A Lifetime of Loyalty

In the 1920s they were grade-school kids who nailed roller skates to orange crates and raced through Boyle Heights.

During the ‘30s they were hustlers, helping their immigrant parents through the Depression by pumping gas and selling Cokes to sports fans who wanted something to mix with the illegal liquor they were sneaking into the Coliseum.

They were spread all over the world during the wartime days of the 1940s. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, they were busy Los Angeles businessmen and fathers. By the ‘70s and ‘80s they were retirees being introduced to the concept of leisure time on the golf course.

Through it all, though, they were Jasons.

The 60 boys from Boyle Heights who first joined together in 1928 to play baseball have met most Wednesdays since then to swap lies, share a few laughs--and sometimes shed a few tears.

There are 16 Jasons left. And last week they held a 70th anniversary get-together at Ben Baran’s house in the Fairfax District.

“We don’t stand on ceremony. We’re too damned old,” said Abe Stein, 84, of Encino, as he headed for a table loaded with lox, bagels and cookies. “After 70 years, we’re gonna make ourselves at home.”

A Jason wouldn’t have it any other way.

It was that kind of attitude, after all, that prompted the kids of poor Eastern European immigrants to form their own ball team--and then help create an athletic league to play in.

In those days, there were perhaps 30 home-grown clubs in Boyle Heights. “The Benitos, the Cardinals, Judsons, Elms, Hercules, the Tartars,” remembered Baran, 83.

The teams evolved into social clubs when the Boyle Heights boys discovered girls. There were regular dances and parties in the mostly Jewish neighborhood that led to romances and marriages.

Duddy Schnyder, 75, of Mission Viejo, said the Jasons initially intended to call themselves the Trojans. One of their members had even sketched a Trojan warrior to use as a team logo.

“But then we thought that maybe USC would take offense. So we picked another name from mythology and became the Jasons. That way we could still use the Trojan drawing,” said Schnyder, the Jasons’ current president.

Jokes, mock insults and tall tales were flying at last week’s gathering.

There were stories about hitching rides on the old Wabash Avenue “B car” trolley. And about taking trips to D Street in San Bernardino, once a notorious red-light district.

Meyer Wolf, 81, of Westwood, talked of the time a group of Jasons was arrested.

“We were stenciling an advertisement for our 1936 Yom Kippur dance on a sidewalk when a police car came by. They took us to the Hollenbeck station and held us for our parents,” Wolf said.

“One of the police asked what they should do with us, and Walt Shank’s brother piped up and said, ‘Make them clean the paint off.’ They sent us back with soap and lye. All it did was take the skin off our hands.”

The men described how the weekly Jason Journal was used during World War II to keep the 54 Jasons in military service up to date on each other. A group of Jason wives helped the half-dozen Jasons who remained in Boyle Heights during the war to reprint letters sent home by club members who were overseas.

“Deep in the heart of France, getting those letters meant a lot,” said Jack Greenstein, 79, of West Los Angeles. “That’s the kind of thing that has made us stick together.”

Harry Gordon, 79, who like Greenstein lives in the Beverlywood neighborhood, explained what fellow club member Abe Feedman did when he learned from the Jason Journal that the two of them were a mere 100 miles apart in the Philippines--and that Gordon needed supplies.

Feedman, now 75 and a Westwood resident, commandeered a 2 1/2-ton Army truck and loaded it with boxes of Vienna sausages and sleeping cots and skirted enemy lines to deliver them to his pal.

That kind of friendship has lasted seven decades.

In the early years, Jasons celebrated when each club member observed his bar mitzvah. Later, they were there for each one’s wedding and to celebrate when each became a father. Now they’re there to mourn when a Jason dies--and to offer assistance to his widow.

“All of our widows are invited to our affairs. They aren’t left out just because their husband died,” said Hy Wisotsky, 80, of Mission Viejo. “The fact that our wives are compatible makes it easier. Most of us married Boyle Heights girls.”

These days, the Jasons meet every other Wednesday instead of weekly. They’ve scaled back their yearly dues to $50 instead of $75. And they’ve given up the group life insurance they had for members; the premiums became too costly.

They make annual donations to the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte and have a plaque there that is inscribed with the name of each Jason when he dies. At their next memorial service they will add the name of Sy Willen of Camarillo, who died in December at 83.

“Sy used to give the speeches at these. Now we’ve got to give a speech for him,” said Ben Kirk, 81, of North Hollywood--who was wearing his blue and gold Jason baseball jersey, a leftover from 1955, when the Jasons won their last slow-pitch softball championship at Echo Park.

The room fell quiet when Feedman passed around a group photo taken 20 years ago at the Jasons’ golden anniversary. “Half the guys aren’t here anymore,” he said softly. “Two-thirds of them.”

The wise-cracking resumed as a 70th-anniversary snapshot was taken, however. Thirteen of the remaining Jasons were present, including Max Wisotsky, 81, of Mission Viejo; Louis Magedman, 81, of Westwood; Marty Newstat, 75, of Sherman Oaks; and Bill Diamond, 82, of West Hollywood. Absent were 81-year-olds Mel Yaruss of Mission Viejo, Milt Wollis of Los Angeles and Sol Pearlman of Palm Springs.

“We’ve got to hurry up and get that picture developed,” laughed Wolf. “We don’t know who’s going to be next to go.”

Stein had the last word.

“Remember,” he said, “it’s the job of the last guy left to balance the books.”