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 during the regime of Rabbis Margolis and Tofield. I was very friendly with
 both. I could understand their idea of religion and their stronghold with
 the institution. The presidents at that particular time were probably
 Philip Selber, Lou Safer, Ralph Mizrahi, and certainly Harry Gendzier. When
 he was president, I was also very much in the swing of the board, not poli-
 tically however, I was just a young man filling a position. Mr. Robert
 Gordon was a most active and dedicated and devoted worker. I was very
 friendly with Bob. I never was called on for many wise decisions because I
 think between Mr. Gendzier and Mr. Selber, and Mr. Max Rubin, everything was
 taken care very well. Mr. Joseph Hackel was also one that I, personally,
 am very indebted to because he taught me more about Hebrew reading and un-
 derstanding of prayer books and the Torah readings than all of my teachers
 put together.

S: Sam, were there any particular incidents, happenings, or events that stand
 out in your mind that took place at the center?

W: Well, I remember the dedication of the Youth Activities Building. The ded-
 ication of the queen, I don't remember so much who the queen was; as I
 remember I was emcee,and I think it was a splendiferous event. You asked
 me earlier about anti-Semitism in the early days. I would say there was
 anti-Semitism but maybe it was not a violent anti-Semitism. I don't think
 that the non-Jewish community actually thought of violence and murder or
 killings against Jewish people. But of course, the comment was, "You dirty
 Jews," and so forth and so on. They held us in very low regard. The in-
 cident that I recall very vividly was the time of a basketball game at the
 YMCA in which the YMHA Juniors, of which I was a member, were playing the
 city championship against one of the Springfield teams and the Jewish boys
 won. We were herded down into the locker room of the YMCA and we were told
 we wouldn't get out of there alive and that they had probably several hun-
 dred non-Jews surrounding the building. They came down to the locker room
 and one of our fellows said, "Why were they such cowards? Why would two or
 three hundred want to pick on six or seven Jewish boys?" That he would
 fight any man that they picked out and let it go at that. They decided they
 would. They let him fight one of theirs, bare-fisted. The only thing is,
 it was not one of theirs. There was about four of theirs that collared him,
 and they finally let us out of the building. So that was another form of
 anti-Semitism, not maybe the way we know it today, but it was bad. Then,
 of course, in high school there was always, "Don't talk to him, he's a Jew,
 she's a Jew." "Don't go with her, she's a Jewess," and whatever it was.

S: How about the exclusion of living in certain areas or exclusion from certain
 clubs?

W: I never found that, but it was there. I mean we moved to Riverside which was
 predominately a Protestant area at the time. We were not excluded from a
 club because we didn't know about a club. We didn't have a club to go to.
 We didn't try to join a club. So it didn't mean anything to me or to my
 family. Now later on after graduating and coming to Jacksonville to practice,
 I was accepted most readily into the dental profession although I know that
 there was some undercurrent.