Kathy Katzman, May 26, 2016

Interview with Kathy Katzman, May 26, 2016

SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Today is May 26, 2016, and so would you give me your full name, with your maiden name and where you have lived?

KATHY KATZMAN: My name is Kathy Lackritz Katzman. I was born June 21, 1952, in New York City. I lived actually in Scarsdale until I was five, at which time my parents divorced, and then we moved to New York City, to Manhattan. And I lived there until fifth grade when we moved to Philadelphia and graduated from Friends Select School in Philadelphia and went to Boston University. I studied to be a teacher. When I first graduated, we got married. Seth and I got married right 00:01:00after I graduated college, and we moved to Schuylkill Haven-Pennsylvania. When you talk about culture shock, here is a girl who lived in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and ended up in Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, with I think was a population, maybe, 2000.

I got a job teaching first grade in Tamaqua, which was about 40 minutes from Schuylkill Haven, and I taught for a year and really did not like it. I decided it wasn't for me. And at that point, we moved to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and I got a job working at Sears in the women, the lingerie department. And we lived 00:02:00in Lebanon for a little over a year and then decided to move to Allentown. And I decided that I was going to go back to school. I got accepted to Lehigh for a Masters in reading, but soon after that discovered I was pregnant. So, I never went back to school, and I stayed home with my children.

We have three sons who are now thirty-six, forty, and thirty-two. And I worked, I taught in a nursery school for a year or two when my youngest son was in nursery school. And then I really did not have a paying job for a number of years until our middle son started his own web hosting business when he was fifteen, and I became his bookkeeper,I guess you would say. And I worked from 00:03:00home for quite a while, and I did a lot of volunteer work.

I was very involved with the PTO at the elementary school. I was very involved with different Jewish organizations, and I always seemed to be the treasurer for these organizations. So we belonged to Temple Beth El, and I was the treasurer for the sisterhood for many years. And I used to go into the Temple all the time, and about six and a half years ago, I was in there, and I discovered that their bookkeeper was becoming the Executive Director, and they were looking for a bookkeeper. I said, "Oh! I might be interested in that." And they hired me! So I've been working as a bookkeeper at Temple Beth El for about six and a half years, perfect job-- Monday, Wednesday, Friday, takes me three minutes to get to 00:04:00work and it's a wonderful environment, it still gives me some time off.

SC: So what are your children's names, and what are they doing now?

KK: Ok. Adam is our oldest, he's the one who's 40, and he's an attorney, and he lives in Southeast Florida. His wife is also an attorney, and they have an almost 3-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter. So after three girls, three boys, I got to have a girl, well four boys, if you include the grandson. And our middle son, Jared, the one who had the web hosting business, has a Masters of Engineering and Computer Science. He lives in Denver, Colorado, and he's the 00:05:00director of technology at a private school there. He's actually chaperoning a trip in China right now. And our youngest son, Glenn, lives in Oakland, California, and he's a history teacher. He took a while to decide what he wanted to do. He graduated in political science and history, and first he wanted to teach, and then he decided he wanted to go to law school and he ended up with a full scholarship to law school in San Diego which is how we went to California, he went for one semester and said "I hate law school, I don't want to be a lawyer," left law school got his Masters of Education, and he teaches at a charter school in Oakland. And neither Jared nor Glenn is married, unfortunately.

SC: So will you go back in your family and tell the names and where they're from, and what you know about your family as far back as anyone has told you?

KK: I believe that both sides of my family were from Russia originally. My mother's name was Vera Warsaw, her father, Jack Warsaw, was actually the founder of Phoenix Clothes here in Allentown. It was originally a silk mill, and he turned it into a factory. I believe he came here very, very, young. His name was originally Warshowsky, and he changed it to Warsaw. I really don't know anything about his parents at all. They were long gone by the time I was on the scene. Her mother was named Maddie Newmark, again I believe she was born in the United 00:07:00States, but I'm not really sure, and I don't really know about her parents either. My father was Morton Lackritz, and his parents were Joseph and Mildred, it was Mildred Becker originally. I think they were both born in the United States, I'm not positive, but the grandparents were from Russia, and that grandfather was also in the garment business, but he was in the garment business in New York. He invested very heavily in some sort of new zipper. Zippers were very new in the world back then. We're probably talking about, I'd say the late thirties, maybe, and ended up going bankrupt, with this big investment. And my 00:08:00father had worked with him briefly, and I'm not sure what my grandfather ended up doing after that, but my father went out of the garment business altogether and became an electronics salesman. That's what he did for his whole life. And unfortunately, I don't know very much about the family history at all further back.

SC: So I have a question, I'll ask you the same questions, but maybe, do you have some business questions or questions about the--?

GAIL EISENBERG: So one quick thing, Lackritz, can you just spell that?

KK: L-A-C-K-R-I-T-Z.

GE: Let's see. So Jack Warsaw, he bought a silk mill here.

KK: Yeah, well, Phoenix Clothes was originally a silk mill, but I'm not sure 00:09:00exactly the transition.

GE: And do you know what they made?

KK: They made men's suits. They were very high quality, high-end men's suits.

GE: Do you know who he sold it to?

KK: He didn't sell it.

SETH KATZMAN: He did sell it. He sold it to Genesco.

KK: Oh, he did? Ok, you see, he knows more than I do. Yeah, he had a partner, Nat Berkowitz, was one of his partners, and there was another one I think, I don't remember any more.

GE: The only one that I heard of who made suits is Billera?

KK: They made slacks; in fact, they had their factory in my grandfather's building.

GE: Oh, isn't that interesting!

SK: Yeah, they knew each other pretty well.

GE: Ok. We're hoping somebody here actually has a connection with Billera, that hopefully when somebody comes into town, we're going to get an opportunity to interview them.

KK: I'm right that they made slacks, right?

SK: Yeah. They might have made other things, but they were known for their slacks.

GE: How about Mort Levy? What did he make?

SK: Mort Levy had done different things. I'm trying to think what he did. I thought he was in sportswear, but I'm not sure exactly, to tell you the truth. Pants. Yeah, pants. That's what he made.

KK: Roberta Penn might know, that was her uncle.

SK: But it was pants, that's definitely what he did, I remember. I was at his factory.

GE: So all you know is that your grandfather did Phoenix Clothes, do you know what years he was in business?

KK: I think he started it in the twenties.

SK: Her grandfather started the business but didn't start in that business, he made vests and different things. I don't know the name of his businesses, but he was in business in another business making vests. He got together with--

KK: Nat Berkowitz. Nat Berkowitz. I don't remember.

SK: There was three men, I don't remember the names, they got together, he was 00:11:00really the financial one. The three of them got together. I think it was in 1950.

GE: And they stayed in business until when?

SK: They sold it to Genesco, which was a big company that bought that company.

KK: In the early eighties, maybe? Because my grandfather still had hs office there for years.

SK: He had a big plant. He was really big.

GE: So when you came here, your grandfather was still here.

KK: Oh yeah.

GE: Wow.

KK: It was sort of funny because as a child I would come here occasionally because of my grandfather. My grandfather actually did not live here, though. My grandmother refused to leave New York and move to Allentown, so he would live here during the week and go back to New York on weekends.

GE: We have certainly spoken with many who, at least for a temporary time, for 00:12:00six months or a year--

KK: She never moved here. Ever. And then she would go to Florida for the winters and he would go down to Florida.

GE: Thank you.

SC: So, what makes you feel most creative?

KK: When you're saying creative, you mean fulfilled?

SC: Yes, that would be another--

KK: Ok... I would say my relationships. Again, my family is my number one relationship, but my friends, too. My friends are very important to me. And loyalty, but again my family is definitely number one.

SC: And that's what you value most?

KK: Yes.

SC: Thank you. So anything else either one of you thought of that you'd like to say?

KK: Seth was saying about it, being in the garment business changing him and I've known him since he was eighteen. We met when I was sixteen and he was eighteen. We're about to have our forty-third anniversary, and as he said about being quiet, he was a very quiet, introverted young man. Once he went into business you can't be that way, and definitely he changed his personality.

SC: Did you meet in Allentown?

KK: No, I was actually on a teen tour across the United States. Seth had just graduated high school and he was driving across the country with a friend of 00:14:00his, whose girlfriend was on my teen tour. And that was how we met.

GE: Is that what inspired one of you or both of you to go to school in Boston?

KK: Me. He was at Brandeis, and that's why I went to Boston.

SC: But what happened to you, that's why you go to a liberal arts college?

SK: Actually what really happened, I applied to a number of schools. Actually my brother and sister both went to Boston University. My brother actually graduated, my sister didn't because she had some health issues. But I figured I'd probably go to BU or something. But what happened, my brother, when I went up to see him, he said: "let's go see the colleges." So we went around, and he said: "let's see Brandeis!" And I said, "Wow, this is a nice school! I'll just apply here!" I had no idea about Brandeis. I really didn't. I had no clue about Brandeis. It looked like a nice school, so I just applied. What happened is I 00:15:00never went back. They wanted to have an interview, so I said: "Ok, we'll have an interview." And the interview was in Philly, so my mother drove me to Philadelphia. I had the interview, and I was sick as a dog that day. I remember, I had a great interview with the guy, so he was asking what I was doing.

So one summer, it was my junior year, the summer of my junior year, my friend and I decided I wasn't going back to camp. I said, we're gonna do a project so we decided we were gonna build a one-link particle accelerator. It's like an atom smasher. It's one of these crazy things you see in Scientific America. We're looking at it, and we said, "we can do this!" We're looking at it, and I said, "Oh, we'll copy this," so we go to [unintelligible], they lend us some equipment. This is something that would never happen today. So we ended up 00:16:00pulling this stuff off, you know we made this thing work. You know, it was in my basement.

KK: For years, it was in your basement.

SK: Yeah! So we spent all summer doing this, we made this thing work, so at the interview, I don't know if the guy knew any science or not, but I was explaining what we did this summer, and the guy was like fascinated! We must have been in there at least an hour or more talking about this particle accelerator. I didn't think anything about it, you know, I knew Brandeis was hard to get into, so I didn't expect to get into Brandeis anyways. And I had good grades; I graduated probably in the top 10% of my high school class. I never killed myself in high school; in fact, I was bored in high school. I found it very boring. It was a public school. Like I used to go down and complain, you know because they stuck me in these classes, I said, "isn't there a better class? What happened?" I guess they had filled up the APs, and I couldn't get in, so I was stuck in the regular classes. I didn't even have to show up, and I could get an A. So I did 00:17:00lots of extracurricular things; I always did different things. So I applied to schools. I knew I was going to get into Boston University. University of Pittsburgh I applied to as a safety school. Tufts was another one I thought I'd try to get in to.

KK: And Columbia, you said, right?

SK: Columbia did me a favor, because I went to Columbia, had a horrible interview with them. I didn't like the school, but I still went. So it's just as well I didn't get in. And then, for whatever reason, I thought I'd go to BU, and BU accepted me. And I think Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, the guy said "Why do you want to come here?" I looked at him and said [unintelligible]. He just said to me, "You're not going here." He looked at my parents, and after the interview, he said, "You're not going here." He said to me, "You're in. Why are you gonna go here?"

KK: And the funny thing is when we took Jared to look at schools, and he wanted computer science, and we took him to Brandeis and met with the head of the 00:18:00computer science department, and he said to Jared you don't want to come here, we're not gonna have what you want and what you need.

GE: But that's wonderful that the school was that frank.

SK: But Brandeis is an interesting school because it has a lot of high powered people there, it's very liberal artsy, it was Boston, it was 1968.

KK: Susan Sachs was in his classroom, from the Weather Underground.

SK: I knew Susan Sachs. I sat next to her in Spanish class.

GE: That was your father's mother, was Maddie--what was her last name?