing supply company and moved his warehouse and office to get out of his father-in-law’s territory, which was North Hollywood and the valley into San [unclear] Valley and [unclear] through the evap cooler and his biggest customer was a land developer, who was creating cities and he created Hisparia, he created portions of Victorville and he created Vista and his method of operation was buy large tracks of land 20000 acres, 25000, 15000 and breaking it up into parcels or lots putting in roads, sometime utility sometimes not depends on where they were in Northern Nevada we did not put in the utilities we just put in the roads and selling off the land. His difference was that he did it in huge the areas and your company does it in smaller areas and they were looking for a national sales manger. They were going to be taken public by one of the financing companies on Wall Street and it consisted of Papa Pan Phillips, a man who was 5 feet in all dimensions and his son-in-law and then of course a bunch of brokers but he bought water pipe from Aaron, my friend, and he was interviewing and interviewing, he could not find one and he was at lunch with Aaron one day and Aaron said to him that he knew the greatest sales manager in the world so Papa Pan interviewed me, offered me the job and so I kept it for one year living where we were. When I went to work for the sewing machine company I got increase in pay so I can afford the house. I never had a house before. We bought a house in Encino, California in 1950, population 5000. I do not know what it is now but almost a year I drove from Encino all the way into Azusa and I could not take that anymore so in 1960 we moved to Pasadena for a year, rented a house and then move to Altadena. Now by that time we had two children, a boy and a girl, in order of birth a girl and a boy and the first thing we did in Encino was to join the temple.

SEVERAL: Was the first temple you ever joined?

BURG: Yes and the reason for that is both my wife and I, she was raised as a Christian scientist but told that she get only date Jewish boys.

SEVERAL: Because they are scientist?

BURG: No because her father who is a pharmacist had gotten palsy and could not be cured apparently and the pain was excruciating and after a year somebody suggested he talked to a healer and he did not even know what a healer was but a Christian science healer so he did that and in two or three weeks miraculously he was cured. So Ally who was the oldest of two girls immediately was enrolled in Christian Science Cindy School but her parents are Jewish and they reminded her she can only date Jewish boys as she was growing up but she did not ever belong to a temple or have any real Jewish education. What little I had I gave her but we knew that our kids were got to be Jewish and I also felt for strongly that if you are going to be something you ought to know what the hell you are. Now I would have and I say it even today I would have no problem with my kids if they decided to convert because they each had a wonderful Jewish education and if they decided to convert they would know what they were leaving and they would know what they were going into but when you are a kid you do not. You got to have something. You cannot be nothing. So we immediately join the temple and so when we got to Pasadena, my daughter I think was 8 years old or 9 and my son would be 7 and we immediately joined the temple again and my friend Aaron was there.

SEVERAL: Did your daughter did she go [unclear]?

BURG: No I do not know if she got [unclear] in the Pasadena Jewish temple but later she raised her kids to go to Jewish Day School and she got [unclear] again.

SEVERAL: The reason I asked is because one of the things I am trying to find out is exploring the growing role of women at the temple and in 1950 there were two twin girls, who have [unclear] and apparently that was the first [unclear] at the corrugation conversation but the next ones were not sure when they were so that is why I asked.

BURG: Okay. She was born in 1952. She would have been in 14 and 1964. She had been 13 in 1963 and we were already in Altadena and after the rattle we knew where we want to live, we looked for a house and we moved to Altadena so that would be 1962. I am not sure, the one I am sure of I think she was [unclear] but I am not sure. I am very sure about my son because he did not want to be [unclear] and we had to fright him. My daughter was on the choir right away and sang in the choir from day 1 and was involved with the youth at the temple.

SEVERAL: What the AZA or BBG?

BURG: I do not know.

SEVERAL: There was a religious school that was on Sunday and that was the Hebrew School. Did she take the Hebrew School?

BURG: No but she went to the Sunday school.

SEVERAL: Okay, then she probably was not far [unclear] because I think the Hebrew School’s requirement to you know it was for people who were being [unclear] or later.

BURG: He had to go through that and then the temple had somebody that taught the kids and I remember seeing him with my son, I am not sure about my daughter.

SEVERAL: There is one thing that I am dying to ask it is a detail we were trying to get information as to when the temple was purchased. The property was purchased and it was purchased in 1942. In 1972 it was a mortgage burning ceremony. Do you remember anything about that mortgage? Do you remember how much the mortgage was? Do you remember who the lender was?

BURG: I remember the ceremony. I do not remember the numbers because in 1972 we moved here in June of 1972 I believe it closed.

SEVERAL: I think the ceremony was early in the year might have been I am not quite sure.

BURG: I stayed member of the temple of Pasadena for at least the remainder of 1972 and maybe left in 1973 but I remember the mortgage burning.

SEVERAL: You do yeah. Unfortunately they may have destroyed the document. I mean did they actually burn the mortgage?

BURG: Not in the temple, its symbolic. There was a symbolic burning I remember. It was very funny. I remember that.

SEVERAL: Yeah because we would love to be able to get that document.

BURG: I wonder where the hell it would be.

SEVERAL: Oh I do not know. I was told that there was a safe in the building and apparently was looked in there and it was not there, I do not know. The documentation that we retained is depressing. Do you remember anything about the swimming pool? There was a swimming pool that was constructed I am not sure if it was in 1959 or 1960.

BURG: When we joined in ’60, the pool was there and it had been there for a while and the basketball gym was there and it had been there for a while. I remember being surprised, I have never seen a temple with a swimming pool and a gym. As I was growing up, I was a boy scout and we were not in temple, we were in the church. Temples were…

SEVERAL: But this was a trend after World War II, the Shula with a pool you know in order to.

BURG: In other words, there are other shuls that has pools?

SEVERAL: Oh yeah it was actually, in fact they began even back in the 30s in New York City, the Turb Shula, may be even the 20s, the Shula with a pool.

BURG: I never remember hearing that.

SEVERAL: But after World War II, it became much more common you know, which the synagogue cease to be just a place for religious life of the Jewish community it became you know social circus and so on. There was also, the Louis B. Silver building. Do you remember anything about the construction of that?

BURG: Is that the school room building?

SEVERAL: Yeah.

BURG: Yeah that I can tell you about. That was built while I was there and that was probably the first Yom Kippur appeal. Rabbi Galpert was dead set against having an appeal on the Yom Kippur. Because of Aaron, who was president of the temple when I moved to Pasadena and joined the temple, he immediately asked me to become head of ways and needs. Now, we are very good friends.

SEVERAL: That was Aaron, what was his last name?

BURG: Aaron Moyer. His widow should be interviewed that you have not interviewed. Anyway, Aaron said, you got to help me, you got to be ways and needs. Now we are growing and we do not have a school room building and we need I forget how many rooms there are, four, four or eight or something in that building?

SEVERAL: I think there may be 6 at least 6, may be 8.

BURG: And I forget how much it cost, 40,000 or 50 or 60,000. Anyway, how we are going to afford that? So I said well, by that time, I have been involved in fundraising for UJA and Israel and I said well, if we got a crowd, I will make the appeal and the only time we have a crowd is [unclear] Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur is the crowd. [unclear] like 90% and Yom Kippur you not only got your temple, you got everybody else that is the temple member but that days are Jewish. So I sit down with Galpert and I said you know, we want to build a school thing and all the fundraising is always, you go to Mr. Singer and you go to Mr. Tupper, I think that was his name.

SEVERAL: Tuffield?

BURG: Tuffield. He owned a lot of property in Pasadena and Beverly Hills and his son Buddy the Tupper, who was one of the big givers.

SEVERAL: Who ever, lets see Stone? Silver I think it was…

BURG: That’s Lou Silver but there was one that was considered the richest Jew, then. What was his name?

SEVERAL: Max Nell.

BURG: Max Nell was very wealthy and became wealthy when his son expanded the home store building, the hardware building but begins with a T, he was considered, anyway they go to Max Nell, they go to Silver and they get some gifts, never really a lot compared to what they could afford but their point was that they don’t want to embarrass the rest of the Jewish community. My point was that you are embarrassing the rest of the Jewish community because you give them a way out. They will say to me well Max Nell gives us a 100$ and he gives us a 1000$. My 100$ is more of mine net wealth than a 1000$ is of his. You should be happy to get it. That’s enough. And I used that kind of thing to get people to go up and kind of [unclear] but Tuffield he owned apartment house in Pasadena. He owned a shopping center with I think either Vaughns or one of the other majors was the center not on lake, is it on lake?

SEVERAL: There are more than I think.

BURG: And so we got a couple of 1000$ from payment and we’re stuck. My point was with the rabbi and Galpert and I were very good friends. The fact that I was a professional baseball player was very impressive to him. He would bring it up at services, he would say as Irv once said, anyway, so I said you know, let me make a pitch at Yom Kippur and we will get the money. [unclear] against that, he finally permitted me to do that and so I made my pitch and basically it was that all of us here in this room are responsible for our kids and I find it hard to believe that in this crowd, we cant raise, don’t remember the number, 70,000$. I said no one should leave here tonight without mentally making a gift, I don’t want you to write a check now but I expect you to write a check tomorrow. Anyway, I made the pitch and we raised more than enough money to build the God damn thing. That’s a separate building. And that’s the first Yom Kippur appeal that was ever made at the Pasadena.

SEVERAL: Now do you recall anything about the construction and that do you expressed by our personal opinion, the architecture is awful.

BURG: I have no idea.

SEVERAL: They used to have this wing you know with the arches you know so you know they cut it off and they put this box there and I mean, I believe something to be desired visually.

BURG: I was not involved in anything but raising the money and then I think that we continued Yom Kippur appeals after that.

SEVERAL: With rabbi Galpert, there was, either something with the, I don’t know 1970 or so, I was looking at some old issues of the Flame, and there were something that Louis B. Silver, I guess he was the president at that time, he wrote and said that there was hardly [unclear] Saturday mornings, actually did you go to services on Friday nights and Saturday?

BURG: Occasionally not Saturday. The [unclear] was for the orthodox and we were reform temple but we had enough orthodoxy at the beginning when I got there that every Saturday they had a service and they would meet not in the main temple, they would meet in the wing of the main temple.

SEVERAL: So there would be two services then on Saturday morning, there would be the one that rabbi Galpert would officiate as then there was another one for orthodox.

BURG: They really were orthodox, in fact the best way I can explain how they were when Silver moved to Leisure World, Leisure World temple did not have a rabbi and they have rabbis retired in Leisure World but none would take the actual post of rabbi because there were enough orthodox Jews in Leisure World who knew more than the rabbis did and then the rabbis wanted to compete with them so rabbis that were there would lead services some times but none of them wanted to be the rabbi because they would be competing with these guys and the best way I can describe that is when Fiddler on the roof played in LA, it was such a hit, that they extended it but they couldn’t extend it at the Dorothy Chandler pavilion because they are booked and Pasadena had just finished building the Pasadena playhouse, the new one and so they moved there for four weeks I think and Silver heard about it and so he decided to get tickets and he went down to the box office and they told him it was sold out so he said to the girl, what do you mean its sold out? She said its booked solid for the state for four or eight weeks, I forgot which and he said how many seats you got? So she said I think we have 3000 seats or something like that and he pondered and said you cant be sold out, there are only 400 Jew families and he argued with her, so that will give you some idea of the mentality of the orthodox Jews but he didn’t get his tickets.

SEVERAL: Do you, lets say on Friday night, did rabbi Galpert give sermons?

BURG: Yes.

SEVERAL: Do you recall if he ever raised any political issues, I mean this is the 1960s, the war in Vietnam, the segregation, the assassination of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, I mean do you recall any raising any political issues at that time? There was also a six day war, did he?

BURG: Six day war he talked about I remember that, in fact at that time, I was campaign chair for UJA, I was in my second year, they had been doing it for three years, I shouldn’t have been successful the first year, but anyway what surprised me is that I had people come that I had never seen before, never saw again, some in the most ram shackle automobiles that were still running and one I remembered vividly was a man who came with a jar filled with coins and cash and tears and he pulled in, rang my bell, came up to the house, gave me this and I tried to say well wait a minute, I will give you a receipt and he almost burst into crying, there were tears coming down, he said not necessary, got back in the car and clinked off. I will never forget that. I was a campaign chair during that time.

SEVERAL: United Jewish Appeal, was that based in St. Gabriel Valley?

BURG: At that time it was more than the St. Gabriel Valley. When I took over, it was only Pasadena and may be an adjacent city or two, but we raised roughly I think 80,000$. I got the idea of making at the eastern areas, I went to all the temples, Covina, West Covina, Monrovia, and I got the temple presidents to get involved and wound up making at the eastern area and there was a man by the name of Carter who was that got some [unclear] in the Los Angeles area, he owned builders emporium among other things and he was so impressed that he prevailed upon me to stay so I did it a couple of more years one of which was ’67 which is the year that was very very emotional and Galpert talked about that. About the others, I cant vividly remember of specific things but he let the congregation know where we should be mentally in these areas and he was very very much for where we are now but he did march it, the rabbi King whose temple we joined when we first moved here, actually marched in the Martin Luther King.

SEVERAL: Were you on the, lets see, there is a name that has come up, it came up in the Flames that I looked at, nobody has ever seems to remember the person, rabbi Burton Mindick who was education director of the temple in 1970m 69, 70, 71 somewhere in there, I mean nobody seems to, I mean he was there, I mean more than just a few months, yet nobody seems to remember him, there was also reference in one of the Flames, the clubs of eminence. Does that ring a bell?

BURG: No.

SEVERAL: Rashi society, [unclear] society, I don’t know these were groups, I have never seen before and they apparently I don’t know if they had meetings at the temple I mean they appear once in these Flames and they disappeared and I have never seen them again, so I am asking people if they have any recollections of them?

BURG: No. Did the name Aaron Reich ever come up?

SEVERAL: Not that I recall.

BURG: He was the president for two or three years in the 60s. Because I was never been president but I was the chairman of the board and he was president.

SEVERAL: Okay I wanted to ask you about that because these Flames at least in 1969, they had minutes or brief minutes and they show you on the board ….and yeah we have a list of board presidents and you are not on that list.

BURG: I was chairman of the board.

SEVERAL: Can you explain what is happening here?

BURG: Was I the only chairman?

SEVERAL: Well the way it said it was something like meeting chaired by Irv Burg.

BURG: Well I know, I will not take credit for starting that but we were at the stage where after my success in raising up that money and stuff and changing the attitude of Jewish community and don’t look at the other guy’s pocket, lets look at our pocket and getting the people that could afford it to raising . I couldn’t get too fell to raise until a new Jewish family moved in and he was a manufacturer of glass and an inventor. He is one I am not going to say the only one, but he is one of the inventors of where glass meets glass and doesn’t leak at a 90 degree, he invented the machine that does that so that the two could meet leak proof and his plant was in Canada and he was now retired and I took him to lunch and explained my predicament and he said well how much do you want from me? Now at that time, Tuffield was the largest gift $5000 and I couldn’t get Tuffield to go to 6, or 7 or 8 because his point was that when he does that, he would be so separate from the next gift that it would be embarrassing. My point was, that’s bullshit but Tuffield that was the [unclear], my friend and those father was my friend really I was little older from Bud and I tried to explain the Bud to Mr. Tuffield, Ben Tuffield, I tried to explain to him that if he would go from 5000 to 10,000, these people that were at 1000 would move up to 5000, they are going to separate themselves from you, Ben, Bud, they are looking at what they think you own and what they think your wealth is and they are looking at their wealth and saying I am in proportion so if I can move you up, we can move everybody up, he wouldn’t buy it but this new guy came in and I took him to lunch.

SEVERAL: Do you remember his name?

BURG: No. He and his wife divorced, not too much after that, but I remember him so well I cannot remember his name. And he listened intently and said you know you’re right and I said [unclear] but that’s my pitch. And he said what do you want from me? And I didn’t know what to ask but 5000$ was here so I said you know, if you give me 14000, I can then go back to Ben Tuffield so he say you got it, so I went to Ben Tuffield and the whole thing moved up.

SEVERAL: This was for money what became the Louis B. Silver building, oh no you raised that through the Yum Kippur.

BURG: This was for the UJA and because of that, and that bulk of that went to Israel, it was still being formed at that time in 1948 was just a dot and that was the reason that I stayed on because Mr. [unclear] and they put me on the board, the LA thing moved me eastern area as part of the general campaign, I think they spunned it off since then.

SEVERAL: Yeah I think its you know there is now St. Gabriel Federation you know which I am just wondering when your involvements in fundraising was almost like a precursoral quite ultimately happened you know.

BURG: Aaron Reich was the president and they would ask me if I become president and I said no but I will be happy to be a chairman, I don’t want the week to week responsibility but I will take an overall and that’s why I say I am sure I wasn’t the first one but I was chairman for about three years.

SEVERAL: Okay I have never seen I mean there has been subsequent minutes and it has always been my impression that as a president of the congregation, that’s the one who chairs the meetings, so the fact that you are identified as chairing the meeting and not being the only one who ever had this kind of unique situation I mean it was it surely…

BURG: Joe Aaron Reich was a very interesting guy. He was dean of the school of business of USC and very successful insurance officer and later got involved or may be while he was still dean in restructuring companies that were failing.

SEVERAL: Did you belong to any other Jewish organization?

BURG: I belong to all of them not actively but if it was a Jewish organization that would aggravate the anti-semites, I supported it, at one time my wife and I remembers three temples. Well there was a new temple forming here and it was the reconstructionist and they needed members to form a temple so we joined. We were members for three years and at that point, we were member of harbor reform temple here the forming reconstruction temple here and Pasadena Jewish temple.

SEVERAL: What was your social life around this temple, I mean were your friends primarily members of the temple or were they?

BURG: In Pasadena? Yes and here yes.

SEVERAL: Yes being what are they are around this temple?

BURG: Not around the temple here but around the Jewish community, were involved in helping to found the heritage point which is the only Jewish retirement home in Orange County I was campaign chair of the original forming of that. We had to raise 6.$ million in 90 days and the federation here was really the core of our friendship, my wife got to be president, the first woman president of the federation in Orange County and in Pasadena, it so happened as only one temple and for that whole area so the bulk of our friends and social life centered not around the temple but around members of the temple. Most of them were like us go to the high holidays, there is a small smattering of us that go more than once and as same as true here except here in Orange County there are 23 temples, there are so many ____ now that there is about 75000 Jews in Orange County.

SEVERAL: That’s a big change, I mean from when I was a kid, I grew up [unclear].

BURG: Oh yes big big change. They have come out of the woodworks since we got the community center which is gorgeous and over the years.

SEVERAL: Lets see there is just one another question again in Pasadena, I am not even sure if they exist, at one point, up through world war II there were a number of stores and businesses that Jews operated I mean there was the congregation in Pasadena was largely mercantile, small businesses and so on but at the time you came, things have changed. You don’t recall, do you recall shopping, buying things at stores operated by Jews in Pasadena kind of you know supporting congregate businesses?

BURG: Not really but that is not deliberately but doing it yes, the badge that we have on this table were made by Jewish person that we met and became friendly with at the temple.

SEVERAL: In Pasadena?

BURG: In Pasadena.

SEVERAL: Do you recall who that was? Hive Vigo?

BURG: Hive Vigo.

SEVERAL: Oh interesting. Okay.

BURG: He is still around, I think he is still alive.

SEVERAL: Yes he has been interviewed twice, and I am going to interview him again.

BURG: Yeah. Say hello from me.

SEVERAL: I will, I think he will be delighted to know that.

BURG: Oh he is a nice man. He is one of those that said to me, jeez I am giving you a hell of a lot more of my wealth than you’re getting out of Ben Tuffeld. No I had a feeling that anybody that is in business then there was the guy that made drapes and then we had the guy that made trailers and he made the drapes for the tailors and his son in law was of my wife, my wife says he too is 92 so he is closer to my wife’s age than I am. And I cant think of anything but he was the son in law and he took over the business and I believe they are still in business in Pasadena, I think their children run it but they make drapes and that kind of thing.

SEVERAL: I just want to make sure, do you have any recollection actually of the desegregation of the Pasadena schools and was it an issue at the congregation at the temple?

BURG: Not an issue but it was very well supported by the temple and I have a memory of it because my son instead of going to Pasadena High where my daughter went, had to go to the other high school.

SEVERAL: John Muir.

BURG: John Muir and he had to be bussed whereas he could have ridden the bicycle at the Pasadena High as my daughter did.

SEVERAL: So how did you feel about that?

BURG: I resented that. I did not resent, I was on the side of integration, we have to have it but I didn’t think the white kids should be moved out. I think the black kid should have been allowed to if they wanted to get on the bus to integrate that’s fine.

SEVERAL: I think that is basically what has happened I mean the Pasadena school system is basically open enrollment, I don’t know if the high school, I don’t know, but at the elementary level, if you can get your kid to a school except for I think may be one which has may be some special testing actually, you can go to any school in the district so.

BURG: That’s the way it should be.

SEVERAL: Lets see, I just want to clarify something I just realized. Now how come the presidents of the congregation did chair that meetings, I mean I guess maybe getting back to the question, why did you do it or why didn’t he do it?

BURG: I don’t remember why and I don’t have enough ego to say they wanted me so badly that they let me do it, I don’t believe that either. That’s why I asked you, am I the only one?

SEVERAL: Yeah.

BURG: But I don’t think it was my idea but I was happy to do that and take that responsibility but didn’t want “the ongoing responsibility” of being the president and having to do all that interaction with temple members and the staff and so forth.

SEVERAL: Lets see, I can think of one another question. What other communities were you on, were you on the board?

BURG: I was on the board and I was always involved in the fundraising part and at one time, I was the chair and “the creative person” I have to go about doing it by doing it but I was very involved with the federation and I brought that importance with me when I moved to Orange County and then moved from the federation to the foundation and I was president of the foundation about three times probably five years old told during the formative years, not substantially capable of being the founders, I was in the founders group and among the first, the initial but we have two people in Orange County at that time, the Feimbarts and the Fiersteins who were really the financial founders of the foundation. They paid for the executive director for the first three years etc. etc. and I became president in the transition going from the “sponsored organization” which cannot grow to being a self supporting organization.

SEVERAL: In Pasadena, I mean you were involved in the fundraising, what was some in the ways that they raised money? I mean they had dues right?

BURG: We had dues and then we had special fundraising efforts helping to retire the mortgage was one.

SEVERAL: Do you recall, was that a special fundraising effort to retire the mortgage?

BURG: There was an effort in law that did that.

SEVERAL: And how did you go above that or what was it?

BURG: It was an ongoing thing and it took some years and I think time had a great deal to do with it but it was really getting the members themselves to extend themselves for things that were more than dues. Dues cannot run the temple, you cant get enough so call them scholarships, that kind of thing and in retrospect, the only thing that I remember individually specifically is the Yum Kapur thing, we had tangle Galpert and I about lets do it.

SEVERAL: Okay well I think that.

BURG: I don’t know if I had helped.

SEVERAL: You did.

A TEI Project

Interview of Irving Burg

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. SESSION ONE JANUARY 12, 2009