| I don't think I've told you the interesting story of Hyman Goldman. |
Before he became Hyman Goldman, he was a sheva boy living in Russia. I don't know as I ever heard what his Russian name was.
Sheva is the Hebrew word that means seven. "Sitting sheva" is a Jewish custom whereby the family and friends take turns thanking God for the life of the recently departed, and they do it continually for seven days.
So sometimes young men from the nearby Hebrew school are hired to sit sheva for a family when, for some reason, the family and friends can't fit the whole regimen into their schedules.
Other than go to school to study his religion, that's what Hyman did.
When he was 20, Hyman fell in love with Annie, they married and they fled Russia in a hay wagon for Poland. Soon they were immigrated to the U.S., landing at Ellis Island. That was about the time of World War I.
Hyman looked for work, but what was he to do? His education was Jewish religion and traditions. I suppose he could have been a mohel or a shochet, or perhaps a rabbi or a cantor, but he hadn't completed the schooling necessary to be any of them.
The only secular and practical thing he knew how to do that would put chicken soup on the table was to run a sewing machine.
So Hyman and Annie settled down in an apartment in a Jewish neighborhood of New York, and he looked for a sewing job. He had no trouble finding one, but they all insisted that he work on Saturdays. Orthodox Jews respect Saturday as the Sabbath, and one who engages in any activity that is not a part of worship on Saturdays they believe will bring on God's wrath.
Hyman had no choice. He took a job making clothes that included working on Saturday. When the first Saturday came, and he worked rather than observe the Sabbath, he knew in his heart as soon as he left his job, God would strike him dead.
When that didn't happen, his faith was immediately diminished for the remainder of his life.
Hyman and Annie had begun their family. Soon they learned that there were more opportunities for Jews in Boston than in Manhattan. After all, New York City was top-heavy with immigrants. They moved to Boston. Hyman started his own business, the Bancroft Cap Co.
Bancroft made the fancy crusher caps the Navy and Marine officers wore - the ones with the bills and the fancy braiding on the visors. Scrambled eggs, the servicemen called it. The war was on. There was lots of demand.
It wasn't long until Hyman and Annie had 11 children. When they passed the first half-dozen, they found it harder and harder to find an apartment. Finally, Hyman and Annie bought a home.
And then one of his daughters, Lillian, married Morris Miller.
Morris was intrigued with his father-in-law's business. He decided that he would work to get a contract with the Army to make the regular Garrison caps that the enlisted men wore. They were simple to make, so with a few employees and a few sewing machines, his company could mass produce them. He called his company Bancroft Rellim Hat Co. "Rellim" is "Miller" spelled backwards.
With the caps that Hyman made, he had to have a woman hand embroider the scrambled eggs on the bills. That prevented him from being able to meet the increasing demand for his caps.
So Morris figured out how to make a jig - a three dimensional template - that Hyman could attach to his sewing machines so that the caps could be embroidered quickly, and without the need of an expert doing it by hand. Sales took off.
The subtlety of this is that Hyman and Morris made their living supplying the military who were fighting to bring down the regime that had extinguished many of their relatives and friends, the Holocaust. The forces succeeded, and both Morris and Hyman prospered as a result.
Recently Hyman's family had a celebration. It was the 70th wedding anniversary for one of Hyman's daughters and her husband, and while most of Hyman and Annie's children and their mates are now deceased, what was notable is that all married, stayed with the same spouse and all celebrated more than 50 years of marriage.
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