National Clothesline

Gerald “Jerry” Lieberman, a long-time industry allied tradesman, died on Thanksgiving at home, surrounded by his family. He had chosen to spend his last days at home with the support of Hospice.

He was born in Munich, Germany, in 1924 and came to

the United States in 1939. In Germany, his father had been sent to a Nazi concentration camp but was later released at the urging of the American consul in Munich because he had helped with the body of an American who had died in Germany.

With Nazi oppression bearing down, the family decided to get out of Germany, traveling first to the Dominican Republic before coming to New York where Jerry’s older brother, Erich, had already settled. Unfortunately, most of his extended family remained in Germany and perished in the Holocaust.

At first, Jerry worked to help his family, enrolling in Queens High School and learning English. By the time he graduated from high school on his 18th birthday, the United States had entered the war.

He was drafted, received U.S. citizenship and was sent to Virginia to train as a cook and a baker. When he learned there was a need for German-speaking soldiers to volunteer for the intelligence services, he stepped up and was sent to a Maryland military intelligence training center called Camp Ritchie where he was taught to interrogate or wage psychological warfare against the Nazis.

“I was able to use my language skills and education in an interesting way to fight the enemy,” he recalled last year in an interview with the Charlotte Observer. “At the time, we didn’t know what was happening in the ghettos and camps. Once we did, it struck a great pride to be a Jew and to be born a German.”

He became one of the “Ritchie Boys,” some 11,000 solders who received special training at Camp Ritchie. As a sergeant who graduated in the 10th class at Camp Ritchie, he was sent first to northern Africa as an interrogator, then to Italy with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and eventually southern France.

As the unit traveled, they used tricks to gather information. When confronting captured members of Hitler’s private SS army who refused to answer any questions, he ordered a guard totake one of the prisoners away.

“Out of plain view, the guard fired a shot,” he recalled. “The next guy was very cooperative.”

After the war, he returned to New York. His father had earned a living selling buttons and other goods to drycleaners and soon Jerry followed in his footsteps, forming the B & G Lieberman Co., the name being a combination of his first-name initial and his mother’s, Belle. He became partners with Walter Marx, a boyhood friend in Germany with whom he had been reunited in the United States. Marx ran the New York office while Jerry worked out of the Charlotte, NC, area where he had relocated. In a 1996 interview with National Clothesline, he recalled the roots of the business his father started.

“It was literally peddling buttons — two suitcases of buttons,” he said. “He used public transit to get around — he took the subway and built a route of regular customers.”

After his father died, he said “We had every closet in that apartment full of buttons. My mother needed something to do. I had a car. So I went outside of the city and saw the possibilities.”

He began traveling farther afield, finding areas where there were fewer sources for his products. His mother would ship the supplies ahead by bus so Jerry could refill his car trunk.

“Every time we made a call all over the country, the first question was ‘what‘s new?’ and we made sure we had something,” he said. He would find new products by keeping an eye not only on developments in the industry but also outside the usual business circle.

Through his travels and visits with cleaners over the years, he got tagged with the nickname, “The Button Man.”

At first, it bothered him, he said. But he grew to like it. “B & G fills a definite niche that nobody competed with,” he said. And it evoked an image of hard, honest work by a refugee courageous enough to start over with a suitcase full of buttons.

Eventually, he adapted the moniker in his email address and was known on the internet as “ButtonDad.”

With an abiding concern for the environment, he joined the Sierra Club in 1970 and served as chair of the Piedmont Central group and wrote guest editorials for the Charlotte Observer and other publications. He served on the executive committee of the Sierra Club’s national council from 1980 to 1984 and on its board of directors from 1984 to 1987.

Of the industry’s role in environmental protection, he said in that 1996 interview, “I think we will have more technically expert plants that take advantage of new chemistry and environmentally friendly processes. And we‘ll have to solve the problems of responsibility for old perc spills and land contamination that has made victims out of some of the formerly very successful operators.”

He is mourned by employees and salespeople whose loyalty long after his retirement bears witness to his generosity to them.

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Marianne, who also was a refugee of Nazi persecution. At the time of his death, he was surrounded by his family — his wife, daughter, son, daughter-in-law, and two of his grandchildren.

The family requests that memorials be made to Hospice & Palliative Care Charlotte Region, 1420 East 7th Street, Charlotte, NC 28204.