Bernie and Bunny Filler, May 19th, 2014

Interview with Bernie Filler, May 19th, 2014

GAIL EISENBERG: Well I can see pictures behind you.

SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is May 19th, 2014, and first interview with Mr. Filler. So I would like you to just go back and talk about your history, your full name, when you were born, where you were from, and then we will go from there.

BERNIE FILLER: Okay. My full name is Bernard J Filler. I was born in New York City; I can't remember which hospital it was in. I was born October 2, 1932, New York Hospital. I lived in the Bronx.

SC: Do you remember the address where you grew up?

BF: Something Fox Street.

SC: Fox Street, okay, yes. So can you talk a little bit about your education, from the time you were a small child all the way through?

BF: Okay, my secular -- you don't want my religious background, do you?

SC: Oh that's fine. Yes.

BF: I can give that too. It's not very large. I went to elementary school and junior high school in the Bronx and--

GE: What was the name of the schools?

SC: It's okay.

BUNNY FILLER: He went to a lot of schools.

BF: I went to a lot of schools.

GE: Okay, that's fine.

BF: And then when I started to go to high school, I took a test for Stuyvesant High School and I went to Stuyvesant. And from Stuyvesant High School I went to 00:02:00the Fashion Institute of Technology. That was a two-year course. I studied management. In that class I also learned time study and motion study and how to sew cloth onto my pants. We were taking sewing lessons and learned all about sewing machines and attachments that went on sewing machines and what they did. So we got a real, real serious in-the-industry education. Then I was- was- went to work for my uncle who was in the dress business. The name of his business was Saint James Junior Company, which was in- on 35th Street and 7th Avenue, New York.

SC: How old were you then?

BF: I started working for him when I was 16 after school and on weekends. I worked for him for two years full time after school. No, no I was going to FIT, I still worked for him part time. When I graduated from FIT, it was about less than a year and I was drafted.

GE: And this was about what year when you were drafted?

BF: [19]48, maybe. I graduated high school in '48, so probably 1950.

SC: Did you see active service anywhere overseas?

BF: No. No. I was drafted during the Korean War and, as a matter of fact, I took my basic training in Indiantown Gap here, and I was sent to Germany and I spent 00:04:00two years in Munich. I was a- I got an office job while I was in the army, I was a company clerk, and I took care of all the records for service company.

SC: That sounds like a good job in the service.

BF: And I was in Munich for- Oh. When I was in elementary school, everyone had to go to the Glee Club and be tested for their- what type of voice they had, tenures, [etc.]. So everybody would sing and the teacher would tell them what their category was. So I sang and she said you're a listener. So I have been a listener my whole life. When I was in the army, some place along the line they 00:05:00put up a bulletin board, notice, that the local chaplain wanted to put a choir together for the high holidays. And we were going to Berchtesgaden in the German Alps for three days to rehearse. So I signed up and we ended up standing on- in the Bavarian Alps looking at the Swiss Alps and the Italian Alps, a magnificent place. They brought along a little portable organ that you pumped, and they handed out some- handed out song sheets and I was standing right behind him and he was right behind the organist. And he taps her shoulder, she starts playing, we start singing, in about 10 seconds he taps her shoulder, says, "Wait a minute," and turns around, looks at me, and says, "Would you mind restricting yourself to the 'amens'?" So I guess I couldn't sing. So everything- that was 00:06:00fine, and then I was sent home and I went to work for my uncle. And I worked for him for 2 or 3 years, I guess, tw2o years, 2 or 3, and I did everything. I worked with the pattern makers, I worked with the cutters, I worked with the spreaders, I did spreading and cutting, I worked in the showroom and took care of customers, I bought notions, buttons, and laces and stuff, a little bit of fabric, not very much. And at the end of the day, after all the customers had came in and bought all their dresses, I worked at night and I packed all the dresses up and shipped them. So I really had a complete knowledge. One- Some 00:07:00place along the line, my uncle opened a small factory. We didn't have a factory where we were in Saint James. He opened up a small sewing room on 9th Avenue at 35th Street. So I went there and I ran that, I ran that for a year. We had about thirty-five operators, four pressers, and again, my job was to run that. At the end of the day I took the push buggies and I loaded the finished garments onto the push buggies, and I walked them from 9th Avenue to 7th Avenue into the stockroom. And if it was necessary, I stayed and I packed them. I did everything. So when I got into the business, there was nothing anybody could pull over my eyes because I knew everything.

SC: Could we back up a little now and talk a little bit about your family 00:08:00background, as far back- names, dates, occupations, as far back as you know on each side of your family?

BF: Okay. My mother and father were both born in the United States. My mother was a bookkeeper most of her life. She was separated from my father, and she was the breadwinner in the family. And she always worked as a bookkeeper. My father had some odd jobs and then was in ill health for a long time, and then he worked for my uncle in the cutting room. He was also a short order cook. He worked in the little restaurants that were in lobbies of the buildings in Manhattan. And he'd work at them and prepare food. And then he passed away at a young age, he was in his 40s when he passed away.

SC: What was his name and do you know about when he was born?

GE: So first what was both your parents', what were their names?

BF: My father's name was Max and my mother's name was Elizabeth.

SC: Do you know her maiden name?

BF: Hoffman. Yes. We found out when she passed away, and we got her birth certificate. She passed away in her 80s, and everybody called her Elizabeth or Betty. We found out her name was Lena.

SC: Where was her family from?

BF: Eastern Europe. My father's family, who's from Germany, my grandmother lived in New York, his mother. And my mother's mother lived in the Bronx. I never met my two grandfathers.

SC: Do you know, do you have any idea of what the families did when they were in Europe? What occupations they had?

BF: No. No. I know what some cousins did but I don't know about my father.

SC: Was anyone else in the garment industry at all that you know of, other than your uncle?

BF: No. Just him.

GE: And your uncle, is that your father's brother?

BF: Yes.

SC: What was his name?

BF: James. Jimmy.

SC: Jimmy -- Filler?

BF: Filler.

SC: So as far as- Those were all the jobs that you had before you came to the Lehigh Valley?

BF: No.

SC: Well tell me more about the jobs that you had.

BF: I worked for my uncle for about two years. I guess somewhere along the line we got married, and I had a very close friend in FIT. We were very friendly. He had gotten a job in South Carolina and ended up managing three factories there. He called me one day and said how would you like to move to South Carolina?

GE: And this is what, the 1960s?

BF: [19]50s. Probably in '54 or '55. And we thought about it and she wasn't thrilled but we said it's a good opportunity, so we- No, we weren't married.

BUNNY: We weren't married.

BF: We weren't married. So I went to South Carolina and we worked in Allendale, South Carolina. I was there for three years- maybe four, five years and I was the lead company engineer. And the last year I was there, I managed one of the three factories in Bamberg, South Carolina. And one day, somebody came in -- the owners of the business lived in New York, and they called us and they said they are coming down and some people are coming from Tennessee, they would lie to look at our business to see if they want to buy it. So we met all of them and 00:12:00obviously the head manager from the company in New York was talking and he was a very, very tough businessman. And he came to see my factory in Bamberg. We had a beautiful, beautiful lawn, beautiful shrubbery and flowering and everything else. I said to him, we are very proud of our yard and he looked at me and said how many dozens a day do you get from your yard? We knew who we were doing business with. And they bought the company. We couldn't understand why they wanted our dress company that was making house dresses. They were in the shirt business. We said why are they buying our company. At the time I was 25. My friend was 2 years older than me, he was 27. I had an assistant from FIT who was 23. Our two plant managers were in their mid-twenties besides myself and within 00:13:00three months we were all in Tennessee. They bought the company for us. And my friend ended up being CEO for them, and went on to a larger company and became the CEO there. And I did very well also. Not like him, but I did very well.

SC: When he was the CEO of another company, do you remember any of those company names? You don't have to.

BF: I'll try to remember the name of the company in [inaudible]. No, I can't remember.

SC: So you were working together still?

BF: Yes.

SC: So they just moved it from the Carolinas to Tennessee?

BF: Not the business, just us. Just the personnel.

SC: Just you. Oh my gosh.

BF: Within a couple of months we were running their business.

SC: Oh okay, wow.

BF: I was there for four and a half years and I was dating some girls in South Carolina and Tennessee and I finally rented an apartment in Nashville, Tennessee because I- and I had a trailer. The reason I had a trailer is because all of the- we had 10 factories in Tennessee and they all had trailer hookups behind them. So I ended up being a "consulting engineer" for the company and I would go to a factory for 2 or 3 months and do whatever I had to do.

I trained a couple of people who were working with me to go with me. So we would go into the factory and we'd work on their make up pay. You don't know what make 00:15:00up pay is, so I'll explain it to you. If the minimum wage was $5, and our employees are on piece rate--they get paid by the piece--and the minimum wage was $6, if they only made $5, we had to make up the difference between the wages, the current wage- the current wage and what they were earning.

At the time they decided to make me the internal engineer, we had $6 million in make up pay. And what we did is, one of the fellas, the other- the other man that came from South Carolina, he was probably the best sewing machine operator I ever saw in my whole life. He had one leg and he could sew anything. So he came with me and the third fellow he couldn't sew, but we decided we were gonna 00:16:00train--I went to the factory first--and I decided what needed to be worked on the most. So I decided side closing, sleeve setting, trimming, and examining. So Martin, who couldn't sew, we put him in trimming and examining. And I took side closing and Tom did sleeve setting. And we went to another factory. I looked at the factory first and said basically, and every factory you go to, everyone does it kind of the same way. Not necessarily the same in another factory, but we had in that factory we had fifty side closers. It was big, 1200 employees. So I did the side closing and Tom did the sleeve setting. So I go in and I pick out one of the ladies who looked like she was in charge. She was a little older than most of them and she seemed very strong so I went over and said, "I'm going to 00:17:00work with you a little bit."

Oh first before that I worked three weeks at one of our other factories side closing. So I could side close like any experienced operator. I started telling her, you're stopping after one inch, then you sew four inches, then you go to the sleeve and you make three more stops to the top of the underarm. She said yeah. I said why don't you do all of that in two stops. She said, :I can't do that." I said yes you can. "I can't do that." I said well you can. She said, "You're so smart, why don't you do it?" That's what you wait for. And I sat down and did exactly what I was telling her to do, two stops, at full speed. And I did three of four garments so it wasn't just one garment. I said do you think you can try that? "... I'll try." She tried and once you get one, the rest were 00:18:00easy. And we did things like drilling a hole in the machine top for an extra needle so they wouldn't have to call for a needle when their needle broke. We engineered it to the end.

GE: So a lot of productivity improvements.

BF: Yeah. So we ended up working in three factories and then I decided I had enough and I'll tell you why. But we saved three million dollars in makeup pay and in three years we did it.

SC: So this was- These factories were all sort of overseen by the investors?

BF: No no.

SC: No. You owned all of the, all three?

BF: The company in Tennessee owned all three and I was an employee.

GE: He was an employee.

SC: That's what I meant.

BF: My friend Howard was the general manager.

SC: He was a general manager, but there were people that owned those factories.

BF: Right. And because of all that staying, I decided to get an apartment in 00:19:00Murfreesboro. That's where I lived, where my trailer was stationed. So I went to Nashville to Percy Cohen's Furniture Company and I go in and who takes care of me, Mrs. Cohen. I was I think 26 or 27 at the time, and I'm buying furniture for my apartment. She says, I assume if you're buying this for your own apartment, you're not married? I say no. She says oh well I have a daughter. So I say- she says that she's a sophomore in college. That wasn't too bad. I said next time she comes home, tell her about me, and then call me and I'll call her. And I did. We went out some place in Nashville; I think the Ice Capades were visiting 00:20:00from New York. We went for dinner. She was a very nice girl, very pretty girl, but not for me. So I came home from that, lived in my apartment for a month or two, and I said I have to get out of here. I got to go back up north and find a nice Jewish girl and get married. I came up to Philadelphia and I interviewed at Rosenau Brothers, who made little girls clothing. They had five or six factories all around Allentown.

BUNNY: Cinderella. It was Cinderella, yes.

SC: Oh.

BF: What?

SC: That was Cinderella Dress?

GE: Was that the label, was it the brand?

BF: Cinderella, very large company. They were the first company to use a star to 00:21:00advertise their clothing: Shirley Temple. So they were a very successful company, and I went to New York for the weekend before my interview, and I stayed with my mother, who lived in New York. And I didn't walk in the door and I wasn't there thirty seconds, she says your Aunt Mae has a girl for you. My Aunt Mae was a bookkeeper, probably in her 80s at this time. I spoke to her and she gave me this girl's number. I called and she said, "It was very nice of --" and everybody called her "Aunt Mae" -- "your Aunt Mae to give you my number but I'm going with somebody," she said. "But I have a younger sister." So that was the beginning. It took us about 3 years, 2 years, before we got married.

BUNNY: We met in '64, married in '66.

BF: So that's 2 years.

BUNNY: Not quite.

BF: Not surprisingly, the first date we had in New York, we went to the Central 00:22:00Park Zoo and sat outside the elephant cage. And then we went for Chinese food. And that was the beginning of that. I was working in- around in the five factories around this area, traveling to them on a daily basis. Every once in a while I'd go for a few days if I needed to do something. Then my company sent me to Virginia?

BUNNY: Kentucky.

BF: Excuse me, Kentucky.

SC: So that was Cinderella that sent you there?

BF: Yes. Somebody was making some clothing for them and I went there. And I was there probably for 3-4 months. Every once in a while we'd get in touch. She'd 00:23:00send me a card, I wouldn't return it. I came back to New York and then we started dating and here we are.

SC: So you were in Allentown and the Lehigh Valley with Cinderella or were you in New York?

BF: No here. I had a choice of moving to Reading or Allentown because our factories were in Reading--.

BUNNY: Lansford. Lansford. Lansford.

BF: Lansford, up in the Poconos. We had one, Red Hill, so I could have lived in anywhere or Allentown.

BUNNY: And Carbondale. Carbondale.

BF: Carbondale. So we had five factories. I went around to the five factories doing engineering. I took time studies and set piece rates. Helped people. I 00:24:00worked for a man who- he didn't hire me. He was the general manager, production manager, and the owner of the company hired me and sent me to work in Lansford to work with the general manager. He didn't want me around so he never talked to me very much. So I did my own thing and I had an engineer work there in the late '30s -- oh wait, '40s who was way ahead of his time. He set piece rates using time and motion study, and he had- we had a whole manual of all the piece rates. Unfortunately, at that time maybe the minimum wage was $4 an hour, so in order 00:25:00to earn $4 you had to do an hour's worth of work. What happened was he left the company and the geniuses that were left said that when they had a wage increase, instead of raising the price, they raised the number of pieces. So when I got there you weren't getting paid 10 cents a garment, you're getting- you had to do 2 garments and then whatever it was. And that was not too easy and everybody was converting all the time. They had big staff in the office that was converting everything. So I just took that manual and converted it to time.

SC: So it was sort of a speed-up routine that they were doing and then you, and the fact that they had to produce five times as much?

BF: Instead of paying $5 an hour they had to pay $6 an hour so instead of raising the value of the time, they raised the time, or they lowered the time. I 00:26:00don't know what they did.

GE: So therefore it became very difficult for the people to meet- to get the wage that they should be getting?

BF: No. It just made it difficult for the office people to convert.

GE: Oh to convert how much they should pay them.

BF: I spent a year redoing that whole book. And I converted everything over to time and then all the piece rates were in time. So if the minimum wage changed, it went, then we just changed time. The element, what it was worth.

GE: You changed the dollar but the time stayed the same.

BF: Changed the dollar.

SC: Were those shops unionized or not?

BF: All union.

SC: All union, yes. Which union did they belong to?

BF: I--

SC: The International? Yeah.

BF: And I was with them for seven years, and I was getting a little unhappy with what I was doing and spending all this time driving. So I decided to find another job and I came- I was living in Allentown and went to an employment agency here. I said I'm looking for a job and he said what do you do? I said I'm an engineer and plant manager in the garment industry. He said tell me what you do. So I told him everything that I do and he said I never heard anybody that can do that much. So he got me a job in Reading with a nice gentleman whose father had owned a ladies underwear factory and his father passed away. They weren't doing too well in the ladies underwear business so he decided to take in shirts and blouses, and they weren't doing too well, so he hired me. And he- I 00:28:00became plant manager. They had two factories at the time.

GE: What's the name of the company?

BUNNY: Kelray, wasn't it?

BF: Kelray Manufacturing: K-E-L-R-A-Y.

GE: And do you know about what year this is?

BUNNY: Well I think around '67. Jeb was born. Around '67.

SC: And Rosenau was R-O-S-E-N-A-U?

BF: Yes.

BUNNY: I think it was two N's.

SC: Was it? Yeah, I've seen it with two N's.

GE: The company that you were with for seven years, was that Cinderella?

BUNNY: That was Rosenau.

GE: Rosenau owns it and Cinderella's just the brand?

BF: Yeah, Rosenau. So I went to work for him and they didn't know anything, they only knew how to make underwear. They didn't know anything about blouses, and he 00:29:00had gotten- became a contractor for knit shirts. They didn't know how to make knit shirts, so I came in and I knew a lot about knit shirts. Once he got me, he started hiring a lot of people and I said to him, you can't do that, you'll have a tremendous amount of makeup -- we all know what that is -- in the factory. He said that's all right we have to hire more people so we can make more garments. The more people we hired the more makeup we had.

Finally he was going to close down the big factory in Reading and keep the other one open. He was going to call the union in. I said let's make a deal. I said, I want to fire everybody but 15 people, and I guarantee in 6 months we'll be back 00:30:00to the same number and you'll be making money. So they called the union in and they listened to me and they believed me. We fired 45 people and I kept the only people who could sew a little bit. Because what happened when somebody couldn't sew and you hired experienced people and you put them next to each other, they couldn't sew either.

So I taught the supervisor, who could sew, how to make a shirt. We started all over again and some place along the line, we were doing very well and he wanted to open a third factory. I said yeah, he says can you open another factory. I said that means I'll have to be there? And he said you could work in all the places. So I'm working in three factories now and running them and we are doing very well. When I took the job I told them that I wanted a percentage of 00:31:00profits. And unfortunately for him, he opened the books to me and I was looking at the books. At the end of the first year, we made $50,000, and I was expecting about a $10,000 bonus. He called me in and he said here is your bonus check. I looked at it and it was $400. I said I beg your pardon. Well we said we lost money before and we had to put money in the pension plan and we had to do this and I bought new furniture.

I never specified what, he should have known; he was just giving me the business. I said well, I'm not satisfied with that. It was Christmas break and I went home; my mother was visiting us. He fired me. He had fired me. Before he fired me, I said to him that I could run it but we'd have to let some other 00:32:00people go. He had people in the cutting room that cut all the goods. His cutter and the three men that worked there couldn't- didn't drive cars. I'm just giving you an idea of the kind of help he had. The man that was in charge of shipping couldn't write and didn't read too well. So I replaced all of the personnel and we started making money.

SC: This is tape number 2, Bernie Filler. And today is May 19th, 2014. So you were saying that he fired you.

BF: He fired me. The following Monday, we got phone calls from a couple of 00:33:00people that were- one of the customers we were sewing for was Hang Ten. Are you familiar with Hang Ten? It was a very, very big company. You know, "Hang Ten" with their feet? That was their emblem with their feet on the board. They were our major supplier and we had a few other people who I had brought in who I knew. We were working for them. Within two days, two companies called me and said get your own factory, we'll give you the business. So I started looking and it took me about three months to find something, three or four months. A friend of mine introduced me to somebody who wanted to sell his contracting business. I went and talked to him and I looked around the factory, and I saw that whatever 00:34:00they were doing, I could do a lot better. And they were making a living.

SC: This was in Allentown?

BF: No.

SC: This was in Reading?

BF: No. Palmerton. They were in Palmerton. I walked around the factory and spoke to some of the operators and I looked and asked how many pieces a day do you do? She told me. I said to myself, that's not very many. Anyway, I talked to the owner of the business, he said well some of my girls can do more but I only want to make 300 pieces a day. I don't want them to make more than that. He said I'm happy with that and I can make a living. Or 3000 a day, whatever it is. I said oh. I looked around and I said if you can make 300, I can make 600. So I offered 00:35:00to buy the business and he said okay. We sat down and we made some, did some negotiations, and I'm on unemployment. One week went by, a month went by, two months go by, I call him up and said, what's going on? We either get the deal, I said I have to work, I'm unemployed. He said oh well maybe the first of April we can settle. I said okay. This was March already. So we made the deal in April, and I walked into the factory for two days and we ran out of work. So I called the company that we were working for and he said this is our slow time. He knew it was the slow time coming up, so he didn't tell me, and I bought the business then ran out of work. So I called the owner of the company, we had a very nice 00:36:00conversation and he said we could work something out. He started sending me work again.

SC: Who was the man you bought the business from? Do you remember his name?

BF: Frank--

BUNNY: With a T.

BF: It may come to me before this is over.

BUNNY: Tiso. Tiso, Tiso?

BF: Tiso. He and his wife were in this business. So I come in and I talk- it's my business now and I go to some of the girls who I knew were good operators. I said how come you only do 50 pieces? I think you can do 300. They said, nobody asked us to. I said well okay, I'm going to start asking you to do more things. So before I was finished I started making 3,000 pieces a week in the factory.

GE: So Bernie, you said that there wasn't- you were already done with the factory- you were already done with your production? Was that there was just no 00:37:00more, the customer didn't need any more?

BF: The supplier to the factory. We were subcontractors. We needed a manufacturer to give us work.

GE: So it was the manufacturer just didn't have any more need?

BF: Well the first two weeks in April they ran out of work, every year, and the previous owner knew that, which is why he was putting me off. Because he was making money and he knew it was going to be bad, so. It didn't take me long. So I worked for them, went to Boston, I went to Boston to meet them. I took my wife along to meet them. We had a younger daughter at the time and they filled us up with cartons of little girls' dresses.

BUNNY: Girltown -- Girltown was the name.

BF: Girltown. It was a big company.

GE: And this was your manufacturer? The manufacturer that you were doing the work for? Is that who Girltown is?

BF: No- yes. No it wasn't the same one. But anyway, I started working and little 00:38:00by little we were losing our dress business, our blouse business. The first year I was in business, I worked for--

BUNNY: Personal. Personal Sports Wear.

BF: Personal? No, Liz Claiborne.

BUNNY: She was after.

BF: Okay. Anyway I ended up working for Liz Claiborne. Liz Claiborne was a little bit better garments than I was used to making. Did I say I bought the business?

GE: Yeah.

BF: Okay. And I worked for Liz Claiborne for a year and did very well. Then they called me and said we are very sorry, we are moving overseas.

SC: What year was this about?

BF: So I worked for two other blouse companies for a short time and they moved overseas.

SC: Was this in the '60s or '70s?

BF: [19]70s. And I had a friend in right outside Allentown who had a garment 00:39:00factory that made ladies pants. He was a contractor. He worked for --

GE: Oh was this the family that --

BF: Fogelman.

GE: Fogelman. The pants. They worked for Dunner, wasn't it?

BF: Dunner, Alfred Dunner.

SC: We just saw Maxine when we had lunch together.

BF: Okay. My best friend in Allentown was her husband, who passed away.

GE: Oh Arnold. Okay so you started doing pants for them.

BF: Not quite.

GE: May I just go back a second to make sure I'm clear. So when you went into your own business, tell me what kind of garments were you making again?

BF: Blouses.

GE: Blouses. Anything else or just blouses?

BF: Just blouses.

GE: Women's blouses?

BF: Women's blouses.

GE: And they were made from what kind of fabric?

BF: Mostly cotton.

GE: Cotton and knits.

BF: No knits. Knit manufacturers were a different category.

BUNNY: It was Personal Sports Wear and Breckenridge.

GE: Say that again?

BUNNY: Personal. They had like two hearts. It was a big label here. Personal Sportswear and then Breakenridge.

GE: Okay those were his two, he had two customers.

BF: He needs another contractor, would I be interested in working for him? I said I don't know anything about pants, I make blouses. He said, well you can come down here and look at and stay in my factory and ask any questions you want. I said can I bring my supervisor with me? He said sure. So the two of us went down and we spent the whole day there and we looked at every operation. 00:41:00When it was all over, I said is there anything here you can't do? She said no. So I told him I'd work for him. I said can you give me a hundred pairs of pants out of scrap so I can make some and be sure. So he said sure. So he cut a hundred pairs of pants for me. My supervisor made all hundred and when she was all finished, I said could you train everybody? She said sure. Now in time and motion, of course. We started working for him and I was- my accountant- I had spoken to my accountant before I switched over. He said are you going to be alright? I said yeah I set up a schedule for myself. Within four months I told him how much I would make each month and by the fourth month I would make a profit. So I did. Now I'm working for them, and I worked for them for 10 years 00:42:00and the last couple of years we were doing very well. I was very happy. I'm trying to think-- No, I worked for him for 10 years.

GE: Is that from around the late '70s to late '80s?

BF: I retired 17 years ago.

GE: So 17 years ago would be 1995 or 1997.

BF: [19]93 maybe. I left something out, I want to just add it. When I bought my own business and I was doing very well, they used to have a show in Atlantic 00:43:00City every year. A garment and textile show. So I decided that I would go. So I went there and I see my ex-employer who had fired me there. He saw me and turned and looked the other way. So I went over to him and tapped him on the shoulder to shake, I said, "Shake? I just want to thank you." He said what? I said I want to thank you for firing me. I bought my own business; I'm making so much money I don't know what to do with it. And I turned around and walked away. He was in business three, three to four months after I left, then he went out of business. So I guess I did something right.

SC: Sometimes things all pull together, don't they?

BF: So that's it, then I retired.

GE: So after, after doing this for ten years for Charles Dunner-

BF: Alfred Dunner.

GE: Alfred Dunner, did you retire because they didn't need it? Do you retire because-

BF: I retired because I was old.

GE: So you retired in the 1990s?

BF: Yeah. Let's go back 17 years.

GE: Well it's 2014 so that would be 1997.

BUNNY: It was after Jeb got married, Jeb was married in '95, so it was after '95.

BF: And some place along the line--

GE: Did you get to sell your business in 1997?

BF: Yes. Some place along the line, I had a friend who worked at the hospitals here in town and he was responsible for buying clothing and things, like hospital gowns. He said, can you make some hospital gowns for me? I said yeah I guess I could. So he showed me one, I said yeah I can make these. I gave him a 00:45:00price and I made hospital gowns as a sideline for- I had a garage, and I converted the garage into a sewing room to make hospital gowns. It was a very cheap garment, so I opened up that section as non-union, my shop was union.

BUNNY: Was that Mared?

BF: Mared Manufacturing. I named it after my children Mara and Jed.

BUNNY: And your other business was-

BF: Jedmar.

BUNNY: Was the main business.

GE: Say it again?

BUNNY: J-E-D-M-A-R Enterprises. That was his big factory.

GE: How many people did you have working there at Jedmar Enterprises?

BF: About 60-65.

GE: And those were mostly operators, sewers?

BF: Yeah. I had more when I had Mared Manufacturing. I had about another 10 00:46:00people working at Mared. And one day the union came to me and said, you know you're a union shop. I said, yes. You can't run a non-union shop in the backdoor, in the garage; you're going to have to convert to union. Meanwhile, the girls who are working back there loved it because they were getting better benefits than the other people were. I mean I was paying them, I gave them Christmas presents, I gave them bonuses, and all kinds of things. They came in and said we don't want to make it hard for you but we want that to be union. We'll give you a deal. He said you tell them it's going to be union and instead of six percent benefits, you can start with two percent. The next year you can go to three percent then five percent. He gave me like three years, and I got that going good, and guess what? They started making them overseas, so I lost 00:47:00that business, too.

SC: Did you belong to any of the associations?

BF: I belonged to the Atlantic Apparel Association. Which everybody did.

GE: That was the one with Arnold Delin?

BF: Yes. When I joined there were about a hundred and some odd members. By the time I left there were maybe 20 left.

GE: So by the time you retired, in the late 1990s, this was pretty much gone from the area?

BF: Yes.

SC: And that was late. So many people were out way before that.

BF: Well, that's because I was good.

GE: How many years did you make the hospital gowns . . . about?

BF: Maybe two years.

GE: Do you remember what years? Is this the 1990s?

BF: Well the children were young so it couldn't be

BUNNY: They were in college.

BF: No they weren't in college yet; they were, they were, maybe they were going to college. I made them partners in my business. I split all the profits with my two children. So that by the time I had to close it down, they already had a nice- better money for college. So they were taken care of. That worked out very well.

GE: What hospital- You were making hospital gowns, who was your customer?

BF: All the- there was only one hospital here.

GE: Really? It was Lehigh Valley Hospital?

BF: Lehigh Valley. And at that time, they were really doing most of the business. They bought an awful lot of hospital gowns from us. I had an offer to make hospital gowns for the military, and I chose not to do it.

SC: Was that because of dealing with the military or was that because of any issue you had with the military as far-?

BF: No. It's because I had a cousin that was in charge of all the subcontractors that worked for the government. He came to a bar mitzvah and he found out I was making hospital gowns and said how would you like to make hospital gowns for the government? I said let's talk about it. It was a good deal. He would guarantee me the work. SC: You asked whether the children were a part of the business? And just one summer, when one of your sons worked.

GE: Right. Would you like to share- Matt, we'll ask you if you have any questions. But would you like to share with us a little bit about the Jewish community when you came, both what you came, what it was like, and also what 00:50:00you've observed? You've been here now I think you said 48 years?

BUNNY: Forty-eight years. But he's been here longer.

GE: What has it meant to you being part of the Jewish community here, and what was that like, here in Allentown?

BF: Well we got married and we wanted to have a family and wanted them to be Jewish. So we decided we would join a synagogue. So I went shopping, and I went to Beth El first and talking to them I found that they were pretty well booked up, and if I joined that synagogue I would have to sit in the back, in a different room in the back for services, for holidays because all the seats, or a good number of the seats belong to old congregants.

GE: This was about what year?

BUNNY: 1966-67.

BF: So I went a couple blocks away and I went to K.I. And I had never belonged 00:51:00to a synagogue in my life. I went to K.I. and they welcomed me with open arms, they said you could sit wherever you want when you come here. You will be a regular member of the community and the congregation. And I said okay, and I joined. And we've been there since-

BUNNY: 1973.

GE: So 1973 is when you joined. How about your involvement with any other institutions?

BF: Well I was president of Jewish Family Service for two years. I was vice president for a couple of years. And I was just on the board for a couple of years, about 6 years altogether.

GE: Okay so a lot of involvement with Jewish Family Service. Any other organizations?

BUNNY: You were president of Brotherhood of K.I.

BF: President of the Brotherhood of K.I.

Bunny: And treasurer of the synagogue.

BF: Treasurer of the synagogue.

GE: So you were really quite active at K.I. Still active at K.I.?

BF: Yes. Not as much as my wife. My wife now volunteers there about three days a week. Does a wonderful job.

MATT: Has Judaism had any impact on your business life when you were working?

BF: Not really.

MATT: Whether business connections or anything like that.

BF: I knew a lot of people in the garment business that were Jewish, but we didn't have any- we became friendly and knew each other but that didn't affect my business at all.

SC: Do you think there is a reason why people in the Jewish community became involved in the garment industry overall?

BF: That's what they were doing when they came from New York.

GE: So even let's say why in New York? In other words, what do you think was the association between Jews and the garment industry?

BF: Because they couldn't get jobs in industries. You couldn't work for GM, you couldn't work for- so they decided to go into the garment business. And of course they ended up very, very large in the garment business and still are, still are.

SC: It's nice to get independent confirmation from different people.

BF: So when the war started, there were a lot of complications in New York. They couldn't get help, they couldn't get factories. A lot of them decided to come out here because there was plenty of help. So they moved here and they opened up garment factories here. They suffered a little bit when the war came along. But once they found out what they had to do, they made a lot of money. They did government work, and they did- yeah.

SC: Do you see the industry as being- in Reading at certain times there were 00:54:00sewing factories up, in all the places that you were, do you think there's a reason those areas were so lucrative for people in the coal regions...?

BF: Availability of labor.

SC: Of the female labor?

BF: Yeah. Actually, in the garment industry, forty or fifty years ago in New York, most of the operators were men, originally. Then the women gradually came into the business.

SC: There's a clich that where there is a silk mill, there's- silk mills were near the coal mines. That the sewing mills- sewing factories were also near the coal mines or near the steel mills or wherever. Is that overblown or do you think there is a connection there?

BF: Well the reason for that I think is because the garment industry employs 00:55:00women and the other industries didn't. So it was a place for their wives to work.

GE: So all the men were working in the coal mines or the other types of jobs and the women were working in these kinds of factories.

BF: There was a lot of- what I'd want to say? When they didn't like Jews? Anti-Semitism and anti- other things in the coal regions. The reason there were so many people from the coal region who ended up in the garment industry and they opened up their own businesses because the people in the garment industry prior to that wouldn't hire people from the coal regions.

GE: Can you say that again and explain it to us?

BF: Yes. There was a lot of prejudice and people with backgrounds, both- 00:56:00whatever their backgrounds was, couldn't get jobs in a lot of factories. They were prejudiced against. There were a lot of Italians working in the Northern part, a lot of Italians.

GE: You're saying that the owners of those coal mines wouldn't hire those Italians?

BF: No, the other garment business.

GE: Because the riginal garment factory owners would not hire those people.

SC: Would not hire Jews.

BF: No, I don't think it was the Jewish owners. It was the owners of the other factories.

GE: Who was showing the prejudice?

BF: They were English, they were-

BUNNY: No, who were they?

BF: I'm getting there. Who came to the United States before the Eastern 00:57:00Europeans? They were English and they were German and they lived up there and the people that opened businesses there wouldn't hire.

GE: And you're saying they wouldn't hire the local people to work in their factories?

BF: No. So eventually they opened up in Palmerton around the coal regions, the lower coal regions, my boss there was- came out of high school in Palmerton, and there was a lady who was kind of a supervisor running the factory. And he was a very bright guy and she taught him. He ended up being the general manager some years later. He didn't have a lot of prejudice. I'm serious.

SC: We've heard that in Allentown, their- the community of people in the garment 00:58:00industry were mostly Jewish. And up in the Northern part near Palmerton and Catasauqua, places like that, it was more Italians. Is that true?

BF: Yes.

GE: And with the Italian owners, who were, were the women who worked there typically Italian or whatever ethnicity?

BF: I would say it started out, but then they didn't have enough people and they started hiring other people. Eventually it disappeared and with the Atlantic Apparel Association make sure of everything.

MATT: I have a couple of follow up questions going back to your uncle's factory in New York that you were talking about. Do you feel like your uncle was your biggest inspiration to kind of lead you on the path that you ended up following?

BF: No. The only inspiration he gave me was he gave me knowledge. My mother said 00:59:00to me, stay with your uncle, some day the business will be yours. He was never married. When he was 55 or 60 years old he got married and married a very wealthy woman and shut the business down.

MATT: She shut it down before you had the opportunity to take it over.

BF: Yes. So I did the right thing.

GE: But you did, the good part was you learned the business.

MATT: And it was for that reason that you decided to go to FIT and not just a regular college?

BF: Yes, because I was working for my uncle and I liked what I was doing. It turned out that I was very good at what I did.

MATT: How old were you when his wife ended up shutting down the business? Or what year and how old were you?

BF: Probably in my early twenties, two years after I got out of the army. And everything worked out very well. He was very happy; he married a nice woman. She 01:00:00took very good care of him when he got older, and I didn't have to worry about it. But I, I- My specialty was engineering, time and motion studying piece rates, methods work. I was very, very good at that.

GE: Tell us what you mean by methods work.

BF: Well a girl- somebody came to work for me and I didn't know if she could sew. She sat down at the machine and I knew exactly how I would tell her to pick up this one and over that one. I knew this. And she sat down and put two pieces together and shook her head no. She did it again and shook her head no. Then she did it the way I would have told her the third time and she shook her head yes. That's what I did. When you walked into my factory, let's say we had 6 sleeve setters, 6 pocket setters, if you came and you looked at them, all 6 would be 01:01:00doing them exactly the same way.

SC: That's efficiency.

GE: Yes, I was going to say. That's efficiency and standardization.

SC: Yes. This is going to go off in a second. Okay, so you said you were good at what you did. Do you have a good example of that?

BF: I had a lady who did the payroll for the executives of the company, plus all the contractors. So I called the one day I said, "You know, I come right by the factory, could I drop my bill off on Friday and pick it up on Tuesday? And she said, "Absolutely." So I said okay. So I dropped it off on Friday and I pick it up Tuesday morning, so instead of waiting a whole week, I got it in the next day. And one day she said to me, "How many people you have working for you?" I said, "60." She looked at me and she says, "You're doing all this billing with 01:02:0060 people?" I said, "Yes." She said "Oh," so I knew I was doing good.

SC: And you had a question?

MATT: So I know you were saying before you were in a lot of states -- Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee. For the most part, the companies that ended up buying your products, your finished products at the end, were they mostly from the specific regions within the states or from all over the country?

BF: Oh no, they were from all over the country. They were all big corporations in New York, they sold all over. Alfred Dunner is probably the best ladies sportswear company below the designers, and they sell all over the country. You go into the major department stores in New York, they have an Alfred Dunner department.

GE: Here, too.

BF: Yes, here, too. And of course, they made very good pants. That's what I made.

SC: The best pants. So do you have any other questions?

GE: You know, I think-

SC: I think we hit them. You were great! Minimal questioning, maximum information -- it was great! But I have two- three. I have three questions. No, two questions -- we talked about the community. So my first question is, what has made you feel the most artistic in your life? And I mean that in that sort of metaphoric sense of creativity, completion, you know, sense of satisfaction in your life.

BF: Well, my wife's the only one in the family with musical talent, and she inspires me. As a matter of fact, on June 20th, she's going to become a bat mitzvah. And we're looking forward to that. And of course, now my grandchildren inspire me -- in very small ways.

SC: And what do you value most in life?

BF: Well, other than the work that I did all those years, my family.

GE: And one other question I was wondering, in terms of the community, 50 years ago, this community had much more industry and small industry. Now there's much, much less of it. How do you think that has impacted the community? The broad community -- and actually, the broad community and maybe more specific- and then two things, the broad community and then also how about the Jewish community? Do you think the Jewish community has been impacted by this?

BF: I don't think so. Because, as I started saying, the Jewish community couldn't do other things. Today they can. So they're not as impacted by not 01:05:00having garment factories.

GE: And how about the broad community? Do you think our community just now has other things? Is it in any way been diminished or maybe it's even stronger or better because we don't have those factories? What do you think? Any thoughts?

BF: It doesn't affect me, I don't think it affects other people. Do you? And, you know, and we've lost a lot of people who wanted to work in garment factories, they just don't want to do it anymore. And their next generation doesn't want to do it, so something would have happened anyway.

SC: Okay, thank you.

MATT: Just one last, quick question. Aside from having to move around a lot, going to the different factories around the country, what do you feel like your biggest challenge was professionally, aside from that? Like, internally within the factories that you had to work in?

BF: Well, owning my own business, and being successful, and that's what I was happy to do.

BUNNY: That was your biggest challenge?

GE: Was that a big challenge because of the risk?

BF: It was. First thing I had to do when I decided to buy a business was go to the bank and borrow money. I had never done that in my life. And fortunately, my mother, who at that time was in her eighties and living alone in New York -- well not exactly alone, she had a boyfriend -- but she had some money saved and I said to her I could use some money to buy my business. You loan me your money, I'll take care of you. You won't have a need for anything, whatever expenses you have, I'll take care of it. So she said okay, and she gave me a nice sizable amount of money, helped me buy the business. And then I started- that was to buy 01:07:00the business, now I needed to go to the bank to buy machinery, the money for machinery because going from blouses to pants was- a lot of it was different machinery. First of all, I never had pressing machines with blouses, we had a steamer. Steamed it. Never had pressing machines but we had to buy pressing machines to press the pants.

MATT: Were there certain challenges, depending on what state your factory was actually operating in? Maybe based on laws or anything in that state, preventing anything or was it for the most part, all the same, no matter what state you're in, when it came to buying the actual equipment in the factory?

BF: That was a national thing. Most of the people who bought machinery from up until about the 90s, was Singer and Union Special, and they were made in the United States. Then there-

GE: I'm sorry, it's what company?

BF: Union Special and Singer. And then the Japanese came in with Juki and they took over the- pretty much most of the sewing and the factories. Just a better machine.

GE: So they really replaced the other.

BF: Yeah, they replaced the Singers, the Union Specials. One place, okay, one place when I was working in Tennessee, my boss sent me to Portugal for a month. He said there was somebody who wanted to make some housecoats for us, and I said- and he said he doesn't know anything about making housecoats, want to go show him? So I said, okay. And I was there for a month, and I like to say that for a month I was God. Because in Portugal, I walked in, I went to see the 01:09:00sewing company in Lisbon and I said, "I'm going to need to buy some sewing machines." And so, "What do you need?" And I gave him this list for about 20 machines, and he looked at me and said, "I haven't got this many machines." He said, "It'll take me a couple of weeks to get them." I said okay -- I mean, they didn't have it. And you know what a cutting table is? We had a- the factory that I went to, the man was making pillowcases, so his cutting table was about six yards long -- you know, pillowcases. And we needed a 14 yard table for the house dresses. So I said, "Okay, we have to buy some lumber. What's the cheapest lumber to buy here?" And they said, "Mahogany!" So we built the mahogany cutting table, probably the only one in the world, and it worked fine. And when I came 01:10:00from New York to go to the factory, I brought a bunch of attachments that you put on the sewing machine. One was a cord piper. You know what cord piping is?

SC: When you put the cording--

GE: Around the edge.

BUNNY: Like this.

BF: Yeah, that's cord piping. So there's an attachment that you put the piping around it, fold it, and it pushes it through. And the pipe- there's a tube, the piping goes in the middle, and you do it all in one time. So I get there and I take out this quart pipe -- and nobody spoke English. But the plant manager was Portuguese, but he was born in South Africa and raised in South Africa. And he was a typical Englishman, wore a bowler and cane, and the spats, the whole works, my age. And he spoke English, of course. So I said, "We should start with 01:11:00the supervisor." And I said, "Well how did you make the samples?" [She had] made samples. She said she took the piping and sewed it to one piece of the collar and then she took the other piece of the collar, sewed it to the other piece of the collar that had piping on it. Three operations. So I took out my phone, I put it on the machine.

SC: Time management.

BF: I was God. I was there for a month and I really hated to go. But I did. I was offered a job there by somebody else and I just couldn't do it to my company. I was working in the factory and the guy who owned the factory was in the textile business in the United States, and he also had plants all over the world and he traveled around the world -- and this is the truth -- once a week, once a week. Go to New York, go to England, go to China, go to Japan for silk 01:12:00and go to- every week, okay? And he came home from Portugal, that was his last stop where he was going around the world, and flew back to New York. And while he was in Portugal, he had two factories in Belgium. The managers would come down and meet with him while he was in Portugal and he would have been- and again, if he could get there, we got there- I flew over with him. I got there like seven o'clock in the morning. Have you flown internationally? Customs? Plane landed, car pulled up to the airplane. We got off the airplane into the car and left -- no customs. I mean, so it was very- Anyway, this guy- we got to know each other in the months he was going, he came to visit once a week. And when he was leaving, he said, "How would you like to work for me?" I said, "what 01:13:00would you want me to do?" He said, "I want you to run this factory and the one in Brooklyn- Belgium, and you can live wherever you want, I'll give you a car and you'll be in charge. It was a great opportunity. I was single at the time.

SC: That's what I was going to ask.

BF: I was single at the time.

BUNNY: "B.B. -- Before Bunny."

BF: I liked working for my boss. I didn't want to do that to him. And I'm doing a good job there and he appreciated it. So I turned down the job. It would have been interesting, but he wouldn't expect me, expected me to live like he did, I mean, I'd probably be working 43 hours a week -- a day -- and traveling back and forth all the time. It wasn't for me, but just [to] tell you how important this guy became. He flew into Portugal one morning and he had a return trip at one o'clock in the afternoon back to New York. Flies into Portugal. He goes to the airport and he's a couple of minutes late. And-- What airlines was it?

BUNNY: Pan Am, I think he came.

BF: Pan Am? I guess he says you can't do this. They say, "I'm sorry, sir. We gave your seat away." He said, "I beg your pardon?" "We gave your seat away. You're not here." He said, "I'm here. The plane is still here. I'll sit in the toilet." "No, I'm sorry, sir. You can't get on the plane." And they wouldn't let him on the plane. So he went back to the factory, called his lawyer in New York and said, "I'm calling Pan Am and telling them I'm chartering a consolation to take me to New York, and they're going to pay for it." His lawyers said don't do it. They won't do it, they won't pay. But after that, when he wanted to go somewhere, he picked me up originally at one of the garment factories with his own private twin engine plane. And we flew to- we had to get to Atlanta to catch 01:15:00a plane to New York. And we were in Georgia. And his pilot called and he said, "We can't go- can't get to Atlanta in time." "How much time we're going to miss by?" He said maybe 15, 20 minutes. He said, "Tell them to wait for me." He got to the airport. There was a car, there was a plane sitting in the middle of the runway. We got on and they took off. So he carried you, you could travel around the world once a week. He had leverage. He was very nice. He was married, I don't know why-- Yeah.

SC: You know and it's nice to know that- that's exciting but you kept your sense of who you were, who is really nice.

BF: How much more could I be then God?

SC: That's true, that's true.

BUNNY: That's a good way to end, isn't it?

SC: Thank you.

Interview with Bunny Filler, May 19th, 2014

GAIL EISENBERG: So maybe Bunny can sit there? We want to hear a little about your family.

MATT: How much time is left on the--?

SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Not a whole lot but we'll go through until we get to the end.

BERNIE FILLER: She'll have to apologize for when she tells you what her father did.

SC: So would you state your full name, when you were born, and where you grew up?

BUNNY FILLER: Well I'm not gonna tell you when I was born.

SC: Okay, that's fine.

BUNNY: My name is Helen Filler, but nobody calls me that and nobody knows me by that name. My name is Bunny. I got that nickname many years ago when I was a camper and it stuck.

GE: What was your maiden name?

BUNNY: Levin. L-E-V-I-N. Levine. Some people call me Lev-een, here they call me Lev-ine or Lev-in. But it's Levin. I was born in the Bronx at- or actually, I 01:17:00was born in Manhattan at Lenox Hill Hospital. I was raised in the Bronx. My mother and father -- my mother's name is Frieda Thelma Kraft, no relation to Kraft Foods unfortunately. My father's name is Julius Alexander. My son is named after him. And my grandparents on my father's side -- my paternal grandfather was a Yankee, which is very unusual. He was born here. My paternal grandmother was born in Lithuania and they met here in this country. My paternal grandfather-

GE: Do you know any names? So like you're-

BUNNY: Harry. I'm named after Harry, that's where Helen came from. Harry, and my grandmother's name was Lena Platt and her family was- wound up in Harrisburg.

GE: Okay, and Lena Platt- she was the one, they were from Lithuania.

BUNNY: She was from Lithuania originally, yeah.

GE: And no relation to Murray [Platt]?

BUNNY: No.

GE: And Harry, of course, that's Lev-in.

BUNNY: Levin.

GE: Levin. Okay. And he was born in the U.S.

BUNNY: Right. My maternal grandparents were Lillian and Benjamin Kraft. Her maiden name, I remember, was Lillian Bernstein. And I'm not quite sure -- Poland, I think? I can't come up with the exact [location], but I think they came from Poland and I think maybe one came from Russia. I'm not one hundred sure.

GE: All those places were the same anyway.

BUNNY: Yeah. My paternal grandfather was in the meatpacking business.

GE: Your paternal grandfather -- that's Harry?

BUNNY: Harry worked at Swift and Company, I think. And my maternal grandfather was a millinery, a millinery, a milliner. Yes, that's it. He made hats. He made 01:19:00hats, yes. My mother had- there were three sisters and a brother. My father had one brother, [unclear].

GE: Three sisters and a brother, okay. I'm sorry, your father had one brother?

BUNNY: One brother, younger brother who was a dentist. Robert, Uncle Bob.

GE: Your grandfather was in the millinery. Did he make the hats, did he work at a little factory?

BUNNY: I don't know. I just know he was in millinery, that's what my mother told me. And unfortunately, she's not here to help me. I have lots of questions now that I should have asked many years ago and didn't.

GE: Do you know about when your parents were born?

BUNNY: Oh, yes, my mother was -- this was unusual -- my mother was born in 1905. And I don't know if you know what the word shanda is, meaning in Yiddish it means "it's a shame". She married my father, who was born in 1909. And in that 01:20:00generation, you did not marry a woman who was older than you. She was- my grandmother was very upset. "Take good care of my son," she said to my mother on their wedding night. She thought my mother was a hussy.

BF: And she was a redhead.

BUNNY: And she was a natural born redhead, yes. And I had a great grandfather, we called them the Bubba [Yiddish for grandmother] and the Zayde [Yiddish for grandfather], they spoke no English whatsoever. My Zayde, I remember, he was in his 90s -- he had this long beard, and I would sit on his lap and pull his beard, and he would get hysterical laughing. My parents were so embarrassed. I don't know, I don't remember their name.

GE: Was that. . .

BUNNY: No, that was Lena Platt. Also, he was Platt, but I don't know- I only knew them as the Bubba and the Zayde. But their name was Platt.

GE: So that was Lena Platt's-

BUNNY: Mother and father.

GE: Oh my goodness. Wow. So therefore the whole family did come. They were in the- they did come to the U.S.

BUNNY: Yeah. I was lucky I had grandparents. I didn't know my grandfathers, they died before I was born. But I knew my great-grandfather. Ain't that unusual? My kids also never knew their grandfather -- my father died when he was forty-six, so that was, that was pretty sad.

SC: What kind of work did they all do, besides the ones that you talked about?

BUNNY: My father had also started to work for Swift and Company, which was a meat packing plant. And he bought his own business, called Merion Provision Company -- I still have pencils. M-E-R-I-O-N. Merion Provision Company. And he 01:22:00manufactured pure pork sausage, which made my mother crazy because my mother was raised as an Orthodox Jew. She no longer was, and he would bring home his sausage, and my sister and I would devour it -- breakfast sausage, not like these big links, and not the patties, they were just the links. And he made a very good living. My mother taught school. And then when my father-

BF: Wasn't she a milliner to start out? No, she wasn't?

BUNNY: No, my mother was a schoolteacher. She was one of the first women to graduate from college in her circle of friends. None of the women went to college. She graduated from Hunter College. And she was fluent in German, she took German.

GE: Wasn't Hunter College free then?

BUNNY: I don't know. Probably.

GE: New York was very progressive that way where it was, like, free. Everybody got in.

BF: Probably.

SC: Yeah, but it was all women.

GE: Hunter? I never heard that.

SC: Was it all women?

BUNNY: It used to be an all women's school.

GE: Really? I never heard that.

BF: Yeah. My sister went there, too.

BUNNY: But she- my mother was a very bright lady but she stayed home, finally, after my father got his business going and became successful. Then she stayed home. I don't know what else to tell you.

GE: But then your dad, you're saying, died young.

BUNNY: My father had a heart attack when he was 46 years old. Got sick on a Thursday and died on a Sunday and it was devastating. Devastating. I was very close to my father, he was a- we're lucky. You don't choose your parents, you're born into- and some people don't have such wonderful parents and you can't help it. I was very, very blessed, very, very blessed -- had a wonderful sense of humor. And interesting, one of my aunts said that Bernie reminds, reminded her 01:24:00of my dad, which I thought was kind of interesting, with the sense of humor and everything.

GE: How old were you?

BUNNY: I was 16 when he died.

SC: So where have you worked in your life?

BUNNY: Well, I went to, I went to P.S. 11, went to William Howard Taft High School, and then I went to Boston University. And I became an early childhood- I was an early childhood major, and I taught kindergarten in New York for five years. And then my Prince Charming came and we got married, and we came to- and he helped me find a job here. He called places for me because I was still in New York, and I got a job in the Allentown School District. Otis Rothenberg I think interviewed me and he wanted to give me a first-grade position, and I looked at him square in the eyes -- I don't know how I got the nerve -- and I said, "I'm going to be a brand new bride. I don't know a soul in Allentown. I don't know 01:25:00anything. But I am a wonderful kindergarten teacher, and I've been doing it for years. I really don't want something new." He went and looked up something. He said, "Fine, you can teach kindergarten at Lehigh Parkway." He interviewed me there and I had to meet him someplace else and we said goodbye and I didn't move. And he said, "Do you have a problem, honey?" And I said, "Yes. I don't know how to get to my fiance's apartment from here." I only knew how to get from South Mountain. And he said, "Follow me." This is the superintendent of schools, and he took me to Bernie's apartment. That's how I started. And I only taught one year because- I was in New York for five, but I only taught one because I got pregnant, and I gave birth to Jed in September of 1967. So I finished school half the year in June and then I stayed home, and then Mara was born nineteen months later. And then about two years later, I went over to the Center -- they 01:26:00did not have a music program for their three year olds, and I said I'll do it for free. I'll just sit and play songs for them. And so, fine, they hired me. What could be better than not paying me anything? And I've been working for nothing ever since! And I went to the Day School, and they don't pay too well either! In any event, I stayed at the Center for a long time and then somebody approached me at the Day School and asked me if I would do the music program there. And this is somebody who does not read Hebrew or speak Hebrew, but I taught a lot of Jewish music there. You learn it. It's not difficult. And then while I was there, the principal, Barry Cohen, asked me if I would begin a pre-kindergarten program that they never had one. And I said I could try. And so I started there in 1980- I want to say '83 or '84. Something like that. And I started that pre-K program that's there now. I was there for 27 years.

GE: So really, just 'til a couple years ago.

BUNNY: I stopped teaching in 2010. What'd you say?

BF: I said that was nice.

BUNNY: Yeah in 2010, that was not a good way to leave. But anyway, I loved, loved, loved working there. I taught four year olds and I was very blessed because I could teach the whole program. I taught secular as well as Judaic. I taught them, you know, all about Judaism. I taught them the Hebrew alphabet. That's how I learned to read Hebrew, like a first grader. But it was a wonderful- it was my life, it was my life, aside from my husband and my wonderful children. My husband supported me three-hundred percent. He loved the fact that I was there. He came to every program I ever did. He made the costumes, talking about his factory, he made all our costumes for us. We used to do Purim and we used to do parody shows. And he did Snow White and the Seven 01:28:00Dwarves. He did the music, really did all of it. He made all the costumes for us. He's been a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful husband. He really has been, I'm very lucky.

SC: And the Center has been so successful.

BUNNY: Excuse me?

SC: It's so successful.

BUNNY: Yeah, it was, it was really good.

BF: As a result of her teaching there, to this day, I'm still- she used to introduce me to her children. And to this day now, because the parents are now grandparents, they still call me "Mr. Bunny."

BUNNY: "Mara Bunny and Mr. Bunny".

SC: Oh, I love it.

BUNNY: So I left there in 2000- I left the day school in 2010. And it was a very difficult decision and a difficult year. And then I kind of found my way into K.I. again. I mean, we've always been active, but now I volunteer there. He said three days a week, I'm really there almost five because I'm chairing this ad book, so I'm trying to put together this home journal, and it's not an easy job. It's a wonderful- I mean, I just love, love being there. And that's been, you 01:29:00know, fulfilling my life.

SC: How do you see the community, the wider community and the Jewish community, changing over time? And Allentown, perhaps?

BUNNY: Well Allentown has grown tremendously. When we first came here, I had to go down to King of Prussia- not King of Prussia, Plymouth Meeting to buy clothes for my little boy. I mean, there was nothing -- there were two shops here, the Children's Shop and I think Clymer's Carousel. And there was nothing else, there was no mall, there was nothing. So it's grown tremendously that way. You know, I've seen a lot of people coming in from the area, a lot of transplants here. So that's changed. How do I see the whole community? It's not just the community, it's society. Everything is very different today. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time. I think, you know, we've become a little bit too casual and a little bit too disrespectful. The kids, adults as well. I saw it in parents as 01:30:00well as children. And it's... it's--. It makes me sad, it really makes me sad, and what makes me feel good is my kids, who are only in their 40s, think the same thing. So it doesn't make me feel like I'm an old lady, like, "Oh, she's from, you know, three generations ago." It's different. It's just- it's very different and it makes me sad.

SC: So what do you value in life? This is going to beep soon, that's why I--

BUNNY: What do I value in life? What Bernie said, I mean, I value my family, my husband first and foremost, my children, my grandchildren, my synagogue that I have seen growing now. We've been through some very hard times and it's now coming back thanks to a wonderful, wonderful rabbi. And I just you know, I just think it's really, really important. It's been our social life. And I value my 01:31:00friendships. As he said, my synagogue has been such an integral part of my life, all of a sudden at this old age, I decided I was going to become a Bat mitzvah all by myself. No classes, no nobody else, just me. And it's been a very, very surreal but incredibly fulfilling experience. I never would have dreamed this. And I never belonged to a synagogue growing up. Nothing. So that makes it even more special for me. It really does.

SC: And what makes you feel the most creative, artistic, satisfied? I mean, I think you sort of said that, but anything else?

BUNNY: I mean, I don't look at myself as a creative individual. I don't- I mean I don't-, well when I think of creativity, you know, I think of artistic, making things, and coming up with all these wonderful ideas. Sometimes I am, I gave him the most wonderful 80th birthday party, and I'm not patting myself on the back. 01:32:00We did it together and it was fabulous, fabulous. It was a New York Giants theme. And it was just -- we did all kinds of creative things and that gave me a lot of satisfaction.

SC: But teaching kindergarten, that's artistry. That is artistry at its best.

BUNNY: I just absolutely- well, the four year olds- yes, I will say I was creative in that. I really was.

GE: And you were doing it for 26 years.

BUNNY: And I was doing art projects -- which to me were hands-on, but I wasn't allowed to call it that because that part wasn't creative if you give the kids directions on how to do something. It was to teach them how to follow directions, not just for their creativity. You know, if I'd say, paint the sun yellow, the art teacher would yell at me and say, "The sun can be any color." I said, "Yes, but I want them to follow directions. Later on, I will tell them they can do whatever they want with it." And so we had a lot of hands-on stuff. And I, I just- that's what I miss most of all, these four year olds. They were just beautiful, beautiful people, beautiful people. So I'm a big child. I just 01:33:00love children, just love children. Or babies, I love them when they're new. I just- that's what I like.