Jewish Federation Executive VP Peter Wells retires after 32 years of building up the Jewish community

He had to be talked into coming to Dayton. At 33, Peter Wells was having the time of his life working with Jewish teenagers as B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s regional director for northern Ohio.

The Jewish Federation director in Youngstown, Stanley Engel – the father of Peter’s dear friend Alan Engel – sat Peter down and told him that Dayton was looking for an assistant Federation director.

Peter Wells

Peter recalls the conversation that changed his life. “I said, ‘Stanley, I’ve only been here a year. I don’t know. I enjoy what I’m doing with the kids.”
Like a father talking to his son, Stanley said, “I want you to give this a shot. I’ll tell you what to do: close your eyes for me now and think if five or 10 years from now you can keep up with the teenagers.”

And so began Peter’s 32-year career in Dayton, a legacy of improving the quality of Jewish life in the Miami Valley and securing help for Jews in need in Dayton, Israel and around the world.

Peter, who has served as executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton since 1978, retires this month.

“We’re in the business of raising Jews,” he says of his mission with the Federation. “Money is just the vehicle. We need to be driven by the heart in our efforts.”

When he began his work with the Federation in February 1973, he says it was a time of much tension in the Dayton Jewish community.

“They had just opened up Covenant House and the community was disappointed because they just had a capital campaign and didn’t raise enough money. They decided to build the nursing home over the JCC. And so there was a lot of unhappiness.”

Peter told the leaders that if they wanted a JCC building they needed to expand Federation’s local services.

“That meant Jewish Family Services, that meant a better Covenant House,” he says.

“When I first came here, the level of local social services was minimal,” he says. “Israel was a focus of the community and the opening of Covenant House helped to change that.”

Former Federation President Milton A. Marks says that while Israel was always a high priority, local programming became more important as Federation added divisions and additional areas of service.

“Thus we saw Covenant House, the Jewish Center, Family Service, preschool care, Jewish education, community relations become increasingly important segments of the mission that Peter Wells as executive vice president had to integrate and manage,” Milton remembers.

When he became executive vice president in 1978, Peter led an extensive planning process dealing with the elderly.

“Out of that process came most of the services we have for the aged to this day: Covenant Manor (low-income housing), senior transportation and the nutrition program,” Peter says.

“We owe Peter a debt of gratitude for the services we have in place here today for the most vulnerable in our population,” says Federation President Deborah A. Feldman. “They are due in large part to his efforts and his skills at coordinating the process, bringing the community parties together to make things happen.”

 

Any of the tensions Peter encountered when he arrived in Dayton faded in the autumn of 1973 with the Yom Kippur War. He was called out of services at Temple Israel when the attack occurred.

“If anything gave me instant training it was the Yom Kippur War,” he says. “The mobilization was just unbelievable.”

“We worked maybe six to eight weeks straight without a break. We got a dispensation to work on Shabbas from the rabbis, saying this was saving lives. There was such an outpouring of people. Social Security pensioners were coming in with their checks. People were coming in day and night. People literally borrowed money to save the country. Every emergency campaign in the community, the outpouring has been phenomenal, the last of which was our 2002 Israel Emergency Campaign.”

As assistant director, Peter was also in charge of community relations. One of the major issues then was the movement to free Soviet Jewry. Peter coordinated major rallies in the community.

This national wave of activism culminated with the March for Soviet Jewry in Washington, D.C. in 1987.

“This was one of our high points, he says. “We had a tremendous delegation.”

Efforts to free Soviet Jews ultimately led to Operation Exodus when the Soviet Union loosened up. Between 1989 and 1992, Jewish communities across North America absorbed more than 750,000 Jews from the Soviet Union.

Dayton, through the efforts of Jewish Family Services and Peter’s coordination skills, was able to absorb 250.

 

Activism was ingrained in Peter’s upbringing. His parents fled Nazi-occupied Vienna shortly after Kristallnacht. Peter was born in a refugee camp in Trinidad. As a child, he grew up in Queens and attended Temple Emanuel.

“Both of my parents were very giving of themselves,” he says. “My father was like the godfather of the refugee group. He took care of everyone. My mother was always at the hospital taking care of people.

“The Jewish community was so weak at that time (the Holocaust). We can’t be that weak again. No one was able to help institutionally. My mother said, ‘nobody helped us,’ but she was so giving.”

While Peter majored in sociology at New York’s Hunter College, he became active in politics. Early on, he got involved in issues of church-state separation, academic freedom and civil rights.

He also became involved with the Reform Democratic Movement in New York, an anti-boss organization, and became its student president.

With the dream of becoming a rabbi, Peter enrolled at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1962.

Two years later, his father died of a heart attack. Peter returned to New York to support his mother and sister and run the family’s insurance business.

He also became principal and youth director of the Greenwich Village Temple.

Peter kept a hand in politics, working on campaigns for the Kennedys and became vice-president of Young Democrats in the city of New York.

It was at this time when he met his future wife, Joan. They married in 1968. “She is the source of my strength,” he says.

 

Peter says a great inspiration to him in Dayton has been the quality of the layleaders. “We’ve had extraordinary volunteers over the years. I had the opportunity to go to Israel in 1974. At that time I went with Lou and Barbara Goldman, who were the national mission chairs. Over the years, the missions have produced unity, new excitement and a better understanding of what we’re all about relative to Israel, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. You find a young leader, you shlep him or her to Israel.”

Volunteers Debby and Dr. Bob Goldenberg went on the first young leadership mission to Israel with Peter in 1979.

“He has played a big part in my life, both personally and professionally,” Debby says.

Debby went on to chair the United Jewish Campaign from 1999-2001; Bob is current Campaign chair.

Debby laughs when she recalls a campaign chairs’ mission with Peter to Azerbaijan and Israel.

While in Israel they were hit with a severe snow storm, a rarity for that region.

“We were stuck on the highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. One person had a salami and another had a bottle of Vodka from Azerbaijan, so there we were at 3 a.m., eating salami and drinking Vodka!”

“Peter engaged me within a few years of his arrival,” says past Federation President Larry Burick. “His extraordinary people skills brought me into the fold and I haven’t left. He makes each and every person feel important and induces people to do important things for the community.”

Dr. Eric L. Friedland, Sanders Judaic Professor Emeritus, says Peter’s “broad range of interests, his personal contacts and his being a never-failing fund of creative ideas made him a continuing vital asset. He has always had the interests of Jews all across the denominational spectrum at heart.”

Former Federation President Bernard Goldman says that when he attended national Federation conferences he was amazed at the number of volunteers from other communities who knew Peter.

“He is a dedicated Jew, number one,” Bernard says. “And he was a good teacher. Many staff members have gone on to major positions in other communities.”

“Colleagues and volunteers around the country have a deep respect for him and truly like him,” Larry says. “He has been a mentor to many younger Federation directors. As far as I am concerned, he put Dayton on the map nationally for our high per capita giving. He doesn’t just talk, he does, which is in line with Jewish philosophy.”

 

For the next year, Peter will continue to work part-time for the Federation on a labor of love, the Federation Foundation.

“The growth of the Federation Foundation is an important legacy that he nourished and will accrue long-term benefits to the Jewish community,” Milton says. “Peter’s smile – his eternal optimism, his people-to-people skills – were important ingredients in the progress and achievements realized during his tenure.”

In recognition of his service to the Jewish people, Peter was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2000.

“Peter is not only someone who knows and loves his rich religious tradition, but is also a skilled diplomat at a time when religions and even folks within the same religions can too easily polarize,” says the Rev. James L. Heft, professor of faith and culture and chancellor of the University of Dayton.

“My greatest joy on the job,” Peter says, “is helping people in need. This community has historically taken risks on all kinds of projects in relation to services. We have to continue to reach out and take risks so that people are truly serviced.”