Mostly Sunny

Herb Streifer was born in the Bronx in 1915, an area where upward, aspiring immigrants-Jewish, Italian and Irish-went to escape the ghettos of the lower East Side. When his father died in 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression, Streifer was fifteen. He and his siblings helped their mother run the family grocery in Elmhurst, Queens through the depression years. Cash became so tight they had to give up their large apartment and move to the back of the store. Once Streifer finished high school, he continued working and went to City College nights. He graduated in 1941 with a BS just in time to be drafted into the army. Streifer married during WW II and, after the war, earned an MBA by night at NYU, and started a family. From these experiences, his wry humor, and an appreciation for a great anecdote, the stories came.