Starting Agfiin Starting Again
Another Country, a New Family
and maintained locks on all the doors, curtains in the hallways, padded carpeting on the steps, and trees in front of the buildings. The tenants were grateful for the improvements, and I had the sat- isfaction of knowing that my properties were well maintained. In 1964, Templet Industries relocated to Plainview, Long Island. They received a government subsidy to construct a new building, which I helped plan. They gave me a nice private office. For three or four months, I traveled from Brooklyn to Plainview, but it was a long commute. At about that time, our old neighborhood began to deteriorate. People became afraid, almost panicky, about the changes, and start- ed selling their properties. We held out for quite a while, as did a lot of our immediate neighbors, but eventually we decided to sell the house and move closer to my job. We sold it to nice people because this was important to our remaining neighbors. We bought a house in Old Bethpage, New York, where we have lived ever since. Later, I sold all of my investment properties be- cause I felt that I would not be able to manage them well from Long Island. Since they were small properties, they could not sup- port a superintendent. Old Bethpage was a distance from Ruthie’s mother, Gertrude, who still lived in East New York, in the same house in which Ruth grew up. She used to visit us for holidays and other occasions. Ruthie’s sister, Helen, lived in West Hempstead and both families looked out for Gertrude. When her neighborhood became danger- ous — vandals used to break windows with bricks — she moved in with a widowed brother who lived in Bensonhurst. Her house sold for next to nothing. Helen moved to Florida and Gertrude followed her after her brother died. A few years later, Helen’s leg started feeling numb when she climbed stairs. At Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, they discovered a long, thin cyst on her spine. They tried to drain it, but this damaged her spinal cord. She went into the hospital numb but walking. She came out confined to a wheelchair and paralyzed. She never walked again.
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