DUO HONORED FOR FIGHT AGAINST BIGOTRY.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Hatred and bigotry met a powerful enemy 25 years ago when Billy and Tootsie Veprin rolled up their sleeves for the Anti-Defamation League and went off to fight the ugly side of life.

When you've been living on the beautiful side for so long, like they had, you need those kind of challenges, Billy says. You need to put your experience and resources to work because what good are you to anyone if you live life in the penthouse and never visit the ground floor?

If you become rich and forget what it was like to be poor.

Billy and Tootsie went from living in a Quonset hut on Guam in 1947, surviving on sardines and canned beans for years as they tried to get a local dry cleaning business off the ground, to becoming successful in Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley real estate development.

How they got there is a great story in itself. But the important thing is they got there. And when they did, hatred and bigotry had a new, powerful enemy.

They met in Ellen Rose's Kiddie Revue in San Francisco right around 1925. Tootsie was 5; Billy was 9.

``Before the talkies came in, they had an intermission with live entertainment between silent films,'' Tootsie says. ``We'd dance with the other kids in the revue, working one theater, then driving over to do another.

Her given name is Ruth, but no one ever called her that after the Kiddie Revue. She became Tootsie. When silent films died out, so did the Kiddie Revue intermission. Pretty soon, Billy and Tootsie's lives drifted apart.

They found each other again in 1940 at the American Utilities Co. in San Francisco. Tootsie was a bookkeeper and stenographer. Billy walked in one day looking for a job as a salesman. He walked out a year later with a wife.

They were married in June of 1941, and soon Billy was in Pearl Harbor working for the U.S. Navy Department.

``We settled in Honolulu after the war, and one day I saw a notice in the newspaper that said the government of Guam was looking for people to open businesses there. I had this idea of opening a dry cleaning business, but like everybody after the war, we had absolutely no money,'' Billy said.

If you believe in fate, it stepped in and grabbed Tootsie and Billy by the shoulders. These were two young people destined to do some good, important things in life fighting hatred and bigotry, and a few thousand dollars now wasn't going to stop them.

``I met a man who was a distributor for dry cleaning plants, and he took a liking to me,'' Billy said. ``He backed me with $90,000 worth of dry cleaning equipment we put on a ship to Guam.''

They were equipment-rich and money-poor - living in that rundown Quonset hut with their young children while working 16-hour days.

Their new business not only got off the ground, it soared. Pretty soon, the Veprins were opening more plants along with a local department store in Guam. Eleven years later, they would sell it all, and leave Guam with enough money to move to Encino and become successful real estate developers.

That's when hate and bigotry gained a new, powerful enemy.

``Like a lot of Jews, we ran into anti-Semitism in our lives, and we knew the Anti-Defamation League was an organization dedicated to stopping terrible bigotry,'' Billy said. ``So, we got involved.''

Got involved. That's like saying buying a ticket to the Dodger game is the same as playing for the Dodgers.

The Veprins didn't just get involved. They stepped in and shook the ADL by its shoulders - using their experience and resources to raise millions of dollars over the years to fight hatred and bigotry.

``They've been mentors and role models for all the younger members, and their impact on the ADL has been enormous,'' said Faith Cookler of Tarzana. She and her husband, Jonathan, serve as the dinner chairpersons for the ADL Lifetime Achievement Award the Veprins will be honored with this Sunday night.

``Bill and Tootsie have shaped and defined the personality of the ADL and its direction, not just locally but internationally,'' Cookler said.

They have helped the ADL reach out and defend all communities from hatred and bigotry, including Muslims.

``We all either swim together or we sink together,'' Cookler says.

As an example, the keynote speaker this Sunday - as the ADL celebrates 90 years of fighting the ugly side of life - is Irshad Manji, an author and journalist who calls herself a ``Muslim refusenik who refuses to join an army of automatons in the name of God.''

He would like to live his life with Tootsie all over again, Billy says Monday from the 25th-floor Westwood high-rise where they now live in retirement.

``But unlike most people, I wouldn't change a thing,'' he said. ``I'd want to do it over again the exact same way - with no money, and no lights in that old Quonset hut, living on sardines and canned beans.

``It teaches you to appreciate what a buck is, and what you can do with it,'' he says.

Become a powerful enemy of hatred and bigotry.

For ticket information and the location of the ADL Pacific Southwest Region dinner gala Sunday, Dec. 7, call the ADL at [phone], ext. 260.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

San Francisco natives Tootsie and Billy Veprin have been taking on hate-mongers for years for the Anti-Defamation League.

David Sprague/Staff photographer