Yetta (Coleman) Lerner, widow of Lou Lerner remembers...

My father, Max Coleman, came to Montreal and looked for a room to live with a family. He rented a room with the Lerners, and lived with them four or five years before he made enough money to bring my mother and five children over from Poland. They came steerage class. It was a terrible crossing for my mother because my sister Bess, who was about 3 1/2 years old at the time, took very ill on the ship. We always kidded they were going to throw her overboard, that’s how sick she was. During the period of their crossing Rose Lerner found a place for them to live downstairs from where they were living.It was in a slum area. (Years later when I went back to Montreal to visit, I couldn't believe where we were living. There were prostitutes all around. It was truly in the slums.)

Two weeks after my mother arrived in Montreal, Uncle Lou was born. My mother was present at his birth. As soon as my mother arrived, I was conceived. Eighteen months later, my sister Freida was born as well. Rose Lerner and my mother became bosom friends. But Rose was already a Yankee. I don't know if she spoke English yet, but she knew her way around. My mother was totally a greenhorn. Rose like to adventure into things - to go out and do things. I don't think she did much housework. The boys, one after another, did all the housework. Uncle Lou used to tell me he did his own washing and ironing. Whether they did it good, bad, or indifferent, didn't matter. They really had to take care of themselves. Bubby Rose was very witty and well educated for that era. She was well versed in Yiddish and Hebrew. She was very positive about what she wanted to do. She was up on everything, and always had a quick answer. After she went to Los Angeles, she even went to adult school to learn to read and write English.

My mother's brother came out to California first and spoke of it being a paradise. Then my aunt, my father's sister came out second and we followed. My father came in 1916; my mother and the children in 1917 when I was six and a half years old, and the Lerners came in 1921. Zadeh Lerner and Uncle Joe came out here a year before the others, and they boarded with my Aunt Geier, who lived next door to us. Until I was fourteen years old, I never went off the block to play with anyone because every house had six and seven kids and we never had to go any further.

It was a wonderful era. People helped each other out. No matter who came along, what "shlepalong", they would put the person up to sleep, help him out in some way. I can remember so many families living with us, and Grandma Lerner did the same thing. Newly arrived people in need were taken into everybody's home.

I remember the day the Lerners arrived in Los Angeles. The younger boys had blouses that were tied with elastic at the bottom. My mother and my Aunt Geier set up the house for them on the same street we lived on. They helped furnish it before they arrived so it would be all ready for them. I remember the day they came my aunt, who lived next door to us, had cooked up a storm. They even furnished the house with big lug boxes of oranges. It was in April and at that time in Montreal fruit was very expensive. When these kids saw the oranges, Nat and Lou especially, they absolutely went wild. They used to fill their blouses with oranges all the way around, and by the time they had gotten to school, Nat had torn them all out an eaten them.

I remember that first house had lots of fruit trees in the backyard. It was kind of a rambunctious household. All the boys worked, no matter how young. (When they arrived Uncle Lou, who was a year older than me was eleven, Uncle Nat was thirteen and Irv was fifteen. I went all through school with Uncle Lou. But I was friendlier with Nat and Irv. They were always over while Uncle Lou was the studious one and was too busy for that kind of activity. He was usually in the library or with his friends studying. I didn't like Uncle Lou very much.

It was a crazy thing how I start going with him. Aunt Bess (Moe's wife) had given birth to her first child, Gloria (who died at age 1 1/2 of spinal meningitis). The hospital was a little wooden building out on Whittier. Uncle Lou was going to see Aunt Bessie at the hospital and since she was my sister, asked me if I want to go. I said "yes". I don't know why I didn't like him before that, but from that time on we began to go together.

When Uncle Lou got out of high school, one of the teachers recommended him to the Board of Education. He graduated high school at seventeen and stated Southwestern College, right across the street from the Board of Education, right way. It was a five-year course at night to get the C.P.A. which he went for. He chose accounting first even though law was his first love, but it was more expensive. We were married when he was twenty and we lived with my mother and father for five years, paying on a car and going to school during the Depression. Six months after he finished he was restless and I encouraged him to back to school to get his law degree saying he’d never have a better chance than then. I knew how very much he wanted it. So we put off having children for eight years.

The night of his law school graduation he was Commencement speaker, because I pushed him into it. He thought it was crazy, but I knew how it would please his mother and father. Grandpa Lerner and all the boys were there. My buttons all feel off my coat I was so thrilled! The night of the graduation, Grandpa Lerner was so proud. I don’t know if the others comprehended what an effort this was on Uncle Lou's part, giving up virtually everything for this goal. Without knowing much about education, Grandpa Lerner was so very proud of him, I'll never forget his face. I never let anything stand in the way of Uncle Lou's going to school. There was no social time; it was all work. He studied all weekend and every night until midnight or later. I knew he was going to have that law degree if it was the last thing we accomplished. I always appreciated education, but was on a "middle of the road" student myself. But years before my association with Uncle Lou, my uncle used to tease me that I was going to go to Law School. It was such a farfetched thing for a girl....

Bubby Lerner opposed to our getting married. I don't know what the reason was. The reason she gave was that two brothers don't marry two sisters (yet she and her brother married Zadeh and his sister.) Maybe she was afraid Lou would quit school. For Bubby to leave her own mother and brothers and sisters in Montreal and move to Los Angeles must have been very hard for her. That would make her relationship with my aunt and uncle and my parents that much closer. So for her to oppose our marriage was going against old, old friends.

Whatever her objections, ours turned out to be the perfect marriage as far as I'm concerned. We had it all. Trials and tribulations, sure, financial problems, yes, but we worked it all out in time.

The first year Lou and I were married and lived with my mother he gained twenty-five pounds. My mother and father adored him. Because of Bubby's objections to our wedding, and that she was making herself sick over it, things became so unbearable that it hastened our getting married. One day we just decided to solve the problem and get married. I didn't know until the day of the wedding that we were getting married that day. The Rabbi, the patriarch of rabbis in those days, came out to the house. Bubby and Zadeh were there for the wedding, or Uncle Lou would never have forgiven them. I didn't know they were going to come until they were there. I'm sure Zadeh worked on her. I wore my white satin graduation dress. I was graduated in January and we were married in November. The fact that it was a small wedding made no difference to me - the only thing that mattered to me was Uncle Lou. After that we went away on a two-day honeymoon to San Diego in a Model "T" Ford and that was a big deal!

Bubby was very religious but my family was not. Although my mother kept kosher, my father was a very liberal thinker, and he just didn't believe in it all. So he would get the last seat in the schule and take the newspapers so he could read them. I also remember that Uncle Lou was Bar Mitzvah, but because he worked on Saturdays the Rabbi who taught him refused to perform the service and somebody else had to perform the service at temple.

The story that stands out in my mind that Lou told me about his brothers...was of Uncle Nat playing hockey and Uncle Lou doing a lot of his homework. Nat was carefree and witty. Uncle Lou said they had two alarm clocks above his head because he wouldn't get up. The alarms would go off until they were unwound and still they would have to drag Nat out of bed....

In my own family, I have very special memories of my sis. My sister Bess was just darling as a child - loving and caring. We had a grocery store a block from where we lived. It was open 7 days a week, from six in the morning until midnight and on Saturdays until one o’clock in the morning. As a child I remember my father had a truck and picked Bess up right after school; God forbid she was late. My dad used to go to the wholesale supermarket at midnight and he would pick her up and bring her to the store so that she could work in the store after school until it closed while he got some sleep. Bessie (who married Uncle Moe Lerner) was the only one in my family to have a big wedding. They were married in Temple Emmanuel on Wilshire Blvd. All the food was brought in because it had to be kosher and the temple was Conservative.

So many families like the Lerners and my family, the Colemans, made the journey by train from Montreal. Although Uncle Lou never described his family's experience, it probably wasn’t too different from mine. I can remember coming on the train from Montreal to Los Angeles. My mother came with seven children on the train. In those days who could afford a sleeper, you slept sitting up. I even remember that we missed a train in Chicago where we had to change trains, and we slept on the benches. My mother took enough food (salami etc.) to last us on the train. But we ran out the last day so we just ate bread. But the trip from Europe was far more devastating as they came steerage sleeping on bunks and were all very ill.

Our family came in 1917, the same year the United States went into war. The one thing I remember about WWI were the soldiers marching down the street in front of our store, a whole battalion going off to war. And I remember when they came back, jubilant! The war was over!!!

When we left Montreal in October, it was like winter. I arrived in L.A. and it was summer. I never remembered going barefooted in Montreal. But it was so hot, I remember my mother took off our dresses and let us run around in our petticoats, barefooted. It was a very joyous day...and, all the days that I live, and it's been 68 years, I love it here just as much as I did then. There's no place like it.