This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
If you are one of those who casts your bread upon the water, hoping for a seven-fold return, it would be handy to have someone like the Rauch brothers at the receiving end.
Albert and Lester Rauch were small children, four and five years old, when their parents emigrated to Rock Island from eastern Europe in 1926. They moved into a modest home on 9th Street. Almost immediately, their father developed severe diabetes and had to have both legs amputated, leaving him with no way of supporting the family.
The mother was too proud to accept charity, even from the local Jewish congregation, but local citizens found a way around that. Soon, the American Federation of Labor Construction Workers were busy erecting a storefront onto the 9th Street home, in which the family opened a small grocery. A member of the Jewish community who worked in the welfare office arranged for some money to show up without the welfare label.
Albert and Lester pitched in at the grocery store, after school and during vacations, helping their mother more and more as they grew up. The grocery store allowed the family to make do, and even thrive during the Great Depression.
The two brothers went on to become part of the American success story. Both went on to graduate from St. Ambrose College, majoring in science. Lester became Director of the Food Service Department at St. Anthony's Hospital and Franciscan Medical Center. Albert became a senior scientist in the technology department at John Deere. Remembering the hard times, they both saved and invested wisely, except perhaps, for the fur coats their mother now wore. Neither brother married.
Nor did either brother forget the small kindnesses to their mother and father back in 1926. When Lester died in 1987, he left his assets to Albert, and when Albert died in January of 1994, the assets of both brothers, $2,500,000, came back to the Rock Island community: half of it to the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities, and half to a Rock Island foundation to be used for charities that benefited the needy, proof that a kindness invested can increase in value even more than stocks and bonds.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by the Scott County Regional Authority, with additional funding from the Illinois Arts Council and Augustana College, Rock Island.
