Ad for Dexall's Shoes in Ubyssey, 1970

When I was little my mom told me to call him “Uncle Max”, and when I called him uncle after I grew up, he would always correct me:

“I am your cousin Max. Uncle sounds too old, and you should have seen me in my emerald evening gown and matching heels. No one had legs as beautiful as mine.”

And Max would flash his charming smile, pulling up his pant leg, suggestively to show off his thin ankles and smooth calf. He was my elder cousin and my only openly gay relative. I loved him, but then many people loved him, and some didn’t.

Max was born in Antepol, the Gorodno district of Belarus, on the Polish Russian border. His grandfather was a Jewish farmer who worked painting churches to make a little money. The families lived in log houses with dirt floors. At the time of Max’s childhood the Russian Czar sent Cossacks to brutalize the poor Jewish communities, and evict Jews from their homes. Max had 4 brothers and sisters when his father was murdered in a Cossack attack. Soon after this pogrom, Max and two of his brothers came to America. When the family had raised enough money Max’s mother and the two younger children followed. Mrs. Dexall ran a boarding house. Max did odd jobs, worked in shops, and sold newspapers on the street.

He worked very hard, and managed to save the fantastic sum of one thousand dollars. He used this money to open his first shoe store in the 400 block of Main Street around 1928. A large bank wanted his corner location, so they agreed to move his store to a new location, down the street. During those days Max used to organize wonderful surprise parties for his family, almost every month. The family was close then.

But as the years passed and Max did not marry, the family became aware that he was gay. My dad came home from helping Max at Max’s shoe store one evening and was laughing nervously and complaining to my mom.

“Well did anyone touch you, or do anything to you?” asked my mom.

“No,” said my dad. “But I was nervous down there with Max and all those guys. They are all fairies.”

I got very excited imagining tiny blond fairies flying on cellophane wings.

“Dad, did you really see a fairy? Is uncle Max really a fairy?”

“Not that kind of fairy, a different kind, you know, a homo.”

“Don’t say that word.” said my mother.

“Well what word should I use?” asked my dad.

Recently one cousin told me:

“We didn’t like him much. He was sort of feminine. We didn’t include him much in our family celebrations. It must have been hard on him He was very good at decorating though, we used to ask his advice if we needed an interior decorator. And he sure knew how to order ladies shoes.

Max was making his own way. He charmed his customers and his business flourished in his store to South Granville at 10^th. He attended the Share Tsedeck Synagogue on Oak Street, and found he could cruise for gay Jewish men, in the men’s section of the Synagogue. But most of them married to hide their gay orientation. Max also had fun with the gay staff of salesmen in his store. His store was known throughout the city for selling women’s shoes size 4 to 6. Women with tiny feet loved him. When ever a mother came in to buy her baby’s first pair of shoes, Max never let her pay. Years later whenever those mothers saw Max-on the street, at the opera, in a restaurant they would always run up to him and hug him saying “Max, Max, remember when you gave me my baby’s first shoes.” One day during WWII a handsome air force man walked into Max’s store. “I rushed to serve him” Max said, I always fell for men in uniform. The man was George Hill. Max offered him a job after he left the air force. They fell in love, and lived happily ever after in a beautifully decorated home, with a manicured garden, near Granville on 38^th street. George did the repairs and all the gardening. Max dusted the antiques, Royal Dolton, needlepoint screen, rose crystal, and Chinese porcelain.

“My mother told me to never clean a dirty house” Max said. “She told me to always clean a clean house, so I put on my frilly housewife’s apron and get my red feather duster.”

They had many parties with their gay friends: teachers, businessmen, professionals, laborers, artists. They helped many young gay men with work, offering recommendations, and encouragement. Max told me he was great in drag, but I never knew if he was joking.

When I took my lesbian partner to meet Max the first time he was so delighted to have another ‘Gay” in the family. Later he connected with his gay nephew who was a professor in New York. Max and George went to visit this young man and said he was just beautiful, and so smart.. Later when this young professor became sick with aids and died Max and George prayed for him. In 1978, Max and George retired and sold their shoe business. They traveled the world, bought antiques, and worked in their garden. George attended his Anglican Church and Max his Orthodox synagogue. They entertained their many friends, and helped organize the first GLBT Jewish group in the 1980’s.

When a young man from that Jewish group was jailed for embezzlement, Max and George would visit him in jail. Max told me,”Thank G-d we never invested any money in that group.” A homophobic doctor was Max’s neighbor. He used to torment Max and George by throwing garbage and rotten fish over the fence into their yard. They never retaliated. When Max died he left a very big amount of money to the Jewish Old Folks home, Louis Briar. And when George needed care he went to live there, happy among his many Jewish friends, until George became so ill he could not stay on the first floor of the facility. The Louis Briar home could not accommodate George, so he sadly moved to another facility and died soon after. A friend who lived on his floor told me, “We were all crying the day George had to leave Louis Briar. We loved him.”