In My Own Words

Richard G. Safran

Rick Safran spent his childhood in two JCCA orphanages, the Israel Orphan Asylum, which he entered at age 7, and Hebrew National Orphan Home (HNOH), which he left when he completed high school at 18. After graduating from Brooklyn College, Rick had a distinguished career as an educator and administrator in the NYC public schools. Married and the father of two daughters, Rick, now 70, is retired and divides his time between an apartment in Manhattan and a home in the Berkshires. He is an active volunteer for a number of organizations, including JCCA. Rick writes movingly about his experiences at HNOH, and Growing Up is pleased to publish this remembrance of the vital role Reuben Koftoff, HNOH’s long-term director, played in his life.

Leave It to the Boss

The year after I left the Home, while working during the day in Manhattan, I completed one term, going to classes at night at Brooklyn College. I worked as an office boy for a large cable company. In warm weather, I spent my lunch hour in Battery Park looking at the legs of the pretty secretaries and watching with interest and some envy the young Wall Street executives in their business suits. They seemed so confident and successful, eating hot dogs and talking to one another about what they’d do next. I daydreamed about my own future--still amorphous--but I knew I wanted to continue college.

At the end of the spring term, after a social worker tried to convince me that I could not afford to go to college full-time, I left his office with tears of anger and frustration in my eyes. The social worker, I realized, didn’t want me to risk failure and disappointment. Yet for all his good intentions, he had undermined my confidence to a degree that frightened me. I knew I had to talk to Mr. Koftoff, a man many of us viewed as a surrogate father.

I found the nearest pay phone and placed a collect call to him. I poured my heart out, exposing all my fears and uncertainty. “The Boss” (we never called him that to his face, of course) emphasized that night school was a realistic option, that other “H” grads had done it before me. But then he added, “Plan on going to school full-time. I’ll get the scholarship money for you.”

And he did. He went to the wives of the dentists who took care of our teeth, the Ladies Dental Auxiliary. Ten of them committed $65 for four years for me. Each September, I would meet with “The Boss” and receive a check for $650. Although I held a series of student jobs that ranged from dishwasher to summer lifeguard, it was that cash scholarship from the orphanage that was my economic springboard. And it was “The Boss” who provided the emotional reinforcement to keep me and countless others like me ready for the demands of our situation.

I dove and swam for the varsity swim team and I did graduate, cum laude. Why? The answer was clear and simple: thanks to RK and his generous ladies from the Dental Auxiliary.