Wisdom Project | For Larry Schlesinger, 103, Education Is Paramount

The Wisdom Project at Moment: Inspirational conversations with wise people who have been fortunate to live long lives.

This week’s conversation is with Lawrence (“Larry”) Schlesinger, 103, of Encino, California.

When your birthday honors include a house call and helicopter flyover from the Los Angeles Police Department and a spot on the evening news, you must be someone special. Meet Larry Schlesinger, whose 103rd birthday in October brought family, friends, fans, police and media together.

Members of the LAPD  surprised Larry on his 103rd birthday on October 11, 2024. 

First, the LAPD: Larry was a longtime volunteer for L.A.’s West Valley police station when he retired from his business career. There, he handled administrative tasks to free up department members to fight crime. He started at age 75 and soon became a weekly fixture at the station house for more than two decades.

Next, the media: As a World War II veteran, Larry has been featured in local news stories on NBC L.A. He also appears in a 2016 documentary about the Queen Mary’s service as a troop ship during the war, Mighty Ship at War: the Queen Mary. (It’s on Amazon Prime.) He also shares his oral history as a platoon leader and company commander in the Lawrence C. Schlesinger Collection at the Library of Congress, as part of its American Folk Center’s Veterans History project. 

Larry began his long life in New York. Born on October 11, 1921, he was raised there by his parents, Rose and Max Schlesinger, store owners, first in Brooklyn, then Manhattan. Larry had two younger sisters, Fran and Charlotte. Charlotte died when she was a toddler. Times were tough.

Growing up in the Great Depression, Larry interrupted his studies at City College of New York to help his parents in the store and again in February, 1942 to volunteer in for the U.S. Army. He served as a member of the 796th Military Police (MP) Battalion in England, France and Belgium during World War II, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. Home from the war in 1946, he finished his degree in accounting on the G.I. Bill and set out on a business career, which led him to the Revell Toy Company. He attended UCLA’s Anderson School of Business when he moved to California in the late 1950s with his then-wife, Marion, and their young daughter, Debbie.

“Get as much education as you can. Maybe you can’t control events, but at least you’ll have some vision about what’s going on.”

In 1967, Larry had decided to change careers and go to law school at night when tragedy struck. Suddenly widowed and now the single parent of a teenaged daughter, he abandoned plans for law school to be home for her.

Happily, several years later he met and married his beloved wife of now 54 years, Violet, and welcomed her two daughters, Karen and Jan, as his own. He retired from the Home Silk Shop chain of fabric stores as a top finance executive in 1985 and has been involved in civic activities in the years since.

The family now includes seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Larry and Violet are members of the Valley Outreach Synagogue in Calabasas, California.

Each night before he goes to bed, Larry watches the news. As he told NBC L.A. in an interview earlier this year, “Maybe I won’t see if [the news] affects me tomorrow or the next day, but it will certainly affect my children and grandchildren.” 

Larry’s wisdom, as shared with Moment:

What have you learned in more than a century?

Be physically active when you’re young, marry a caring, loving wife and enjoy what comes from it. Do everything in moderation. It’s important to be intellectually involved all of your days, whether you’re working or retired.

What have you learned about people?

It’s really important to acknowledge their point of view. Most people are pretty nice. Out of the thousands of people I’ve met, maybe there are one or two I could do without, but the rest of them are really friendly, and they contribute to your understanding of life and all that goes with it.

Larry and Violet celebrating his 99th birthday at home during the COVID pandemic.

What have you learned about marriage and family?

That a caring, loving wife and family are essential to understanding life and appreciating its goodness and its adventures.

Growing up, how did your family survive during the Depression?

My father had [various] jobs. When he married my mother, he was a cab driver and then got a job with the Borden company. In those days, dairy companies used to deliver milk to your doorstep—milk, butter, cream— by a guy who started work at three o’clock in the morning so you would have milk for your morning coffee. And of course, in those days, most deliveries were done by horse and wagon. I helped my father on occasion. It was very hard work because in New York the houses were all apartment houses and very few of them had elevators. I think there was only one building in the whole neighborhood that had an elevator. So you had to climb the stairs up to the fifth or sixth floor to deliver heavy containers of milk to people.

Twenty-five percent of the population was out of work back then, but my dad was always able to keep his job because he was hard working and devoted.

When I was 10 or 12 years old, other people lived with us. I slept on a daybed in another room and my mother rented out my bedroom. My sister slept in my parents’ room, and she rented out that bedroom to a couple.

What else did your mother do to get through the hard years?

I recognized the power of an intelligent, concerned woman in my mother, because she was the one who saw where to go, and she pushed the family in that direction. She realized that my father would have a tough time surviving the climbs in apartment houses carrying milk and that it wasn’t sustainable in the long term. So she opened a store in Brooklyn. I had to drop out of college for a year to help her with the business. By the time I got back from the Army, my mother had engineered that little store into a business on lower Broadway in Manhattan. She really did a good job—they were able to retire, travel and enjoy life for many years.

She told me later that she’d told herself at the time, “Rosie, you’re going to put $1 a week away, even if it kills you.” She also said, “If you watch the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves.” I learned the importance of saving for the future.

Larry and daughter Debbie at the ski slopes long ago.

You’ve always been physically active. What have you especially enjoyed over the years?

Skiing! From the first moment that I put on skis and slid down a little hill, I was hooked. For me, it involved a great appreciation of nature. I remember standing on top of one of the mountains in Mammoth [California] and looking across the broad horizon of peaks and sun and really appreciating what a beautiful day it was and what a beautiful world we live in.

And racquetball…my racquetball partner and I became very, very close playing three times a week for over 10 years. We began when I was 60.

How else did you stay in shape?

[While I was still young] I began closely watching my diet, doing exercises on a daily basis, along with hiking and a little swimming. If you want to enjoy skiing during the winter, you have to continue doing your exercises during the summer. I liked biking a lot, but it took me away from the family for long periods of time, and that wasn’t so good.

What do you see as the world’s biggest challenge right now?

Finding peace.

How have you seen political and social discourse change in America over the years?

I think that with the advent of advanced communications through technology, people are much more educated about the status of the world. It gives informed people more strength to their opinions.

At age 75, you decided to volunteer for the Los Angeles Police Department. Why? And what did you learn there?

Well, number one is, I’ve always had an interest in police work since my early days in the military. I was in the MP, so police and justice were always primary in my thoughts. If people are denied justice, there’s going to be a lot of recriminations and hostility.

Working with the LAPD, I learned to appreciate the efforts of a lot of people who were able to put their humanity ahead of their personal needs.

Larry, when he enlisted in the Army in 1942 at age 20.

What was it like for you as a member of the MP in World War II?

When I enlisted, the Axis powers owned most of Europe, and I wanted to do whatever I could to thwart their goals. I enlisted as a private, then I became an officer and a commander of an MP company. I found it to be a growing experience and an opportunity to meet many new people, make new friends, understand society from a [wider] point of view, and overall, make the most of it. I really enjoyed what I was doing.

Did you feel you were in danger?

When you’re in the military, you know life can always be dangerous, so you kind of get used to that and find ways to make it as safe as it can be. Most of the people I met understood the need to be there and to fight for righteous principles. I gained from that experience that you can improve wherever you are.

How are you able to remain so optimistic, generally, with antisemitism on the rise yet again?

You know, I’m sure there was antisemitism in the army that held me back from promotions, but you do your best to overcome it by being a fair-minded individual.

Is education the answer to antisemitism?

It’s a really weird thing because it’s not relegated to just ignorant people—sometimes very intelligent people are antisemitic. Education by itself is not the salvation—we find that antisemitism is broadly discernible at colleges and universities with the most educated parts of our society. So, it’s not the answer. I don’t know what the answer is.

How have you adapted to the technological advances in your lifetime?

I became aware of technology when I first started in business and recognized the need to be involved with it. I made it my business to learn as much about it as I could, both in business and in my personal life. It was very apparent that technology was a key to growth and success. I decided if I was going to use it, I’d better understand it and how it functions.

Beginning with…?

Computers. They were an important factor in business starting around the early 1980s and so I incorporated them at work and became aware of their capabilities. It wasn’t hard to do—you could see how fast they were and how accurate, versus the labor of individuals.

What’s been your greatest adventure in life?

The army!

You’ve had an impact on legislation in your business career. How so?

When I was working at Revell, we made hobby kits. One of the essentials in a kit was a glue to cement all the pieces together to make a particular prototype, an airplane or a battleship or whatever. Well, some kids took to sniffing the glue and getting high. So, there was a movement in the California legislature to ban the sale of glue. We recognized that a ban would put us out of business. I made several trips to Sacramento to lobby lawmakers about the real purpose of glue and the business that was involved. We came up with the proposition of restricting the sale of glue to juveniles by keeping it behind the counter and not on an open shelf where kids could take it. Once we did that, it eliminated the glue-sniffing problem. It saved our industry.

What life advice do you want to pass on to the next generations?

I believe in education, because it is a great leveling device. It teaches you about other people, other cultures, and it gives you an opportunity to be present in the development of the world. So, I tell my children and grandchildren, get as much education as you can. Maybe you can’t control events, but at least you’ll have some vision about what’s going on.

You’ve traveled extensively over the years. Is there one trip that sticks out in your mind?

Russia. During our traveling years, our temple decided to help the Jews there who were under a lot of pressure from the Russian government. We wanted to send or bring them things that they could sell on the black market—they were really being horrendously discriminated against. People with advanced degrees weren’t permitted to do their jobs and were given menial things to do.

My wife and I went on a temple trip there, which was very illuminating. We brought a lot of things that were in short supply, and being Russia, a controlled, communist government, there was very little opportunity for acquiring many of the things you can get in a democracy. For instance, quality clothing, which is available widely in the United States, was not available in Russia. We took multiple pairs of jeans with us that people could sell at high prices.

How did you sneak stuff in?

One way was that Vi took a raincoat of mine and made pockets in the lining. We stuffed the pockets full of small things. We carried the jeans in our luggage and had all kinds of fake excuses ready to explain to Russian immigration why we each needed four pairs of jeans over there, so it worked out.

We met wonderful people. One family had a year-old baby that they wanted us to take back with us to the United States, which was, of course, impossible. Forty years later, this family moved to the United States, and we met them again after searching and finding them on the computer.

WHAT?!

Vi was on the computer and she found the family living in Costa Mesa, which was incredible. [The Orange County city is located approximately 40 miles south of L.A.] The father had decided to stay in Europe, but the mother and the son came here, so we renewed our friendship and got together. The baby was now a 40-year-old consultant, doing very well. The mother, who had advanced degrees in Russia, was able to settle herself into professional positions here. We went to their synagogue with them for a service and I spoke there. I brought the raincoat with me.

How has Judaism informed your life?

It’s shown me the need for community activities and, to some extent, religious activities. Listen, as I was growing up, I wasn’t really very religious. Even though I had a Bar Mitzvah, I really grew away from religion. I’m really grateful to my wife, Violet, for bringing me back to Judaism, which I now recognize as a premier belief for humanity.