Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/917841
December 21 • 2017 11 jn continued on page 12 remembers vividly from childhood. In 1948, around the time Israel gained statehood, he and his mother walked many blocks from their home on Broad Street (near Dexter) to catch a glimpse of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. "Hundreds of thousands of people were on the street; Ben-Gurion was passing in a con- vertible. That was all part of the solidarity of the neighborhood we all lived in … It was a very big event," he recalled in the oral history. As a boy, Applebaum attended the Fresh Air Society day camp for three years as a scholarship student, with his parents paying $3 a week rather than the full $21. He really enjoyed camp and went, also on scholarship, to Fresh Air's overnight Camp Tamarack. "Camp was very personal to Eugene," said Steve Engel, Tamarack Camps executive direc- tor. "Eugene called his time at camp some of the best days of his youth. The Applebaum fam- ily has supported Tamarack Camps for many years. Most recently, in 2016, the Applebaum family dedicated a new Applebaum Village to celebrate Eugene's legacy." Although Applebaum didn't know it then, many of his childhood friends would remain friends for life, also growing into leadership roles in the Jewish community and becoming major philanthropists as well. For example, in kindergarten at Winterhalter Elementary School, he met David Hermelin, one of his closest lifelong friends. At Durfee and Central High School, he became good friends with Sidney Forbes and Arthur Lieberman, among many others. "Our parents were friends. We grew up together in the Dexter area. He loved being around people; he was very outgoing," said Lieberman, a doctor who lives in Birmingham. He introduced Applebaum to his wife, Marcia. "We all came from modest means," said Forbes of Bloomfield Hills, a luxury mall developer and philanthropist. "Look, he was a hard worker, as I was; we didn't know where life was going to take us. We didn't know how Eugene and Marcia Applebaum ARBOR INVESTMENTS GROUP "It's a good Horatio Alger story — somebody who started with one drug store and ended up with a monster company." — EUGENE APPLEBAUM