Archives West Finding Aid

Scope and Content: Correspondence, legal documents, clippings, family tree, tape-recorded interviews conducted by James Mirel and Meta Buttnick on 2/10/80.

Mr. Rucker tells how his maternal grandparents came from a village near Berlin. They were David Kauffman and Hulda Harris Kauffman. They came to Seattle via Victoria. His mother was the first Jewish child born in Seattle. His father Samuel Louis Ruchker was Methodist-Episcopal. He died when Wallace was 18 months old and Mr. Rucker thinks that he wanted his son reared in the Jewish faith, which he was. He had his Bar Mitzvah at the Temple on Boylston Avenue. He also has association with Temple services at Morris's Hall. He tells of his World War I service and of his long career as a salesman for MGM.

Helen Bornstein Rucker was educated in Seattle and attended a finishing school near Washington D.C. She fleshes out the story of the Educational Center by giving personal experiences of accompanying her mother to the center and hearing her mother tell of her work there. This was Mrs. Bornstein's transcendental interest. She tells of her authorship of two book, "Cargo of Brides" and "Wolf Trap" and that she has another awaiting publication. She tells of her father's work for the shelter house during World War I. Both she and her husband add to the information about the reform congregation and its members.

Scope and Content: Tape-recorded interview and transcript conducted by Howard Droker, October 19, 1981 and June 30, 1982.

Mr. Rucker talks about his grandparents who came to Seattle in 1869 from Victoria B.C., and his mother, who was the first Jewish child born in Seattle. He recalls his childhood and training in Temple De Hirsch, Rabbi Samuel Koch, and his business career. He discusses the Seattle chapter of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, of which he was a member, and his changed feelings following the establishment of the State of Israel.