FABRIC OF THEIR LIVES

BY JANIE GOULD

In 1912, St. Lucie County had been in existence less than a decade. Fort Pierce, the county seat, was young, too, with stores opening on Second Street, which would later become the shopping hub for three counties.

One of the community’s earliest merchants and part of the town’s first Jewish family was Isadore Holtsberg, who moved to Fort Pierce in 1912 and opened Holtsberg’s Dry Goods at 117 North Second St. His son, Fred, later operated a grocery store in Jensen Beach before moving it to Fort Pierce. Fred’s son, Harold Holtsberg, 82, still remembers his father delivering groceries as far south as Hobe Sound late on Saturday night. Stores on Second Street would stay open on Saturday nights to accommodate people who came into town just once a week to do their shopping.

“Second Street was Main Street, period,” Holtsberg says. “I remember on Saturday nights we’d come downtown with my mother and you’d know everybody who came into town.”

The Holtsberg family left the dry goods business early on. Isadore died, and in 1927 his widow, Sara, sold the store to the Rubin family. The families were distant relatives. The Rubins became the second Jewish family in Fort Pierce and one of the region’s best-known retailers.

The Rubins had come to the United States from Romania. Three brothers first worked in Key West and then two opened a store in Cocoa. Then, one of the brothers, Ralph, settled in Fort Pierce and turned Holtsberg’s Dry Goods into Rubin’s.

"We stayed at that location from 1927 until we closed in 1987," Arthur Rubin said in an interview with Fort Pierce Magazine in January, a few weeks before his death.

Arthur, 83, son of Ralph and Ida, joined the business after serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II and graduating from the University of Florida in 1948.

“At that time, my parents and a brother were still active in the business,” he said. “In 1948, we decided to enlarge and expand the store. We modernized it and made it a top-class clothing store. At one time, we had a fabric shop within the store. We had a junior department store in Vero and a luggage and shoe shop in Vero.”

The Rubins also owned a beach shop on South Beach as well as a decorating shop at Orange Avenue and Depot Drive. Their businesses drew customers from Vero Beach, Stuart and Okeechobee. The motto of their downtown store was “One of Florida’s Better Department Stores."

“Basically, Second Street was the downtown,” Rubin said. “Within two or three blocks were all the businesses in town.”

With competition from retail chains and approaching retirement age, Rubin closed the family department store in 1987, one of the biggest blows to downtown Fort Pierce until its resurgence.

Rubin and Holtsberg played together as boys, attended Sunday school together and have shared memories of Second Street.

“In the ’30s, most of the stores would have pots of fabric that they would set on fire to keep the mosquitoes out of the places of business,” Rubin said. “They were smoldering rags is what they were.”

“I can remember being down on Second Street and smelling those things burning,” Holtsberg said.

The stores weren’t air conditioned in the early years.

“In our store we had what they called bullet fans,” Rubin said. “They looked like an airplane engine with the propeller in front. We had 20 or 30 of them in our store and that was our air conditioning.”

Holtsberg’s Grocery was cooled by ceiling fans. “That was the only way to get any kind of cooling effect,” Holtsberg said.

The Jewish community was minuscule in those days, but Rubin and Holtsberg says the larger community was always accepting and there was no prejudice. In fact, the town’s voters elected Fred Holtsberg mayor twice. Rubin’s brother, Bernard, also was elected mayor twice. Milton Tucker, who served as mayor in the 1960s, was also Jewish.

Jewish families in Fort Pierce held worship services at the Methodist and Presbyterian churches and at the Women’s Club. Holtsberg remembers “years and years ago” when his parents and Arthur’s parents would take them to a temple in West Palm Beach for services. And the Rubins opened their home to Jewish servicemen stationed at the Navy’s amphibious training base during the war.

“Their home was always open to the Jewish community,” Holtsberg said. “They contributed tremendously to the development of the community.”

In 1949, 17 Jewish families were living in Fort Pierce, three in Stuart and one in Vero Beach. So they decided to build a temple, which became Temple Beth El at 23rd Street and Avenue B in Fort Pierce. Support from the Christian community helped make it possible, according to Holtsberg and Rubin. Christians donated money for the project, came to the dedication and sang in the choir.

“The main choir consisted of only about two Jewish people and the balance of them were from the Christian community,” Holtsberg said.

Temple Beth El grew steadily over the years until Port St. Lucie’s population started to take off. Members of the early congregation in Fort Pierce were dying off, and Fort Pierce’s population was standing still. So Temple Beth El moved south, first to a site about midway between Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie. Later, the temple merged with a newer temple in Port St. Lucie to become Temple Beth El Israel.

“I don’t remember how I voted [on the merger], but I think what has happened is for the benefit of the community,” Holtsberg said. And Rubin added, “You have to be where the people are.”

To catch a spy Ralph Rubin, best known as the founder of a Fort Pierce department store, also played an important role in catching a German spy during World War I