The Great Neck Choral Society
Performing musical masterpieces for Long Island audiences for more than 50 years
 |
PROFILE Simmy Bank: |
No, he's not a librarian. The headline is a perhaps-bad jest, though one that Simmy, with a robust sense of humor, would probably appreciate. A stalwart in the bass sction of GNCS, Simmy is an internationally known gastroenterologist.
Simmy was born in Moorreesburg, a small town in South Africa, about 80 miles from Cape Town. His father was a Jew from Russia, and family lore, perhaps apocryphal, has it that he had intended to emigrate to America on the Titanic but gave up his reservation when he discovered that the ship did not offer kosher food. He took a "mail boat" to South Africa instead. Simmy's mother was from Riga, Latvia. "I have no idea how they met," Simmy says.
Simmy's father ran a general store. With the rise of Hitler in Germany, many Afrikaaners began to act out their sympathy with the Nazi view of Jews. In Moorreesburg, they stopped shopping at Mr. Bank's general store. So, when Simmy was six years old, the family moved to Cape Town. Simmy went to a school called Girls Central--
"despite the name, it was coed," he says--and then on to Cape Town High School.
During these years, there was plenty of music in the house. His older sister played piano, accordion and recorder, and Simmy thinks that it was from her, primarily, that he derived his
abiding love for classical music. Both brothers also played piano, and the older also played accordion--plus, expertly, the mouth organ.
His voice was his instrument
The pervasive concept of playing an instrument did not rub off on Simmy, the youngest of
the family.. "I took piano for just two months," he recalls. But he did discover another instrument--his voice. His school did not offer much in music, but he sang as a child soprano in temple. And later he joined the chorus of the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra, where he sang for 12 years. At the end of each season, he says, "we always did Beethoven's Ninth."
Meanwhile, the Afrikaaner government, which had taken over South Africa from the English in 1948, had insinuated its policy of apartheid--the rigid separation of whites and blacks--into all areas of public life. Many whites opposed apartheid, some more openly than others. "My family were 'closet liberals'," he says. When the police started raiding some of their more outspoken friends, one of them showed up with a carton of "leftish" books and asked the Banks to hide them. The Banks had a dining table that contained unobvious drawers, and that's where the books went. The table was sold years later, with the books intact, and "I somtimes wonder," says Simmy, "what the buyer thought when he finally discovered those books."
Simmy elected to study medicine, influenced in part by his father, who regarded it as a "secure profession." He attended the University of Cape Town, which was
affiliated with Groote Schuur Hospital. After finishing med school, he married Sybil Velkes, who was teaching preschoolers in a Hebrew school, and they moved temporarily to London, England. There he spent three years in specialized training and received the honorary degree of Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. It was there that, influenced by a renowned colleague, he decided to specialize in disorders of the digestive system.
When the Banks returned to South Africa, Simmy helped set up, with Solly Marks, an older colleague, the first gastrointestinal clinic in the country. "We were known
as the 'gastric Jews'," Simmy says, hoping the pun is clear. "Patients were referred to the clinic from aIl over Africa." In 1967 he was the gastroenterologist on the surgical team headed by Christian Barnard that did the world's first successful heart transplant. Three years later, at age 37, he was made head of the clinic. In 1974, on a sabbatical, the Banks spent six months in New York, where Simmy was a visting professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Back home, apartheid continued to be oppressive. It was also, Simmy says, "ridiculous." At Groote Schuur Hospital, for example, there was a wing for whites and a wing for blacks, but Asian patients posed a problem. The hospital sent
Japanese patients to the white wing and Chinese patients to the black wing, but the policy for other Asians was less clear. The clinic's waiting room was supposed
to be divided, too, but "happily," says Simmy, "it was too small." More critically, he says, "the political uncertainties had a drastic impact on staffing."
Leaving apartheid behind
Meanwhile, riots by blacks had intensified. And after the third such episode in Cape Town, the Banks
decided to emigrate to the U.S. with two of their sons, moving to an apartment on Wooley Lane in Great Neck. A third son went off to Israel to study engineering
and joined them later in New York. The move's biggest challenge, Simmy says, was
getting a Bechstein grand piano, played by son Robert, into the apartment.
That piano was only one of many instruments played by Simmy's kids. Besides piano, Robert, now a lawyer, took flute and cello for awhile. Larry, the oldest son, now an engineering professor, played
guitar. Simmy's third son, Kevin, who also went into law, played violin, piano and recorder. None showed any special interest in the voice as an instrument.
A year after tbe move, Simmy had become chief of gastroenterology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., and he has held that position for
27 years, recently being named "chief emeritus." He is also currently a Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Manhattan, and has held similar positions at Stony
Brook Univeristy and City University of New York. Over the years he has published more than 500 papers and abstracts, chiefly on peptic ulcer disease and pancreatitis. His criteria
for the severity of pancreatitis are used internationally.
Sybil, meanwhile had taken a master's degree in education with studies at Queens College and Adelphi University. For 16 years she was Director of Early Childhood
Education at Temple Israel in Great Neck. She now does volunteer work for Planned Parenthood and attends workshops at Taproot, a group for senior writers.
Simmy loved singing with the chorus in Cape Town, and he joined GNCS as soon as he arrived in Great Neck in 1977. Singing is "very relaxing," he says. He is one of the
hardy breed of choral singers who has persisted for more than 50 years despite the fact that, as he says, "I don't read music." Fortunately, he says, "I have a very good ear," and
that's how he learns. While a choral director naturally prefers singers who can read music, Simmy offers one important plus. Since he's not riveted to the page,
"my eyes are on the conductor most of the time."
The Banks, who moved to their current house on Rose Ave. in 1980, have long been subscribers to series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Manhattan Theatre Club. For many years they also had opera. ballet and dance subscriptions. At one time Simmy played a vigorous game of
tennis. Now, at 73, with a "trick" knee, his other main relaxation is swimming. Two or three times a week he goes down to the Town of North Hempstead indoor pool on Denton Ave. But, he confesses, "I spend a lot more time in the sauna than I do swimming."
top | index to profiles | home
Main
GNCS Pages
- About the Group
- Archives
- Audition
- Concerts
- History
- Locations
- Members
- Music Director
- News
- Tickets
- Past Concerts
- Past Soloists
- Picture Galleries
- Profiles
- Supporters
- Works Performed