One of my most thrilling moments in philanthropy came on July 7, 2009, when we were honored guests of the Israel Air Force (IAF) at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Edelstein Auditorium at the IAF Center in Herziliya.
The state-of-the-art 260-seat auditorium, to which we made a major contribution, now serves as the main conference facility at the IAF Center. It is equipped with the latest audio-visual and electronic equipment, with special access for the disabled, including those who sustained serious injuries during their involvement in military operations.
In 1999, Michael Edelstein returned with family members to the location of his youthful home and Holocaust ordeal.
At the end of two months at Fort Dix, my orders came through to join the 338th Military Intelligence Service Battalion at Fort Meade in Maryland, the large, multipurpose Army base situated midway between Baltimore and Washington D.C. It was home to the Second U.S. Army Headquarters and quartered more than 20,000 soldiers on the post.
My battalion was one of four that made up the 470th Military Intelligence Brigade. Each battalion was assigned to a particular intelligence function: signals intelligence, aerial exploitation, and two for prisoner interrogations.
The one place we visited for several summers when the kids were young was a bungalow colony in the Catskills, one of the many Jewish resort communities that flourished in the region.
The colony we returned to regularly was run by the Kasimoff family. Just like at home, our bungalow unit was on the second floor and Florence negotiated for a discounted rate for it.
For most of those years when the kids were little, we lived in a small two-family house on East 57th Street in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn that we bought after the boys were born. I remember we paid $28,000 for it, which seemed like a fortune at the time.
Nor did we have the house all to ourselves; we lived upstairs and rented out the more desirable ground-floor unit. Upstairs, there were just two bedrooms so the boys shared one and Susan slept in the tiny den next to the master bedroom. There was an office in the basement that we reached by an outdoor staircase.
By the late 1970s, thanks to excellent work of Marc and Ronnie, who were barely past twenty, business was booming at Edelstein & Sons. Also it was no longer only Edelsteins up on the roof. By 1978, Ronnie, Marc and I were each running a separate crew and business was so brisk that we couldn’t keep enough materials in stock.
Later on, since I have had money and became a big giver, I have had the honor to meet every Prime Minister of Israel, starting with Yitzhak Rabin during his first term in office in the mid 1970s.
I have pictures in my office of myself and Florence with many of the prime ministers, including Begin, Shamir and Sharon, each of them a great leader in his own way. I feel deeply honored to have received that access, and more importantly, to have had the opportunity to make a positive difference for Am Yisrael, the people of Israel.