Oral Histories

Robert Weiler

Interviewer: This is Bill Cohen with the Columbus Jewish Historical Society. The date is November 20th, Twenty Twenty-Five and we are interviewing Bob Weiler. Bob, let’s start. Is there any way you can trace, how far back can you trace your family roots? One or two generations?

Weiler: I can go back to my mom’s parents, my grandparents. I didn’t have any great-grandparents that were living when I was born. My dad’s parents, unfortunately, had both died several years before I was born, so my mom’s, my mother’s grandparents who lived on Franklin Avenue in Columbus. I can go back there. In fact, we used to spend our Friday nights, my brother Alan and I, at their home on Franklin Avenue where we’d have our dinner and then we were living on Bexley Park, and Alan and I, after dinner, would start walking down Franklin Avenue, east, towards our home and then my parents would pick us up, something we would not even think of doing today, but that was back when you didn’t lock your doors, of course.

Interviewer: So, what country, I assume in Europe maybe…

Weiler: Germany. We have German on both sides. My grandmother, on, as I say, both on my mom’s side, was Steinhauser and she had a brother, Julius Steinhauser, who was the treasurer of Lazarus.

Interviewer: The treasurer of Lazarus?

Weiler: Lazarus, yes, Lazarus treasurer, numbers guy, Uncle Julius, and I have a great Uncle Julius story to tell you and that is, he was living on Bryden Road. In fact, back when I was growing up, some of the more prominent Jewish families were on the east side in the area which we now consider Olde Towne East or going on out to Rhoades Avenue on Oak Street and Franklin Avenue, and Bryden Road. Bryden Road in Franklin Park area, but Bryden Road having these big mansions back then and my uncle Julius was in one of them, and back in the 1960’s, one of my good friends, Sam Powers, who was working with me on the appraisal office, was telling me how he moved into the house next to Uncle Julius, and when he first moved in, the grass was very high, and so, Sam who is my age, at the time he was probably in his early thirties, was out cutting the grass and he said my Uncle Julius came to the front porch and said, “Son, when you’re through cutting that yard, would you mind cutting mine?” and Sam said, “Sir, I bought this house. I live here.” So, I guess, Uncle Julius got somebody else to cut his grass. I don’t know about that, but anyway, that’s one of my early memories about my Uncle Julius, but he was my grandmother’s brother and was a very smart numbers guy, but this goes back. He was the treasurer back in the forties and fifties at Lazarus.

Interviewer: Now, you were born what year?

Weiler: Born in 1935, April 22^nd.

Interviewer: And you were born right here in Columbus?

Weiler: I was, over ninety years ago and lived on Bexley Park Road, 2424 [Twenty-Four-Twenty- Four] is where my parents lived.

Interviewer: So, they were already in Bexley in the 1930’s.

Weiler: Correct. My dad had two sisters, both older. The older of the two was Amy, who was, second marriage was to Simon Lazaarus, Amy Lazarus. The younger of the two, Razina, Razina Kahn, lived across the street from us by the way later in life, but Razina and Amy, sisters, were very close with my dad who, as I say, was the younger of the three, and their mother, that is, Mrs. Weiler, who I didn’t get to know, but just the three and their mother, built the house on Bexley Park where my Aunt Razina lived and my dad later lived with his wife, so, that home was built, probably, in the, maybe in the twenties, but central Bexley.

Interviewer: Most Columbus Jews lived west of Nelson Road and near Parsons and, as you say, Bryden, but in the, what we now call the inner city, but your parents were already in Bexley in the 1930’s, or maybe even the 1920’s. That’s very early.

Weiler: It’s very early. Now my mom grew up on Franklin Avenue, three doors east of Parsons, like you say…

Interviewer: In the inner city.

Weiler: …in the inner city, and then, Bill, at the corner of Bryden and Parsons, back then, was CSG. It, that same building that is now, I think a state-owned building, but it’s at the northeast corner of Bryden and Parsons, is where CSG was, basically in the backyard of where my mom grew up.

Interviewer: CSU?

Weiler: CSG. Columbus School for Girls

Interviewer: CSG.

Weiler: CSG.

Interviewer: Wow.

Weiler: CSG was on Bryden Road and my mom, who was born in 1906, so she started there in the teens, Nineteen, somewhere in the teens, before CSG moved out to Bexley which is where they are now at Drexel and Broad but they used to be where you’re talking about in the inner city.

Interviewer: Your mother attended CSG…

Weiler: Correct.

Interviewer: …when it was in the inner city.

Weiler: Yeah.

Interviewer: So, I guess, I’d always heard rumors that CSG was anti-Semitic, but I guess not.

Weiler: I don’t think so, no, well, I would not have any evidence of that.

Interviewer: Well, fascinating. So, tell us about your, your parents, their names and what did they do?

Weiler: Sure. Well, since I’ve already mentioned my mom, she, after high school, went to Smith College. Back then it was just strictly a women’s college, and then, after four years, she graduated in 1928 and would, became a teacher, a Columbus schoolteacher on the west side of Columbus, briefly, not more than a couple years at most and then married my dad. My dad grew up at, on, at 91 Miami Avenue which is just north of Broad Street, on Miami Avenue, and went to East High School. He graduated from East High School. Prior to that he went to the Columbus City school elementary and middle school, Douglas, but anyway, he went to Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Pennsylvania, and he claims a bottle of whiskey is what got him through some of his courses, but he, I noticed in the yearbook, the Pennsylvania yearbook, he was a business manager, so I think he was a salesman back then, but after he graduated, briefly he went into the paper-selling business with a relative of his named Kahn, K-a-h-n, just briefly, and then, growing up in Hartford City, Indiana is where he was born, and then his family moved to Columbus. The Weilers and the Levys were very close and depending on whose story you hear, either the Weilers came here to help the Levys with their department store, or the Levys brought the Weilers here because the Weilers were struggling with their department stores in Indiana. They had several department stores called Weiler Department Stores. Now, this, this is my dad’s father and uncles who had the struggles, who I never met, so.

Interviewer: The Levy’s Department Store. You’re talking about in Columbus?

Weiler: The Union, the Levys, which is the Union now, The Union Department Store, so they came here working with the Levy family at The Union, so that’s, that’s how my dad and his family, his two sisters, who I mentioned, and parents, came to Columbus. They came here basically for the employment of being in the department store business with the Levys, with The Union.

Interviewer: And so that’s what your father was doing when you were a child? He was with The Union stores?

Weiler: No, no, my grandfather, my dad’s father, and my dad’s uncles. My dad never worked for The Union, but there’s a connection there though, and I’ll fast forward and then back up, because my dad was in the real estate and insurance business and one of his bigger insurance accounts was The Union, and, since I’m talking about the Levys, Bob, there’s, Bob and Herb Levy were brothers, Bob, the older, and my dad was friendly with both, but Bob Levy, after his wife died, had my dad and his dad’s partner, Ben Lurie – they had a company called L & W, which we can talk about if you’d like – but anyway, they built a home for Bob Levy right across the street from us and Bob lived there for many years, one of the sweetest guys you’ll ever know, and he, he was known as Mr. Columbus, so named by Mayor Sensenbrenner, who was one of his good friends back there. I’m sorry. I’m rambling a little bit but, hey, one, it’s like a dominoes. One thing reminds you of something else, but anyway, the Levy family is the reason my dad came back here. My dad, going back to his employment right after college, he was selling paper for Capital Supply Company, something with Capital in their name, out of Indianapolis, and after a few years, he was living here in Columbus, he wanted to get into the real estate business and he went with William Zinn, Z-i-n-n, which was the big industrial real estate company back then. They had about eight or ten real estate brokers and they specialized in commercial property, and several of his friends, who I later got to know, left Mr. Zinn to start their own companies and several of them, at least four or five of them, as they joined the Board of Realtors, became president of the Board of Realtors, subsequently, and they all remained very close friends. The nice thing about the real estate business, which I’ve been lucky enough to have been in now, since 1957, is we don’t have any competitors. We’re all in, we share commissions together, so, I don’t look at it as commissions. The better those in the business do, the better we do, and the old expression is, “a half a loaf is better than no loaf” so we, it’s the only business really where you cooperate on your sales, cooperate on the profits, but anyway, my dad married my mom then, in 1931. He was born 1902, so he was twenty-nine. My mom was twenty-five, and were living on Bexley Park, so, back to Bexley Park, is where my brother Alan, who’s two years older, and I were born.

Interviewer: So, what are your first memories or early memories of your, your elementary school years, especially in the Jewish community?

Weiler: Okay, well, Bill, I have a horrible memory, but I can tell you every one of my elementary school teachers and I have a very strong bias for teachers. I have four grandchildren who are teachers and two of my four kids are teachers and a third spends her time volunteering in the Columbus Schools, and my wife of sixty-seven-years-four-months-and-who’s-counting-days – my soulmate – she’s, she spent more time volunteering in the Columbus Schools than anybody else – forty years, so I have a very strong bias for teachers, so, my memory, since you asked, as far as the Jewish part, a lot of the Bexley, my friends in Bexley were Jewish. I’d say, probably, oh, I’m guessing, twenty to twenty-five percent of our class was Jewish which doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s a lot when you think of everywhere else it might be one or two percent, and I can tell you each of my teachers. My first-grade teacher was Mrs. Reed and I have a funny story, although it’s not a Jewish story, but you can always splice it out, I guess. Mrs. Reed called in my mom one day. She said, “I’m calling you here because every day up until now, Bobby Weiler has cried, because he cries over just about everything,” and so, she had my mom come and she introduced my mom to the class and with that I started crying, so anyway, that’s one of my memories about that, but tying in Miss. Reed. I just want to tell you what a small city this is. I had the privilege of serving on the Columbus School Board for many years, and we had a group in that was an advisory group, sitting at a table, and the one lady said, “You were Bobby Weiler and I was your first-grade teacher,” and in front of her is Mrs. Lakin. I don’t think she was Jewish but anyway, I said, “I don’t think so. My teacher was Mrs. Reed, Miss. Reed.” She says, “I was student teaching then and I was Miss. Reed. I am now Ms. Lakin,” so how do you like that, and that would have been, around 1988-or-9, which is forty years or more after I, I hadn’t seen her either since that time, so, anyway.

Interviewer: Now, this was Cassingham Elementary?

Weiler: So, I went, yeah, I started off at preschool on Main Street and then kindergarten at Montrose at the time and then first grade is at Bexley Elementary or…

Interviewer: Cassingham

Weiler: Cassingham. Excuse me. It was Cassingham. Back then, it was before there was a Maryland Avenue School, so there was just a Montrose and a Bexley, a Cassingham Elementary, and then I went through twelve years of Cassingham, graduated in 1953 from high school on Cassingham.

Interviewer: Now, you said that a lot of your friends were Jewish. How did the Jewish kids get along with the non-Jewish kids? What was that like?

Weiler: We went, we got along real well, but it’s hard for me to acknowledge that back in high school we had a Jewish fraternity called KTZ and just the thought of having a Jewish fraternity and a non-Jewish. The Gentile fraternity was, the president my year, was Carl Weiffenbach and Carl and I were best friends. I was president of the KTZ my senior year and just to let you know what a small world

[phone rings. Why don’t you take that off the hook and hang it up again and just let it stay, well, I don’t think it will ring again. I’m sorry…]

Interviewer: There was a Jewish fraternity.

Weiler: …but anyway, there was a Jewish fraternity, and in that Jewish fraternity, we, actually, it was, I don’t know if there were freshman in there, but I mentioned Ben Zox previously, he was in the fraternity and, of course, juniors and seniors, and unfortunately when you get to be ninety, as I am, a lot of my friends are not here and furthermore, so many moved away from Bexley, after graduation, after college at least.

Interviewer: What was your understanding or did you have any understanding when you were in high school of why there was a Jewish fraternity and then a non-Jewish fraternity?

Weiler: Well, I think, partly, Bill, we had friends at Temple Israel. I was, our family was very Reform, so Reform we had Christmas trees and celebrated all holidays and even growing up now with my kids, we, we would hide Easter eggs and such, so, I mean, it was, and then there was the Conservative and Tifereth Israel had just gotten started, but we had a group of friends at our various respective temples, and it just seemed like, when Montrose kids who were from Main Street to Livingston came over to Cassingham, because that was, that was and still is, the only high school, we Jewish group from Cassingham, many of whom were in the Reform, were Reform Jews, joined in and it just seemed like the Jewish group were very close, but I don’t want to mislead you. We were very, I would say, of my friends, more were non-Jewish than Jewish, mainly because there were larger, much larger number. Three quarters of the class, probably, were not Jewish so if you say, who were your best friends, yeah, they’re, I’m happy to say, I had Jewish friends, but many of them were not Jewish.

Interviewer: So, the Jews and non-Jews in high school, they got along pretty well?

Weiler: Oh, yeah. They got along real well. Now, I will say, the more Orthodox, I think, probably didn’t assimilate or integrate as much as the more Reform Jews, but if I were to start naming some of my good friends back there, they would tell you their best friends, many cases, were not Jewish friends. In my wedding was Donny Feibel, and Bob Roth, the Roth family. Bob Roth lived right next door to a fellow named Joe Althways, in our class, not Jewish, and he and Bob and Joe and I were best friends. I mean, I just, it was not like we were, the Jews versus the Gentiles. It didn’t work that way, but strangely, I, looking back at it now, we had a Jewish fraternity. My brother was not interested in it. In fact, I’m not even sure it was, KTZ was there when he, he was two years ahead of me. I’m not sure when it was started, but anyway, we had, oh, I’m thinking, maybe about twenty guys in my senior class. We started, just sophomores. I don’t think freshmen were in our class. I don’t know, but we had, it was crazy to think we had initiation and all this other stuff. I mean, looking back at it, I mean, what are you thinking about? On the other hand, we had Jewish fraternities in college. I was in ZBT at Arizona, so, I mean, back then there were Jewish fraternities. I don’t think they exist now. At least, I hope not.

Interviewer: Now, why do you say that? You’re saying there shouldn’t be kind of…

Weiler: No. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s healthy. I mean, it’s just my opinion. I think we’ve become polarized when we fail to have experiences with those outside of our religion, outside of our beliefs. I think the reason we’re where we are now is we’re living in separate silos. We’ve lost the art of listening or trying to understand how other people feel, so, today if you’re Republican, anything the Democrats do is wrong. If you’re Democrat, Trump can’t do anything right. I mean, that’s, that’s, to me what’s happened to us in many regards. I’m one of these people who feel that as a Jew, I hope I don’t limit my friends to fellow Jews.

Interviewer: In high school and in junior high and elementary school, did you spend any time at, well, let’s say, the Jewish Center?

Weiler: Yes. I did spend time at the Jewish Center and I was not bar mitzvah. Again, as a Reform Jew, some were, and some were not and I can get into that if you’d like because our rabbi was Rabbi Folkman after Rabbi Gepp, growing up by the way, and Rabbi Folkman, when he came here from Grand Rapids, he had three, he and Bessie Folkman had three children, one of whom Judah, was brilliant, and a real quick story about Judah. He came back here to talk on his subject. He was at, I believe at Franklin Park and had a group of people there and Gordon Zacks, I don’t know if you know the Zacks family, Aaron Zacks who lived behind us on, on Brentwood, was introducing Judah Folkman to a group and my brother Alan was there, and Judah was a year ahead of Alan and Judah, at Bexley and, Gordon introduced Judah and said, “You probably all know about Judah. He was a year ahead of us,” and then he asked Alan to help on the introduction and he said, “You’re wrong, Gordon. Judah was not one year ahead of us. He was one light-year ahead of us,” and I thought that was apropos, okay? But getting back to Rabbi Folkman, he confirmed me in our confirmation class, and I think, again, that’s how we, a lot of us stayed together because in our confirmation class, I mentioned Bob Roth, and Don Feibel, Eddy Russel and those who were part of the Reform Jewish group and so we were close seeing each other on Sundays. We didn’t see a lot of each other because, I think, part of going to Sunday School, was sneaking out the fire escape and going over to, to Main Street Drug Store to, while we were supposed to be in Sunday School. Sunday School was not really the most exciting experience for me and so, it’s, I’m not, I probably shouldn’t be admitting this but, at my age I, I can’t get into too much trouble, you know, but anyway, the, the Folkmans were really fantastic and my, one of my best friends, lifetime best friends was David Folkman, who, needless to say, was bar mitzvah, and some of the, some of my, in my confirmation class were bar mitzvah. I’d say, it was maybe half and half. I don’t know.

Interviewer: You said you did some things at the Jewish Center?

Weiler: Getting back to the Jewish Center, our family was members. I don’t know that my parents went there very much but my, my involvement at the Jewish Center was to play basketball there, and Terry Meyer, Dr. Meyer, who was in my Bexley class in the fraternity with me, was playing with me, but most of the others who we were playing with were not Jewish, or at least, our team wasn’t. Our team might have been. I can’t even remember but there were a number of teams and most of the teams were not Jewish, but I went over to the Jewish Center to play basketball and then, one of my classmates I mentioned, Eddy Russel, he and I on Sundays would go over to the Jewish Center, primarily, pretending like we were going to pick up girls, which we were not very successful in doing, but we’d spend our time hanging out at the Jewish Center, so I did go there, and I think my dad was involved with it, to some extent, because he was involved with construction, and with the building the Jewish Center, and Leo Yassenoff was the actual builder of the Jewish Center. This again goes back to the original Jewish Center.

Interviewer: Now, there were these Jewish fraternal groups, I guess you’d call them, that would meet at the Jewish Center. Were you involved with any of that, Pops Dworkin or AZA?

Weiler: No. I was not in AZA. I’m trying to think. There was a national Jewish group I was in and I can’t re…it wasn’t AZA though.

Interviewer: USY?

Weiler: Yeah, now, you’re talking about, something like that. Indianapolis, Dayton and Columbus had these chapters…

Interviewer: Yeah.

Weiler: …and it’s, oh, I don’t know. It’s seventy years ago, I can’t, more than that, seventy-five years. I can’t remember, but…

Interviewer: Let me ask you about this. This would have been in the fifties then. Interfaith dating, was that an issue with your family? Did your parents tell you one thing or another. You can date Jewish girls. You cannot date Jewish girls. What was the situation?

Weiler: There was absolutely zero pressure or even suggestion. I would say, for the most part, I dated Jewish girls, but a lot of my dates were not. Growing up, we had what was called Little Junior, and Big Junior and there was a Mrs. Potts who had a dancing class which is now in the University Club and that was Jewish and non-Jewish. I mean, it was a very integrated group and  that’s where we learned to, the fox trot, and I can still remember Monkey Goes the Weisel and we did, we went back in a circle and stuff, but anyway, the Columbus Country Club was a place where we had a lot of our parties, and at that time, Columbus Country Club did not take in Jews, but they did for parties, so, we were able to go there on, with high school dates, and my dates I’d say, were probably fifty-fifty Jewish girls and non-Jewish girls. Now, the girls I went with, kind-of steady, as they say, for the most part, were Jewish girls, but my parents, my parents didn’t care.

Interviewer: Now, the Columbus Country Club, you said, did not have Jewish members but there could be some events there where Jews could come.

Weiler: Exactly.

Interviewer: Did you have any, was there any awareness or questioning or did anybody, maybe it’s, it’s crazy to ask of a high school teenager to have awareness about this, but did you, did it strike you as weird that, why can’t Jews be members of this place?

Weiler: I would ask that question and their answer would be, “You have Winding Hollow, which is a Jewish club. You have The Excelsior Club, which is a Jewish club, so we’re not members of your club,” and you know, Bill, this again goes back, now we’re talking a hundred, close to a hundred years now, and at that time, the Jews were not accepted the way they are today. Here’s the irony of it. Many Jews have become not only active, but officers of the Columbus Country Club. I mean, things, things do change over time. Some things change, I think, for economic reasons. They want to survive so they take, you take in whoever you can, but back then, I knew I could not become a member of the Columbus Country Club. Even more restrictive was the Columbus Club at Broad and Fourth. The Columbus Club did not allow any Jews in it. In fact, I think it wasn’t until maybe, the seventies or eighties, I think Mel Schottenstein was the first to join, and it’s, similarly, has now had, Frank Kass who was the president. Different Jewish guys joined later and now it’s very, very integrated, but growing up, there were places like the Columbus Country Club where Jews were not, not invited.

Interviewer: But it was just, uh, accepted that that’s the way things were.

Weiler: It is. Yeah, I mean, did I resent?  Now, I’d say if there wasn’t a Winding Hollow, now Winding Hollow, my dad and my brother were both president of Winding Hollow, and maybe twenty, thirty years apart. My wife and I, when we got married, did not join the club for several reasons. First of all, she, my wife never dated a Jewish boy until she got to college. Her high school, she went to a school called New Trier, where she grew up on the north shore of Chicago in Winnetka, Illinois, and she had not dated a Jewish boy until she got to the University of Arizona where we met, and so, when we got married and moved to Columbus, we were very interested in a more diversified environment for ourself and our kids, and it’s not meant that we didn’t want to be with Jewish people. We just wanted to be with a diverse group.

Interviewer: And your wife was Jewish or not Jewish?

Weiler: My wife was Jewish. Her maiden name’s Appelbaum, very Jewish, German, too. Our family have a lot of German roots, although her mom had Russian roots, as far as she knows, she, but the Jewish community back when we were growing up was a very close-knit group and our parents, my parents were part of a group that were called The Meanies and there was also a group ahead of them…

Interviewer: How do you spell that?

Weiler: M-e-a-n-i-e-s, like you’re a mean person, I guess. It was kind of a play on themselves as being meanies, and you were invited into this group and they were the, mainly the Reform families here in town, included, well, I mentioned the Feibels, and the Basches and the Reslers, and, I mean, I could go through the families with you, but, Hofheimer, and so, Alan and I became friends with the Meanies children, and the group ahead of them, a decade ahead of them were called The Jingles. I don’t know why they were called The Jingles, but Gundersheimers, and I’m sure others who’ve been interviewed can fill in a lot of these gaps, but anyway, and so, we had a lot of close-knit families who were part of the Jewish community. As we mentioned Bexley, a lot of them were living in Bexley. In fact, the first really to move further east were the Feibels. Troy and Pearl Feibel moved to Harding Road where my parents later moved after Alan and I, went to, when we were in college, they moved to Harding Road.

Interviewer: So, that’s a little east of Bexley. That’s Eastmoor.

Weiler: Exactly. That’s Eastmoor, which is where I now live in the same house we moved into when we got married in 1957, still in the same bedroom.

Interviewer: So, your wife’s first name?

Weiler: She went by Missy. That wasn’t her real name, but she didn’t like to be known as her real name and she picked out Missy, when growing up, they had a Filipino lady who was doing some cleaning and she called Missy “Little Missy” and it stuck and so on her headstone, it’s Missy Weiler, so she did not want her, and I thought it was a beautiful name.

Interviewer: M-i-s-s-y?

Weiler: She did not like Lila Ann.

Interviewer: Say that again?

Weiler: She did not like Lila Ann and she probably wouldn’t like me telling them this.

Interviewer: That was her, that was her given name.

Weiler: Her given name was Lila Ann Appelbaum.

Interviewer: So, she went by Missy,

Weiler: So, she went by Missy, and I dare say, those here in Columbus didn’t, didn’t know anything other than Missy.

Interviewer: So, tell us about your early married life. You got married in ’57.

Weiler: We got married in 1957. As I mentioned, Missy was, we met at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She was two years behind me. When we came to Columbus, she knew nobody, really, and it was a real psychological change for her because she was with a very close-knit family. She had three older brothers, no sisters, and growing up she was the little, little spoiled, although that didn’t, didn’t rub off on her, but, anyway, she, it was a big sacrifice for her. Put it that way. She came here, knowing nobody. The first person she became friendly with was Betty Able Roth. Bob Roth’s wife. The Able family, Dick, Dick and Gussie Able had Able, Able Label and then Mansfield Tire Company. They were in the Lazarus store, and lived, there were other places but when they moved here, they lived across the street on Kellner Road with me, and Betty and Missy were very close, also very, became good, friends with Miriam Schottenstein Yenkin, who has been very active, as you know, in the Jewish Historical Society, so, slowly, but surely, she became friends in the community, but not having really any Jewish friends in high school at New Trier, she was not, there was not a gravitation to Jewish people. Let me put it that way, and again, I don’t want to suggest she was anti-Semitic in any way but, so when she came here, who were her best friends? They became neighbors here on Kellner and she was one of these people who was the most honest straight-forward, kindest, best listener, and I know, sometimes over time you tend to exaggerate but she, she was just a, just a wonderful person.

Interviewer: And was her role a housewife or did she work outside the house, the home?

Weiler: Well, when we were first married, she wanted to volunteer, so she was a volunteer every Tuesday at COSI. They had The Street of Yesteryear and she volunteered there, wore a colonial dress and learned all the history and as school kids would come through COSI, Missy was there to help tell them about it, The Street of Yesteryear, but anyway, and then she wanted to volunteer in the schools, and as our kids, my first of the four kids – we have two daughters, two sons, the oldest of whom was born in April 1959. We were married in September ’57 so we hadn’t been married two years and Dawn, Dawn Elizabeth Weiler, when she was born, Missy did, limited her volunteering because she wanted to be here with her, but then became very active later when the last of our four kids, Jim, who, we had two sons after two daughters, went to preschool at Fairmoor, which is just a few blocks from here, and Missy was over at Fairmoor all the time. She, family, she was just very family oriented. Growing up, family was everything, and I’d say that was a great influence on me, because I made it a policy. At 5:30 at night, I didn’t care what I was doing at the office. I was leaving to come home. So, evening meeting? Count me absent, you know, so, and I must tell you, with her here in Columbus, in the house that we’re sitting in now, was being built when we got married back in 1957, in September. We moved in in December. Before that, we were renting on James Road, a little apartment just north of Broad, so here she was in this big house by herself, but I came home. I tried to not have any evening meetings, but her kids, her life revolved around our kids, and, but she became very active in the schools, active in Fairmoor and then later in Eastmoor, she and a group of parents were over at the school all the time, were at Fairmoor all the time, and then Eastmoor Middle School and then Eastmoor High School, and she did not like to have the spotlight on her. She didn’t want to be committee chair or anything else and they wanted her to be head of the PTA. She did not want to be and so, she, I said, “Well, let’s do it jointly,” but she, she loved being over at school, so, that, I think, is what really gave the impetus for her to then get more involved in the school when our kids got older and out of school. All four of them had graduated from Eastmoor. She then was spending at least two days a week, every week, in the Columbus Schools, and we are, you know, very strong advocates for public education and particularly for the Columbus Schools, so.

Interviewer: So, what did you do upon getting married? What was your job in the late fifties?

Weiler: When I first, my first job was to go into my dad’s business. I had the widest path cleared for me than anybody you know. You won’t know anybody who’s, you’ve heard of White Privilege, haven’t you? Well, you’re looking, you’re looking at the Whitest of privileges right here, and so, I had no, no worries about college, had no debt to speak of when I got married and….

Interviewer: And your dad’s business was…?

Weiler: And my dad, my dad had purchased, his brother-in-law was Al Harmon. My Aunt Amy’s, first husband was Al Harmon. She later married Si Lazarus. Al Harmon was a partner in Archer Meek Harmon Insurance Agency which later became Archer Meek Weiler Insurance Agency, and Dad, when he left when he was in, started his real estate company, so Dad was in both real estate and insurance, and what could be more convenient because my brother Alan, two years older than me, was in the military, got out just in time to attend our wedding, and then he went into business. He went on the insurance side with my dad. I went into real estate. Our office was all together on the fourth floor at 175 South High Street, just south of Town and High, and so, my job was really carrying my dad’s briefcase around and following him and trying to keep up with him. They called him “Rapid Robert.” He loved real estate, I think, more than insurance. I mean, let’s, let’s face it. I think real estate selling, of course, I’m very biased, although I did get my insurance license, just in case, but he loved real estate. He loved, his main field, which I followed him around, was leasing downtown property, specifically on High Street, and so, basically, from Main Street to Gay Street, which was the primary downtown which took in Lazarus, the Huntington Bank, The Union, later moved across the street. He knew every tenant there and he leased, he was leasing space to the retailers, at that time was a thriving field, unlike today.

Interviewer: So, let me understand. Did your father and you and your company, did they own the buildings and they leased them out to stores, or they were just the real estate agents?

Weiler: Primarily were the agents, the leasing broker, for the most part. They did own a building which was occupied by Foresters, which was a restaurant, and when I say, “they,” it was my dad’s, my dad and his two sisters. The three of them owned it and, and they also owned some storerooms across the street on High Street. They would be on the east side of High Street, just south of Town, but for the most part, they were leasing, like, for the Huntington, Roger’s jeweler, Jack Ratner, do you, was the owner, but that’s what he was doing all up and down High Street, so I was following him. There really wasn’t room for more than one person and so, he created a job for me because he and his partner Ben Lurie, Nancy and Tom Lurie’s dad, were partners and were building homes in Bexley on Sherwood Road and Brentwood, Merkle, we mentioned Roosevelt, Gould, but also, and some of them in Eastmoor, but out further east on McNaughton Road, a development called Old Orchard Estates, and so my first job really, with Missy, at that time before we had children, she’d sit with me at open houses and we were trying to sell lots in Old Orchard. At the same time, I was trying to sell homes in Bexley and else…other places. Dad had really one and a half employees at the time, or associates. Sherwood Walker, who was not Jewish, but his wife was, was a real estate salesperson and he sold tons of houses in Bexley, so he was kind-of taking me under his wing and I was helping try to sell homes, but it took me, I was a slow learner and it took about two or three years to realize I’m not cut out for this. I’m not a house salesman. I didn’t have the patience. I’d show people houses and if they didn’t buy it after two or three times, I figured, you know, and so, very fortunate to have a very good friend named Tom Kohr, K-o-h-r, who was a real estate appraiser. In college I’d taken all the real estate courses and one reason I went to Arizona was they offered real estate as a major. Primary reason was I had asthma and allergies, and it was good for my health, and I figured I’d have trouble getting into some of the Ivy League schools like Dartmouth, where my brother went. Anyway, my feeling was, I loved the research part. I liked to write. Appraising seemed to be fun and when I was in Arizona, one year I interned at the Solot Realty Company in Tucson, and they did a lot. They had a MAI Appraiser. MAI is the initials for Member of the Appraisal Institute. It’s like being a CPA, except a much smaller number. It’s clubby. It’s hard to get in and you have to know somebody and take the courses and so forth. Tom Kohr, who I mentioned, was one of just a small handful of MAI’s, and I wanted to be an appraiser, and it was like a Catch-22 because you couldn’t really get assignments and be an appraiser unless you had an MAI, but to get an MAI, you had to have the experience. So, how do you do it? You hope that somebody takes you in and lets you sign reports for him, which Tom did, and so, I kind-of morphed into real estate appraising and consulting and didn’t do a lot of brokerage. That was where I was, really, until 1969 and the big change in my life then, was, while appraising, I got to know a fella’ named Don Kelley, and in 1969, we formed a partnership which lasted until two or three years ago, and in that partnership, we developed literally, thousands of acres of land on the east side, started at Brice and Livingston with Walnut Hills Country Club which Don and several of his partners owned, and then I brought in several partners, some of whom were active in the Jewish community. I mentioned Troy Feibel, a fellow named Lou Krakoff, who was in the tire business. In fact, he was with the Ables, I believe, but anyway, and so, we formed a partnership that acquired a lot of land and our first big development was called Channingway Apartments, 770 apartments out on Livingston Avenue, and from there it just kept going all the way down to Refugee Road, but Don and I have remained extremely close. We talk to each other every day, sometimes twice, three times. We were the managing partners of the partnership and then, that continued to, to grow into additional partnerships with different people, and the last, which was a high-profile partnership, was with a fellow named Bob Eckel, who came to me some thirty-plus years ago asking if I’d like to be a partner with him and land that he had acquired north of Anheuser Busch, where Bob was their real estate corporate head and had tied up a lot of land on options.

Interviewer: So, this was, let me understand. This was just vacant land and farmland undeveloped, and you would buy the land and then you’d figure out, maybe make apartments out of it, maybe make homes, maybe for businesses. That was what your business consisted of?

Weiler: Well, yes, but this particular situation, Bill, my feeling is with life, it’s timing and relationships, and the timing was such that Bob Eckel came to me and with Don, I was working with Don, and asked if I’d be interested in being a partner with land which is now Polaris Centers of Commerce, and Bob had acquired all this land with options. He had worked from the homeowners, the property owners in the area, the grass roots .as we say, all the way up through to the higher-ups and was waiting to get approval of the interchange, and had tied up the land with options, but the options come due and he had to come up with a lot of money and so, the three of us became partners. Bob was fifty percent, Don and I, fifty percent, but that’s how Polaris got started, but Bob had the vision of a mixed-use development with a big mall, which ended up being Polaris that Herb Glimcher, who you know, was the builder, but prior to that time, Don and I had formed a lot of other partnerships, probably fifteen, twenty partnerships, and our main area was buying land, and trying, like you mentioned, trying to get utilities to it. The analogy I use is, we were trying to buy cows and turn ‘em into tenderloins. I mean, that’s basically, acreage, turning ‘em into lots, and so…

Interviewer: So, wow, so, would you say that Polaris is your, your top achievement, or is there something else in terms of, that we would know about.

Weiler: Yeah, I would say that it’s the highest profile. It’s not the largest, though. The largest is Northstar, which is a golf community at the next interchange on 71. It’s the Delaware Sunbury exit, 36/37 and at the northeast-quadrant are over two thousand acres, which, Polaris was a little over, eleven hundred, so it’s about twice the area, not twice the value, however, but, and by the way, this is my second golf course, because we got involved with Walnut Hills, and funny story there is, it was eighteen holes and just don’t buy a gold course unless you have a lot of land around it and then you can get the value for the lots that front on the golf course, but owning a golf course is, as an independent hobby is not a profitable one. I can just tell you, but anyway, the funny story is, Missy was, my wife, was at a luncheon and they were talking about going back to Walnut Hills days, “They’re actually going to reduce Walnut Hills from eighteen holes to nine holes, “ and Don Kelly and I were the ones doing it with our partners, and, of course Missy, she was a shy, quiet person anyway. As I say, she was a great listener.. She listened multiple times more than she talked, just the opposite of me, and so, she said she didn’t say anything until she came home. She said, “They were saying ‘these developers – they have to cut off golf courses to put apartments on.’” She didn’t let them know that Don and I were the ones behind it, but anyway, getting back to our biggest achieve…’er, the biggest development, Northstar is, acreage-wise, a big development and in, a few years after we started it was really too big for us to do by ourselves and we brought in Nationwide Realty, which is the real estate arm of Nationwide Insurance, and so they’re a fifty percent partner with us on the surrounding land, not the golf course but on the surrounding land.

Interviewer: Business-wise, with all these land dealings and development deals, most of your associates and the people you would deal with were Jewish or not?

Weiler: That’s a good question. The, residential, we were primarily in the residential field. We would buy land. We didn’t have a building company. We would buy land, Bill, and then put in the streets and utilities, or sometimes, we would sell to the developer and have them put in the streets and utilities. The largest residential building company then and has continued and gone public is M/I Homes, Mel and Irv Schottenstein, very close friends of both Don and mine. We were, they were our biggest, or one of our biggest customers of lots, probably the biggest. The others were not Jewish. In fact, our partner, Bob Yoakum, Catholic. My friend, Don Kelley’s Catholic, very active at St. Charles, and his friends, many of his friends are Catholic and he brought them into our partnership, so, as we were selling lots, most of the builders were not Jewish, and today I’d say the same thing, if you look at your larger building companies. Now the presidents may be, some of the stockholders may be, but the people we’re dealing with who were buying the lots, for the most part, they’re not Jewish.

Interviewer: Well, that seems to symbolize your, your life, in general. You are active in the Jewish community but you’re also active in, in the general, larger community. You were, actually, you were on the Columbus School Board for a few years. How did that come about?

Weiler: I was on for close to eight years. It happened back in, well, as I mentioned, Missy was very active in the schools and I was at a, I was a member of the Chamber of Commerce back in the 1970’s, ‘80’s, and there was a levy on the ballot and an attorney named John Elam, Vorys, Vorys managing partner, fantastic guy, very philanthropic, by the way. I was on the Education Committee, and we were having a meeting about supporting the levy and he said, “The Columbus School Board would like to have a Chamber member serve as a co-chair of the school levy.” This was a levy in the early eighties.

Interviewer: For the campaign to pass it.

Weiler: For the campaign to pass it, and he looked around the room and, I think, I was the only one there who had kids in the Columbus School district. It’s probably not a, it hasn’t changed much since then but that’s another issue, and so, I said, “ Yeah, I’m happy to do it,” and so I was the co-chair with a lady named Loretta Heard, who turned out to be the longest serving school board member. She was an African-American woman, became one of my closest friends, and so, we worked on the levy together and I have to tell you, when I first met her and we talked and I came home, I said, “Missy, this is going to be a disaster. She’s a real nice lady but she’s soft-spoken and I can’t even, picture, think of her going to meetings, talking to people, let alone, I’m not going to be the best either. The two of us are gonna’, are gonna’ be a losing proposition.”  Well, she turned out to be a dynamo. You know, they say you can’t judge a book by its cover? You can’t judge a person by their size or their voice either. She was, she was phenomenal. The levy we worked on, unfortunately, was defeated by less than one percent, and we were all moaning and lots of tears, and our superintendent said, “Hey, we came that close. Next time we’ll pass it,” so the two of us worked on the levy right after that and it passed with like fifty-five, fifty-six percent of the vote. After it passed, Loretta said to me – and, by the way, Joe Davis was the superintendent back then. He was a terrific guy, and he was the one who said, we were all crying, He said, “What are you all crying for? This is wonderful. We came within a half a point of passing it.”  I mean, he was just, you know, and that’s the way Missy is too. She was always, looked at the positive side, and so, Loretta then, after the levy did pass, there was an opening on the board, a guy named Jim Ebert, who resigned or retired, whatever. There was an opening and Loretta said, “Bob, I want you to be on the school board.” That was the last thing in my mind, really, and I, she said, “His term just has,” I think, she said, “less than three years to go. Do it and then…” So I did it and then in my third year, whoever was on, the head of the school board, at the time, Steve Iveling, I think it was. He says, “Bob, you need to run for school board.”

Interviewer: Again.

Weiler: Again. Well, I hadn’t really run. I’d just been, so I ran, ran as a team and we got elected, and I like to say four years after that, I had to retire for health reasons, “because the voters got sick of me.” You see, that was a line I forget who used, but I liked that, and so, what happened when I was on the school board, and, by the way, there weren’t a, weren’t, there wasn’t much Jewish activity there. No other members of the school board were Jewish and most of the school administration, I can’t think of right now, any, off the top of my head, not that that has anything to do with it, but when it came to my being on the board, I did something I regret to this day, and that is, we had reached a high of close to a hundred twenty thousand students. We’re now half that number, in the sixties, but we had more administrators then when I was on the board than we did back when it was double the size, so we had to get rid of the administrators, so we brought in a superintendent named Ron Ethridge, for the purpose, he was a hatchet man, just to use today’s terms, and he did something, which sounds brilliant, he said, “Everybody who’s here now is, no longer has their job. I’m putting together a business chart with all the different boxes of all of what we need, superintendent, two assistants, four regional, six this and eight that, but if you added up all the boxes, there were like sixty boxes and a hundred fifty people working there and it didn’t take a genius to figure out we’re going to have some difficultly here. The big mistake I made was, we had people who had served on the school system who were phenomenal people, Evelyn Luckey being one who happened to be a neighbor of mine, she was a preschool…and rather than work our early retirement or just let time take its course, we fired, literally, two thirds of our team and kept what Ethridge thought was the best. Well, needless to say, Ethridge was run out of town, and not that I would have wanted it otherwise, but, I was part of the group who the community was so angry with, and so, anyway, we had about fifteen, eighteen people running for the school board and I didn’t make the top whatever it was. You know, everything happens for a reason. My partner Don Kelley’s famous line is, “That’s the best thing that could every happen to you.” Whatever it is, that’s what he says, and that is one of the better things that happened to me because being on the school board, it was taking its toll.

Interviewer: So, in the end, you ran for reelection, but you didn’t, you didn’t’ win.

Weiler: I didn’t win when I ran for reelection. Correct.

Interviewer: So, you served about seven years?

Weiler: Yeah, and then, just Loretta Heard who had me come in, she died turn of the century. There was an opening and the school board and particularly her husband asked if I wouldn’t serve her unexpired term which had less than a year to go, and that’s when I really got to meet Andy Ginther, our current mayor, ‘cause he was on the school board at the time, so I said, I will be happy to be on, to serve that time but I will just tell you now, I have a better chance of going to the moon than running again, ‘cause that’s not going to happen, so, anyway, I was just a placeholder, a little like Otto Beatty on City Council, so, but, I’ve, it was an honor and Hubert Heard, Loretta’s husband, held the Bible for me. I have trouble fighting back tears ‘cause, but Loretta and I talked all the time and she was, she was just a phenomenal person, but anyway, that was my school board experience, but I loved being on the school board, and nobody made me run. Nobody made me serve, so.

Interviewer: Now, in terms of Jewish institutions, are you a member of a particular synagogue or…?

Weiler: Yeah, my history there is, I was active in Temple Israel. My, my dad was never an officer. I was a president of the temple brotherhood for a while and then I was on the temple board and we had a rabbi, Kinor, Ed Kinor, and there was a group who wanted to get rid of him. I wasn’t, I was on the other side. Our ringleader was Jim Feibel but a lot of us were very unhappy about it. We had a congregational meeting and talk about tension. You could cut it with a knife, as they say, and by a very narrow vote, they got rid of him, ad so I was ready to leave the Temple and Sydney Blatt, who was active in the temple, he might have been president, and several others said, “We don’t want you to leave. We want you to be part of the team to bring in the next rabbi,” and so, I got the honor to represent, if you want to call it, those who felt disenfranchised or who lost our rabbi, and Lou Krakoff, the same Lou Krakoff who was my partner back with Columbus Land Investment Company, the initial partnership that Don Kelley and I formed, the two of us were co-chairs of a committee to bring in the next rabbi, and on the committee were maybe eight or ten people, and we interviewed a number of people and we narrowed it down to, to two or three, and then the finalist, who we really liked was Harvey Goldman, and Harvey’s congregation was in, oh, the twin city to Buffalo, the snow city, not Buffalo but…

Interviewer: Something close by.

Weiler: Yeah. Oh, dear.

Interviewer: Niagara Falls?

Weiler: Where is the engineering school?

Interviewer: Oh. Rochester?

WEILER: Rochester. Thank you. Thank you. It was in Rochester. Now this is like forty years ago.

Interviewer: So, did you wind up bringing him in? Did he become the rabbi?

Weiler: Yes, and I just have to tell you for, we went to Rochester. He was the rabbi of a smaller congregation. It was in Dece…it was in the winter and there was a, behind the pulpit was glass. The snow was coming down behind him and I’m telling you, it was like surreal moment, and his sermon was great. His wife at the time, who he later divorced, would get the ten if it was a ten sermon. This was a ten sermon. We thought he was great. He came to Columbus, stayed at our house, and speaking of snow, we got snowed in, so, he and our kids and Missy went over to Miller’s Hill which is in Bexley on North Parkview is Miller’s Hill and we went skiing together and he had been a former baseball player. He was just a real with-it-type guy, and so, we loved him, and he became our rabbi for many years. Well, then, I know this is unfair to generalize but, rabbis don’t kiss enough rings from time to time and it’s like, I didn’t mention to you why we didn’t join the country club. One reason was it was all Jewish. We did not, Winding Hollow was all Jewish. We didn’t want to be in a group that was all Jewish. We didn’t want to be in a group that was all-anything, and so, we did not join Winding Hollow, plus the fact neither Missy nor I played golf, but she was very anti-club but getting back to Harvey. Harvey was very Reform Jewish guy and has remained our close friends, but then, as I mentioned, o’course they wanted to get rid of Harvey after a few years. Well, what do they say about “fool me once”? Well, one time is enough. “Second time, shame on me.” When he left, we left, and we formed, we being Jim Feibel was the ringleader along with several others, what is now Beth Shalom, and you probably know the history, the Fifth/Third Bank over on Broad Street is where we first located and so, Har…

Interviewer: Then for a while, you met at a Presbyterian church.

Weiler: Correct.

Interviewer: …not far from here in Eastmoor and now the congregation is up in New Albany.

Weiler: Yes, and I want to tell you a little irony. Temple Israel is now on the site that you just mentioned that was that we shared with Episcopalian Church. [transcriber note: Eastminster Presbyterian Church]  We shared it and some of our members didn’t like the idea that there was a cross that we covered up with a Star of David and used their building, and wanted to have their own building. Well, I guess, being ultra-Reform, we liked that idea. We did not see the cross behind the Star of David as a symbol of anything other than interfaith cooperation. That’s how we saw it.

Interviewer: So, you were just fine meeting in the Presbyterian Church in Eastmoor.

Weiler: Well, and selfishly, it’s six blocks from our house, too. I liked that. So, they moved out to New Albany, and I will tell you that’d be the last place Missy would want to live and here again, I don’t, we all have our prejudices, but she would not want to live in New Albany, any more than we purposely didn’t live in Bexley, and I. just so you know, I loved my education. I have great friends, including my brother who’s not now, but lived in Bexley after they were married, so it’s not that I’m anti-Bexley in any way, and I support the Bexley Education Association and so forth, so I don’t want to give any impression other than we’re living in Eastmoor because we felt our kids would get a much better education from a streets-smart standpoint than from an academic, and I think from an academic, Bill, if you’re fortunate enough to have parents who are college parents, Missy left after her sophomore year. She left, as she said, she had a choice of going back her junior year and taking chemistry or getting married and I was the lesser of the two evils. That was our standing joke when they’d ask her, “Why don’t you, why did you, why did you leave college?” So, we got married and came here, but anyway, getting back to the rabbi situation, and then Beth Shalom had, had their own rabbi and we went there a little bit, but Missy and I just decided, you know, you can be good people, good Jews without going to temple and conversely you have those in temple who the next day are not practicing what they preach, but, anyway, and so we would hold services in the woods, known as the Weiler Woods next to us and I have to be totally honest and tell you that I have not been at Beth Shalom very often. The last time I was there was to give the eulogy for my friend Don Feibel, and in fact, Jim Feibel, who as I mentioned, had led us as a group when we departed Temple Israel, I became a member and continue to support Beth Shalom but I’m not a very active attendee at services.

Interviewer: Well, you represent a certain chunk of the Jewish community that is…

Weiler: Yes.

Interviewer: …that is at that point, is at that part of the spectrum, I guess. Let me ask you this. Something else you’re very active in, which is not a particularly Jewish issue: transportation. You have been active in calling for the, the COTA system, the bus system to be free for everyone. How does, tell us about that, that push and why you’re involved in that issue.

Weiler: Okay, well let me just give you the bigger picture. My dad was very active in the community. He was head of the Community Chest which later became United Appeals, is now known as United Way. He encouraged Alan and me to be active in the community. My very first board was the Pilot Dog Board. He, he was one of the founders of Pilot Dogs. Anyway, I tried to stay active in the community. I was asked by Mayor Coleman if I’d be interested in being on the COTA Board, and this goes back now about twenty-plus years ago. It was during his first term and so, he needed to appoint Columbus people and I, anyway, we were friends and so at my very early meeting on the COTA Board, we talked about how to increase ridership. The ridership had been stagnant, so, I said, “Wouldn’t we increase it if we could make it free? Why do we have to charge, especially those who can least afford it?” and so, I brought that up. I used to tell people, which is true, I brought it up every meeting and it died for lack of a second. Nobody else seemed to think it was a very good idea, and they, they kept saying, “Well, we’d lose the revenue. We’d lose the revenue.” Well, Bill Loda became head of COTA after I’d been on the board three or four years, and he suggested having a free C-bus downtown, which you may remember went from roughly Second Avenue to Grange Insurance on High Street and it was free, an overwhelming success, but anyway…

Interviewer: It was just in a small geographical area.

Weiler: Correct.

Interviewer: It circulated around the downtown.

Weiler: …downtown, High Street, and then went by Grange to Front and then back around. It was kind of, formed a rectangle, but, but, Bill, it was overcrowded and then they discontinued it and I asked the COTA superintendent – this is now the third or fourth superintendent since I’ve been on the board, “Why,” ‘cause Bill started it, “why’d you stop it?” She said, “Oh, Bob, there’s just, just too much drugs and too much crime,” which I felt was a bunch of bull, but even if I was wrong, it was true. My feeling is, why do you let bad behavior influence a good decision, and needless to say, a lot of the people, most of the people riding the bus were not poor people. They were business-people and I’d see people who could certainly afford the two dollars, would wait for the regular bus to get the C-Bus. Rather than pay the two dollars, they, they waited, and I just think psychologically, not having to pay anything was important, but that wasn’t the main reason. My main reason was, we could find other ways of raising the money. Now, back when Bill Loda started, he checked and we did research on what percent of the ridership fee income is total budget and it ranged from ten, fifteen percent up as high as a third. We decided to make it twenty pent, so it was twenty percent back for years. Well, the other eighty percent, most of it is generated from sales tax, and then Polaris came on, which is in Columbus and a lot of other developments, so before you know it, the percentage, that twenty percent kept getting less and less and less, so, they tried to raise this, the fee and there was such an angry mob that they just left it alone, so, it hasn’t been raised in about fifteen years, and what that means is, the percentage of revenue is still roughly eighteen to twenty million, but the total budget’s over, over a hundred and twenty. Anyway, it’s now down to around five, six percent. That’s all it is, and so, it’d be so easy. Back then you could erase the sales tax one tenth of one percent to cover it, but anyway, it’s a long way of saying, I just think it makes so much sense. In yesterday or day before’s paper, New York Times, talks about Iowa City’s gone to free public transit and it’s working perfect, beautifully. They had an assessment of it. We now are having a study done and I don’t mean to be cynical, but you tell me how many studies didn’t turn out the way the person who engaged the study wanted it to be, but, and I don’t know. It all depends on how they ask the question but it, it would happen tomorrow if the right people were behind it.

Interviewer: So, it’s fair to say you’ve got more support for the idea and more people talking about it than they did twenty years ago, but still, you’re still, still haven’t sold it yet, the idea.

Weiler: Yeah, and I think what it comes down to is, those who de facto run our city, well, and also the mayor and, but not City Council. Shannon Hardin’s all for it, who’s the head of City Council, and others on City Council but those who de facto run our city – I think you know who that is, have not supported it and just to be blunt about it, I‘m not sure too many of them have ever been on a COTA bus and it’s not a priority. It’s a priority is spending two and half million on a new airport to add seven or eight gates to what many of us thought was a perfectly fine airport, but we can’t find the twenty million for lower income people, so, I’m saying things that can get me in trouble after I’m no longer here, but when I’m underground I really don’t care.

Interviewer: Your, your community activism with the schools, with COTA, do you think there’s a Jewish, is there any Jewish roots to that or is it just, just being human? What, what’s in back of, is there, is there any Judaism behind it at all?

Weiler: You’re talking about with me or just in general?

Interviewer: Yes, your, your community involvement, or you mentioned being worried about low-income people. Does that, is there any Jewish roots to that or is that…?

Weiler: Yeah. I think there is Jewish roots to that. I think a lot of my Jewish friends, have wanted to be helpful in the community. That’s not to say that we’re disproportionately involved in non-profits. That’s not the case, but growing up, I remember my mom volunteered at what was called the Five-Seventy-One Shop which was a, I can’t even tell you what it was ‘cause I was so little back then, but I can still see her writing thank-you notes to people, so she, I mean, there was, I think in our family there was that feeling you need to give back. I mentioned my Aunt Razina. She spent her time visiting people who were sick and having difficulties. That’s, I mean, she, she didn’t have the same financial means that her sister Amy Lazarus had but it was, I think, part of our family’s culture.

Interviewer: Is there anything else you want people to know your life, and especially your, the Jewish part of your life? Is there something you want to leave people with?

Weiler: Well, I would say, when we talk about anti-Semitism and discrimination and such, I can tell you that I did not have that experience, that you could say that I was very fortunate. All my life I’ve been very fortunate. I just, I know it’s a trite thing to say you’ve been blessed, but I, I don’t know of anybody who’s had the good fortune I’ve had and being Jewish has not hurt me in any way. That’s not to say I haven’t experienced some. I would just mention when I was showing houses, a lady after she saw the house she said, “Is there any way I can Jew you down?” I’d never heard that expression and I, and I thought she said, “chew you down.” That’s how little I knew about what she was talking about, so I guess, sometimes you, but growing up, I guess I was just so insulated from any of that discrimination. I didn’t have it all and I was fortunate enough to be president of my high school class and I don’t mean to be bragging about it, but you asked. My Jewishness did not hurt me to my knowledge. If anything, it probably helped me. I mean, it just, I did not have that in college. I was, as I mentioned I was a member of a college fraternity, so I have not, I have not faced any discrimination and I think that is, maybe to leave you with, is, I feel, we, as Jews, need to take a more understanding approach. Right now, with all the difficulties in Gaza, Missy’s mom used to say, “Palestinian’s mothers care just as much about their children as Israeli’s mothers care about theirs, and so, you’ll get the idea that I have difficulty believing that I am part of the Chosen People. I think we’re all Chosen People of God, so, maybe that’s what I’ll leave you with.

Interviewer: Thank you very much. We’ve been talking to Bob Weiler. I’m Bill Cohen and this interview is for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society. Thank you very much. 

Transcribed by Linda Kalette Schottenstein