Know where you came from

Barbara Bandler Steinmetz

Once Barbara is accepted into college, she and Howard request and receive Margit and Alexander’s approval for their engagement and meet with their local rabbi. They wed in a traditional Jewish ceremony in 1956. Barbara and Howard Steinmetz have three girls, Julie, Ivy, and Monica. The two older girls are born while Barbara is still a student.

(l) Howard and Barbara with Lori and Eugene Mayer on Barbara and Howard’s wedding day in 1956.

(r) The couple will be married for over 50 years and have three daughters.

Courtesy of Barbara Bandler Steinmetz

Barbara graduates from Wayne State with a degree in speech pathology. Speech pathologists provide assistance to people who have physical or cognitive problems with communication, such as stuttering, vocalizing sounds, constructing sentences, developing language, or even swallowing. Barbara’s many experiences learning languages and decoding accents attracted her to the field. She realizes that how we communicate with one another is essential, and that one cannot function without language, even as a young child. Interestingly, she finds work as a speech therapist at a Catholic school. Howard studied transportation at the University of Michigan and receives an offer of employment in Saginaw with Roadway Express, a successful national trucking company.

The couple sends their daughters to Jewish summer camps in order to help them forge connections to their Jewish identity. “My daughters think I sent them to summer camp not to have fun, but to survive,” Barbara laughs. But she has passed on to her own children the relentless drive instilled in Barbara by her parents. She explains to her daughters that they are responsible for “carrying the reputation of an entire people”—the Jewish people—on their shoulders, because their school friends in Saginaw might “never know any other Jews but you.” Barbara acknowledges that such a burden may be unfair, but that bearing responsibility can be a point of pride, one that can serve as a reminder to emphasize ethical behavior.

Howard loved working at Roadway, but the stress of the job began to wear on him. Because of his own years of toil, Alexander recognized that his son-in-law was growing fatigued. He invited Howard to join his advertising sales business. Howard helped Alexander expand the business exponentially and soon Barbara, a busy young mother, gave up her position at the Catholic school to manage their business office. In 1963, Barbara and Howard drove from Saginaw with their three daughters for a camping trip at Rocky Mountain National Park. The weather turned bitterly cold, and the family escaped to Boulder during a sudden snow storm. Howard fell in love with the city and impulsively declared that they were moving. But Barbara protested. She could not take her children away from her beloved parents.

Transcript

Barbara: I-- as I said, I grew up. I got married. I went to the university. I think that-- I think that the-- my experiences of the war have permeated my life in a myriad of ways, probably in the way I raised my kids, feeling that education was important, that music was important, that reading was important, that being a strong individual is--is-- is a very important thing, and that family and the unity of the family is really important. In all the years while we were traveling from place to place, even though I was separated from all family in Europe, they were with us every single day. When I was a child and all the years growing up, every single night when we went to bed, we would mention the names. We would say, "God bless Aunt Berzy and Uncle Arpad and Imre and Oscar and Pearl and Oscar and--and-- and Panni and our grandparents." We would name all of the members of our family so that some of them, when they came here in 1956 after the Hungarian Revolution, even though I hadn't seen them since I was three years old, I knew them. They had been part of my everyday life all the years I was growing up, so that when my cousin Imre came and my cousin Munci came, they were-- of course I knew them. They were part of my vocabulary.

"In all the years while we were traveling from place to place, even though I was separated from all family in Europe, they were with us every single day."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 38619

Alexander Bandler dies in 1964, followed by Margit in 1966. While Howard and Barbara continue to vacation in Boulder for decades, they don’t move permanently to the city until 2005. Shortly thereafter, Howard encourages Barbara to tell her story and that of her family. Howard and Barbara are married for 54 years, until he passes away in 2010. Earlier in the same year, they suffer the tragic death of their daughter, Ivy. Julie today lives in Boulder and chairs a non-profit. Monica resides in Evanston, where she is a successful artist. Barbara has returned to visit the Dominican Republic with her surviving daughters and two of her seven grandchildren. One of her granddaughters has Sosúa as a middle name. 

“A connection with the past gives your life a different purpose. It doesn’t matter whether you are Jewish or not,” Barbara insists, “Recognize your heritage! Know where you came from!” At the age of 86, she believes more than ever that “gratitude isn’t enough, we have to use whatever privileges we have to make the world better.” Barbara has not slowed down. She swims regularly, tells her story at schools along the Front Range, and supports a variety of humanitarian causes. And she can still hear her father exhorting her: “What are you doing just sitting around?! You have nothing to accomplish? Nothing to read? Who allowed you to just sit there?!”

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