Al Golman
Al Golman came from a family of Eastern European immigrants. His paternal grandfather, Meyer Golman, was born in Poland or Russia and was brought to Dallas by his children, following cousins named Sheps who had established a bakery there. Al's grandmother on his father's side never allowed a photograph while alive, and his maternal grandmother came from Lithuania by way of England before settling in Dallas. Al's father worked in the wholesale baking business with his brothers, and his mother was a homemaker. Born in 1932 as the Depression was ending, Al grew up with older brothers, including his idol, George.
Al was born and raised in Dallas, starting in South Dallas on Park Row and later moving to the Martell and Concho area of East Dallas. He attended Brown School, then Stonewall Jackson School, and finished at Woodrow Wilson High School, where he played football and later chaired the class's 60th anniversary reunion. He remembered carefree summers running barefoot with friends like Billy Guffy and Wilson Wetherford. His brother George, a Texas A&M man, was captured at the Battle of the Bulge; a Catholic friend, Billy Harman, helped him hide his Jewish identity from the SS and likely saved his life.
Al attended Texas A&M and entered the Air Force through ROTC, serving two years stateside as a crypto security officer supervising a base communications code room during the Korean War era. Afterward he joined the family wholesale bakery for about fourteen years, then moved into food brokerage, representing national manufacturers until centralized buying changed the business. He married Marilyn, whom he had known since age twelve, and they raised a son and a daughter and had a grandchild. A lifelong Dallas Cowboys season ticket holder, he witnessed the aftermath of President Kennedy's assassination firsthand, having delivered pies to the event and later seeing the scene as Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.
Full Transcript
and that picture is of my grandfather a man by the name of Meyer Goldman and he was in Dallas too he was here yeah he well he was right born in Poland or Russia wherever they were and his his children brought him here his children came and then they brought him and the rest of the family why why did they pick Dallas well we had uh uh some uh cousins here by the name of sheps the Shep's family was here and they were cousins my grandmother of this man's wife was a sheps and uh the sheps had a bakery here and they brought up uh
the goldmans over I guess to work in the bakery and then the Goldman open their own bakeries but the ships had uh I'm sure an interest in him now you remember your grandfather when you were little a little bit not much my brother's older brothers remember him of course better than me I know that he made homemade wine but I just barely remember him yeah uh but this this book was published just last year wow did you know your grandmother at all remember your grandmother she the only picture I ever seen of her was in her coffin because she wouldn't allow a photograph to be
made while she was alive okay okay so you have no remembrances of when she was this was on your dad's side My Father's Side what about your grandparents on your mom's side well I knew I knew her mother but I didn't know her father okay and where was your grandmother here no well they she was here when she passed away but she came from Lithuania right uh came through England where she spent some time in England and then immigrated here as my understanding of the story and she uh married after she got here and my mother was her uh next to oldest daughter yeah yeah
what is your parents do my father was in the wholesale baking business here with his brothers and my mother was basically a home homaker right now you were born in 1932 that's correct in Dallas yes city has changed a little bit hasn't it yeah you're being funny now no it's very yes greatly I think it's probably around 300,000 people when I was a teenager right maybe a little bit more what part of Dallas were you did you grow up in well uh we started in South Dallas on Park Row M and then we moved to a Street in East Dallas near East Dallas called Martell
Martell and Concho in East Dallas and uh we lived there for a long time and uh now when you were born it was it was you know the beginning of the end of the depression yeah did your folks ever talk to you and uh uh your brothers about the depression how did it hit that Fountain well the only the only story I know is Dad had at one point had been in the baking business here with his brothers and at one point decided he would move to Houston and open a bakery which he did but uh it didn't go so he came back here broke
and at that point in time I guess he had to borrow money from my oldest brother who's now deceased and uh but I think being in the baking business certainly had its advantages in terms of at least food so I think that they did okay with through that time I don't know about my mother's family but I know my dad's family did okay yeah during that time now where did you go to grammar school well I started at Brown School in in South Dallas uh on Grand Avenue or just south of Grand Avenue and then I we moved East Dallas I went to Stonewall Jackson
uhuh uh on the on mocking birg Lane and uh it was a small school had one story now it's two stories and I think there was 180 kids there wow when I went there yeah wow where' you go to high school woodro Wilson what what did you guys do for fun when you were little I don't well in the summer we went swimming and uh in the summertime I I think I ran around with nothing but a pair of sharks on had no shoes no shirts we didn't know that sun was was dangerous for you in those days but we we stayed you know tanned
and and we were very active and athletic and played games and that's that's about what it was we we take a vacation every once in a while but I don't remember where very much about it tell you the truth now in high school did you take do any sports or anything I played football at woodro and I had been chairman of our of our uh reunion group at woodro I shared the 60th anniversary we had a about 300 people turn out for that wow that's great it was wonderful yeah that's great how did World War I affect your family well my brother oldest brother George
uh was first missing and then a prisoner war and so it affected us greatly in the terms of you know your care and concern and love for one of the members of your family my oldest brother he was my idol of course and uh uh he uh had been he was had gone to Texas A&M and they they they pulled him out and and you know they had to go on in the service and he uh went through training and then they sent him over to Europe and he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge his name was George Goldman and uh he survived
that thank goodness and he had he had a lot of problems I think in terms of his feet and things like that that were Frozen but he he he died at 63 at a very young age but he had had heart troubles for many years did he say what it was like to be a prisoner from that battle he had uh become very close friends with a a Catholic boy from Baton Rouge Louisiana fellow name was Billy Harman and Billy uh used to he would bring they were going through basic training at at at in Paris Texas a camp Maxi and he would bring Billy
home for the weekends and Billy would stay at our house and as a matter of fact when Billy got married uh he spent his wedding night in my brother's bedroom uh and funny thing about it was that the bed broke this was this was the same bed that my brothers and I had always wrestled and and had fun on and it always used to break well it broke that night uh but anyhow there uh they they're gone in the war they're overseas and the the battle starts and he's captured and he had on a a uh a star of David and he was concerned because
they were captured by the SS and they were shooting uh Jewish prisoners or that's what the rumor was so he said to Billy Billy what should I do he said throw off your your muza and your dog tags I guess and take mine which he did and when they came to George he told him he was Catholic and uh they went to went to Billy and Billy had a really large Roman nose and they asked Billy and Billy Billy uh told him he was Catholic they didn't believe him but he was able to pull out his book or doxology or whatever it is and quote
from it and they so they went through the war and the in Camp together in that respect but Billy saved my brother's life remained close after the war they did but uh and Billy is still living although he's really up in age my brother of course died at 63 yeah now you yourself you went into well after high school did you go into college I went to Texas A&M yes okay were you able to graduate oh yeah I graduated and went into the air force from there okay so right from A&M you went into the air force yes well about five months later okay yeah
now this was now Korea wartime it was that war time but it was winding down mhm so I I really stayed State Side the whole time okay were they training you for anything well I was I was trained for uh uh Base Communications I was a crypto security officer at my base mhm mhm which uh simply me I supervised the the code room okay at the Communication Center and how long did you stay in the service for two years two years okay now when you come out of the service what are you going to get into well that was a question I really I was
looking uh for work and uh my family had been in the and was in the wholesale baking business here in Dallas and I got contacted by a cousin and they asked me to come join him and that's what I did my father was there so I I uh I worked at the bakery for I think 14 years do you remember your first car it was a uh 19 50 it was 1954 penth so is that when you got it was in the 50s when I got when I went in the Air Force I had to have a car I knew I I couldn't you know
get around without a car so I had to I came home my brother George took me over to a dealer by the name of Mars Robertson who was here for or Robinson who was here for years and years and years and I bought the car I I've still I saved as a matter of fact I still have it at home somewhere the the the bell of sale how much was that $650 times have changed brand new yeah times have changed just a little bit had you know it was a regular wasn't automatic and if you wanted the the windshield washer you had to press a
button on the floor to wash the windshield oh gosh that that's neat that's neat what was the happiest time when you were a kid what what was the most fun I think high school I guess you know my memories of of of uh pre-teen years I don't remember them that well except I know I had some really close friends right uh who live down the street from us one of them was a kid by name of Billy Guffy and we we ran around a lot during the summertime and another fellow name Wilson wetherford who lived over on momas and uh those were the the fun
times I when did you meet Marilyn I've known Marilyn since I guess we were 12 uhhuh uh so when you were 12 years old did you know then you were going to marry this woman I had no idea women are really not on my mind at the age of 12 I mean we knew each other and and I I happened to be at her confirmation uhhuh uh not for her but for I was there for another girl but uh uh I was there for her confirmation so we've known each other a long time and when did you start dating oh I'd come out of the
Air Force and I really wasn't dating anybody I had a good another Aggie a good friend uh that we were just running around a lot together and my dad said I think he was worried about me and one day he said to me he said what about that little Coleman girl I ran into her outside Phil's delicatess it was on Preston Road and she had a date with a the guy and uh I know she squeezed my hand like help me so anyhow I called her not long after that I asked her if she ever accepted blind dates and she said yes who is it
I said me so we started dating and that we dated for a long time and then we decided let's do it we got married yeah when when was it when you got married we've been married 51 years and then where did you guys settle down we we were in an apartment first on the Inwood Road did you you guys have a television set yet I believe we did yeah right next door to us was another couple that we had known and were close friends with and it was fun because we could actually our bathrooms backed up to one another and we could talk through the
through the wall through the wall that was fun and and when we got our first child uh or they got their first child and they and we wanted to get together we just dial the other phone number keep the phone and they'd answer we'd keep the phone of the baby's crib so that we could hear right then if was there was a problem we just came right back over now after you left the uh family baking business what did you get into I was in the uh went to the food brokerage business there were a commission Reps for national food manufacturers we representing companies like
Welches s Le General Foods bird's eye had a lot of good accounts pinea a lot of fine accounts that we in those days uh the customers here did their buying locally even the national chains bought locally so that's who we called on and uh but the day came when they started doing centralized buying and that was kind of the end of the food brokerage business or the Jewish community in general how has that changed over the years in Dallas well it's a lot bigger and it's organized uh our whole experience when I was growing up was either at the synagogue or the temple and uh
the uh there I was not involved basically uh that much in the community I guess I spent all my time working there was a time when I was asked to serve on a uh a Young Person's committee downtown uh which I think had to do with I know had to do with the the community uh and I served on it a couple years but that was it I didn't do much after that what do you think was the the greatest invention in your lifetime atomic energy which is not an invention but a discovery I guess right right uh that was certainly big uh flying had
already started I don't know one of the major problems I guess is the is the development of weapons of war which have been so have become so dangerous yeah yeah what got you interested in flying that you wanted to join the Air Force well I didn't fly in the air force I just uh I had served in the Air Force Roc at A&M and that's where I got commissioned and uh as I said I was in Base Communications I didn't really I wasn't a pilot now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasions um you know you liveed through the end of the depression
of course World War II the Korean War president shot here in Dallas something good to moonlanding in ' 69 yeah and all amazing things you know of course the tragedy of 9/11 what any one of those or something else that really stood out oh they're all they're all terrible the day that that Kennedy was shot we had uh the caterer at at uh where the affair was being held for him had called us and asked us to bake off 200 Frozen Pi a couple hundred Frozen Pies which they didn't have the capacity to do so we certainly said yes we did that and I drove
by there just to see if the pies had been delivered okay and I I just simply told the officer who I was he said go ahead and I went around the back and walked right into the kitchen there to make sure that the pies have been delivered and they had and I left and was heading north when I heard about on the radio came about Kennedy being shot Sunday after uh Kennedy right had been shot Lee Harvey Oswell had been taken to jail and I was driving on Central Expressway down it went R through downtown Dallas and I saw a bunch of cars down there
I said you know what that they must be doing something with that guy that shot the president so uh C got off the expressway circled around and parked and I I saw them back the armored car into the basement of the the jail there where oswal was so I was standing there but then we heard these bangs coming out you know it was echo or magnified coming out from the basement up this ramp and all the cops started running and I didn't nobody knew what had happened so I ran and jumped in my car and uh drove to the baker which is about 3 minutes
away and turned on the TV at the office there and sure enough that's when the Oswell had been shot by Jack Ruby I think that was probably in my life one of the most shocking things that ever happened and the after effects of it were were terrible in terms of Dallas and what people thought of Dallas and I'd always been so proud and still have of Dallas uh but that was really a a terrible thing World War II of course when my brother was found was liberated that was a probably the a a major day for me I think those two things are probably now
you were here when the Dallas Cowboys started yeah who's the greatest Dallas Cowboy we ever had the greatest Dallas Cowboy I think has to be merus Dy D Dy D yeah in my opinion because mer my wife and I and my and her father he had season tickets I we had season tickets and we went to every game starting in a cotton bow so them and my father-in-law they rest in peace was a big fan of the competing team the Dallas Texans which are now the Kansas City Chiefs right so we were at the football game every Sunday either the Chiefs either the Kansas City
the Texans rather the Dallas Texans or the Dallas Cowboys and worse than that he was they lived a block and a half from Highland Park High School here so he went to every Park High School game on Friday night and I've seen him there was one weekend where we went to uh a Highland Park High School game on on uh I think it was a Thursday night and on Friday night SMU played out in the cotton bow and then on Saturday the Texas Oklahoma game was out there and then on Sunday there was either a cowboy or or Tex game Texans game and and I
think we made every one of those games cuz he really loved the game of football he so see you you were allowed to go then if it was your father-in-law it was very nice of him to let me go that's right yeah yeah yeah especially since he'd gone to the University of Texas and I was naggie happiest time in your life well we got married it was certainly a happy time and uh when we got our our two kids was a happy time you have you have one son one daughter yeah and one grandchild that's correct what advice does Grandpa have for your grandchild in
that next Generation just keep on keeping on because there going to be times when it's not happy and you have to keep on going and you just have to live through that and it'll all be worth it someday you did a great job man