APRIL 7 • 2022 | 21

get divorced. But we talk a lot 
about who has passed on and 
who is seeing who.” 

A LONG HISTORY
The men grew up in Detroit’s 
Dexter neighborhood. There, 
they met in elementary and 
middle school, played ball, 
got jobs and all graduated 
Central High School in 1950. 
They were active in B’nai B’rith 
Youth Organization’s Aleph 
Zadik Aleph No. 63 as teens. 
All but Kulish graduated 
from Wayne University, before 
the institution was renamed 
Wayne State University in 1956. 
“There were two distinct 
Jewish neighborhoods in 
Detroit,
” Lippitt said. “In the 
Dexter neighborhood, you had 
multi-family homes that were 
built very close together and 
people made a modest mid-
dle-class income. As the kids 
living in Dexter, we all worked. 

The Jewish kids who lived in 
the Seven Mile neighborhood in 
the larger, single-family homes, 
not so much,
” 
Now in their 90s, the men 
have had their share of health 
problems, from diabetes to 
cancer to heart disease. But they 
all feel very fortunate to have 
each other, their wives, relatively 
good health, mobility and the 
independence to get out each 
week to schmooze with each 
other over a meal. 
“We are all walking survi-
vors,
” Lippitt said. “We are all 
lucky to be alive.
” 
Outside of their get-togethers, 

the four enjoy spending time 
with their spouses and seeing 
their children and grandchil-
dren, the bulk of whom make 
their homes in Metro Detroit. 
They talk about the changes 
they have seen in Detroit with 
wistful nostalgia and look hope-
fully to some of the economic 
progress as the city works its 
way out of decades of decline. 
As times have changed, the 
four said that they think it is 
more of a challenge for today’s 
kids to form the kinds of friend-
ships out in the suburbs com-
pared to the way they grew up 
in the closely knit, multi-family 

houses on the streets of Detroit, 
where kids lived in close prox-
imity to one another and were 
left to their own devices — 
more than today’s more sched-
uled suburban kids who live on 
bigger lots spread further apart. 
“We were somewhat inde-
pendent compared to the kids 
today,
” recalled Kulish, who in 
2021 worked on an initiative to 
provide instruments and teach 
instrumental skills to Detroit 
K-12 students in public and pri-
vate schools.
 “You could walk to a friend’s 
house or a vacant lot to play. We 
walked by ourselves to school. 
Kids can’t do any of those 
things today; they are totally 
dependent on their parents to 
drive them everywhere. Kids 
today don’t have the pleasure of 
spending time with their friends 
playing ball or hanging out on 
the porch after school like we 
did.
” 

“WE ARE ALL WALKING 
SURVIVORS … WE ARE ALL 

LUCKY TO BE ALIVE.”

— DAVID LIPPITT

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