AN INTERVIEW WITH HARRY SAX

An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach

The Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project

Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries

©Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project

University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014

Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans

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The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a

Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables

students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-

person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the

support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish.

The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false

starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All

measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases

photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator.

The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of

the Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project.

Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center

University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas

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PREFACE

In 1939, Harry Sax was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son to first generation American Jews. He spent his childhood on Chicago's South, where his family belonged to a progressive Reform congregation. After graduating from Hyde Park High School, he continued his education at Indiana University. In college, Harry was a member of the ZBT Jewish fraternity, participated in a singing group, and was a cadet in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

Upon graduating from college, Harry was stationed in Munich, Germany as a second lieutenant in the Quartermasters Corps. In addition to his required military duties, he also participated in an after-hours acting group; through this group, he was hired as an extra and for small roles, including The Great Escape.

When he finished his service, Harry returned to Chicago, where he connected with a high school friend, Mike Schulson. The two became partners and purchased Arby's franchises in Chicago and Las Vegas. Thus, in 1968, while his partner remained in Chicago, Harry moved to Las Vegas and opened two franchise locations in two weeks. Though it took a few years to stabilize the business and overcome competition, he opened a third location in 1972 on South Decatur, what was then the western edge of the city. Today, Harry has nineteen locations in Las Vegas, with additional franchises in Reno and Barstow, California, and employs nearly 300 people.

After about twenty years as a "closet Jew" in the city, Harry reconnected with Judaism and joined Congregation Ner Tamid in the late 1990s. He served on its board, eventually becoming vice president and then president (2007-09). He also dedicated himself to have a bar mitzvah, following up on his Jewish education and confirmation as a teenager. Harry has also served on the Anti-Defamation League's board as well as an active member of the Chamber of Commerce.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Interview with Harry Sax

on April 8, 2015 by Barbara Tabach

in Las Vegas, Nevada

Preface iv

Discusses family background; paternal and maternal sides converging in Chicago how parents met; at university childhood on South Side of Chicago. Talks about time in military in Germany after college; acting hobby getting him roles in movies; chance meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Returns from service; purchases Arby franchises and moves to Las Vegas. Describes market research before opening doors; why Las Vegas was a strong retail market 1-5

Recalls what city was like in 1960s; cheap buffets, tipping maitre d's for good seating at shows. Describes first apartment in city. More about first two franchise locations; competitors; taking time to turn profit; eventually opening third location; initial marketing strategy. Mentions evolution of Arby's menu 6-10

Talks about role of Judaism during childhood; belonging to progressive Reform congregation; unique confirmation classes. Recalls reconnecting to his faith as an adult; joining Congregation Ner Tamid; serving as vice president, then president; becoming bar mitzvahed as adult. Describes leadership philosophy, regardless of organization; focusing on employee empowerment to serve customers/congregants 11-15

More about Arby's business; work to get up and running; franchises organizational structure; current employee numbers. More about serving on Ner Tamid's board, Marla Letizia's leadership; developing new programming; changes in membership numbers before and after recession. Praises current congregation president Jacky Rosen's job performance. Discusses managing personnel changes while president 16-21

Recalls Ralph Engelstad Hitler birthday party. Mentions work with Anti-Defamation League; reasons for ending board involvement; charitable endeavors through Arby's business; work with Chamber of Commerce 22-24

Index 25-26

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This is Barbara Tabach. Today is April 8, 2015. I'm sitting in my UNLV office in the

library with Harry Sax.

Harry, spell your name for us.

H-A-R-R-Y, S-A-X.

Tell me about your ancestral story.

I'll tell you what I know. On my father's side was from the Ukraine. I think their name may have

been Zax and when they went through immigration, they mispronounced it and it became Sax.

So Zax would have been... ?

Z-A-X, I think. This is what I hear. On my father's side my grandfather immigrated. He had a

relative somewhere in Minnesota, I think around Ely. I don't know how he got down to the

Chicago area, but he ended up in East Chicago, Indiana, which is on the Illinois-Indiana border

near Lake Michigan.

[My father] met my mother at University of Illinois in Champaign on a blind date.

Actually, the first blind date they couldn't stand each other, but my mother needed a date for a

social event and they fixed her up with my father again and it took. They eloped, actually. My

mother was from a fairly well-to-do family; her father was a surgeon, and my father's family was

from more humble means. So they eloped. They decided to set up residence in Chicago on the

South Side. My father went into the high fashion women's shoe business in Gary and Hammond,

Indiana.

My mother's background is Sephardic Jews who were from Toledo, Spain, and with the

Inquisition, went to Portugal; then after being chased out of there went to Amsterdam. Then my

grandfather, my mother's father was born in London where he went to medical school, became a

surgeon, and came over to the United States. My mother, of course, was raised in Chicago; that's

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where my grandfather immigrated.

My own background to continue the thread...I was raised on the South Side of Chicago. I

went to Bret Harte Grammar School. I went to Hyde Park High School. Probably the most

famous thing about Hyde Park High School is some of its graduates; Steve Allen and Mel Torme

are graduates of Hyde Park High School. I don't know that she graduated, but Amelia Earhart

went to Hyde Park High School. I was in a cappella choir and sang next to a guy who was great on

the piano, and his name is Herbie Hancock.

Really?

All of these people went to Hyde Park High School on the South Side of Chicago. I then went to

Indiana University. I was in a singing group there called the Singing Hoosiers of Indiana. In

1960, I went on a USO tour for sixty days in Europe and we sang mostly at army bases.

When I graduated—I was in ROTC in college—I took a commission as a second

lieutenant, and I got stationed in Munich, Germany, where I was in the Quartermaster Corps. But I

also, in college and in the military as a social after-hours activity, got into an acting group. They

were filming a couple of movies overseas and sometimes when they needed extras or actors that

would just speak two or three lines, they'd go to the local military base and if there was a theater

group, they'd ask them to be in those movies. So I was actually in two movies over there. I was in

a movie called The Great Escape with Steve McQueen and Charlie Bronson.

I remember that movie.

That was filmed...the prison was erected outside of the Munich. The film studio was called

Grunwald Studios. I was just a background character in that movie.

In 1964, they filmed a movie over there called Situation Hopeless...But Not Serious, and it

starred Mike Connors, Robert Redford and Alec Guinness; I was in that movie. I think I spoke

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about twenty words in that movie. The movie is about two GIs who parachute over Germany, and

Alec Guinness kind of keeps them in protective custody, locked up in a cell in the basement, and

gives them these phony reports about the war, which has been over for years but he still keeps

them locked up. I'm in a short scene with Alec Guinness where I'm an MP on the back of a truck.

It pulls in and I ask Alec Guinness if he's seen a guy running around with a brown coat and no hat,

and he says a few things back to me, and I said about ten words to him. That was my claim to

fame.

That's a pretty illustrious actor to have lines with.

Yes. Unfortunately, one of us made it big, I think this guy named Redford. I would have worked

much cheaper. But that was my theater experience in Munich.

The other memorable thing, of course, which I think I may have shared with you, is that

while I was in Munich I had a group of friends who would meet down in the student area of [the

city] every Saturday because, as you know, in Europe cafes are very, very important and part of

the social landscape. One Saturday morning I met my group of friends. This one friend of mine

Robbie—Colonel Robinson when we were on duty, but Robbie when we were off duty—Robbie

was a black officer and he was sitting together with a couple of other black gentlemen that I didn't

recognize and he said, "Harry, I'd like you to meet a new friend of mine. This is Dr. King and his

sidekick Dr. Ralph Abernathy." This was 1964 and, of course, that was Martin Luther King Jr. He

was on his way to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and he had stopped in Munich.

They had asked my friend Robbie, because he was such a well-known officer who was black, to

escort Dr. King around Munich before he went on to Stockholm. I didn't recognize him at that

time because in those days we didn't have the Internet or TV. We had Stars and Stripes

newspaper. But as I'm walking away with a friend, I did kind of recollect who this gentleman was

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and I said, "Wasn't that Dr. King; that civil rights gentleman?"

So you had some awareness of him.

Yes, I had some awareness. I remember he had a bowl of soup and he said—and he had a very

deep voice—"That's good soup." We just had a short conversation, and then I and another friend

of mine went on. So those were some of my experiences in Europe.

Then I came back to Chicago, and I met up with a fellow I went to Hyde Park High School

with who had bought a franchise for Arby's fast food restaurants. He and I talked and we became

partners; I became the operational partner and he handled the administrative work for the Las

Vegas market. I moved out here in 1968 and opened our first restaurant, [at] 1625 East

Charleston.

Before we go too fast here, I want to know a little bit about Arby's franchise.

Sure.

When was it started?

Arby's was started in 1964 by two nice Jewish boys named Leroy and Forrest Raffel in Boardman,

Ohio, a suburb of Youngstown. They decided, after looking at the fast food landscape in the '60s,

that they wanted to open up a fast food place that sold something other than hamburgers, and so

they decided that roast beef would be a higher quality item to sell. So they started the business.

My partner bought a franchise for the South Side of Chicago.

What was his name?

Mike Schulson. He's still my partner today. Still lives in Chicago. He and I subsequently formed

a partnership for Nevada. I moved out here to be the operating partner of our franchise in 1968

and it's been my day job ever since.

Had you come to Las Vegas prior to that?

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Never been here. I came out here with my partner to look and see if this was an area where we

wanted to open up Arby's. My degree in school was marketing and I did market research in those

days. We didn't have computers, so it was very hard to collect data; it was all done manually. But

I came up with something that I thought was a very curious aberration. Las Vegas in 1968 had

about a hundred and fifty thousand people and so did Salt Lake City; but Las Vegas seemed to

have about twice as many retail establishments, especially grocery stores, as Salt Lake City. I

thought that was a mistake. But when I researched it I found out that that was valid info. The only

thing that I can think of was that in 1968 there were a ton of people, as there are today, who make

their living in the gaming industry and a lot of them had income that maybe they weren't reporting

to the IRS.

You think?

Or putting it in a bank. So as a result, you had a huge amount of disposable income that didn't

show up in anybody's numbers except for retail sales because when you have a huge amount of

disposable income, you spend more. So I thought, well, here is a town that has this very wonderful

aberration, this tremendous amount of disposable income. The weather was good. We had all the

entertainment. No state income tax. So all of those things convinced me and my partner that this

was a great place to open up an Arby's and to develop several stores here.

So as a marketing picture, it looked really good?

Yes.

what did you think about it? The weather is always appealing, but gaming, tourism, all of

that...what did you think about living in Las vegas at that time?

Sure. In the '60s, even as today, the West and the Southwest were the growing parts of country.

So the population was migrating from the East Coast and northern cities to the West and the

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Southwest. Those were the growth areas. Gaming and leisure industries were expanding rapidly.

So I thought it was wonderful, plus that Vegas was an entertainment capital even in the '60s. The

ownership, of course, of the gaming industry has changed dramatically over the last fifty years.

As a businessman looking back at the '60s, what do you remember? What do you recall

historically?

I recall there were a lot fewer hotels. Most of the buffets were either free or unbelievably cheap.

When you went to the shows, you didn't buy tickets for any show. You would go into the show

and your seat depended on how much you tipped the maitre d' who was in charge of the

showroom. So that kind of ties into that disposable income. You had maitre d's here making huge

amounts of money in the '60s and probably not reporting a lot of it because you could walk into an

empty showroom, but if you didn't tip the maitre d' properly, you were going to be seated in the

back. Also, most of the major shows in Vegas served dinner, which was a real challenge for the

wait staff to get food and cocktails and everything out prior to the curtain going up. But prices

were definitely a lot lower then and they gave away a lot more. They did a lot more comping and

offering of freebies to people to come out here. I'm sure the junket business is still alive and well

in Vegas today; I'm guessing, and I don't know this for a fact, that it was much bigger then.

Yes, I think that's probably a good guess.

Right.

So where did you decide to live and how did you choose a place to live?

My first apartment was on Rexford Drive, which is probably in the shadow of the Stratosphere

Hotel. If you went down St. Louis and took the first or second street to the left that was Rexford

Drive. It was a very modest apartment building. When I moved in there, there were a bunch of

casino hosts that lived there and people that worked in the pit on the gaming floor. When I asked

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them to teach me how to play craps, they said, "You don't want to know." They'd say, "Harry, you

see those tall hotels, they're not building them with the money they're giving you; they're building

them with the money they're taking from you." To this day I haven't a clue how to play craps after

being here almost fifty years.

And that's how one can continue to live here easily, for sure.

Exactly right.

That's good advice. And you didn't have a family that you were moving here with?

I had no relatives west of Chicago in that day. I was just excited about the opportunity of going

west and the weather and all the things I talked about before: the entertainment, a new business, all

those things.

So the 1625 East Charleston was the address of the first Arby's store.

Right.

What's the cross street there?

The closest cross street would be Maryland Parkway and that would be about a mile west.

What was the neighborhood like and how did you choose that neighborhood?

It's interesting. I think in those days the parent company was choosing the locations. Today the

franchisees tend to choose the locations and get approval from the parent company. So they chose

it. And frankly, I don't know a lot about what went into their research in those days other than they

chose that location and my second location, which opened a week later, which is on Lake Mead

and Bruce. Those stores opened about a week apart in 1968; I think one was October 21 and the

other was October 28.

So you were personally quite busy opening two locations.

I brought a couple of fellows out with me from Chicago to help me run these stores. I was

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working eighty, a hundred hours a week in this business. And in the first two or three years

business was very, very slow. We were not doing well.

Oh, really? Why not?

I think maybe some of it was competition. Kentucky Fried Chicken put their toe in the water into

the roast beef business and opened up a concept called Kentucky Beef and it was across from the

old Bishop Gorman High School here in Las Vegas. They opened up in March of 1968 and I think

they did seventy or eighty thousand dollars the first month selling sandwiches at sixty-nine cents a

sandwich. I opened up about six or seven months later and I was doing about six thousand dollars

a month. So we went through a couple of years where we came close to closing our doors with our

first couple of locations.

I don't know if it was a combination of my competition closing and us having more

perseverance, but things started to turn around and business started going up. It got to the point

where I was actually looking for a third location. Now, I opened these first two stores in '68, so I

looked for my third location in 1972; that's how long it took me to recover from the negative into

the real positive territory as far as sales and profits.

I saw this location and my heart sank because it was going to be open by another

competitor called Roy Rogers Roast Beef, who was actually at that point, I think, owned by

Marriott out of Washington, D.C. I kept driving by this location and they never put the equipment

in. So I contacted my real estate broker, Alvin Levy, who was a county commissioner here. His

son is a past president, actually, of the same temple that I'm a past president of, Congregation Ner

Tamid. Alvin contacted the landlord who owned that whole section of town, Ernie Becker, Becker

Homes. My partner and I met with Ernie Becker, and he said, "I've got Roy Rogers on the lease

and they've got more money than I've got and I'd be happy to lease it to you because I'm in good

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shape." So he leased it to us. It was the first restaurant we opened up that just made money hand

over fist, and we were off and running. In the ensuing years, we just kept opening up restaurant

after restaurant and everyone was a home run.

So the third location was...?

Three fifteen South Decatur.

At that time was South Decatur like the edge of the city?

Decatur was the western edge of the city just about, but it was a growing area. So we opened up

there in 1972.

And today how many locations do you have?

We've got nineteen here in Las Vegas, one in Reno and one in Barstow, California.

I think that's interesting. You've mentioned two roast beef places. I don't even remember

Kentucky Fried Chicken being in that business. Were they located in the Midwest, too?

I think Vegas was a test market for it and I don't think they ever got out of Vegas because I don't

think it worked out for them. So that was 1968 and that was one competitor. There was another

competitor called Sam's Roast Beef that was out of Sacramento. Then I mentioned Roy Rogers

Roast Beef, which is actually still alive today although much smaller. I think they have locations

in New York City and maybe in Washington, D.C. because at one point Marriott Hotels owned

them, which I think is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Interesting. When you come to Las Vegas at that time, how do you let people know that the

store exists?

You send out fliers to businesses and homes within a one- and two-mile radius, which we'd hand

deliver sometimes; do radio advertising; and, of course, television advertising. Those would be the

two or three most used ways of letting people know about you.

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The fast food business...that's a tough business it seems like.

Yes. I think that it is. I think it's gotten more competitive today than it's been in a long time. It's

always been competitive, but it's even more so today. Everybody is selling sandwiches. The

convenience stores are. Grocery stores have opened up ready-to-go sandwich sections. And then,

of course, you have all these sub shops and sandwich shops that have opened. So yes, it's very,

very competitive.

My husband, I told him I was going to be talking to you. He said, "Look what we got today

in the mail."

You got an ad, yes.

The menus change rapidly, too, it seems.

Yes. It's interesting you say because it has. When we started in '68, we sold one sized roast beef

sandwich, soft drinks and potato chips, and that was the entire menu.

Potato chips, no fries.

No french fries. Probably two or three years later we introduced potato cakes, which we still have

today, and then we introduced french fries. But today, depending on the year, we'll have ten to

fifteen different kinds of sandwiches on the menu. So the menu has expanded dramatically. As

you saw, we also sell nontraditional sandwiches like gyros. Our market fresh line, which is an

upscale set of sandwiches served on thick-cut honey wheat bread, has done very, very well. We

have expanded into what I call other meat blocks. We're not just roast brief; we're turkey, we're

ham, we're corned beef, we're chicken. So we offer a wide variety of sandwiches using all four of

those different meats. Our current campaign is a slogan that says, "Arby's, we have the meats,"

and that's resonated well with the public.

So going back into Las Vegas...You were raised Jewish.

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Right.

At what point did you seek out a Jewish community here?

That's interesting. I was raised in the '50s in Chicago and I think this is probably similar to other

areas. The Jewish population, at least in Chicago, was trying very hard to assimilate, to be

Americans. We were very proud of our American heritage. But my temple, which was in the

shadow of the University of Chicago, a very progressive area of Chicago, probably did some

things that not a lot of other Jewish temples, Reform temples, did. I think in most Reform temples

in the '50s men did not wear kippahs for services. On the High Holidays we had a trumpet instead

of a shofar.

Really?

While we had Friday night services, our biggest services were Sunday morning. I don't know how

large the congregation was, but I suspect it was one of the larger ones. The name of the temple

was Temple Sinai; it was on the South Side of Chicago and I would suspect we probably had two

thousand members or more. Reform temples, to my recollection in those days, did not do a lot of

bar mitzvahs; it was confirmation. I was confirmed.

No bar mitzvah for you.

No bar mitzvah. No bar mitzvah then. I was bar mitzvahed much later. I think I was seventy-two.

Oh. We'll work up to that.

A few years in between, yes. But I was confirmed. It was a very, very progressive temple. Two

or three of my confirmation classes were very progressive. One was really what amounts to a

comparative religion class. We'd go around to every Christian denomination. We'd study the

branch, whether it was Baptist or Presbyterians; we'd go to the service; and then after the service

we sat down with the clergy in charge and ask them any questions. We learned the difference

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between the Greek Orthodox form of the Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic. We may have

known more about the difference than the Roman Catholics did, at least most of my friends. That

was exciting.

The other class, which I know was not very common in the '50s, was the sex education

class where a man came in and talked to the boys and a woman came in and talked to the girls in a

very informative, clinical way about something that certainly fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys

and girls are very uptight [about].

Sure. And back then that sounds very progressive.

Yes, this is super progressive. Of course, the third part was just Jewish history and the culture of

the Jewish religion. Our rabbi was Louis L. Mann. I think he had about three doctorates, one of

which was in theology, but I think he [also] had one in the physical sciences. He was an orator par

excellence. When you went to services, he had not only the delivery of Moses on Mount Sinai, but

the topics he talked about and the way he wove them into religious discussion, it was more

exciting for a young boy or girl to go to a service than to go to the movies; that's how exciting and

vibrant he made the services.

That's certainly not something you hear about very often that somebody's able to do that.

No. There are things that you probably don't even hear about today. I remember when he was

teaching us Jewish history and what makes Judaism different from the other religions, he told us

that many of the points of view that he was going to express might be a little hard to grasp, but that

he was going to talk to us like we were adults, not children. He said, "If you get 30 or 40 percent

of what I'm saying, it will be a hundred percent more than if I talk to you like you're children." He

did. Of course, this certainly was a tenet of the Reform part of Judaism then. He said, "And if I

say anything that doesn't make sense, challenge me and we'll talk it out." So it was a very

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participative type of an environment. It was a very exciting thing to do. So that was my

experience.

When I went to college, I joined a Jewish fraternity, ZBT, Zeta Beta Tau. I did go to some

events at the Hillel foundation at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Then when I went into the service and I got stationed overseas, I really was kind of passive

in terms of my involvement in the Jewish community. When I got out of service and came to

Chicago and then to Las Vegas, I would go occasionally with friends; I was a High Holiday Jew.

I'd go to the High Holiday services and not every year, and when I came to Vegas I probably went

less.

So I was really kind of a closet Jew in Las Vegas for the first twenty or thirty years until I

went on this trip with a TV station that took some of their clients on trips and I met a friend of

mine—wasn't a friend then, but whom I met—Norma Friedman, a member of Congregation Ner

Tamid. She and I talked. I told her I was Jewish and she said, "What temple do you belong to?" I

said, "I don't belong." And she said, "Shame on you." She pulled the Jewish mother guilt trip on

me. She said, "Well, you should get involved."

So I did. I talked to Rabbi Akselrad. I really liked him a lot. So I subsequently joined

Congregation Ner Tamid. I was happy with my involvement with the temple, but I've always liked

to be low-key. I know a lot of people like to be well-known and I'm kind of the opposite; I like to

be known by very few people.

You fly under the radar.

I like to fly under the radar. I'm kind of uncomfortable with being out there and highly visible.

But as fortune would have it, some of my friends in the temple asked me to be on the board of

directors and I agreed. Then subsequently they asked me to be vice president and subsequently

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president of the temple, which I did from 2007 to 2009.

So about what year is Norma cajoling you into [joining the congregation]?

That was probably around 2000; somewhere between '95 and 2000.

Did you know very many people there?

I knew nobody there. Like I said, I wasn't out there in the community at large or in the Jewish

[community] very much. So really I don't think I knew anybody in the temple.

Got it. Boy, they put you on the fast track to get you—

Yes, they sure did.

—in the leadership management role here.

I tried to convince them that I was the worst person to be president of a Jewish temple. I had been

in the closet, so to speak, in terms of my religious practices for twenty or thirty years. I was in a

relationship with a non-Jewish girl, who's my wife now; she's Catholic. Neither of us have

children. I kept ticking off all these points why I was really the worst person in the world to be

president of a Jewish temple. But the rabbi kept trying to convince me and finally he did. So

when I agreed to become involved, it was then that I decided that the president of a temple should

be able to read Hebrew, and that's when I enrolled in the B'nai Mitzvah class at Congregation Ner

Tamid.

Talk to me about that. That seems to be a very important aspect of the congregation.

I think it was. First of all, it got me back in touch with my Judaism and also, like I say, learning to

read Hebrew and being at the temple more. Obviously, I was going to Friday night services a lot

more often. I think a combination of all that. The learning that you get in a B'nai Mitzvah class

and learning to read Hebrew and to read from the Torah, all of those things reconnects you with

those roots that were still there, but let's say they hadn't been watered for thirty years.

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So it was a wonderful experience. I'd like to think I did a good job. People told me I did.

It's interesting because I really treated my service as president in the same way that I treat my

business. I've always had a few principles of how whenever I'm in a leadership position I handle

that position. The main thing is really to empower the people that work for you. My biggest

complaint with American business today is micromanagement, people who have very bright

people working for them, but they micromanage them and they limit the tremendous potential that

they have and don't involve them enough in the decision making. I've always felt that whether it's

in a temple or in a business, the smartest people in the company are not the people at the top; the

people in the fast food business are the people that wait on the customers, and in the temple it's the

people who answer the phone. While a lot of other people may ignore those folks that work at the

grassroots level, I've always been preoccupied in making them the most important people.

Because if you take care of the people who take care of the customers or the congregants in a

temple, then I think you have solved most of the problems. It's a transportable management skill

that to me is uniformly successful if you use it properly. I think I learned that in the military. I

always took care of the people before me before I took care of anything that had to do with Harry.

When we went out to play war and we'd be in bivouac and put up tents, I always made sure that all

of my troops were well positioned before I put my own tent up. I think that that's what leadership

is. There's nothing wrong with setting high goals for your people. But when you're preoccupied

with their welfare and making their life exciting, they will return the favor in spades.

I'm curious. Since we're kind of on that topic, when you first opened up your stores here,

how many people did you employee?

I probably had somewhere between fifteen and twenty people for each store.

What kind of hours were you open?

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We would be open from ten in the morning till midnight, seven days a week. Like I said, in those

early years, I'd go in the morning and I was the janitor and setup man. I was washing the

windows, mopping the floor, and then setting up the equipment and cooking the food. [For about

an] hour before we opened... I was all by myself. I learned humility. I said, "Here I am"—at that

point—"an ex-captain in the army and I'm working a hundred hours a week, mopping the floor and

setting up the equipment and cooking the food." It was baptism by fire. I really learned my

business that way. I didn't start this business with a coat and tie on. That's kept me in good stead

because now when I go around to my restaurants, I can see twenty things that maybe somebody

who didn't have that background couldn't see.

Does each restaurant have a manager and then... ?

Right. Each restaurant has a manager and two or three assistant managers. Every five or six

restaurants has a supervisor. Above the managers I have three supervisors. Then there's a director

of operations who reports directly to me. It's worked out very well.

About how many people do you employ in Las Vegas today?

Somewhere between two hundred and fifty and three hundred.

Wow. That's a nice payroll.

Nice size workforce.

That's a good payroll.

It is. You're not kidding.

Is it hard to find people to work?

Yes, it is. Although I know I'm a little bit prejudice and I think we're a great company to work

for...it's interesting because so many people out there that are unemployed could do nothing and

still get a check for sitting on their duff. I understand their point of view, why should I go to work

16

for Arby's if I can get all these benefits from the government and not have to work? I understand

that. I do. I believe that we should reward good behavior and we should not reward bad behavior,

and I think sometimes we do the opposite.

Back on the Ner Tamid side, when you came to be president in 2007, what were some of the

major things that you had to watch over?

I had a wonderful predecessor, Marla Letizia, who I had known from some of those media trips I

was on. Actually, it was Marla who had asked if I would succeed her and work with her. We just

worked so well together as a team. I think Marla is a businessperson, too. So we had the same

no-nonsense approach about the leadership of the temple. I think Marla's expression was, "Fill the

parking lot;" give people a reason to come here more than just Friday night services. We

developed a tremendous set of programs with the help of our program director, Nancy Weinberger.

Nancy developed a group of over-fifty programs and those programs were not just directed at

people at large. We had a program for young singles. We had Chardonnay Shabbats. We had and

still have a very active senior group headed by Joyce Herlands. Our viewpoint was: let's provide

exciting programs for different segments in the market, not one size fits all. I think we're

successful in that.

During the years that Marla was president and I was her vice president, we were in a new

temple. Marla was the first president in the new campus on Valle Verde. Our membership hit an

all time high during those four years. And then a bunch of things—I think the big thing is the

recession that's hit this town. But I think those were an exciting four years. I think that the people

that worked on the staff at the temple were excited about working there and I think the congregants

were happy. Like I said, we offered them a lot more than just a place for Friday night services—

Hebrew school, a day school. I'm very proud of the time that she and I served in the leadership of

17

the temple.

Do you think membership is starting to grow again now that the recession is over?

I think it will. Our current president, Jacky Rosen—I don't know how much time she has left on

her presidency; it may be this year that her presidency is over—has done an unbelievable job.

Jacky was a classmate of mine in B'nai Mitzvah class.

How many people were in your B'nai Mitzvah class?

I'm going to say there were ten of us, from ages fifty- to seventy-years-old. She's just a ball of fire.

Certainly on a day-to-day basis, I can't think of any president of a congregation who's been more

involved daily, including myself and Jacky. She's probably at the temple every day. She doesn't

have another day job, which helps. But I can't imagine the hours that she puts in at that temple.

She is there doing anything that needs to be done. She's not just serving as a president. She's a

worker bee, too.

I wondered about that because I was there one day. I met Jon Sparer and he gave me the

architectural tour and his history, and she was there. She seems to always be there.

Yes, exactly.

I didn't know if that was an expectation of her presidency or...

No. All of us who have served in the presidential role spent a lot of hours at the temple. First of

all, I lived in Summerlin, so I'm a half an hour away. But I think all of the presidents, while

they've spent a lot of time at the temple, none of us could compare with the amount of time that

Jacky Rosen has spent there. We all own our own business and we have a business thing to run.

Right.

Even though she's inherited hopefully the tail end of this recession and she's had some rough issues

to deal with because of that recession, she has done an outstanding job.

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What was your biggest challenge at that time?

I don't know that I really had any one big challenge because I had great people. I did make some

personnel shifts. Personnel are always the issue. There are no problems outside of personnel. All

the problems are caused by people.

So as a president, the main thing is to make sure that the right people are in the correct...

That's how I viewed my role as president.

All right.

We had a change in terms of the executive director. I took the program director I mentioned,

Nancy Weinberger, and with the approval of the board, we elevated her to be the executive

director of the temple, who besides being the leader of the staff, is also imbued with membership.

Even though we have a volunteer membership committee, she kind of leads the charge in that area.

There were just other people...

On the front desk, we made some changes. We wanted to bring a more friendly voice to

people who called. The first person you listen to or talk to is the person that answers the phone. I

don't care if it's a doctor's office or a temple or anything like that. If you have somebody that's

boring or just couldn't give you the time of day that is indelible in your mind. That doesn't change.

It's your first impression, perhaps.

And if you have somebody that wants to know what you're calling about and takes ownership if

you have an issue instead of saying, "Well, I'll turn you over to this person or that person..."

My thought is always that if somebody calls—and this is still my issue today with private

companies. You call a company—the phone company is the worst—and you present your problem

and person one says, "Hold on for person two," and person two turns you over to person three, and

then person three turns you back to person one, and you go round and round. I've always felt in

19

terms of customer relations or congregant relations, what people want besides caring, when they

call a company, they don't want to have to talk to four or five people in the company. They want

the person they contact to take ownership of their problem and say—sometimes you can't do this; I

know this—but there are many times you can and say, "I'll talk to the two or three people inside

the organization of the temple and get back to you," or at least, "I'll get back to you with the person

who can resolve your issue," rather than you having to talk to four or five people.

So we made a change at the executive director position. We made a change at the

receptionist position. We made other changes because I really wanted a staff that felt that their

number-one obligation was pleasing the congregants. We're there at temples. In many of my talks

with the rabbi, as the president of the temple does, we always would have healthy disagreements

on some issues. The one thing that was the overriding principle that we all agreed upon was let's

make decisions that are for the congregants' welfare rather than for select individuals. That is

apropos whether you're in the fast food business, take care of the customer first. I tell my

employees at Arby's, "Food is a sideline. We're in the customer pleasing business. Food is the

way we do it. But when people stop going through that door, I don't have a job. And if I don't

have a job, you don't have a job." It's the same thing in a congregation. But, again, the leader has

to exhibit that. If a leader takes good care of the people that work for him [or her], they'll pass that

on in their attitude towards the customer. If you want to see an example of this...if you walk in a

restaurant and you get great service and the food is hot and the wait staff is friendly, just say to the

waiter or the waitress, "You must work for a terrific person," because it's impossible to have that

attitude if you work for a curmudgeon. You can't take it out on anybody that you work for, so you

take it out on the customer or the person that you're waiting on because you're frustrated and you

don't know what to do. But if you work for a boss or somebody who's constantly supportive,

20

you're in a good mood all the time; you can't help but pass that along to the people that you're

serving.

It's contagious.

Yes.

I can see why they wanted to fast track you into leadership because you can take that

philosophy easily from one to the other.

Besides whatever business acumen I had, I've always been excited about the personnel side, the

human dynamics of what makes businesses or institutions work well. As I said before, I don't care

what institution it is, whether it's religion or business, all the problems are people; they're all

communication. I could give you the generic complaints and they apply inside a temple as well as

inside a business. In a large company the marketing people continue to sell what the operational

people can't produce. They constantly are at each other's throats. And they don't talk to each

other.

I hate to say—this is unfair to management consultants—but I'm always amused when

companies or organizations hire outside consultants because usually the consultant comes in,

interviews the CEO or president of the company about what the problems are. Then he goes down

five flights of stairs and talks to the people who are executing the mission of the company and asks

them about the issues and they tell him what they think the solutions are. Then he or she writes it

up in a nice presentation and gives it back to the president. All the president had to do was get off

their duff, walk down five flights of stairs, and ask the people doing the job. First of all, he would

have gotten the answers for free. It would have made the people feel like a million bucks. But

they don't do this. They hire outside people and that to me is a cop out in most cases.

I hear you.

21

Now, you came here at a time when there was a lot of—let's see. Nineteen sixty-nine,

there were racial riots happening in Las Vegas. Do you remember that late '60s, early '70s

period?

I know there was in Chicago.

But you don't remember them happening here?

I really don't. Maybe I was working too hard.

You might have been.

I was probably working so hard.

You were opening stores. Yes.

I'm sure there were probably racial situations.

Yes, because there was welfare rights issue. Ruby Duncan was marching.

Right. But I probably had my head buried in my business. I hate to say it, but I was just probably

unaware of that.

No, that's fine. I think that's okay to say that.

Do you remember the Engelstad situation?

I do remember that. My recollection was he had all his Nazi paraphernalia. I think there were

automobiles and flags and all kinds of stuff.

And he asked people to dress up to celebrate Hitler's birthday.

Yes, I do remember that.

But other than that do you recall any situations in Las Vegas that...anti-Semitism or

anything like that?

No. I really don't. I was on the ADL board for many years.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

22

I joined the ADL board probably about twelve years ago. I recently decided that I needed to get

off the board because I thought they were taking a political stance on many issues and I thought

that the main mission of the group should be to fight anti-Semitism and prejudice and not to take a

viewpoint one way or the other on a political thing. But during the time that I was on that board,

while there were incidents in Las Vegas, I would say that generally speaking the level of anti-

Semitic incidents in Vegas compared with some other areas was really very small.

That's the sense I get; it just was not an issue.

Right. The board was very active, had a very close relationship with the local office of the FBI.

Whoever the agent in charge was worked very closely both with the local chapter and with New

York. I learned that the national offices of the FBI has tremendous regard for the ADL because

they're a tremendous intelligence source for a lot of things that are going on. So it's been a mutual

admiration society between us and the FBI, both locally and nationally. The local chapter was

very well run. Like any religious organization, the national office gives you quotas of how much

money you're supposed to raise and they always exceeded that here. But there weren't a lot of

incidents here. We had some great speakers come in. It was, by and large, a wonderful

experience.

Any other organizations or anything that you were involved in that you want to mention?

I've raised money for different charities through Arby's. I raised money for the local chapter of the

Kidney Foundation here locally. We had two or three years where we raised a lot of money, over a

hundred thousand dollars for the Kidney Foundation.

Great.

I had a problem and that's why I didn't continue. Like a lot of charitable organizations, a portion

goes to the national headquarters and the local chapter here was really struggling to get the beepers

23

to notify people when a kidney transplant was available. With kidney transplants you've got to be

there now. So I wanted the money that I raised, which really didn't involve any effort on the

kidney board's behalf, to be made local and they insisted that twenty or thirty percent go to New

York. I said, "That's it; I'm out of here."

Yes, that's too bad.

I said, "You're worried more about your national organization." It would have been different if the

local chapter was financially well off, but they were struggling. And to me a national organization

should have recognized that if they have struggling local chapters and here's somebody that wants

to come around and raise thirty-five or forty thousand dollars a year with no effort on behalf of the

Kidney Foundation that that would be a good thing.

Yes.

I've been a member of the Chamber of Commerce, but I'm not currently active in the Chamber of

Commerce. I think that's about it.

All right. Well, I'll let you go get your car, rescue it from parking.

Okay.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

All right. Okay, good.

[End of recorded interview]

24

A

Akselrad, Rabbi Sanford, 13 Allen, Steve, 2 Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1 Anti-Defamation League, 22, 23 Arby's, 4, 5, 7, 10, 17, 20, 23

B

Barstow, California, 9 Becker Homes, 8 Becker, Ernie, 8 Bishop Gorman High School, 8 Boardman, Ohio, 4 Bret Harte Grammar School, 2 Bronson, Charlie, 2

C

Chamber of Commerce, 24 Chicago, 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 13, 22 Congregation Ner Tamid, 8, 13, 14, 17 Connors, Mike, 2

E

East Chicago, Indiana, 1 Engelstad, Ralph, 22

G

Gary, Indiana, 1 Germany, 2, 3 Grunwald Studios, 2 Guinness, Alex, 2, 3

H

Hammond, Indiana, 1 Herlands, Joyce, 17 Hyde Park High School, 2, 4

I

Indiana University, 2, 13

K

Kentucky Fried Chicken, 8, 9

INDEX Kidney Foundation, 23, 24 King Jr., Martin Luther, 3, 4

L

Letizia, Marla, 17 Levy, Alvin, 8

M

Mann, Louis L., 12 Marriott International, 8, 9 McQueen, Steve, 2 Minnesota, 1 Munich, Germany, 2, 3

N

New York City, New York, 9

P

Portugal, 1

Q

Quartermaster Corps, 2

R

Raffel, Forrest, 4 Raffel, Leroy, 4 Redford, Robert, 2, 3 Reno, Nevada, 9 Reserve Officers' Training Corps, 2 Rosen, Jacky, 18 Roy Rogers Roast Beef, 8, 9

S

Sacramento, California, 9 Salt Lake City, Utah, 5 Sam's Roast Beef, 9 Sax, Patricia, 14 Schulson, Mark, 4 Situation Hopeless...But Not Serious (movie), 2 Stars and Stripes (newspaper), 3 Stockholm, Sweden, 3 Stratosphere Casino, Hotel and Tower, 6 Summerlin (area), 18

25

T

The Great Escape (movie), 2 Toledo, Spain, 1 Torme, Mel, 2

U

Ukraine, 1 University of Chicago, 11

University of Illinois, 1

W

Washington, D.C., 8, 9 Weinberger, Nancy, 17, 19

Z

Zeta Beta Tau, 13

26