Sophia Maier: Perfect. So yeah, just start by telling me a little bit about your family and how they ended

up in the Bronx.

Stuart Jacobs: Okay. Well, it's very interesting background, my family. My grandparents immigrated

from Europe. They all died before I was born, so I never knew my grandparents on either side, maternal

or paternal. My mother's parents owned a couple of restaurants in the Southern Boulevard, Tremont area

of the Bronx. Apparently it was a very successful restaurant, but they died. My mother --- there were six

sisters --- and their mother died when they were very young, and the older sister basically brought them

all up. And they were living in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx. They actually moved from one

then I moved a couple of times in Queens, but I always relished my childhood days in the Bronx. I have

two girls. I keep telling them that --- and to this day, they'll tell you what's my mantra --- the Bronx to

the center of the universe. I had, I mean, I can't tell you how many stories I have about growing up in the

Bronx. I still keep in touch, literally, with --- I never counted --- I'd say at least between 50 and 100

people that I grew up with, whether it be from the neighborhood, from college, from summer camps that

I went, people lived in the Bronx. And it was like, I'll never forget my days growing up in Pelham

Parkway. The Pelham Parkway area of the Bronx, literally, it was probably 98% Jewish.

SM: Okay. That’s usually one of my questions.

with the pandemic. We are now scheduled to have it this coming October, and they basically opened it

up to any graduating class. So but, you know, we get a lot of people at these reunions. You know,

growing up in the Bronx --- I mean, being Jewish --- there was either a shul or a synagogue on, literally,

every single street, small ones. I went to one that was right on Pelham Parkway. The Jewish holidays

came around, nothing was going on in the neighborhood. Everything was shut down. Because whether it

was, you know, a Jewish establishment or not, the Jews weren’t out shopping, you know? And it was ---

I loved it. I thought it was the best, the best time of my life growing up there.

SM: Yeah. What kind of things did you do, I guess, for fun or just generally when you were growing

up? Things that you remember doing?

And, you know, one season it was marbles season, and we all played in the middle of the street, on the

sidewalk. We played marbles, and when the cars came we would move or they would wait for us to

move. And there were different seasons. Stickball season. We played stickball in the middle of the

street. You know, how many sewers can you hit the ball? That was a big thing, so we did that for fun.

We were very close to the Bronx Zoo, so there were things to do. I was a big Yankee fan, so I’d go to a

lot of ball games with my dad --- and my uncle had an affiliation with the Yankees, so he would get me

seats right behind the Yankee dugout. I’d go to a lot of a lot of Yankee games and, you know, spent

most of my free time playing sports going --- either playing, when I was really young, playing on the

street. Back then, all of the parents would sit outside, they'd bring their folding chairs there and sit

outside. And then we were playing ringalivio, Johnny-on-the-pony, stickball, marbles. There was always

SJ: I have gone there periodically. Whenever we go up to my cousin's in Westchester, we take the Bronx

River Parkway and drive right by Bronx Park. And I always tell jokes and tell my family, “Everyone

salute. Salute Pelham Parkway, the center of the universe.” You know, I've had them convinced of that.

My wife is a Queens girl, so she doesn’t like that.

SM: So what did your parents do for a living?

SJ: My father was well --- he worked for Dunham Bradstreet. He worked in the --- I don't know what

area you would call it --- but in the printing area, proofreader, typesetter. When they moved their plant

Merchant Marines. He also did typesetting and stuff, printing to them. And I have a very large family.

Like I said, my mother, there were six sisters and there were at least two cousins from each of them.

Quite a large family. And we're very, very close. Before the pandemic, in 2019 or 2018, we decided to

go on vacation together. So 14 of us, including a couple of our children --- like one of my daughters

went --- we went out to Yellowstone, and we stayed in the park for three nights and then we went up to -

SJ: Well, when my mother was a kid she lived in the Bronx. One of the --- eventually when they got

they got married, they got an apartment in the same building that I grew up in. One of the other sisters

lived up the street from us. Another one lived around the West Farms area. And one lived out in Nassau

County around New Hyde Park, that area. So they were they were all fairly [close]. My parents didn't

drive. So, you know, they always had to rely on one or the other, my aunts or uncles, to take us places.

Eventually the one of them that lived up the street moved out to Wantagh, out on Long Island, one

moved to Franklin Square, one moved up to Tarrytown. So they all somewhat scattered but we all still

got together frequently. One to Wantagh on Long Island. So um, but yeah, the families always stayed

very, very close.

hung your clothes up and you had a clothesline that went from one window to the other window. And

my mother used to hang clothes out on the lines. Occasionally things fell from that, so it went down into

the into the alley way between. Between my building and food store was the shul, and there was an alley

in between there. And if anything fell onto the roof of the supermarket, my dad would have to go down

to the supermarket and say, “could you go up to your roof.” But yeah, there were no mega stores back

then, the supermarket was local, it was called Orlinsky’s. And the story about that is there were bakeries

--- and these were like Jewish style bakeries --- and a big fire started in the bakery and it burned down

the entire street. And there's actually a very funny story about that, but I'll get to that later, I don’t want

to diverge from the food stores. There was Gloria’s pizza, it was like the place --- Gloria’s and Venice

Pizza. Carvel on the corner. And everyone used to hang out at Carvel on that corner and my window

a sewing store my mother used to go to, she used to do a lot of knitting. There were --- what else was

there? We were near White Plains Road --- [where] the train was --- and there are a lot of stores up and

down. Produce, clothing stores, the music store where everyone wanted to buy records. They were 45’s

then, those are the small ones, or the big LP’s. We didn't have CDs or anything or media like we have

now. And those were the stores. There were some clothing stores, there were some discount stores,

was very close knit. A lot of butchers around, you know, kosher butchers. Actually my brother and I

actually worked one of them, helped clean up and stuff, delivering the rotisserie chickens to people,

especially on Friday. So yeah, it was an assortment of stores. You go there now and not very few of

them are still there.

SM: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about school. Do you have any memories from public school or from

junior high school that really stand out? Or generally kind of what your experiences were like?

SJ: Um, elementary school was literally two blocks away from where I lived. The fun thing about that,

you know, they had the crossing guards. The crossing guards knew every single kid by name and were

Columbus was a great school, it was actually, back then, it was referred to as the Harvard of the Bronx.

It was very high academic standings there. And, yeah, it was basically everybody from Pelham Parkway

went there. Large Jewish population, but there were people that came in from other areas. I had a very

diverse relationship with different friends, ethnicities, or religions. I had a friend --- actually, I still keep

in touch with him, like on a regular basis, he’s actually a lawyer down in Texas now --- his father was

the super of the building next to us. They were Puerto Rican. And we, you know, we actually made him

an official Jew, because he went to more bar mitzvah’s than a lot of the Jewish kids did. So, you know,

we stayed very close with him, I stay close with other people that are from other areas of the Bronx, the

Van Nest area and stuff.

SJ: Absolutely not. We all got along, there was never any tensions. Yeah. I mean, yeah, were people I've

had disagreements and fights with, but nothing that would have equated to being anything to do with

religion or race and stuff. I mean, I had back then --- I mean, listen, our neighborhood, there weren't a lot

of, like I said, it was 98% Jewish. There were some of the other families there --- because, like the

supers’ kids --- families that were not Jewish. And so I know where some of the churches were in the

SM: Absolutely. And so were you involved in any sort of extracurricular activities in school or sports,

anything like that?

SJ: Like I said, I was a jock. In high school, I was on the track team, I was on the cross country team.

When I was in college, they wanted me to be on the swimming team, but I couldn't because you couldn't

compete in two sports at the same time. In college, they wanted me to run track, but I'm --- a guy that I

got friendly with --- I played a lot of roller hockey and they were forming an ice hockey team, so I

wound up playing ice hockey in college. I played a lot of sports besides hockey, track, I played

competitive racquetball, I was water ski instructor, a water safety instructor. I played a lot of different

sports. When I was growing up my life revolved around sports, basically. I was in the Boy Scouts for a

know, it is what it is.

SM: So did you feel like you got a good education and you had a lot of opportunities?

SJ: Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, in retrospect, you look back and yeah. I mean, the schools that I went

to were grade schools, I mean, I wasn't the greatest student in the world --- I wanted to goof off and stuff

--- but I got a good education. I got my college degree in education, secondary education. I never really

pursued that, I went in for business. Not personal, individual business, but I got into the business world

and I had a successful career. I actually just retired a couple of months ago.

SJ: Thank you. And I have two wonderful daughters that are very successful. One lives down in

Bethesda, she works for a pharmaceutical company, and she's very, very successful there. The other one

works --- she lives in Queens --- she works for a non-profit, and she loves what she does. She used to

work at a different non-profit that worked with the developmentally challenged individuals. And now

she works for another non-profit. And I guess I look at their upbringing as a function of how well I was

my upbringing, my cousin’s upbringing. It just transcended down from how our parents brought us up

and the culture that we lived in, in the Bronx. All these problems now with, you know, race, racist issues

and stuff. I mean, my family is the furthest thing from that. We all get along with everybody.

SM: Do you feel like growing up as --- I know, you said you had a brother, but maybe your female

cousins --- did you feel like growing up as a man during that period, you had kind of different

expectations than the women that you were growing up around?

SJ: No, one of my female cousins was my brother's age --- which is about three years older than me ---

there were no expectations. I mean, we didn't look at things the way they look at things now. We just

SJ: I was brought up in the conservative atmosphere. My parents kept a kosher house, and so did my

mother's sisters, all kept a kosher house. We all observed the holidays, Passover we would always go to

my aunt's house out in Franklin Square for the seder. Thanksgiving we would --- well, that's not a

religious holiday --- but we would celebrate all of the holidays together. When the High Holidays came

around, the whole neighborhood basically shut down. We went to shul, I belonged to Pelham Parkway

Jewish Center, which is where I was bar mitzvah’d. And basically, they would --- at least my father

would --- stay there almost all day. And when I was very young they had children's services. And yeah,

we observed all the holidays. On Yom Kippur, my mother was, you know, adamant. I mean, she went to

some extremes. You weren’t supposed to open up mail or anything. She actually would cut up sheets of

toilet paper, so that we didn't have to do that during the holiday. I'm a diabetic --- I became a diabetic

stove on a very low flame, so that she could make food for me. But we lived on the sixth floor. We had

an elevator, but my parents wouldn't take the elevator. I was a kid, you know, I didn't even take the

elevator going down, I would just run down the stairs and stuff. But most of the neighborhood was the

same way. We had the Young Israel, which was a block away. We had the shul that was right downstairs

and there was one in the back, out on the street in back of us. Some of the non-Jewish stores would still

take the bus. But we would walk there and hang out with friends there and stuff. My parents were

friendly with the rabbi from the shul downstairs --- we lived right across the street from the shul --- even

though they were very orthodox, but it didn't matter back then. But, you know, these days, the ultra-

orthodox don't even recognize no reform or conservative as being Jewish.

SM: Exactly. Did you speak any languages besides English growing up?

SJ: Well I --- funny thing is that my aunt's, all my aunts, from I guess from their growing up --- they

picked up some Yiddish. When they didn't want the kids to know what they were talking about, they

would speak Yiddish. But you know, after a while, you pick up little bits and pieces. I never spoke

SM: So you already said after college you decided to move to Queens because your girlfriend lived out

there. How did you feel about leaving the Bronx at the time? Like was that kind of a conscious leaving

or?

SJ: Well, it was a little bit more than that. While I was in college, I worked at the bookstore. And when I

graduated --- the people that owned the bookstore owned several other college bookstores, LaGuardia

College, Kingsborough Community College, then they started running the bookstore at the State

University at Old Westbury --- and they asked if I would want to manage that store. I was the assistant

manager at Lehman at the time, and I didn't have any job opportunities, so I said, “Yes, sure.” But

driving from the Bronx out to Westbury every day was a little bit of a schlep. So I guess moving to

became very sick. It was a freak thing, he had a tooth infection that went down into his lungs, and he

was in the intensive care there for several weeks, so my parents and I went out to California --- he lived

in Berkeley at the time --- so we went there. And when I came back, I just decided enough of the

bookstore, I'm gonna get a real job. It's time to put on my pants and get a big boy job. I just quit and

started looking for a job.

the boy scouts --- I'll forgive him for finding my hat under the leaves one night --- but he's actually

coming in in October for this reunion. So, you know, I go there periodically. I have noticed --- and other

friends that have gone back there --- we've noticed some changes. One thing is the Bronx House, which

was like a gathering point, we had --- every month or so --- they had a dance or something, it's still

there. Carvel is now a bodega. A lot of the stores have changed with the demographics of the area. I

know that at one time I was told that there were a lot of Armenian Jews that were living there. But you

can see. It's funny, because I drive by my old building and the front of my old building, it looks the

same, but it looks different. Obviously some things have been upgraded in the neighborhood. But

definitely the demographics are the biggest change that I see there. I actually, there have been --- I mean,

there's been violence all over the place --- but recently, just a week or two ago, we saw that there was a

middle of it --- there used to actually be a riding academy up near Pelham Bay Park. And that I've seen

pictures --- first when I was in high school --- of what it used to look like many, many years ago before

when they rode there. And it was all farmland. So things --- it's an evolution. There are rocks on Pelham

Parkway that we used to climb on. Rocks that literally have been there for millions of years. They did a

report on --- I don't know what program it was --- about some of these stones and the age of them. And

it's just very interesting to find out how my old neighborhood is in the news. Something interesting

that’s not violent or bad news. You hate watching the news these days, because it's always bad news, so

it’s interesting seeing that.

SM: Yeah. And so I guess my last kind of question: when you think about the Bronx today --- not