Annette Corman
Annette was born in Chicago in 1937, but her family soon returned to Texas, her father's home, seeking better employment during the Depression. Her father grew up in Galveston, and the family settled first in San Antonio and then in Corpus Christi. Her mother, originally from Chicago, was a stay-at-home mother. Annette remembered her grandparents, including a very Orthodox grandfather who bought and sold old gold across the country, and her father's parents who ran a small scrapyard in Victoria. In Corpus Christi, she watched the Jewish community grow and her father's scrap business flourish during and after World War II.
Annette grew up in Corpus Christi, attending Crosley and Sam Houston grammar schools and WB Ray High School, where she was editor in chief of the yearbook and deeply involved in school life. She attended the University of Michigan before transferring to the University of Cincinnati to be near her future husband, Saul Besser, who was studying at Hebrew Union College. After marrying, the couple came to Dallas in 1962 when Saul became assistant rabbi to Levi Olan at Temple Emanu-El. They later moved to the Washington, DC area, returning to Dallas in 1969, when Saul helped found and build Temple Shalom.
In Dallas, Annette was involved in the Sisterhood and a Brandeis women's book group. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she built her own career, working first as a librarian for private collections and then, beginning in 1985, as a stockbroker with Paine Webber, later UBS, until retiring at age 72. She was often the only woman in her office. In 1991 she married Jack Corman, an attorney and oil, gas, and real estate businessman. Her sons Jeremy and Ethan Besser both graduated from Greenhill and the University of Texas. She counts her later years, with five children and seven grandchildren, as the happiest and most contented of her life.
Full Transcript
Anette 1937 born in Chicago but she didn't stay there about a couple of months that's right what what what why did the family leave I think it was a matter of the depression and uh the fact that my father really couldn't find what he thought was good employment I think he old Metropolitan life insurance for a little bit and decided he needed to go back to Texas which was his home to do something okay in Corpus Christie is that where he was originally from he was born in Salt Lake City and his family moved to San Antonio and eventually to galston and Galviston is where
he grew up and then when he brought the family back to Texas it was to San Antonio and then ultimately probably a couple of years later we moved to Corpus Christie what do you remember about Corpus Christie when you were a little girl I can remember the refineries I can remember the beginning of a Jewish Community growing there there always had been for many years there had been a reformed Jewish Community but my parents were part of the establishment of um Orthodox conservative Jewish community that developed there there are still people from my childhood that I see here in Dallas more in Dallas than in
Corpus uh and I remember starting to see it grow with the Naval Air Station and the second world war and those kinds of things tell me about your mom my mother was a stay-at-home Mother originally from CH Chicago that's how my father ended up in Chicago well did she ever talk about being a culture change for her coming from Chicago to Texas well I think she missed a lot of the Jewish things that were in in New in Chicago she was a graduate of um I think uh High School where she learned to type so I wouldn't tell you that she had a terribly cultural
experience in in Chicago I think that that opened up more in Corpus than it did for her in Chicago do you remember your grandparents at all yes my father's Grand my father's parents were alive my grandmother was alive till I entered college and my grandfather was alive when my first child was born uh my mother's mother had died when she was 16 and my mother's father was alive until I was probably in the first grade and would come to see us about once a year and he was a very Orthodox Jew and you know what they did for living your grandparents my mother's father bought
and sold old gold and traveled the United States doing that I don't really know how he made a living but apparently he must have made something of a living and and my father's parents were in a very small scrapyard very small and barely made a living and they lived in Victoria I can't tell you how they ended up in Victoria but they did they lived in Victoria where did you go to grammar school in Corpus and what was the name of the school I went uh to two grammar schools one was called Crosley and the second one in the fifth grade I went into a
school called Sam Houston uh hi school high school was WB Ray High School which is still a big high school in Corpus Christie okay talk to me about high school life oh I was very involved in high school life I was the editor and chief of the yearbook and very involved socially in Corpus with I guess the set that were the cheerleaders and the doers in the school and uh I had a wonderful experience in high school really wonderful flourishing experience now when you were just a little girl World War II broke out correct do you remember did it affect your family at all oh
very much my father was in the scrap business and so he went from being a very small buying and selling whatever he could to really working for the US government and being told what he needed to buy for the government uh and at one point I think he got so tired of working for the government that he decided he would try to enlist and he had a condition called thrombo flebitis which meant that he had clots in his legs and his legs swelled up and the doctors knew that and so he was 4f and they so after the second World War I can remember going
downtown in Corpus the day that the war was over and looking in someone's window and there were all these CH Japanese uh dollar bills and things that and I thought and there were all these German uh marks or whatever they were and my father's saying inflation had gotten so bad in Germany that people were carrying wheel BRS of um money to buy a loaf of bread and uh being very excited about the end of the war but my father's business really flourished during the second world war and very much flourished after that that so things became very comfortable for us in Corpus Christie now After
High School uh was it to work on the college I went to the University of Michigan and uh so you went all the way back up north yeah I fell in love with the catalog and I could I was told I could go wherever I wished and uh I already knew the man that I ultimately married and he was in Colorado and uh I decided that that was too much of a place school for me CU I was a very serious student and so I applied to Michigan Colorado and brandise and the way I ended up at Michigan and not at brandise was my mother
said who do we know in Massachusetts inette and I said not a soul and my mother said but we know Aunt Naomi in Chicago and she's close enough to Michigan then that's how I went to Michigan but I did fell in love with the catalog okay now where did you meet you first husband at a Jewish Institute at a federation event somewhere in the Poconos in New York state and he was there representing the city of Denver and somehow I had all I was in New York at a Convention of young Judea and when our Federation director learned I was there he said well if
Annette will go on to this Federation meeting we'll pay her room and board so I went there and that's where I met him so I was going into my senior year of high school and he was I guess probably in his junior year of college okay and he was in Colorado in Colorado okay so you go up to Michigan and go to school and then you guys started dating we really corresponded and then my second year in college my husband my husband to be said I want you to come to school where I am and he was entering Hebrew Union College at the time in
Cincinnati and I transferred to the University of Cincinnati okay which was like going back to high school from Michigan really and then you guys got married uh at that time then at the end of my junior at the end of my sophomore year in high in college yes okay and then where you you finished school yes and then where did you guys settle down after school uh he was invited to come to to Dallas Texas uh to become assistant rabbi to Levi Olan you were glad then to be coming back to a I never thought I'd live in Texas again I never had any interest
in living in Texas again I really thought I was a big city Urban gal and so I mean to live in Cincinnati was a thrill you know uh to wear gloves downtown on Saturday and was really go to Symphony and musicals traveled through and they had a great Symphony and Opera at the zoo it was just great in Cincinnati so I never thought I was coming back to Texas never and you come back to Dallas tell me about life down here now I think Central Expressway was two lanes in each Direction at the time and when TI let out at 4:30 I mean you couldn't
even hope uh to get on the Central Expressway at the time wait what year is this 1962 north of Temple emanuals was basically pastures and uh I remember my son was maybe a year and a half old and we saw this little uh horse prancing around a little Colt in the pasture and I said to him Jeremy what is that and he said so I think the Jewish Community followed Temple Emanuel North that's my impression of what was going on my first husband was Saul besser Rabbi sa besser and we came here as the assistant Rabbi temp Emanuel and then when Temple Emanuel decided that
they needed to have a northern Branch or a northern that the Jews were moving North and there needed to be something that covered the Reform Group out there they approached my husband to do that and uh then when the establishment members children were interested in moving with him there people like Irving Goldberg said we're not going to encourage that and so he left and went to the union of American Hebrew congregations and we went to the Washington DC area and then when Shalom became established but those establishment families children by and large decided to stay at Temple Emanuel the people who did found Temple Shalom
invited him to come and he was responsible for the raising of the funds and the building of the building that when what time period was this 1969 1968 69 okay so you guys had left to go to Washington DC right and we came back on the day that Scott Carpenter walked on the moon wow so that's the day that we came back were you involved at all with the Jewish Community as an observer you know I went to all the functions that went on at Temple Emanuel and uh was involved in The Sisterhood and uh was very involved in a group called brandise uh women
they had a book group and that was a wonderful wonderful thing for me I enjoyed it very very very much your first marriage ended in divorce correct okay and then you remarried mean I was married over 25 years to the first husband and 22 to the second husband when when did you meet your next husband well I probably I knew him before I was divorced I knew him and I knew his wife and he was a widower he was a widower before I was divorced and and during the time I was divorced so I was hoping he would call me and he didn't and so
finally when he did it was I was already divorced about two and a half years and I said to a friend I'm going out with Jack Corman and she said to me where are you going and I said I don't know but I know he doesn't buy stock by that time I had created a career for myself I was a stock broker and before that I was a librarian and I had solicit him as a stock broker and he hung up on me so I said I know he's he has to be calling to take me out because I know he doesn't buy stock and
our children had gone to Green Hill together so I I knew I knew his wife Leah and uh so I knew his family did he know that you were trying to date him all this time no no he he was so busy he must have been on the phone and and he hung up uh so he he really doesn't remember that at all so then what prompted him to call you I really don't know I really don't know I know that at that time he'd had a daughter that was still living at home she was involved with bbo and went to run their Memphis office
and I think all of a sudden he decided that he was going to be alone and he needed to uh widen his Horizon so when did you guys get married in 1991 okay and then did you continue working as a stock broker yes I did I stopped when I was 72 and how did that business evolve I had been a librarian and when I was a librarian I worked only for private Collections and I worked for people here in town like John and luy Merkerson and Mrs Edward Marcus and when I decided that I really had to support myself that I better do something where
which would financially be more advantageous I decided to become a stock broker so in 1985 I joined uh Payne Weber and stayed with them when after they changed their name to UBS until I retired 25 years later were there a lot of women in that uh business at the Town very few very very few and I think there probably is I probably a quarter of the Brokers today are women but actually I was the only woman in my whole office and there were very few women and it was good it was a very it was interesting because the men would share stock tips with each
other but with me they would say What restaurant should we go to or do you know the name of a good tailor so I really uh flew by the seat of my pants in that business and really had to learn the business myself tell me about your husband Jack he is an attorney by trade by profession and he's a oil and uh gas dealer he that's his business is and real estate so he's in the oil and gas business and he has some real estate Investments too now in your lifetime there's been so many advancements in technology do you remember anything that came along that
you went wow how do we ever get along without that oh I think it's the the computer and the internet I think I think it's just stunning because I when the internet started I don't think people understood how essential it was going to become in everyone's life and it really became began as the way libraries and uh universities linked to each other and then suddenly somebody said oh we could all use this and I remember uh going from a little quotron where you you know had nothing on it to all of a sudden having a computer where you really could retrieve anything you wanted it's
fascinating was the happiest time in your life I I think these years have been the happiest years of my life they've been the most contented and the most interesting and uh just lovely and how have you seen Dallas grow over the years since you've been here you know you talked about Temple Emanuel being as far north in Dallas and for those that don't know it's thriving Metropolis north of Temple Emanuel um how have you seen it grow it just happened and we didn't really understand what was happening I mean all of a sudden you would look up and there would be whole new developments that
had occurred from the time we left here we left here in ' 65 and came back in ' 69 the whole area called The Meadows and the duplexes that came in were all there and so all the community had moved very far north relatively far north at that time and I remember being here uh when 6:35 was developed and uh thinking that that was the end of everything and now you go on and on and on and it goes on into Plano and it goes on into Frisco and it goes on into Allen and I mean it's just amazing and I think with that I
can remember being on an elevator downtown at nean and someone came on the elevator speaking French and I thought H we're so Global at this time and now you hear languages in the malls I mean people from Africa people from all over the Middle East uh you hear a lot of Russian and and nobody even turns their head anymore you know we really have grown to be a very International City if you had to do it all over again what would you change oh I think I would have been much older when I married my first time and had uh some more confidence in myself
and uh understood what um I could or couldn't do by myself before I gave up my Independence to be married tell me about your sons I have two sons uh my first son is Jeremy besser and my second son is Ethan besser Jeremy was born in Cincinnati before we came to Dallas and Ethan was born at Baylor hospital they both attended School here in town uh and uh started out in the public schools and went to Kramer and Jeremy went to some Middle School I can't remember which one and then and moved we moved him to greenh Hill and Ethan followed the next year from
Kramer R into greenh Hill and they both graduated greenh Hill and they both graduated the University of Texas and um and I think that they both were in the school of communication and Jeremy has always been in uh some form of the advertising business here in town he's worked for uh Bloom and a lot of the different agencies here in town he worked for Timberland mlan for a long period of time and then he became a partner in a business here in town called directors and now he's freelance ing uh with a group called Treehouse Productions and is still with TV advertising he's a father
he has uh three children um I have a 16-year-old granddaughter and twin grandsons that are 14 in there everything Garrison Keeler says grandchildren should be and um I have my uh son Ethan lives in Denver and uh has done work on the internet and currently is selling residential real estate in Denver the uh 60s were a very turbulent time Vietnam War of course the hippie movement and the Kennedy assassination KY assassination did any of that era affect you well oh I think I lived through a lot of it because uh we happened to be in Washington when the march on the Pentagon occurred when uh
Johnson announced that he wouldn't run for president for another term and we happened to be in Dallas when the assassination occurred and uh I can I think that's when my son realized how important TV was because he ended up in his uh high chair s sitting and watching TV and eating eating all his meals in front of TV for three days solid I mean we just never left the TV said I mean you watching history change before your very eyes it was it was amazing time and a terrible sad time too you had two sons and three grandkids I have uh three stepchildren and uh
as a result of that I have four more grandchildren so it's so there are seven grandchildren total and uh and five children total so it's very nice andette what advice would you like to leave to the Next Generation enjoy your life prepare yourself so that you're ready for any opportunity that you you have that comes before you and understand your opportunities and uh even when bad things occur good things grow out of the bad things and go forward well you did a great job today oh good thanks for doing this thank you very much