This is an abridged reprint from an article, by Jo Chesworth, that first appeared in the June 1975 edition of the Town and Gown Magazine, honoring Highlander Charles Schlow, a pioneer and co-founder of the Schlow Centre Region Library. The Library’s Director, Lisa Rives Collens, wrote an introductory message, to accompany this article to commemorate the Library’s 60th anniversary in its current location:
Charles Schlow will be 89 this month. Well versed in history, literature, philology and chemistry, he was trained to be a teacher. Then, suddenly, he stopped teaching and started selling ladies’ clothing, then gifts, then furniture.
With Charlie Schlow, it’s difficult to tell when he is serious and when he is not. But his wit-spiked-with-wisdom plus his firm belief that a man’s duty is to make his community a better place to live have long endeared him to the people of this area.
“Use your money wisely and try to do some good for your town with it. That’s all a man can do in this life,” he says. The “good” he has done includes:
- Our public library named in memory of his wife and son;
- 29 years on the State College Borough Water Authority, of which he is president;
- 55 years as “rabbi,” counselor and friend to inmates at Rockview State Correctional Institution;
- During World War II, he and his wife Bella entertained hundreds of Penn State-based servicemen at Sunday picnics in the spacious yard of their home;
- From his own pocket and in his capacity as a founding director of Federal Savings & Loan of State College Federal Savings & Loan [at 122 E. College Ave., now a site of PNC Bank], he has helped thousands of people buy homes of their own.
His efforts have earned him praise and a wall full of plaques and awards, one being “Man of the Year,” presented by the State College Rotary Club: “In appreciation and esteem from a grateful community for a life of service and commitment to his fellowman.”
Charlie was born in the Ukraine in 1886, but according to his daughter, Irma Zipser, he’s not sure on what day. “So when he became a U.S. citizen, he chose to celebrate his birthday on Flag Day, June 14,” she said.
Not long after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Charlie met Bella Silversmith, a Denver girl who had come to Philadelphia to attend a school of oratory. They were married in 1914, and in 1915 their son Frank was born. As Frank approached his fourth birthday, however, Charlie, who had never made more than $1,000 a year, decided he couldn’t afford to be a teacher anymore.
“I was tutoring a boy whose father was in the garment business, so when he came to get his son, I asked him if he knew of any jobs. He told me that a women’s dress shop was going to be for sale in a little town called Bellefonte, and I could probably buy it for $5,000 or $6,000. He even offered to lend me the money!”
Charlie traveled to Bellefonte to meet the owners, two ladies named Newman, who told him they couldn’t possibly sell for less than $2,500. “I could tell they had more than that in their merchandise, so I told them to take inventory and I’d be back later. When I returned, they said, ‘Oh, Mr. Schlow, we didn’t realize we have $5,000 work of stock here, so we’ll have to sell for that.’ I told them they should ask for more, but they just wanted out of the business.”
That first year, Charlie and Bella did everything themselves. The following year, when Irma was born, they were able to hire a bookkeeper and a teenage boy, who came in before and after school. One day the boy, Russell Hartman, asked for a steady job. “I told him I’d start him at six-fifty a week, and he could tell me whether he liked it. Well, Russell still works for me, and he’s never yet told me whether he likes it!”
In 1922, Charlie opened his second store, on Allen Street in State College. “In that store, you had to walk sideways,” he said. “It was 110 feet long and about six feet wide, so the size 52s couldn’t get in. Before they could come into the store, I had to go outside and measure their beams!” In 1925, “broad beams” got a break when Schlow’s Quality Shop moved to Charlie’s own newly constructed building at 106-108 E. College Avenue.
In the 1930s, Charlie expanded the dress shop, then added a gift shop in the basement. Some gift items were small wooden tables and cabinets, while chairs were provided for customers upstairs. “When you order furniture for somebody else,” he said, “you get interested in the furniture business yourself.” In 1937, he cut out the middleman and opened Schlow Furniture Store.
Frank Schlow, a 1937 Penn State graduate, managed the furniture store until his death from Hodgkin’s disease in 1965. His wife, Marthamae (“Martie”), worked at the store, but after Frank died, she returned to college and is now a speech instructor at Penn State’s Altoona campus. “The whole family always worked in the stores,” Martie said.
Aside from family members, many local residents worked for the Schlows over the years, and Charlie encourage all to buy their own homes. “If they couldn’t come up with the down payment,” he said, “I’d lend it to them. And everybody paid back every cent.”
The Schlows lived in Bellefonte until 1929, then bought a home on East Fairmount Avenue in State College. It was there during World War II that they held picnics every other Sunday for nearly 100 servicemen and an equal number of girls from town and campus who served as hostesses. The soft drinks, hot dogs and ice cream were “on the house,” and neighbors baked luscious cakes.
Charlie brought rabbis to State College for High Holidays (Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashannah) and was instrumental in establishing Hillel Foundation and the Jewish Community Center. And since 1920, he has been the sole provider of Judaism to inmates at Rockview. The Rockview superintendent said: “There usually aren’t enough Jewish men here to hold services, so Mr. Schlow comes in on Sundays and holds discussions with the Jewish inmates and Catholics and Protestants as well. They look forward to seeing him, and because he’s not an official member of our staff, the men trust him more. He’s also written letters to the board of pardons that have been responsible for getting many men paroled.”
Irma Zipser said: “It used to be that when men were paroled from Rockview, they’d be released at midnight. So Dad would drive to the prison and bring them to our house for something to eat before driving them to Altoona to catch a train. He always gave them a silver dollar, too, in case they had to call him sometime.” In 1970, Charlie’s service to Rockview was cited in The Congressional Record by Senator Richard Schweiker, a Penn State graduate, who said: “The most important thing he has done during these 50 years has been to let the inmates know they are not forgotten, that someone cares, and thus to serve as an inspiration for the inmates to better themselves when they leave prison.”
In 1956, Charlie made perhaps his greatest community contribution when a new location was sought for the Community Library, then housed in the high school. “My son Frank was on the library board,” he said, “and I asked him how much money they had for this new building they wanted. ‘One share of Pennsylvania Railroad stock,’ he told me.”
With that, Charlie donated two rooms plus free electricity and heat in a house he owned at 222 W. College Avenue. He also contacted Harry Scherman, his Central High classmate, at the Book-of-the-Month Club, and acquired publishing-house “seconds” to add to the library collection. In November, Carol Kountz suggested a unique project for her eighth-grade social studies class — a book drive for the new library. “We thought they might get a few hundred,” Charlie said, “but those youngsters got their parents to drive them around town one evening and collected 11,500 books! We had to put extra posts under the floor of those two rooms to support the weight of all the books!”
In October 1957, Charlie’s wife died of cancer, and, in her memory, he gave money to expand the library, which in 1958 was dedicated as the Bella S. Schlow Memorial Library. Charlie alone couldn’t keep the library solvent, so in 1960, the State College chapter of the League of Women Voters led a massive “Save the Library” campaign, which resulted in voters approving to allocate a one-half-mill share of borough real estate taxes to the library each year.
In 1966, the library moved into the former post office building where it was rededicated, in honor of both Bella and Frank, as Schlow Memorial Library. “We have a paid staff,” Charlie said, “but the library couldn’t function without the volunteers. We have 87 volunteers now, and I try to remember all of them with a little gift at Christmastime.” One Christmas, he gave the men neckties and the women Irish linen tea towels; another year it was umbrellas; another, Italian silk scarves.
“I once had a young friend call me,” Charlie said, “about a bestseller she had just finished reading. ‘Don’t you think this will be considered a great book?’ she asked me. I told her, ‘Ask me again in a hundred years. If people are still talking about the books, I’ll say it might just be great.’ You know, the test of greatness is time, whether it be a book or a piece of music or a person.”
Charlie Schlow has stood the test.