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THE I SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Friday, May 17, 1968
Store Demolished By Riots,
Owner Has No Bitterness
By MILTON FIRESTONE
Editor, Jewish Chronicle, Kansas City
“A lot of our friends are road
at us because of the way we
feel—'because we don’t hate the
colored people now. But why
should we? Our customers didn’t
do this to us. The people we
dealt with are wonderful peo
ple. They liked us, and we liked
and respected them. And our
feelings toward them haven’t
changed.”
This was the statement Abe
Sber made shortly after his
clothing and shoe store was com
pletely destroyed by rioters. Lo
cated near the northwest corner
of 31st and Indiana, he Panco
Sales store was one of the retail
businesses which was totally de
molished in the racial disorders
that plagued Kansas City.
He was now without a business
far the first time in 30 years.
After having suffered an overall
loss of 25 to 40 thousand dollars
— all his records were burned
and he may never be able to as
certain the total destruction —
and with only a small part of it
covered by fire insurance, Abe
Sher was frankly looking for a
job. He wasn’t sure what type,
he wasn’t sure which of his tal
ents would be desirable to an
employer, but he felt that there
was little likelihood that he could
resume his business.
And yet remarkably, he spoke
without ranoor or harshness about
the misfortune he had suffered.
Like so many others, he had
felt that “it oouldn’t happen
here,” hat Kansas City would not
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suffer the violent rioting which
had previously been inflicted upon
Newark and Detroit, Washington
and Chicago. Now he knew he
had been wrong, but he was quick
to emphasize that it was the
hoodlum element, the hardened
criminals who had tom the com
munity apart — who had first
broken out his windows on that
terrible Tuesday, and then come
back to finish the job with a
fire-bomb on Wednesday night.
Of one thing he is certain—
that anti-Semitism was not a fac
tor in his loss. He feels his store
just happened to be in the Cen
tral high school neighborhood
His was only one of 4 firms lo
cated in a long row building, and
where violence reached a peak,
all were destroyed. Next door
was a Negro-owned record shop,
on the other side was a refrig
eration company operated by a
white Christian. All were wiped
out, and Sher feels that many
Jewish stores were damaged or
destroyed simply because many
happened to be located in that
area.
“I should be thinking about
the thousands of dollars of mer
chandise that were destroyed,
but instead I keep recalling the
little things which were lost,” he
told me.
Sher spoke of the 18 filled
books of Treasure Stamps, which
he had been saving to buy gifts
for his children. He thought of
the Mogan David emblems which
Scout Troop 53 was selling for
car decorations; a number of
these were destroyed in the fire
with resulting loss of revenue to
the troop. He recalled the electric
razor his wife had given him only
last Hanuka, now part of the
ruins. He was concerned about
the special orthopedic shoes his
wife wore in the store, and which
were burned. He was upset that
his power tools from his home
workshop had been left in the
store, where he had been budd
ing some new fixtures. These
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things seemed almost to out
weigh the costly tosses be had
suffered.
Sher bad been in his 31st Street
location less than a year. He was
proud of the big, clean store he
occupied, after having spent 18
years in a much smaller loca
tion on 18th Street. He had been
delighted that his new location
was doing a greatly increased vol
ume of business.
Almost every week Sher took
in twice the sales receipts he had
had on 18th Street. And all the
profits, and all of the savings he
could muster were plowed right
back into building a larger in
ventory. He had no time or op
portunity to increase his fire in
surance to cover the larger stock.
There was also no thought of
coverage for the fixtures he had
installed by dint of hundreds of
hours of evening and Sunday
work.
After the windows of his store
were broken on Tuesday, Sher
sucoeeeded in boarding up the
front, and he and his wife were
escorted out of the area by polioe
officers. They returned on Wed
nesday morning, and tried to
resume normal operations, but
the unrest in the area was too
great, and the threats they re
ceived finally convinced them to
lock their doors and leave.
For the only time in our sev
eral hour conversation, Abe
Sher’s voice broke and he was
near tears as he told me how he
and his wife had visited the
oemetery on Wednesday after
closing the store, in order to pray
at the graves of their departed
parents. But, some time that
night, the torch was applied and
his store and those adjoining
were burned, but the several
Negro families living in the
apartments overhead were made
homeless. Sher had 3 Negro em
ployees working for him, who
are also now without work. But
he feels strongly that only a small
percentage of the Negroes en
gaged in the violence, and that
the big majority, like white citi
zens, were appalled and sickened
at the senseless destruction.
A naturally friendly and gre
garious person, Abe Sher has
been active in many civic and
community fields. He has been
in Boy Scouting for 19 years, and
was Scout Master of Troop 53
for 4 years; now he serves as
Troop Committee chairman. He
is a member of Kehilath Israel
Synagogue, and the Heart of
American Lodge of B’nai B’rith.
He served two years as presi
dent of the Southeast Commun
ity Council. He is a member of
the Jewish Community Center,
where his wife is active in Com
munity Service League. He
doesn’t know now how he will be
able to pay his Synagogue or
Center dues, but he hopes they
will go along with him for a
while, on the basis of his long af
filiation.
Sher did not own the building
in which his store was located,
but he is concerned about the loss
suffered by his landlord, Irving
Abend. He had not yet had a
chance to discuss with Abend
whether he had any thoughts of
restoring his building. His own
records have been destroyed, and
he is relying on a competent and
sympathetic lawyer to attend to
the many legal details ahead.
Abe Sher is a gentle and a
kind person. He never had a gun
in his store. He declined to at
tend the classes the police held
some months ago to teach small
storekeepers self-protection. “I
never in my life fired a gun,”
be says. “How could I ever bring
myself to shoot a holdup man,
or even someone who tried to
destroy my store?”
Some of his friends and rel
atives don’t understand how he
can still talk this way. With his
business ruined and his future
uncertain, Sber is determined not
to let the situation be worsened
by adding an element of person
al hatred.
If harmony and order are to
be restored to the Kansas City
community, if the lessons of the
recent past are to be learned 90
as to avoid repetition, it seems
there will need to be more peo
ple, both white and black, who
possess the tolerance and the pa
tient understanding of Abe Sher.
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