Sam melton chicago

What happened was that both arches in my feet broke, and I just fell flat on my face. I have had bad arches ever since. The coach never apologized, never gave me any attention. From that time on I would not have anything to do with that high school's sports team. That was another experience that I have never forgotten. P: Was this in Toledo or in Columbus? M: Toledo. Something like that happened in Columbus also because I could not go out for track or anything until my senior year again.

I decided I would go out anyway. My father's store was where I had to work, so I could not take time off because he needed me. It was my senior year and we had the try-outs, and those that were not on the track team could try out. So I tried out on the high jump, and I tried out on the hundred yard and fifty yard dashes, and I came in second against the fellows that had made the team. Then the second time I went out--this was two days later-- my muscles got sore and I could not run anymore.

So I had to withdraw, but it showed that I had the ability, if I would have trained properly, to do well as an athlete. P: What kind of social life did you have growing up in high school? M: Not much in high school. I attended the junior prom and the senior prom. I do not remember who I took to the junior prom, but the senior prom I remember because my cousin, the Fisher girl, was also in the school at that time.

She graduated in the same class with me. The prom began on a boat that went from Toledo to Sugar Island, which was about thirty-five or forty miles out of Toledo. This was a cruise boat that ran regularly. The senior class had scheduled this prom at Sugar Island. They had a big dance hall there.

The funny part of it was, I did not dance. I played ball. And my cousin was furious that I did not dance with her, but I was not too interested because she was my cousin. I would rather play baseball. I did not have many dates.

I remember one incident, though. I was invited to someone's house. Maybe it was in my sophomore or junior year. The guests were all Jewish kids. It must have been a birthday party for this girl who I did not really know that well.

She was in one of my classes. I went to that house, and this was the first time I was ever in an upper class home. I was very impressed with the home and very impressed with the kids that were there.

A lot of other kids were in my same situation and they were also very impressed with this beautiful home. We played games. I remember one game we played. We were sitting in chairs all around and all of a sudden, you had to jump around and kiss the girl over there. I do not know what it was called. I do not remember the details, but I do remember going from one girl to another. P: What do you remember about your Bar Mitzvah? M: The Bar Mitzvah ended with a luncheon for all the people that were in the Schul.

There must have been about fourteen or fifteen men, and they came over to our house after services. They all sat down and my mother fed them. I got presents. I got one fountain pen, a big red one. And I got stockings, ties, things like that. Not very much.

P: When did you and your family move to Columbus? P: Why did you make the move away from Toledo? M: My father and Uncle Abe, my father's brother, this was one of the uncles that had slept with me, he went to Columbus later on. He was in business with another uncle on my mother's side. They were together on the outskirts of Columbus and had a nice little business there, but my uncle Abe, my father's brother, found a grocery store that was available.

The fellow that owned it wanted to retire. He had a much bigger business than the one that my two uncles were in on the outskirts of the city. They talked to my father and said this was something that he ought to buy. So my father went up there and he liked it and bought it together with my Uncle Abe. So that is when we moved up there. They bought this place which they called Mendlowitz Brothers, and they were the first ones to put fruits and vegetables in the store.

Most of the grocery stores in those days had sugar, canned goods, and meats, but no fresh produce. Vegetables and fruits were sold in different stores. Grocery stores sold basic commodities. So my father put a display in the window and he went to the market, picked up his fruits and vegetables, displayed them in the window, and they started doing business in a big way.

They had a stand, and it was really, in those days, what you might call a supermarket. There were no such stores in Columbus at that time.

P: Your father sold the house in Toledo? M: Yes, he sold the house and another piece of property he owned in Toledo. P: So he had some capital to invest in Columbus. M: Yes, and had money besides what he realized from the real estate sales.

P: Were you already through with school when you moved to Columbus? M: Yes, I had finished high school in I was planning to go to the University of Michigan. I had applied to the University of Michigan, and I was going to have a job there in the student center as a busboy or something.

It was the only way I would be able to afford to go to school. But I did not get to go to Michigan. It was a state university. That is where I started. P: Your sister was still in high school when the family moved to Columbus? So she transferred from one high school to another. P: Did your father buy a house in Columbus? In Columbus, the first thing we did was rent a house for about a year and then my father bought a double house, a duplex. We lived in one side and rented the other side. P: The first year you moved to Columbus you went right into college.

P: But in the meantime you also had to work in the store. M: Before they concluded the deal of securing the store, I worked in a shoe store for about a month.

And after they had finished the deal and got the store, then I went to work there. I got a lot of experience in that shoe store. It also sold men's clothing. I knew a lot about selling shoes, but I did not have any experience with clothes. They were mostly overalls and socks and stockings. This shoe and clothing store was on a farmers market street. The farmers sold their merchandise, their products, to people like my father at the grocery store and to peddlers on the street. The farmers would then buy the things they needed for themselves and their family from a store like the shoe store where I worked.

Also on that street at the time was a china store that my cousins had. They sold china and tinware and things like that. The whole thing was a new experience for me. I had no experience in that field before.

P: You said you knew something about shoes. Where did that come from? I had worked in Toledo after school in the wintertime. I worked at G. Kinney for a while, and I worked at Books Shoe Store which sold ladies shoes. P: As a salesman? I fitted the shoes and sold them, and I used to make extra money by selling specials. We used to make twenty-five cents extra a pair if you sold the specials.

You know something? Some of those pairs did not fit, and I sold them anyway. And it was a damn shame, but that is the way that business was done. People bought the specials because they were special sales. The big experience that I had after school in Toledo in the wintertime was at Tiedke Brothers which was the largest grocery store in the world at that time.

They delivered all over the city of Toledo, and they had sales every Friday on sugar. Ten pounds for twenty-nine cents. I packaged sugar down in the basement. We unloaded carloads of hundred- pound sugar bags in the basement, and then we would package these into ten pound sacks. They must have sold carloads of sugar. They also sold fish brought in from Maumee Bay. The fishermen fished in the Great Lakes, and sold their catch to Tiedke Brothers.

Lake Erie is near by. They also sold a lot of coffee. They roasted their own coffee. They had a big organ that was playing all the time and as soon as you walked into that place, you smelled that wonderful coffee odor that came from the roasting. That roaster was going all the time. It was half the size of this room. P: Well, between the smell of the coffee and the organ playing, it must have been an interesting grocery store. M: It was really an operation. It was the largest grocery store in the world.

It was the first real supermarket, and they carried almost everything there. They bought oranges by the carload that were shipped in from California. You did not see any nuts around anywhere until around Christmas time and then there were bags and bags of nuts at Tiedke 14 Brothers.

Those are the kinds of things that they sold. They had over a hundred wagons delivering all over the city of Toledo, and they had dappled grey horses which they raised on their own farms. It was a multi- million dollar business. So, I was very impressed, and Toledo was very impressed.

Later on a Jewish man bought out Tiedke Brothers, but that was after we left Toledo years later. And it went to pot because he could not operate like Tiedke Brothers had operated. Tiedke Brothers did not last long as a business because the family died out. The original brothers operated the business successfully, but no one else could do what they had done. P: You said you worked for a photography shop in Toledo also? M: Yes, I did not know too much about that business. All I did was take care of the scrap paper.

P: This was also an afternoon after school job? P: So you were a versatile man as far as work experience was concerned. M: I had a lot of experience at all kinds of things. Especially in fruits and vegetables for my father and groceries for Tiedke Brothers and as a shoe salesman.

That was my background in business. P: You did almost everything in your father's grocery store? P: Did your uncle have any children? M: Two children. P: Did your cousins work in the store too? They were too young. P: So it was your father, your uncle, and you. M: Oh, no, we had people working there besides us. There was a butcher, two clerks, and a delivery boy.

P: What about your mother? Did she work in the store? M: No, my mother never did anything like that. She took care of the household. P: Well, it was a big operation then if you had that many people working for you. M: Yes, my father and uncle did quite well.

To expand on that, they were doing very well and I was in school. I was taking economics, and I 15 remembered one principle of economics. It said: In business, if you do not expand, you die. And I told that to my father and my uncle. And believe it or not, they also believed it. They expanded and they kept on expanding.

So they opened a second store, and they enlarged the first store that they had. They added the room next to it, and then they added a third room. So they had three rooms instead of one, and they bought a second store.

I worked over there in the summertime while I was going to school. Then another uncle arrived, a brother whose name also was Sam Mendlowitz. P: So now there were three brothers in business together. M: Yes, three brothers, although this third brother did not stay long. He came in from Cleveland to work in Columbus, but he was what you might call an operator. He used to sell jewelry practically on the street since he did not have a store. He would find a sucker and sell him a watch, a five-dollar watch for ten dollars or something like that.

That is the kind of thing that he used to do. So the grocery business did not seem too interesting to him, and he left. That is the way it went for a number of years.

Finally my father and my uncle decided to give it up because it was too much trouble to hire people and watch the whole operation. While I was there in the summertime it was fine, but after I graduated they agreed to get rid of it. While I was in school, I also did something for the grocery store. I solicited fraternities and sororities to buy their supplies from us, and I built up a nice business in that area.

That is one of the reasons why they were able to expand. I also helped found the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity in Columbus.

Alpha Epsilon Pi in Columbus was started by me and nine other guys. And the chapter is still on the Ohio State University campus. P: Sam, why did you plan to go to the University of Michigan? M: Almost everybody from Toledo went to Michigan. Almost all the kids from Scott High went to Michigan. P: What did you think you wanted to study? M: I was not sure. When I got to Ohio State, I told the advisor that I would like to study mechanical engineering, but he advised me, "Sam, you are Jewish and you would not have the slightest chance of getting a job after you finish.

And it turned out that it was the right thing to do. I had a friend from New York who was going to school here at that time, and he took up mining engineering. There was a scarcity of mining engineers. Anyone that graduated in mining engineering could get a job in those days, but when he graduated in my class, in , he could not get a job as a mining engineer because he was Jewish.

So he took a job with Ross Willoughby in Columbus. They were suppliers of materials and equipment for the mines. My friend thought that by being able to contact the chief people in the mines, he would be able to get a job as a mining engineer. So he sold mining equipment and supplies. He got to know some of the purchasing agents and some of the vice-presidents, but he could never make it as a mining engineer.

He was a Jew. After two years 16 of trying, he gave up. He moved to Detroit, and he went to Wayne University at night and worked as a clerk in the court. He graduated from Wayne University Law School, and became a very successful attorney.

So my advisor was right when he told me not to go into mechanical engineering since I was a Jew. And that was proven to be true ever later when I was in business.

Kaplan Rabbi Kaplan's wife called me one day. I guess this was about or She said, "I have a young man who is married and he is working here at Hillel. He and his wife are going to have a baby. He is a mechanical engineer, but he has never been able to get a job. He has been working here three years now, and we cannot pay him enough so that he and his family can live decently. Would you give him a chance? Well, he came to me, and I told him, "I have hired several Jewish boys before and somehow or another, they did not stay with me very long.

They went in business for one reason or another, but they would not stay here. I did not have too much success with Jewish boys. If you think you can do some good here, you see what we have here. I will give you a chance and after six months we will talk again. He was that important. He is still there as an advisor, and he has been there now for forty years.

He has retired, but he is still employed as an advisor, and he still gets paid. That is how good he was. P: Sam, was there ever any question in your family about whether you would go to college or not? M: No, it was my determination. My mother and father always wanted me to go to school. My mother had the greatest respect for a man that would sit at a desk and write.

Her ambition in life was for me to be able to sit at a desk and write instead of working with my hands. P: She wanted you to be educated. M: That is right, and my father was the same way. P: So you went off to college in to Ohio State. Did you live at home? M: I lived at home all the way through college. P: You had to travel by streetcar to campus? We had a car, and I used to drive the car after my sophomore year to and from the campus.

P: You were not afraid of getting drafted in World War I? M: I was ready to go, and when I was eighteen they sent me the notice, but the war was over by then.

P: So you went into college in , and you graduated in ? What was your degree? M: Bachelor of Science. My major was accounting.

And I looked at the fellow asking me, and I said, "How much will it cost. It was too much money for me, and I did not think enough of the boys to join the fraternity.

I did not know anything about a social fraternity since I had never socialized very much in high school: two dances, junior and senior proms, and very few dates. P: So you turned the Sammies down. M: Yes, but I did not know what they were at that time. Later on there was a group called the Kadimah Club, a kind of Jewish group. We started eating together. All rights reserved. Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet.

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But officers failed to arrest the man and take the girl to the hospital for a rape kit. Coleman confirmed police never sought charges in this case and her office never received rape kit evidence. A year-old man took the little girl from Chicago to a home in Gary, Ind. He was eventually arrested — but only on misdemeanor charges.

Immediately upon learning of the concerns regarding this investigation, the case was reassigned to a new detective, and the offender was promptly arrested on Friday, March 12 and charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of a victim under 13 on Saturday, March The additional cases remain under investigation, pending the return of forensic results from the Illinois State Police Forensics Lab. We are revisiting our policies and practices, in addition to meeting with advocates, to prevent any unnecessary investigative delays from happening again.

We must do better. As a woman, a mother and simply as a human being, I am outraged and horrified at how many ways this child has been failed for years by those around her.

This is simply unacceptable and no child in Chicago or anywhere should endure what this child has.