Jews were only three percent of America’s population in 1917 when the United States entered World War I. However, almost five percent of those serving in the armed forces were Jews. Eighteen percent of the serving Jews were volunteers, which also was above the national average.
The Jewish Legion was organized by the British government in 1917. Its purpose was to drive the Turks, who had joined the Central Powers (Germany, Austria and Hungary) out of Palestine.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, were sympathetic to the return of Jews to their biblical homeland and the establishment of a Jewish state. The men were friends of Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who requested and received a statement from the British government supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The statement, drafted by Arthur Balfour, was delivered on November 2, 1917, and became known as the Balfour Declaration.
1917 was also the year Sid Sherman was born.
Sid is a beloved member of the Aitz Chaim shul and resident of Century Village in West Palm Beach. I’m lucky to see and talk to him daily when I’m in my winter dugout. Sid is well connected to current events and has great recall concerning long gone yesterdays.
Sid was born in Philadelphia but by the time he was four the family lived at 72 Suffolk Street in the pushcart district of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As his father’s bank account went north, the family moved north to Harlem, which at the time was home to a mix of Jews, Italians, African Americans, and others. The elder Sherman opened a second-hand furniture store in the neighborhood, which led to Sid’s knowledge of the industry and the eventual ownership of his own furniture business.
Besides furniture, Sid grew to love baseball and movies. Sid could talk before films could and fondly remembers taking his little brother to the movies and spending a day in the theater.
“It helped us to read too, as we had to read what the actors were saying through the words printed on the bottom of the screen,” Sid recalled. “It was ten cents for a full day and you could see four movies and a continuing chapter of a serial. The serial made you want to come back the following week to see how the good guy would make out. Tom Mix was my favorite of the cowboy stars.”
Sid was already driving in 1931, when he was 14. In 1937 he bought his first automobile, a Packard. Sid followed New York politics and voted for Fiorello La Guardia for mayor.
Sid married in 1941 and he and his wife used a popular neighborhood teen as a babysitter for his daughter: Edie Gormezano – who later became famous as singer Edie Gorme (Mrs. Steve Lawrence).
As the years flew by, one thing remained constant in Sid’s life – the New York Yankees. Sid was going to ballgames at Yankee Stadium before the 1920s ended and often sat in the bleachers behind and near Babe Ruth.
“I can still see him in my mind,” Sid recalled. “The big flannel uniform flapping in the breeze above his knees. The high white socks covering his thin legs. He looked so different from anybody else because he was so big from the waist up. Lou Gehrig was very muscular and the Yankees had many other great players on the team, like catcher Bill Dickey.”
Sid lived on 168th and the Grand Concourse, an easy walk to and from Yankee Stadium a few blocks south. In the late 1930s, Joe DiMaggio became Sid’s all-time favorite Yankees player.
“DiMaggio was like a ballet dancer playing in the field,” Sid stated. “He was so graceful and it seemed he glided along on the grass after fly balls. Of course, it was also great to see him hit.”
It’s great to see Sid’s car pulling into the shul parking lot, as it always means a bright start to the day. You can talk to him about so many subjects, and if you want to go bowling with him, he’ll do the driving.
Those of us in West Palm Beach are looking forward to a shul kiddush when Sid turns 98 later this year.