And so we didn't."īy 1881, according to a company historical outline, the store had 22 clerks and a branch at Broad and High streets, on the lot where the Deshler Hotel would later be built. "They treated us well and had great respect for our intellection, but they didn't expect that we would go into the business.
"I don't think the Lazaruses ever expected their women to do anything of importance," Witkind says. If they cared to join the Junior League or do good civic works on the side, so much the better. While it was assumed through the fourth generation that male children would join the business, girls were expected to marry, stay at home and raise families. If Amelia indeed served as a kind of self-designated corporate controller, she was as close as any Lazarus woman ever came to having a significant role at the store. She didn't trust her kids to be entirely responsible." "From Simon's death on," says Char Witkind, "Amelia went down to the store every day and counted the money. When Simon Lazarus died in 1877 at the age of 69, Fred and Ralph took over, though not without considerable scrutiny from their mother, Amelia, who lived until 1899. In the next 140 years Lazarus floor space would multiply a thousandfold, but for the first two decades Simon and his young sons were content to sell men's ready-to-wear from their little storefront. The men's clothing store Simon opened at the southwest corner of Town and High streets in 1851 occupied 800 square feet-an area smaller than the home swimming pool one of his grandsons would build 75 years later. Fred and Ralph joined their father in business and became the "F" and "R” of F. David later became a rabbi in Pittsburgh. Another son, Ralph, was born in 1852, and four daughters followed. A rabbinical scholar who later served without pay as the first rabbi of Temple Israel, Simon came to Columbus with his wife, Amelia, his stepson, David, and his infant son, Fred. When Simon Lazarus left Wurtenburg, Germany, in 1850, barely 40,000 people lived in Franklin County. And so, in a sense, is the family that built one of America's great mercantile dynasties. Most have been made financially comfortable by the fruits of their fathers' and grandfathers' and great-grandfathers' labors. Lazari (as family members like to call themselves) and Lazar-in-laws are spread from coast to coast and even overseas. The Lazarus family, its fifth generation in the prime of life and its sixth generation moving through childhood and adolescence, is larger than ever. But it was no longer a family store, no longer the base that had made Lazarus the most recognized family name in Central Ohio and given family members instant credibility in the tight circles of community power. The store that had carried the family name for nearly 140 years might survive into the 21st century and even beyond.
For Char Witkind, seeing the empty office from which her father, Robert Lazarus Sr., had run the store for more than 20 years triggered a cathartic moment of grief and understanding.