This Week
mul
%
GONTOVNIK
Cover Story
from page 15
1191TW EET1118
J1
2
as Cadillacs will be raffled.
1 in 2500 chance to win.
Only 5000 tickets will be sold.
3rd prize is a dream vacation
to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
For
more information,
contest rules
regulations, visit
wvvwjarc.org
AUDETTE
BREAK THROUGH
7100 Orchard Lake Road, W. Bloomfield
www.audettecadillaccom
Mon. & Thurs. till 9; Tues.„ Wed., Fri. till 6
PUT AWA3 iFT3 iiirrilUNGER!
*TN
7/ 5
2002
16
If your toilet will not
flush or you have to
flush it two or three
times to clear the bowl,
you are a victim of the
new 1.6 gallon per flush
toilets. There is a solu-
tion. A.
compa-
ny
JEFFREY MOSS called
Toto, the
world's largest manufac-
turer of plumbing prod-
ucts, has a full line of
high performance 1.6
gallon toilets.
These toilets feature:
• Most powerful
gravity flush toilet ever.
• 2 1/8", 100% glazed
trapways, largest in the industry.
• 3" flush valve vs. standard 2".
• Consumer Digest Best Buy.
• Siphon jet action to assist perform-
ance for efficiency
• Designed for commercial and resi-
dential installationS.
The toilet you
Jeffrey Moss is
select should be able
vice-president of
to perform flawlessly.
Advance Plumbing
You
Supply Co.
should
have a ,
Call 800-560-7474
sense of
toll-free
confi-
dence in
1977 E.W. Maple Rd.,
your toi
Walled Lake, MI
let, know
48390
ing it will
function
with one flush.
• For more information and
a free 28 page guide on
selecting the right toilet call
-
-
Advance Plumbing Supply Company
at 248-669-7474 or visit us at
www.advanceplumbing.com .
Gontovnik's mother had family on a
kibbutz, so in 1949 the family made
aliyah. Not liking kibbutz life, his
father brought the family to Tiberias a
few months after arrival.
In 1959, the Gontovniks move to
Kiryat Motskin, a small, tight-knit com-
munity between Haifa and Acre.
Avraham has grown strong. His size
makes him a natural in the shot-put, and
his athletic ability puts him in a special
infantry unit in the Israeli Defense Forces.
Soon after fighting in the Golan
Heights during the Six-Day War in
1967, Gontovnik becomes the Israeli
shot-put champion.
"My emphasis was on studying rather
than sports," he says, his voice still
thick with an Israeli accent.
His interest is in engineering, but
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
in Haifa won't recognize the two years
he's already put into an associate's
degree at another school. A friend tells
him a school called Lawrence Tech in
the United States will accept the credits.
So, at 25, Gontovnik packs his bags
and leaves for the Southfield college
with another schoolmate in 1972, a few
months before the Summer Olympics.
"I felt sad. I knew a couple of them
very well," he says of the 11 Israeli
Olympic athletes killed in the Munich
Olympics massacre.
He doesn't know if he would have
participated in the Games had he
stayed in Israel.
"Being champion didn't guarantee
going to the Olympics," he says. "In
Israel, you have to achieve a certain
level of competition rather than just
being a champion."
His plan is to stay in Detroit for two
years, get his engineering degree and
move back. Maybe get back into sports.
"In a way, I was a celebrity [in
Israel]," he says. But things aren't
always in your control.
Gontovnik meets a woman, Ilise
Simon, and after a year of dating, they
marry. He is working at an engineer-
ing job at TRW when tragedy strikes.
After six months of marriage, his
wife dies from an allergic reaction to a
prescription drug.
"Inertia keeps you here," he says
solemnly, of why he didn't return to
Israel. "You don't make quick decisions."
Four lonely years later, he's still
working at TRW when a friend sets
him up with his future wife, Raya.
Raya Goldenberg
Born in 1950, Raya Goldenberg is
from an Israeli family whose roots in
the Jewish homeland go back 11 gen-
erations.
When her father became ill with
kidney disease in early 1959, the fami-
ly learned the U.S. was the only place
with the dialysis machines he needed.
"We left a very large and very close
family in Israel to seek medical care
for him here," Goldenberg says. "It
was a very traumatic decision, but it
had to be done."
The family moves to the Detroit
area,- where her aunt has settled after
the war. Goldenberg is enrolled in a
school for immigrants.
"On one hand, there's a sense of
excitement about being different
where people are drawn to you
because you're not like them," she
says. "On the other hand, your strug-
gle is to become more like them.
You're really thrown into it."
The schoolchildren, between ages 6
and 16, are taught English at the same
GONTOVNIK on page 18