Ethel Gruen
Ethel Gruen was born in 1920 in New York City. She attended Julia Richman High School in downtown New York, which was the first time she and her twin brother, Sam, had been separated. Afterwards she went to Hunter College and married her husband, Ronnie z”l, in 1942. They settled down in New York and Ronnie was exempt from army service because he was a tool and dye maker. Ethel and her husband have always been very important advocates of Jewish education, having supported the Dallas Jewish community and its institutions like Akiba and Yavneh Academies in addition to Yeshiva University in New York. Ronnie and Ethel were involved with the establishment and development of both Akiba Academy and Congregation Beth Torah and have served as major philanthropists in the Jewish community.
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Irwin Grossman was born in 1931 in Paris, Texas, and moved to Dallas in 1937. His father came from Russia and his mother from Lithuania, but they met in Dallas. Irwin’s father started a dry goods store and later became a real estate investor. Irwin had his bar mitzvah at Congregation Shearith Israel and later was confirmed at Temple Emanu-El. He attended MIT and later entered the general contracting business. Irwin was very involved in Golden Acres, building several buildings there, and eventually becoming president of Golden Acres as well. He also built some of the buildings at Temple Emanu-El and was vice president of Temple Emanu-El and of the Jewish Federation. Irwin, along with his wife, Irma, has been a very important member of the Dallas community.
Joan Gremont
Boris Gremont was born in 1947 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in the country on a farm. It was there that he attended primary school. His mother and father, whose family was tragically lost in the Holocaust, were from Lithuania and met in South Africa. Boris was in the South African military for nine months in an engineering corps. He met his wife, Joan, in college in Johannesburg, and they married in 1971. Boris maintains a strong interest in engineering, however he has worked throughout his life as an accountant. He and his wife, Joan, eventually moved to Dallas with their family; they have two kids.
Jack Greenberg was born in 1927 in Iowa City and raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa. His father worked for a chain of women’s ready-to-wear clothing stores where Jack’s mother worked as well. Jack attended high school in Illinois where he was one of five Jewish kids at the high school. He went to the University of Iowa for three years, then Washington University for one year, followed by U.S. Army service from 1950-1953, during which time he was stationed in Georgia. He worked at Neiman Marcus department store when he and his family first came to Dallas until his family opened up a women’s clothing store in Dallas and later worked for Charles Curtain Company for 32 years. Jack and his wife, Carole, have three children.
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