One family member was a Jewish pioneer in gold rush San Francisco, selling dry goods down the block from fellow German immigrant Levi Strauss. Another family member was one of the wealthiest Jews in the 19th Century—a tobacco merchant, hotel owner, Wall Street banker and real estate investor who once met President Grant and hobnobbed with prominent Jews profiled in Stephen Birmingham’s “Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York.” Other family members included a pioneer in the silk business, a Russian Jew who fled persecution, a colorful Brooklyn merchant who was the first to display an ad on a trolley car that crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and a Palm Springs civic activist. Richard Simon, a retired Los Angeles Times reporter, writes about the lives of his family members, including the adversities they overcame, in “A Dream Fulfilled.’’
