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In April of 1941 Abe Sacks wrote home from Fort Benning, Georgia to his girlfriend, Beatrice Goldman in Brooklyn, New York. “We hiked for six hours with a 30-pound pack on our backs and reached our destination after dusk. The tents had to made in the dark and we eat then. Was put on Guard duty in the woods for four hours. Had to lie on my belly. The mosquitos gave me the once over. They gave us one hour to sleep. This is the U.S. Army.” And he had been a soldier for less than a month. Abraham Sacks was born in 1913 in Brooklyn, New York. He had three older brothers and a sister. His father, an immigrant from Latvia, scratched out a living as a salesman, at times supplying produce to resort hotels in the Catskills. On the 1920 census, Solomon Sacks listed his occupation as “vendor” and his business street address as “Bread Wagon.” After a year at Brooklyn College, Abe got into sales himself, not perishables, like his dad, but men’s wear -- shirts, neckties, cufflinks, belts. In the trade, men’s suits were clothing. What my father handled was called men’s furnishings. He worked both sides of the counter, as a salesman in department stores, and as a rep for manufacturers. He liked the products, and he liked the hustle. By the time he joined the army in 1941, he was 28 years old and had been around. But never hiking thirty miles into the dark of night. For a trip that long in New York City where he grew up, you’d take the subway. In 1941, a subway token cost a nickel and, day or night, would take you anywhere the 650 miles of track were laid. The motivating force for my father to enter the army was patriotism and a sense of duty to his country, a place on earth with a government that gave his mother and father, immigrants from Latvia, refuge and opportunities for the future. |
Abe Sacks ready for business1940.
Below: Brooklyn College campus in the same era. 
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Government posters from the 1940's promote consumer thrift and rationing.