December, 2017
Dear Family and Friends:
Our Indianapolis community and The Goldman Union Camp Institute
lost a good friend last week. From the time our kids Jer and Mike attended
the Hasten Hebrew Academy we knew the Batelman family. Our kids were friends and the Klotz family shared
our neighborhood, Greenbriar, with the Batelman family. Gideon, who
passed away last week, and I worked together all the years I directed the
camp. He sold the camp paper goods, kitchen supplies and a variety of
other things over the years. But our relationship was unlike any other
vendor and customer. I think the camp reminded Gideon of his birthplace,
Israel. He didn't just sell to the camp, he took care of the camp.
I'll give a few examples. Before each summer I would order the entire
summer's worth of paper goods. Gideon knew that the camp had very limited
storage space. He would bring half of the items and keep the other half
in his garage. Then throughout the summer he would come to camp, take
inventories and replace whatever needed replacing (it's possible he also liked
seeing his kids who were campers and camp staff members).
I remember one time he showed up with an industrial
fan. If you visited the camp’s dining hall today, you would see two dozen
ceiling fans, two big warehouse fans and several wall mounted fans. It
gets hot at camp. But in those days we didn't have those fans and Gideon
thought we could use one. He just showed up with it; and it was
great. Whenever he found anything at a good price that he thought the
camp could use, he would call me, and we would have it.
But here's the best Gideon story. I am reminded of one of my
favorite movies, "The Great Escape." In that prisoner of war
movie James Garner plays the part of "The Scrounger." The
prisoners are, of course planning an escape. Whatever they need The
Scrounger finds. Need a camera? What size lens? They tell the Scrounger and he'd somehow
find it.
Well one July we were studying the history of Jerusalem in our
camp's educational program. That summer Jerusalem was celebrating its
3000th anniversary. We came up with the bright idea to culminate the
program on the last night of
camp by floating 3000 candles on Styrofoam boards in the pool and have a
birthday party for Jerusalem. Not only that, we wanted to use Jewish
candles, so we decided Hanukkah candles would be perfect. One
problem. Hanukkah is in December and this was July. Enter our James
Garner. I called Gideon with this wild idea. I expected him to say
that it is impossible to find any Hanukkah candles at that time of the year let
alone 3000. But no. Gideon tells me that he knows someone in
Brooklyn and let him make a couple calls to see what he can do. No lie;
the next week 3000 Hanukkah candles arrive at camp. I still do not know
how Gideon did it, but I certainly remember it well all these years
later. By the way, the Jerusalem culmination program was a complete
disaster, but we did get all of the candles lit.
Susan Dill will testify to the fact that our great G.U.C.I was
lucky to have many people who helped us over the years and were completely in
the background, unrecognized. We were lucky to have Gideon Batelman on our side. Gideon and I
had great talks whenever he came into the office. He was one of the
really good ones.
That's the way I see it.
Ron
