David Harris
Recreating “A Whole Neighborhood of Jewish Mothers”: Meet Marty and Sally Hiudt, Co-Chairs, 2016 Annual Campaign
Lifetime residents of Cincinnati, in Blue Ash for the last 38 years, Sally and Marty Hiudt are co-chairing our 2016 Annual Campaign, which has just launched. At the JCC last week, I talked with them about their roles and the importance of the campaign, which raises money that is then distributed—through a collaborative, volunteer-driven process—to programs that help people in Cincinnati, in Israel, and throughout the world. With many relying on the Campaign for needed funding, the couple is leading the charge to raise $5.45 million for the community in 2016. —Danielle
A version of this piece was also published in the American Israelite.
Give us some background; how did you come to co-chair the Jewish Federation’s annual campaign this year?
Sally: I’ve been here my entire life, I grew up in Roselawn in the sixties, where you pretty much could fall out of your front or back door and be surrounded by Jewish people.
Marty: We were blessed to grow up in Cincinnati shtetls. I grew up in Amberly Village on Elbrook where it wasn’t 100% Jewish—but it felt like it—
Sally [smiling]: He was on Elbrook and I was on Lakeland.
Marty: So you didn’t have one Jewish mother looking after you, you had the whole neighborhood of Jewish mothers looking after you. We could ride our bikes to the Jewish center. It didn’t take a lot of effort to be in a Jewish environment. We were in a Jewish environment.
Sally: Fast forward to us raising our family of five boys and it wasn’t the same.
Marty: We were in Blue Ash, great community with many Jews and great Jewish friends. But during this time the J in Roselawn had been sold and there was no real Jewish Center. We had activities and events at little satellite Jewish centers, but not a building like this. We felt that loss.
Sally: And so when we were asked to co-chair, really the J was in the forefront of my mind. I was thinking about Cincinnati 2020 [the collaboration to build an engaged and empowered Jewish community by the year 2020], and how its vision of a vibrant Jewish community will affect our kids, and how we want them to be able to stay here in Cincinnati to raise their families in that kind of Jewish environment.
Marty: This is melodramatic [grins] but that loss was like the destruction of the second Temple: there was no Temple, and Cincinnati Jews were thrown out into the diaspora. It changed Jewish life for our kids. So when we were asked to get more involved, we thought about how to expand and protect that Jewish neighborhood with those Jewish mothers we’d each had as kids. We wanted to help build a thriving Jewish community for our kids. So we looked at each other and thought: Federation is the best way to accomplish this. And we said: this is important, we can do this, let’s do this.
Sally: We have five sons, two daughter-in-laws, one-soon-to-be daughter-in-law, and one grandson in town. Three of the boys are in town. They call Cincinnati their home. Our youngest are twins, one is currently in Chicago, one’s in Scottsdale. We believe they will come back. Hopefully!
Marty: We’ve been very blessed. So we hope to have Cincinnati 2020’s goals in place not only for our kids and our grandchildren but the community’s kids and the community’s grandchildren.
Why put so much energy into this cause?
Sally: In our child-rearing days we were a proud and engaged Jewish family, involved but not overly active outside of Hebrew school, bar mitzvahs, etc…. We were generally just check-writers for many years.
Marty: Before I retired, whenever I was asked to get more involved my typical response was “not never, but not now.” [pause] I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. My dad passed away when I was a young adult, 25, and my go-to mentor was my uncle, Murray Guttman. He was very involved, very philanthropic, and I watched the Guttman family from the bleacher seats and said “wow.” For me, he was always the guy you wanted to be proud of you. I had said to myself that if we were ever in the position to be more involved and philanthropic that I hoped we would have the courage to actually do it. And I wanted to be true to that commitment.
Sally: After my grandmother passed away, my grandfather, Lou Carl, went to the Jewish Center at the old J on Section; they picked him up and he was able to do activities and socialize, and he had Meals on Wheels.
Marty: Her grandpa lived alone and while Sally’s parents spent the winter in Florida Sally became the “go-to” caregiver. But she was a full-time mom of active boys, and I was very busy growing our family business with my two brothers.
Sally: Had he not had the J, I don’t know what we would have done … what would have happened. He would not have been as self-sufficient and happy in those later years. And that has always stuck with me, what our Federation does to help our seniors.
Marty: It would have been extremely difficult. We learned how important those programs are—there’s lives behind these dollars. We are not raising money; we are really helping the Lou Carls of the world.
What else is important to you?
Marty: Camp Livingston. All five of our boys went there, from campers to assistant counselors to counselors, some of them even stayed around long enough to be in administration. And they loved it.
Sally: They always came back every summer dirty, dusty, with tons of laundry, but rejuvenated.
Marty: They came back Jewish. Not religious Jews necessarily, but comfortable, proud, energized. Not that they left un-Jewish, but it was just a great environment.
Sally: They were excited about Shabbat, they put on a clean shirt instead of coming to the table in their grubby whatever-they-were-in.
Marty: And they knew the Birkat: they came back comfortable being Jewish, proud of being Jewish, excited about being Jewish.
Sally: And then fast forward, the youngest four all went on March of the Living, and three of them did a Birthright trip, which was all made possible by Federation. It helped build their identity.
How did you come to be Community Campaign co-chairs?
Marty: We were asked! But part of our journey has been that we supported the community with our dollars and a little bit of our time. But as I’ve gotten more involved, what I learned, and continue to experience is that the work of Federation is important stuff, and we both wanted to give more of our time and energy.
Sally: I have personally seen that the need is great, and if I could just help get that message out to people, they would better understand the goals and need, and want to become more involved, too. It’s helping them understand what good this community can do for people in need.
Marty: To reach the wallet you first gotta reach the heart. The deeper our involvement, the greater our understanding of the issues and the importance of the mission. And the greater our commitment to help make these efforts successful.
Sally Hiudt has volunteered in the community in the Mayerson JCC Adams Classic, and has twice co-chaired the Major Gifts dinner for the Jewish Federation. Marty Hiudt has served on the board of Adath Israel Congregation, and is on the religious services committee and head usher for the High Holidays there. He serves on the board and executive committee of the Mayerson JCC, and on the Federation’s board. He has been a Campaign solicitor for many years and was also Campaign co-chair last year.
This year The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati will again match two-to-one all new and increased portions of gifts to the Campaign.
