Ed Wolffe(1942-2023) Bainbridge, Ga,.-Georgia Tech- Getting married-Morristown, TN- Air Force-Move back to Atlanta(5,223 words)
In the beginning I was born to Jake and Bella Turetzky Wolffe at the original Piedmont Hospital, at Capitol Ave (now Hank Arron Dr) and Crumley Street, south of the state capitol, on December 6th, 1942. At the time of my birth my father was serving in the Sea Bees in New Guinea. Fortunately he came home, wounded but alive. Shortly after his return, I was 3, Dad's cousin , Louie Wynne, Bainbridge Ga, offered him a job and we moved from Atlanta.
The exact sequence of events following are not 100% clear, but my father worked for Wynne's Department store in two "experimental" ventures. One was a Bargain Center, in a separate building selling less expensive dry goods. The other was with a traveling truck loaded with work cloths, work boots, pots, pans and yes, condoms. Dad traveled the "shade tobacco" areas around Quincy, Florida selling from the truck.
Finally, on July 1, 1949, my father purchased, for $100, a business license to open what was originally Jake's Annex, then, two years later it became Jake's Pawn Shop. Ultimately my sister Roslyn Wolffe Palmer and her husband Jack Palmer purchased the business and it remained in operation until their retirement in 2012.
Early in my life in Bainbridge, I became friends with Bob Grollman and now at age 80 (2023) he and I are still close friends, some 77 years later.
I also stay in contact to my cousin, Marvin Wynne and of course my sister, Roslyn, who still lives in Bainbridge and has been on the city council for 36 years and was elected into another uncontested term in 2023.
I went to kindergarten, grammar and high school in Bainbridge, graduating in 1960.
Curiously, as a Jew, growing up in a
small Southern town, I can not remember any anti-Semitic
events. As an adult, I've been asked this question, especially in recent
times (2023)
My years in Bainbridge, until high school graduation, were rather normal in that I believe that I did all the things kids did growing up in the 50's.
Actually, on second thought, perhaps I actually did do a few things which many might not be considered "normal" these days. Below are a few that come to mind (in no specific order).
1) One of my jobs growing up was to rake the leaves...out to the dirt street in front of our house....and burn them. I had no adult supervision.
2) I would ride my bike to school and looked forward to joining many of my friends during the ride. No, I can't remember what I did when we had rain, but I do remember that our mild winters did not stop me.
3) On Saturday I had my chores to do (see raking leaves as one). My folks would leave to open the store at 8:30. Johnny Mae, our maid, was already at our house. By noon all the work had been done around the house and we'd walk to the store. Mom would pay Johnny Mae and I'd walk over to the movie theater (25¢) for the Saturday double feature, cartoon, serial, coming attractions and merchant's ads. At the end I'd go back to the store and help as best I could, waiting for closing at 9:30. Then home for dinner, radio shows and bed.
4) On some Saturdays during summertime, we'd drive down to Panama City Beach after the store closed. Dad would have rented a cottage and we'd have a great Sunday in the sun and surf before having dinner and driving back to Bainbridge. What you'll want to know is that Dad's car was a coupe with a very wide "deck" under the rear window. That's where I'd sleep during our drives. No seat belt, just lying there. Thank goodness we never had a wreck or I'd been a body flying through the air until impact with the front windshield.
5) We all are aware of Global Warming and the resultant hot days and nights. I have vivid memories of sleeping on steamy summer nights with zero air conditioning (Our first was a window unit in about 1958-ish but just for the den, not bedrooms). I remember how important I felt when I was given my own fan, placed on a table next to my bed so it would blow across my body clothed only in underwear. All my windows were open, which really didn't help but in our minds it did. I was allowed to listen to one radio program as I was going to sleep. It usually was either The Shadow Knows or Johnny Dollar, Private Eye.
6) I have fond memories of my scouting years. We had Edgar Priest as our scout master. He was a postman and 100% of all his deliveries was via bicycle. Talk about being in great shape. I remember, with pride, my ability to efficiently pack my backpack with everything I'd need for our Friday/Saturday nights. While most of the time I'd use a common "pup tent", dads store had Army-Navy surplus items and I also would use a Jungle Hammock. Mercifully my back was very supple and I was actually able to sleep on my stomach....think about that. During the summer of 1957, our troop went to the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Valley Forge. For one year our troop worked to earn money for this event. Selling cotton candy and hot dogs on the street corner on Saturdays in front of Ehrlich Drug Store on the square. Ultimately we boarded our chartered Trailways bus for our trek to the jamboree site in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. After the mid-July event we also went north to Niagara Falls to visit a Sea Scout troop, getting to ride one of the ships out into Lake Ontario.
7) I guess this next memory would have been during about my seventh grade. The game of marbles had grown to be very popular and I can remember playing, in the dirt, during school breaks and lunchtimes. We carried our marble bags along with our school books. Trading marbles was almost as popular a playing because there were some marbles "worth" more than others. You got them by playing the game and winning or trading. The most common was the "cats-eye". Everyone wanted "crystals". Clear ones were common but colored ones more valuable. Opaque ones were also more valuable than "cats-eye" and "steelies", ball bearings, generally were not allowed in a game because they could chip glass ones.
8) My father owned Jake's Pawn Shop. The store sold dress-up ("Sunday-go-to-meeting") & work clothes, dress-up & work shoes, Army-Navy surplus items, knives and guns. Yes, pawning goods was a big part of the business and many times an unclaimed pawned item is how my father gained inventory to be sold, pistols and rifles among those items. In retrospect, one ability my father had was to remember how much a gun, taken via pawn, cost him and when negotiating with a customer wanting to buy that gun or trade theirs for one of dad’s, he always could work from memory and mental-math and come out WAY ahead in the sale/trade. Remember, there were no computers for most of his business days, just his brain.
Guns were always a part of my growing up and for all of you "on the other side" of the gun-culture, I apologize. Yes, the current political climate is against guns. Unfortunately this stance is due to the horrors of a few folks with social and mental issue using a class of gun, AR-15, which I have zero interest in owning. Anyway, I'll move on with regard to the ongoing discussions with regard to Pros & Cons of gun ownership. No one is going to change their minds because of these writings. Now a few gun related stories from my youth.
a) I remember at about age 12, strapping on a real Colt 1873, 6-shooter walking across Griffin Park to Citizens bank with the store cash deposit. Both my father and I thought this was "cool". The gun was a part of Dad's inventory.
b) I grew up with a wall of about eight guns in my bedroom. Among the mostly antique ones was an M-1 carbine with a folding stock used by paratroopers.
c) On some Sundays, dad and I would take this carbine and several other pistols out to a clay pit on the edge of town, set up some beer cans and coke bottles and target practice. We were still doing his after Barbara and I were engaged so she got to come along. I can assure you that she was not thrilled and heaven knows what she must have told her folks back in Atlanta.
d) As a kid, 10-ish or so, on
Saturdays, I'd get into the store with my folks and begin cleaning the gun
inventory so that they looked great for possible purchasers later that
day. Also, at the beginning and end of each day, I helped move the pistol
inventory in and out of dad's safe. I'm not certain why he didn't have
the same concern of rifles although in later years he did string a cable and lock through all of the trigger guards to slow down a theft during a break-in.
e) About age 11, my dad came up with a great idea for me to earn money. He set me up with a shoe shine kit and made a few calls for me. The next thing I knew, I was shining shoes at police and fire department to earn money for mom's Hanukkah gift, a deep fryer.
f) My father loved fishing. You may not have grown up using "cane poles" for fishing, but these 8'-10' bamboo poles were equipped about 12' of clear nylon line, no reel, lead weight near the hook and a cork floater. En-route to whatever pond or creek we were fishing we'd stop into a "bait" shop to buy earthworms. Southern fishing meant hooking the worm, swinging the line out into the water, after the weighted hook settled (you adjusted the cork to hook distance as close as you could to the waters depth). Now, with great patience, you'd simply watch the cork. When it'd bob up-down, or get sucked under, you had a fish (Bream, also known as Crappie). When we'd get home with our catch, dad would clean and gut the fish which we'd fry for dinner. As I moved into my teens, perhaps one of the worst things I ever did to my father's ego was to turn him down for a fishing trip. In summer months, we'd get started about 5am so we could be on the water bank, waiting to cast our line as the sun came up. One morning my dad came into my room to wake me up. I said something like, "I’d really rather sleep". He was crushed and we never fished together again.
12) Many of the Jewish merchants had an annual tradition after closing on the last shopping day before Christmas. Bainbridge had a restaurant, G's and their steaks were legendary in our city. Grollman, Kres, Rubinstein, Wolffe, Wynne were there and after a few shots of bourbon, merriment ensued.
During this time, I evolved an interest in science, specifically electronic devices. Transistors were just becoming available in the general market ant their prices were coming down from hundreds of dollars to "just $1".
As a Cub Scout, in the 6th grade, I made a crystal radio based on a circuit from a Boy's Life magazine article.
In later years, about 1956, 8th grade, I convinced my father to allow me to purchase a Raytheon CK722 transistor (it was .99 cents, just over $11 in 2023 and the size of an English pea). I called the electronic distributor, in Atlanta, confirmed they had it in stock and on our next trip to Atlanta, my father took me so I could purchase it.
To me, making this transistor radio was not a huge challenge, but my school, my teacher and my scout troupe made a big fuss over this achievement.
As I began to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah at age 13 (1955) my parents started me down the road of learning Hebrew. Initially my Uncle Irving Kres (his father was a rabbi), started me on the basics of learning the alphabet, pronunciation and reading. In later years, I was packed off in a Trailways bus on Saturday afternoon for time with Rabbi Kravitz in Tallahassee. Last but not least, in the final stretch (summer) leading up to my December event, I was sent, via an 8 hour train ride, to Savannah to live with Mike and Corrine Turetzky Seidlitz(uncle & aunt), for daily lessons with Ms. Levine who's patience guided me through learning to chant my haftarah portion. My time in Savannah had the added benefits of meeting many Jewish kids my age....and older. I still remember going to my first Saturday night party at the Savannah Jewish Alliance Center.
Walking into the room, there appeared to be hundreds of Jewish kids, all my age. Coming from Bainbridge with about 12 Jewish kids, I was blown away. As a point of interest, the music was Elvis Presley's newly released Hound Dog. The new friends I made during my summer helped to make the time absolutely fly. Remember, I was just 12 but I looked older and I did acquire a few older friends who were already driving. I still remember the night we went out to Howard Johnson for ice cream and didn't get back until late (10pm). The Seidlitzs were ready to call the police and jump off a tall building. To say that I was grounded for the rest of the summer is a mild understatement.
I played tackle on the high school football team. However, I did a lot of sitting on the bench because I didn't have the innate desire to brutalize my opponents, but I put in my five years, which included junior varsity....however I was one of the jocks. I can remember that when we won a home game, as soon as we'd shower and dress, we'd go across the Flint River to West Bainbridge to Bram's Drive-In for a free hamburger and shake. Then back to the Youth Center for the Friday night dance.
I attended Georgia Tech starting in the fall of 1960. This made me the first member of our family to attend college. I entered college in the Electrical Engineering (EE) department. However, as I got into my junior year and tackled my first two EE classes, the two D's I made did not bode well for my future in that arena. I left Ga Tech in the spring of 1964 headed for Riverside, CA, again to live with the Seidlitzs. My uncle Mike was stationed at March AFB outside Riverside. My trip west was via a Trailways bus from Tallahassee to Riverside, for three days. Long story short, when I got on the bus, there were 3 or 4 Navy folk, en-route from Jacksonville to San Diego, in the back of the bus drinking bourbon from a shared bottle. I joined in and because I looked the oldest, overnight beard too, I was chosen to get our next bottle during our stop in New Orleans. After sleeping through the change of bus in Blythe, California (with hangover) and having to call the Seidlitzs to let them know I'd be on another bus, much later, I made it to March AFB about a half day late. I can't remember how my next step started but I applied to the local Pacific Bell employment office, took qualifying test for PBX school and was accepted. After taking 2 weeks of installation classes I began my brief career installing residential phones all over Riverside County while waiting for a slot in the PBX school. Uncle Mike gave me one of his old cars, a 1956 Oldsmobile, which ultimately Bob Grollman and I drove back to the east coast. By the way, the car had no air conditioner and our cross county was done in late August. During late spring I'd reapplied to Ga Tech for fall classes, majoring in Textile Engineering.
Back in Atlanta and back in school, I buckled down, determined to graduate from Tech sooner rather than later. I resigned myself to attend two summer schools in a row, to graduate ASAP.
At some point in the fall of 1964, I met my wife, Barbara Cohen. I had no idea that 58-ish years later, after Barbara's death in October 2022, I would reconnect with Emilie Posner Haas, who'd introduced Barbara and I. Emilie and Barbara were friends, growing up living very close to each other and spending nights at each other’s houses. Emilie and I were friends who enjoyed just being together, driving into the North Georgia mountains during Tech football games, drinking beer at Harry's and just hanging out. One evening I called Emilie to ask if I could come over and watch TV with her. When I arrived, I was introduced to Barbara. Barbara and I dated into the spring of 1965 when we got engaged and ultimately married, with the originally scheduled date of Sept 12th with 300 invited guests at the Chateau Fleur De Lis (French restaurant on Cheshire Road, no longer in business).
It was a late Friday afternoon, August 26th 1965, I was in a class at Tech. A professor, grading papers in his office, heard a radio broadcast in which President Johnson said that if you weren't married by midnight that night, you'd be considered for the draft (Vietnam) as if you were single. You have to remember that cell phones did not exist. Since Barbara and I were scheduled for our wedding on September 12th (seventeen days later), I knew I had to get in touch with her. I asked the professor if I could use his office phone to call, having explained our pending marriage. I called her parents Lenox Forest apartment since she was living there until the wedding. Barbara too was trying to figure out how to get in touch with me...."had I heard the news?" I told my professor that I had to leave to plan how I was getting married before midnight. Since I had his lab the next morning (Saturday), he admonished me to show up with a marriage certificate or else (smiling). Long story short, via Harvey Minsk, my brother-in-law, we found Judge Little, Probate judge in Eufaula, Alabama who agreed to marry us before midnight, Alabama time. "I'm going to be at a Kiwanis meeting but call my home when you get into town". As we were rushing to get on the road, Harriet Cohen, my mother-in-law, had to finish ironing Barbara's veil for the "wedding". Off into the hot, humid August evening we drove in my car with no air conditioning, windows down. Harvey was sitting in the front passenger seat smoking and flicking his ashes out of his window. Unknown to us, these were drifting in the open rear window and when we got into the light of the Eufaula courthouse, Barbara's white dress was a light charcoal tint from all the ashes.
Upon arrival, I called Judge Little from the payphone on the courthouse steps.
It was a very still, hot, sticky August night in a small southern town (it could have been out of some movie), Judge Little drove up in an old truck with his dog in the front seat. When he opened his truck door, the dog ran up onto the steps to the door and waited for us.
Technically we were married after midnight Atlanta time, but not Alabama time, thus we were going to be safe from the draft. We had our wedding dinner at a Krystal in Columbus, Ga, got back to her parents’ apartment about 5am. We brought them up to date....we had in fact been married, and I went to sleep since I had to be in class at 8am that morning. Driving to Tech Saturday morning, I came across Bob Grollman and showed him our marriage certificate. When my professor saw me in class, he asked if I had my marriage certificate. I handed it to him, told him a brief summary of what had happened. He looked up at me and told me to get out of class and go home to my wife. When I called my parents to let them know we'd gotten married, my father told me that he and Judge Little had been childhood friends growing up in Eufaula.
We rescheduled our wedding plans, dropping the Chateau Fleur De Lis plans with 300 guests and pared it down to just family at the Avavath Achim Synagogue (AA) because Rabbi Rothschild at The Temple would not allow yarmulke and tallit but Rabbi Geffen at AA did. My mother wanted this, hence our choice for location. Years later, Barbara and I realized how awful it was to un-invite people and yes, we did return gifts.
At the end of Tech's 1965 summer session, my graduation and our marriage, Barbara and I moved to Morristown, TN so that I could begin my first job, Process Engineer with American Enka (later, after I had left, it was purchased by BASF in 1985). My 1965 starting salary was $7,500 (about $75,000 today). What can be said about Morristown is that thank goodness we were newly married because we did our best to see our location as an adventure we would tackle together. Fortunately within the first few months we were "discovered" by the Jewish community and this brought Barbara a close friend (Carolyn Solod) with whom she could chum around. Carolyn's husband, Mike, was employed in the family furniture-foam business and he made $10,000/year. Barbara and I used to say that if I ever could make that, we'd be fabulously wealthy and would be on easy street. The Solods belonged to the Morristown Country Club. Barbara and I would talk during my lunch break at Enka which usually consisted of a homemade sandwich in a brown bag. Meanwhile Barbara and Carolyn were eating at "The Club" and playing the slot machines. We did gain one new addition to our family, Andre, our black poodle, which was a wedding gift from Barbara's sisters, Janet Hinerfeld and Mimi Minsk. Andre was our "first child" for 18 years until his death.
As you'll remember, Barbara and I got married two weeks early so I would not be drafted. In 1966, the law changed again and marriage alone did not exempt me from the draft. However, working in a product area related to the Vietnam War effort did. American Enka made nylon for mosquito netting, used by our troops. OK, safe, again. Later in 1966, the rules were changed again and this time exemption from the draft required having children. We were not ready for this so Plan "B" was started. A fellow Ga Tech grad also employed by Enka and also one of our newly found friends, Walter Hubbard from Atlanta, found a National Guard program that led to exemption from Vietnam. Become a Navigator in the Air National Guard. Walter was about 3 months ahead of me in this program. Like Walter, I had had Air Force ROTC in college so I was able to receive a direct commission to 2nd Lieutenant and a slot in the Navigation Training Program at Mather AFB, Sacramento, CA, starting in January 1967. After our training, Walter and I served six years as navigators on KC-97 refueling tankers based out of Knoxville, TN. Twice a year we'd fly over to Frankfurt Germany's Rhine-Main airport, military side and support NATO's F-4 fighter jet training missions over the North Sea and Europe.
We packed up our goods from our Morristown apartment, stored them in the basement of another friend and started our driving trek across country, heading for Riverside, California and the Seidlitzs for New Years. En-route we stopped to visit Barbara's relatives in Phoenix, drove up to see the Grand Canyon, spending the night in Flagstaff, on Route 66, before Interstate 40. The couple who owned the motel felt sorry for us because we were spending Christmas Eve without family and brought us a tray of homemade cookies. It was December 25th when we got to the rim overlook. With freezing temps & winds whipping, we stepped out, looked around, yep, done that and gone. We probably gave less than one hour to the entire rim-adventure and then we struck out for Riverside.
We joined my Uncle and Aunt (Seidlitzs) at the March AFB Officers Club New Year’s Eve dinner/party and then set out a few days later for our drive up to Sacramento and Mather AFB.
My nine months of active Air Force duty spent at Mather were very enjoyable because Northern California offered us so much to see and do. Yes, I was flying training missions five days a week (some nights too) but after the first month we were allowed to travel outside our area. In no special order but I can remember visiting: San Francisco, Lake Tahoe (north & south shores), Tahoe's Heavenly Valley, Yosemite, Napa Valley, El Dorado (Poor Reds BBQ, still in business). I'll share two stories from our Air Force experiences.
A 2nd Lieutenant's pay was about $321/month (about half what I had been making at Enka). We had a REALLY nicely furnished apartment across the American River, not associated with the AFB's typical offerings. We had two cars and we were traveling every weekend. While we didn't feel poor, it was not unusual to run short on funds toward the end of a month. So, when we'd go to San Francisco, we'd take the highways along the North Bay, coming in by Hamilton AFB, across the Golden Gate Bridge into the city (it was free in those days).
My only credit card back then was a Shell gas card. However, I'd stop into the Hamilton AFB Officers Club and cash a check for our coming weekend expenses. In "the good old days", checks were all handled manually and it'd take almost a week to work its way back to our Sacramento bank and by then I'd have a new paycheck in place to cover it. In a similar vein, we'd use our Shell card to get a full tank of gas and drive up to Tahoe's South Shore and Barbara would play the nickel slots. I'm certain most of the time we'd lose money but I can only remember the winning times. We'd use the winnings for lunch and dinner around town, head back to Sacramento and still have extra spending money for days. You have to remember that $1 in 1967 is equivalent to $9.00 today (2023).
During our summer in Sacramento, Barbara flew home to be with her father who'd had a mild stroke. A plan evolved while she was back East that would have my sister fly back from Atlanta to Sacramento together and spend two weeks with us. My sister (ten years younger than I) did NOT want to leave Bainbridge, but my folks laid down an ultimatum, travel to visit me or go to camp. Roslyn picked visiting us. As Barbara and Roslyn were walking toward the Atlanta departure gate, Roslyn fainted because she was so anxious over the thought of the trip. You may or may not be aware that my father made garlic pickles every year. He boxed up a jar for Barbara to carry on the plane for the return trip with Roslyn. They flew from Atlanta to Dallas, changing planes in Dallas using the tram trains. Barbara sat the pickle box in the seat next to her but at each stop more travelers got on the tram and ultimately she had to move the box to free up a seat. Unfortunately for the man who sat down, Barbara noticed that the pickles had leaked and the man sat in the wet spot before she could say anything. We'd love to know how he explained the smell to others later in the day.
Roslyn enjoyed Barbara's willingness to suggest and work with her in an update to her haircut, plucked eyebrows, blue mascara, mini-skirts to 1960's California "standards", not in line with those back in Bainbridge.
I believe that when she walked off her returning plane in Tallahassee my mother thought we might have gone overboard and thought Roslyn looked like a hooker (vs Bainbridge 60's style). When Roslyn started back to high school, her principal measured her hemline, which was more than 3"s above her knees but Roslyn convinced him that her height made it impossible to find another solution.
We traveled with Roslyn for a day tour of San Francisco, including that tour of the Haight-Ashbury area. When she got back to Bainbridge, telling her tales of travel, no one had any idea what a hippy was.
We also rented a "tent" cabin at Yosemite National Park and spent a weekend there. We were eating dinner with a view of the falls. During the meal Roslyn asked when they turned off the falls.
Roslyn also reminded me of the time we bought cherries for 10 cents/pound at a roadside stand, providing us with a yummy snack.
Ultimately, at the end of my nine month Navigator Training with my wings earned, in September 1967 we packed up and headed back to Morristown and my job with American Enka. They were required to hold my position during my military leave.
We were more or less settled back into our East Tennessee life style when we thought it'd be a great idea to own a home vs renting an apartment. We found plans for an A-Frame and bought a lot up on Crockett's Ridge with an elevated 500 foot view westward toward Knoxville and the Smoky Mountains. We interviewed builders and were within days of signing a contract to build when my brother-in-law, Joe Hinerfeld called and asked how we'd like to move back to Atlanta and come to work with him and Harvey at Secom. We kept the Morristown lot, paying $45/year in taxes and sold it for triple our investment in 2011 to a "neighbor" who wanted to plant grape vines.
I continued my National Guard air refueling flights out of Knoxville until I'd put in the required six years (1973). My monthly flights were generally over the Southeast but on a few occasions we did missions to Puerto Rico and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (navigation training) as well as the twice-a-year missions in Germany. While on these missions, I also got some side weekend trips to London, Amsterdam & Copenhagen (twice) and of course around Southern Germany (Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Rhine river cruise)
Barbara and I did suffer the loss of a baby girl during this brief time back in Morristown. The pregnancy went full term although the obstetrician had determined the fetus had zero heartbeat weeks prior to birth.
We moved to Atlanta in the spring of 1968 and as they say, the rest is history.
We rented a duplex at 3747 Ashford-Dunwoody Rd.
This was Julie's home at birth, December 24, 1969
We bought our 1st house at 4880 Windwood Dr, Dunwoody in 1970.
Ryan was born in Atlanta on December 6, 1972.
We built our current Roswell home and moved in during October 1978
Secom remained in business until end of May 2022 when I "pulled the plug" and shut it down.
Barbara died from lung cancer on October 5, 2022.
Pause in my story
November 10, 2023