Mr. RUBY. There is a bit about his patriotism that might mean something.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Tell us about that.
Mr. RUBY. This happened many years ago. They were playing the Star
Spangled Banner in the stadium in Chicago before all sporting events,
and a friend who was with him, a fellow by the name of Mr. Kolitz told
me this himself, he was smoking.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What is Mr. Kolitz’s first name?
Mr. RUBY. Ira. He was smoking when the Star Spangled Banner was playing
and my brother insisted he put out his cigarette, that it wasn’t in
good taste to be smoking when the Star Spangled Banner was being played.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Your brother didn’t approve of smoking either, did he?
Mr. RUBY. No; he didn’t smoke at all. Well, neither do I, for that
matter. But this I didn’t find out about until a couple of months ago
because I ran into this party in Chicago, and you know talking about
these things, and he says, “How could they accuse your brother of being
a Communist”, and then he related this incident to me. He says, “I
remember, you know at the stadium when this happened, and he actually
insisted I put the cigarette out.”
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did Jack in your dealings with him, did he strive to be
important and did he strive for recognition, things like that?
Mr. RUBY. I would say, well, he tried to be a success. He always wanted
to be a success in life.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What was his idea of being a success?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, having a family and being happily married and earning a
steady living.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did he talk to you about his desires to have a family?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, yes; on a few occasions. Once when he had financial
failure and he was terribly depressed back in the early fifties, I
think, he came to Chicago. He was just terribly depressed and he says,
“Well, it looks like it is the end for me.” And, you know, he had no—he
was penniless, and I tried to help him out again there. I was trying to
look around for a business for him, to be truthful with you because we
were doing pretty well, making a living, a good living, and I thought I
could help him out but he decided to go back to Dallas again.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Well now, there have been reports that Jack was the kind
of a person who liked, who wanted everybody to know him and liked to be
a big shot, some people might say. Did you have any experiences with
him that would indicate anything about those kind of observations?
Mr. RUBY. Well, he was pretty well known in Chicago. He always was a
good athlete, a good ballplayer. He was a very great swimmer, and he
was very close to Barney Ross, so I would say—and he had many friends,
so he was pretty well liked, and maybe some people would get the
impression that he was a big shot but actually I don’t think he ever
went out of the way to try to show people he was a big shot.
However, maybe I didn’t notice it because I am his brother. And he was
my older brother, and so maybe I just didn’t notice it.
Mr. GRIFFIN. I wonder if you can explain what seems to be on the one
hand signs of his obsessions about being a Jew, such as you pointed
out as fighting the Bundists and things like that, and on the other
hand, what appears to be a lack of regular devotion to going to church
services every week and keeping the religious home, and so forth?
Mr. RUBY. Well, the reason for that is I am more or less the same way
as I explained before because in the breaking up of our home we were
drawn away from this life, you see. I was living with—on a farm—I was
living with gentile people and there wasn’t any synagogue there to go
to, and so we drifted away from the services. And because before that
we used to go to the Hebrew school, before our home was broken up, we
all went to Hebrew school.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you learn Hebrew?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, sure. Jack and—we went only until our home was broken up.
Mr. GRIFFIN. When you were living in your home, did your parents keep a
kosher home?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, yes; definitely.
Mr. GRIFFIN. It was a kosher home?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, yes; definitely. Oh, sure.
Mr. GRIFFIN. To what extent was it a kosher home?
Mr. RUBY. We would call it orthodox, you know, change of dishes and all
that.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Dietary rules?