Everybody growing up in Central Maine knew the Levines. A large Jewish family that emigrated to Maine at the turn of the 20th century, they ran Levine's, the Store for Men and Boys, on Waterville's Main Street. Often, they would appear in TV commercials, where models would flip open the insides of their jackets. Now, descendents of the store's founder have produced a documentary about the family that sheds light on what it was like growing up Jewish in Maine in the 1950's.

The Miller sisters (left to right), Wendy Miller, Sara Arnon and Julie Miller-Soros

Everybody growing up in Central Maine knew the Levines. A large Jewish family that emigrated to Maine at the turn of the 20th century, they ran Levine's, the Store for Men and Boys, on Waterville's Main Street. Often, they would appear in TV commercials, where models would flip open the insides of their jackets.

"For almost a 100 years the Levine label has meant quality and value we all can be proud of. Levine's, Downtown Waterville," is a claim made by a Levine''s advertisement.

Colby College students and mill workers alike came to Levine's for menswear--and customer service the family prided itself on. But business faded away with the rise of shopping malls, and as younger Levine generations moved out of state, the family decided to close the store in 1997.

Today, a collaboration between Colby and several Levine descendants is helping to inform about Jewish life in a rural state, and preserve a family legacy that began with store founder William Levine, who emigrated to Maine from Poland.

"He came for a better life, because Jews were not liked," says Sara Arnon, a great-grandaughter of William Levine and daughter of Howard Miller, Levine's grandson. A retired early childhood educator living outside New York, she's the eldest of the Miller sisters working with Colby on its Maine Jewish History Project.

Arnon says her great-grandfather used his earnings as a peddler to open his clothing store in 1891. By the time he passed the business onto his two sons, the store had become a popular meeting place in town.

"Well, my uncles were extremely sociable, first of all, and they were genuine characters, so people literally came into say 'hi' to them. It was a busy, fun place especially if you were one of three daughters--it was really a great place to find dates," she laughs.

The youngest Miller girl, Julie Miller-Soros, an educator living in California, says growing up in Waterville post-World War II, the Miller girls were protected from the anti-Semitism. "I had Jewish friends because of Hebrew school and Sunday school, but I had my friends that were Protestant, my friends that were Lebanese, my friends that were Christian. And I didn't know the difference," she says.

At least not until she ventured out of the Waterville area. Along the coast of Maine, resorts banned black and Jewish people through the 1950s.

Miller-Soros says even by the early 1970s, she couldn't get hired as a waitress in Bar Harbor. Her mother had warned her that would happen. "I thought she was nuts at the time but I went with my friends and the three of them did get jobs, and I did not--they were blonde and blue-eyed."

The experiences of the Levine family--the good and the bad--all this was fascinating to David Freidenreich, who directs the Maine Jewish History Project at Colby, where about 50 members of the Levine clan had attended college.

"Many of the books that have been written about Jewish life in the United States are focused on the Lower East Side experience and the greater New York area, because, after all, most Jews in the United States lived in urban areas, and I wanted to find some way to teach students about what American Jewish history was like in Maine," Freidenreich says. "Nobody knew the answers."

A study of old Census records showed how integral the Levines were to growing Waterville's Jewish population to as much as 200 in 1910.

"Migrants would go to places where they had contacts who could help them get settled and established, so by 1920 and into the 1930s, about a third of the households in Waterville were related by kinship or hometown connections to the Levine family," Freidenreich says.

By happenstance, Freidenreich started the Maine Jewish History Project in 2009, around the same time the Miller sisters were finding a way to record their family's history, and he was delighted that they agreed to work with him.

"The Levines were a recognizable name, and they also kept all of their stuff! You can't do history without records," he says.

Wendy Miller, the middle Miller girl and a therapist from the D.C. suburbs, says she and her sister found a treasure trove of archival material stowed away in attics of family homes, "all of the ledger books, all of the deeds, all of the ephemera from the clothing store."

Some of the most poignant items saved by members of the Levine family were hand-written letters. One stash paints a picture of how young Jewish people tried to connect to one another during the early 1900s.

"There were letters from young Jewish girls in, let's say, the southern part of Maine who had heard of one of the Levine boys, and so they would write these introduction letters--you know, 'I don't mean to be forward, but I've heard this...'--and they're fascinating!" Wendy Miller says.

The Miller sisters say they hope the research on their family, much of it archived on the Maine Jewish History Project's website will help the public and scholars alike to better understand Jewish life in small-town America.

For eldest sister, Sara Arnon, now 66, the Levine story is also a reminder of how far their forebears have come.
"They came from somewhere, for some reason, and for many of us it was because of persecution somewhere. So they came to America to find freedom. And, I think that today we take that for granted."

Members of the Levine family are at the family camp in Sidney this holiday weekend. They'll be attending a screening of a documentary short about the family that the Miller sisters produced called Legacy. The event will take place Sunday morning at 10:30 at Colby College and is free and open to the public.