Goldfoot Genealogy

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Oh well, I'm 92 in 2 months, might as well confess all before I forget it all.  I was born to Morris Goldfoot, Jewish, and Mildred Elizabeth Robinson, daughter of a Swedish immigrant and English/Scottish  immigrant with deep roots in Ireland.  My mother's side was connected to a Queen of England and my father's side connected to  my only sibling, Dr. David Alan Goldfoot, psychiatrist who I am most proud to share this connection.  I am connected to Ian Goldfoot of South Africa, who is also connected to my 3rd cousin, the famous Stanley Goldfoot also of South Africa who made aliyah to Palestine in his youth.  He became Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group, a wanted group by the British. As far as this goes, I believe I'm related to Netanyahu's mother through her maiden name.   Wow!  Then I'm connected to King David and to Rashi, commentator of the Torah.  I'm so proud of my genes, holding me together through a few anti-Semite attitudes, not too bad for me as a kid in Portland, Oregon, USA. I didn't know any of these genetic  facts, though, taking up genealogy and DNA details much later.  

As a girl in Ladds Addition, a neighborhood experiment of depositing a mixed median economy nationality group in one area to see how their smorgasbords turned out at PTA special meetings, and attending Washington High with the monied young teens of the Eastmoreland  neighborhood instead of the higher economy of Grant High School students.  I would meet teens I didn't know, and the meeting format didn't allow chatting then as I remember.  We had oodles of balls to attend in formal gowns, though, with boyfriends bearing corsages.                       

 My brother, 8 years younger, was so cute that I put him on the Lewis & Clark football float as a future player with his blond hair and blue eyes.  Here he and his wife Lorraine, both psychologist are, enjoying life, happily since he has passed away.   I turned to him for many of my questions or proud moments of Ah-has in discovering a fact in my research and he'd bust my bubble telling me it was already known. I'm referring to my Pesach research.  That reminds me;  I experienced real highs at my own discovering a fact;  still do, best if not known to others, of course.    

Oh yes, I was a joiner.  I joined B'nai Brith Girls, then the Jewish sororities of QED and then of Sub Deb, which meant I was going to really dance a lot in formals.  The Jewish girls had their own sororities being they were never asked to join the Gentile sororities.  Anti-Semitism showed up in many ways.  When I was 16 and a Senior, I was chosen as Queen Esther of the Purim Ball.  That came about with the help of my boy friend, Sammy Arnstein of Eastmoreland! His father was a jewler.   I didn't know what an impression that would make in my mind as I grew much older.  Throughout it all, I attended Sunday School and wound up teaching when about 15 to the youngest students.  That, of course, started my interest and final career choice of teaching.  That and one day I was asked to be a Girl Scout director for the mothers and taught these adults once a month.              

My best girl friend was a high school girl, Shirley Katz from Eastmoreland whose parents were holocaust survivors.  We went to Vancouver BC on a BBG trip and stayed at someone's home.  The Boys of BBG were playing basketball against Vancouver, and Sammy was one of them.  Shirley and I shopped and bought a cashmere sweater each being our money was worth more.  That was memorable.  Shirley resorted to suicide as a young adult;  leaving me without a close pal.  Another younger one had been Joan Padrow, 2 years younger than me and 2 houses from mine.  We didn't keep close as school divided us. Joan's parents were immigrants from Palestine/Israel.  Her father was a dentist and a pharmacist. He'd come home each week and scrub the kitchen floor for Mimi.  What a husband!!  Mimi would walk over to our house and visit with my mom every day, and pinch our cheeks.  She even tried to get her to accompany her on a visit back to Israel but mom felt she couldn't go.                                                     

Our neighborhood was family-minded.  My father's sister visited with my mom quite a lot, and they both visited with Dad's other sister who had 5 girls.  Uncle Werner was a Jewish refugee from from Germany who may have been the last Jew to get out in 1939.  Then when I could drive at 16, drove my mom to see her parents who lived in the countryside every week.  Mom made all my costumes.  She did the wall-papering in the house, too, and the painting.  Dad said, "MY Milly can do anything !"   Mom and I went shopping downtown Portland just about every week.  Besides that, a few days each week I took dancing;  tap, then ballet, toe, and finally, Spanish dancing from Therese Stopper. I walked home every day from high school with Pat Diel who took ballet from the other more well-known Russian dancer, Nicholas Vasilieff..   Additionally, I took piano starting at 8 years, I think it was, and was terrible as I would not take time to practice.  That poor teacher was the mother of one  of our Senators or Reps, can't remember.  She had arthritic fingers.  

  

This is a photo of my Mom, Mildred E. Goldfoot nee Robinson

This is Dad's latest acquisition;  a huge cattle truck.  The cattle went from the feed lot in Ontario to the Portland Silver Falls Slaughter House.  He had a driver, but sometimes Dad did it. Dad wore jeans and a plaid shirt, jeans low just like high schoolers today.  He was rather a rarity in the Jewish world.   

Mom sat for me at my portrait oil painting class in Ontario.  I'm sure glad she did. On the left is me at age 15.  I remember I sent it to my boyfriend of then, Mort Shirken.  

 Finally the day came when my close friends had to attend college out of town, like U of O or Oregon State.  Being the youngest, 16, I was kept home and attended Lewis & Clark College, alone...no friends I knew with me.  I wanted to be a Dietician.  A year later, I was married to a Reed College pre-med student and pregnant, not Jewish. Wes Henwood parted ways after living a year in Seattle, and he became  a Radiologist.  I wound up as an elementary teacher.  I eventually married Danny Eskow from Brooklyn, New York who had moved to Florida when my children were adults.  His last job sent him to Ontario, Oregon where I lived.  We married, the only Jew marrying the only Jew.  Danny and I made aliyah at my suggestion in 1980, both as teachers.  We returned in about 6 years being my son had become very ill in Portland and they didn't know what to do about it, asking me to return, so we did.  By 2004 I was writing blogs defending Israel and haven't stopped since, but they have turned into 7 of them.                                      

Living in Ontario, Oregon where my Dad had his feed lot is quite different than my Portland city living.  Here's my Steve and Debby with horse and dog, Molly.  I love this picture!  Steve's still here in Portland helping me and Debby wound up on top of a mountain in North Carolina after her husband passed away.  It's the women who have done the traveling, ever since biblical days.  

I'm a good 65 here, standing the model's stance I learned at Marie Easterly Modeling School I attended the summer before college. Look at that back.  I stood up straight then.  Ugh!  

                    An oil painting I did of Danny while in Portland.  

Now, here I am, at age 92, almost, looking back at my life.  This has been a rare time of anti-Semitism, of mixed social movement in our country.  I had almost forgotten I was Jewish, in a way, but finally got my mind together and felt more Jewish than I ever had.  I am so grateful for the experiences I have had, my children, Steve and Deborah, my father and mother, Danny, families and friends.  I know who I am.                                  

Here I work in my 2nd room  in an assisted living center that cost an arm and a leg, grateful for the money I had by selling all my goods, to be here.  I have been able to write to my heart's content and not have to cook for myself.  Yeah!  Although trying to keep kosher is a main problem of mine, I have accepted it for myself.  It makes me feel so Jewish, and that's important.  I can hold onto my ethics.  My mind is better than ever, I have decided, except for forgetting certain words.  I can think logically. 

My body seems to have aged, though, with a cracked back and broken hip, not to mention a complete broken elbow bone operation in Israel.   I never thought logically over men, but I can with politics.  I have a pacemaker that's good till I'm 99.  Hope runs in my family and wishes to see Israel coming out of all of this for the best.  I have to keep an eye on things.  

(I realize that this turns out to be a study of Jewish life from 30s onward in the USA, how some have gone from orthodox living to mixed heritage and continuing with luck and what's meant to happen today.)

How could I forget, I threw over oil painting and started writing in its place.  I discovered what blogs were from a Robinson cousin who was dying and wrote in his every day.  I decided to try it to place my venting in defense of Israel, as anti-Semitism ran rampant in 2004 as well as now.  I've been writing and researching every day since then, and reading again more of our history. There's so much more to our knowledge than just the holidays.  It's mind boggling !!!I've also written 2 books, Letters From Israel and Messages From A Syrian Jew Trapped in Egypt;  both factual, using all factual facts but changed names in the 2nd one to protect the main character, Vick, who I still correspond with.    Hope I can keep on chugging away helping him.  He's SO good looking!!!

  

Labels: history, Jewish life in Western USA, Sociology

# posted by Nadene Goldfoot @ 2:58 PM