Autobiography

I was born in New York City in 1926, four years after my parents and my brother migrated to the United States from the city of Odessa in Russia. Although they arrived in New York penniless, my parents scraped together enough savings to establish the first of several small businesses just after I was born. Despite the hard times of the Great Depression and the modest financial circumstances in which we lived, they created a joyful household and they encouraged my brother and me to be optimistic about the future.