Capstone Speech Excerpt - Nathan Schwartz

His family and him were threatened by a drug ring when he was a private detective in Texas. This is only after he left the Air Force Security Police (Air Force Military Police). His mother barely survived World War two while being a nine year old shot in the leg. His brother Yossi helped build the first stealth bombers. His name is Aviv Stein.

My grandfather Aviv Stein, who our family called Grandta, was born in Afula, Israel in 1952.

He really loved to wander around and explore his town on his own when he was younger. One day he went to the beach and  fell asleep. He woke up and he saw the tracks of tanks that had circled around him and the tanks travelling off into the distance.

Grandta was very smart and a lefty, but in school they actually tied his left hand behind his back so he would learn to use his right hand instead. Which, is really messed up.

Shortly before his Bar Mitzvah, he and his family moved to the United States. As a teenager, Grandta kept himself busy by working many jobs. He worked with cancer patients, as an attendant at the beach and parking private planes amongst other things. He worked under a doctor in the Papanicolaou Cancer Insitute for Research and wanted to become a Doctor, but when he got to college, he realized that his English wasn’t good enough to be able to get through school.

In the early 70’s Grandta was drafted into the army. He had a low draft number, so he joined the Airforce so he could choose which division he could be in.

He became Security police. While on a base in Texas, he met my grandmother in the Synagogue where she was visiting her brother.

They eventually got married while Grandta was still in the military. While in Spain, they experienced a lot of anti-semitism which actually started making them more curious about their Jewish roots.

My grandfather did underdcover work in the military where he found out that they were smuggling drugs back to America in dead soldier’s bodies.

Grandta was injured on the base while working security police. He was honorably discharged because they said he could get better care outside of the military.

Back in Texas, he worked as a private detective. A powerful drug ring he was investigating threatened him and his family, so he dropped being a private detective.
Grandta had a strong tie to judaism. He went to the University of Texas, San Antonio, then Austin. On campus there was a table that said “Jews for Themselves” and it piqued my grandparents curiosity. They went over and were invited to the local Chabad house for Shabbos in Austin and immediately became religious after that.

After graduating college, my grandparents ended up in Houston. One day the Rabbi called up my grandfather to say Tehillim for an Iranian Jewish family trying to escape from the Ayatollah. They had to travel through mountains and dangerous territory. Grandta stayed up late saying the entire Tehillim and later found out that the family got to safety at the exact same time he finished.