Arnie Stokol
Arnie Stokol grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, in a family profoundly shaped by its Lithuanian-Jewish heritage. His mother was born in Poland and came to South Africa at age four, while his father was born in Lithuania and arrived at age seven, having spent years there with his grandmother while his grandfather saved money to bring the family over. His grandmother spoke mostly Yiddish, and his grandfathers worked as a tailor and a shoemaker in Johannesburg. Arnie recalls a warm, very Jewish upbringing, remembering the shul, his second-grade teacher, and his grandmother chasing him around the kitchen table for taking cookies.
As a teenager, Arnie decided he would not raise a family under apartheid and told his parents at fifteen or sixteen that he intended to leave South Africa. He met Barbara in 1971 in college, and they married with a shared commitment to emigrate. Trained first in pharmacy, he switched to optometry, and after finishing school the couple left South Africa. They spent about nine months in England, where he earned his British optometric qualification, backpacked through Europe, and visited Israel and Arnie's brother before he pursued his doctorate in the United States. Accepted at the University of Houston, Arnie completed his degree, passed his boards, and had their first child, Trevor, in Houston.
In January 1980 the family moved to Dallas, drawn to a strong Jewish community and day school, and Arnie built a long optometry practice, later serving as past president of the North Texas Optometric Society. He became a United States citizen in October 1986, a day he considered one of the best of his life. He and Barbara found warm support from the ex-South African Jewish community and eventually joined Shearith Israel, where he helped lead fundraising efforts, and he was a founding member of the Federation's Maimonides Society. Their daughter Jody was born in Dallas in 1982. After their son Trevor died about ten years before the interview, Arnie stepped back from communal involvement. He and Barbara continued to travel often to South Africa, treasuring family ties across several continents.
Full Transcript
Okay. Okay, go ahead. I'm Arnie Stoeckle. Today is May 13, 2015. Very good. Thank you for coming. Sure, you're welcome. Tell us a little bit about what you remember of your young years, your early life in South Africa, and also where your family came from before they were there, before they settled in South Africa. Sure. I remember actually a lot about it because we were very Lithuanian-Jewish influenced. My late mother was born in Poland and she was four years of age when her family emigrated to South Africa. My late father was born in Lithuania and he was seven when his family moved to South Africa.
And so there were a number of years in Lithuania where my grandmother and my father and his first brother, there were four boys, two born in Lithuania, two in South Africa, where him and his next youngest brother had been about four years in Lithuania while my grandfather went to collect enough funds to send back to Lithuania for them to ship out, which I think was a pretty common occurrence. So then my father and his brother was a little bit younger. His brother was about five and a half, but my dad never spoke English at all when he came to the country. so he was put into the same school grade as his younger brother, which was actually a bit of a problem for him over the years.
And he was one of the, I think one of the only, well, him and his one other brother didn't get an education, higher education because of that. It held him back. But the point is, my grandparents were very, very Lithuanian. I mean, my grandmother pretty much spoke Yiddish. She would hardly ever speak English to us. So that's, we were raised very much in a very close-knit family with a very strong Lithuanian influence. On my mom's side, my grandfather was a tailor, and he worked in Johannesburg, and I used to go usually Friday afternoons by bus to go see him at his little tailor shop in downtown Johannesburg and give me 25 cents for coming to see him.
So very strong influence, very, very Jewish. The area we lived in in Johannesburg was very Jewish and was very much part of what I remember and growing up there and just a lot of warm wonderful fuzzies I mean it was a fabulous thing Can you remember a memory of yourself let say in elementary school something that was really a highlight of your years there Well, I mean, I just remember a lot of just really good vibes. I mean, one of the things I can remember as a very, very young person was my grandmother chasing me with a dishcloth around the kitchen table because I was taking biscuits or cookies from the dish.
I mean, that's probably one of my earliest memories. But no, just a lot of really good, positive stuff. I remember the shul very clearly. I remember school. My second-grade teacher, Ms. Lieberman, very clearly. And just good stuff. How Zionist was your family, would you say? My father's late father had two sisters go to Israel Also in the early 30s And I know that he supported them financially I wouldn't say that the family was extremely Zionistically inclined My family was just All of the efforts were really made to survival and making a living I mean that's what I remember My grandfather was a shoemaker, and he actually had a little shoe factory in Johannesburg, where my father and two of the four brothers worked.
Most of the support, financially and Zionistically, I think came from my grandfather. My brother did, after he finished high school, actually went to Israel, and lived there for a number of years. married a girl from America, from Arizona, and they have two children who were born in Israel. Are they there still? No, they're in Allen. Oh, nearby. They're here. Nearby, okay, very good. So at what age do you think you started thinking that maybe you would not be staying in South Africa and what your next step might be? I would say about age 15 or 16, and I remember clearly talking to my parents about it.
saying that my plan was to get an education and leave South Africa and go somewhere. I didn want to raise a family in the apartheid environment The whole thing didn feel right and there was nothing that you could actually do because if you did you were thrown in jail for 180 days without cause So we knew I knew at a very young age as a teenager that I was going to leave And I remember my parents being absolutely shocked at the discussion and saying to me, well, you'll grow up. Because we had it good in South Africa. And I think after their experience as immigrants, it was like, what more does a person want?
And how can you even think about leaving the family? and I said, you know, I'm going to go. And then Barbara and I, we met in 1971 in college, which was about 44 years ago. Started dating in 1971. And when the relationship got serious, I clearly remember saying to Barbara, there's one thing I want you to know, and that is I'm not staying in South Africa. And unless you are open to immigration, you know, this relationship is not going to go anywhere. and she was totally on board with it. She was pretty much raised the same way by her father. So after college we left.
So you were both in, she said you were both in pharmacy school? Yes. Pharmacists, that was your path? Well, that was my path and that's what she finished doing and it was not what I ended up doing because after two years I became quite disillusioned with what looked like being a pharmacist and decided to switch to optometry. So I then went to optometry school and she finished pharmacy, I finished optometry school. And then we left probably a few weeks after we finished, got our degree. Just got up and left. I don't know if I can imagine, but what was the scene like? What was it like when you guys were actually packing, leaving with your families and friends?
What was it like? How did they feel at that point when it was a reality? Well, I can tell you that from my standpoint, and I think Barb's as well, There was nothing but excitement, and we were two of the adventurous type and had our backpacks, and we were going. I don't remember there being anything negative from our families at that time. I'm sure they were deeply concerned, and they were heart-sore that we were leaving. But I don't remember that being a vibe that was conveyed to us at all. I just remember a lot of excitement about it. At that point, even though it was early on, did you sense that anybody else that you were close to was possibly considering also leaving South Africa or not at that point not at that time No I don recall that at all Other than my brother who had already left South Africa for Israel because he left in 1975.
So other than him, no, it was very unusual in our circles to be talking about emigrating. It was just not the done thing. You were one of the early ones, I guess. Yeah, I think so. So I know you didn't come to Dallas directly, so tell us what path you took after you left South Africa, then what? Well, we first went to Israel. No, no, excuse me. We first went to England because I could do nine months' worth of training and studying in the United Kingdom to get my optometric equivalent there, and the main thing was to make a living. So we did that, and I got my FBOA, my British exams, and then decided that there wasn't enough sunshine, and I lost my tan line, and Britain was not for us.
We could have lived anywhere and been happy, but that didn't work out. So we were about nine months in England, and then we did three months of backpacking through Europe, and then we went to Israel, because it seemed like that was the natural thing to look at and to do. We didn't know what that was going to be like, but we decided to go over there, and it was almost... It wasn't made difficult for us, but they didn't make it easy for us in that you had to use your immigration privileges in order to come there. We wanted to go for six months. I wanted to see what I had to do from a work standpoint, but we didn't want to take our immigration privileges because once they started, time would run them out because if we decided later on we were going to come to Israel, we would have used up those privileges.
So we decided we just didn't want to do that. And so we spent a bit of time there. We spent time with my brother and his family, and he had two kids at that point, youngsters. And then we went back to South Africa for a short period of time while I made preparation for coming to do my doctorate in the States. And we realized that this is where we thought we would land up. And I made application at two, maybe three schools. I was accepted at the University of Houston. I accepted the position, and then three weeks later, I got accepted at Berkeley in California.
Yeah, but we'd already accepted my advanced placement at U of H. We came to Houston, sponsored by my father and my late father-in-law. And spent my time, got my doctorate, took the board exams, had our first child, Trevor, in Houston. And when he was about three weeks old in January of 1980, we decided to move to Dallas. basically wanted to stay in Texas. I only had a Texas license at that point. We were offered sponsorship for immigration and also I wanted to go as far north in Texas where there was a strong Jewish community and a Jewish day school. And you can still get your tan.
And I get my tan back. Definitely. So and Jody wasn't on the scene yet, right? Jody was born in Dallas in 1982 so So, no, she was not on the scene at that point. How welcoming did you find the community here, the Jewish community and also the community at large in your field of work, for example? We found it very welcoming. There were quite a few. I must say that the welcoming came from the South African community. Just like us, most of the families did not have family of their own. and two of the friendships that we formed in those days were truly our family, surrogate families at the time, and so it was extremely, I mean, I remember the Yontavim together and...
Still to this day. Yeah, I mean, it was extremely welcoming. At large, I don't remember much. I mean, most of it came from the friendships that we formed from the ex-South Africans, the Jewish community, and that's as much as I can... Is that also how you based your affiliation with the synagogue? I know you waited a while probably to join anything, but at that point, how did you choose a synagogue to affiliate with down the road? Well, it was unusual to be in a community that wasn't Orthodox because South Africa was 98% Orthodox. And that was part of why it took us a long time to become affiliated.
But we joined Sheriff Israel. We just felt most comfortable there. But it did take a number of years. And so we joined up and it was terrific Have you yourself gotten involved in anything specific in the Jewish community Any activities any particular groups you part of or anything like that Well, we had been. I mean, there was a time where I even headed the fundraising for the Campaign for Excellence for Sherrath a few years ago and on the Federation I was one of the original founding members of the Maimonides Society of the Federation. But things changed for us in a big way ten years ago when Trevor died, and whereas a lot of people would have become more involved, I became less, and that's just where we're at right now.
Okay. What about in your professional area? Have you joined anything there or found any really close-knits, close people and things to get involved in in your field? Well, yeah, I'm a member of all the national, state and local societies, and I'm a past president of the North Texas Optometrics Society, and I've been very involved in that. I mean, my profession's been so important to me. It's done so much for us, and we've tried to give back as much as I could. I've never asked anybody this but I wanted to ask you did you ever feel any twinge at all within your profession of anti-Semitism at all or is that just really off the radar not there I would say no I have not the level of acceptance by the professional community for myself has been remarkable I would say not from a I never felt uncomfortable as an immigrant and in fact if anything I think I was embraced as an immigrant never never sensed any anti-Semitism at all That's good to know because I grew up here and I have so it's interesting to hear that that's good Do you feel that you guys you and Barbara have taken some of your South African traditions and brought them here, or have you left most of it behind?
Oh, no. Besides the Jewish food and stuff, but anything else? Oh absolutely I think the best example I can give of that is our daughter Jody sitting us down more than once and telling us how this is a Texas child how she always felt different and almost felt like an immigrant herself, and we kind of chuckle at that. But I think that we brought something very South African and very different with us, and still to this day, I think we stand out differently as South African Jewish. I think that the community from South Africa in general has been very involved and I think have been a very positive force within the Jewish community in Dallas from an involvement standpoint, and I just think that brought a lot.
and I don't know that we, I think we just did what we did and because it was different, it brought something different with us and yeah, I think that shows for sure. Do you foresee Jodi carrying that on with her family? I think Jodi's been, without a doubt, partially molded by that and whether she does it consciously or not, yeah, I think that's where the influence of parents has an effect on their children. I think, yeah, it will be carried forth. What family and friends, who do you still have in South Africa? And do you wish any of them would eventually move here or have some of them moved here?
Maybe not Dallas, but not far. My brother came in 1986, and he came to Dallas because we were here. They decided to leave Israel, go back to South Africa, and then decided they wanted to come to the States, and they came here because we were here. We have a younger sister. she's living in Johannesburg with her husband and two of her children the third child is living in London with two of their grandchildren the other three are in Johannesburg and Barbara's got two sisters one in the Cape Town area one in, in fact now they're both in the Cape Town area and then she's got a brother and sister in Sydney, Australia so we've still got family we've got all of our uncles and aunts are there we've got one uncle in Walnut Hill, California other than that all of our uncles and aunts are still in South Africa.
So nobody else that you can foresee that's going to be coming here? No we were hoping that my sister and brother would come but they are firmly rooted now in London they were the second home there So I doubt that they going to come I don think any of our direct family is going to come So basically, do you do a lot of travelling, visiting everybody and vice versa? We do. Fortunately we're in a position where we're able to do that. We love to travel and we do. We go back for as many Simchas as there are. In fact, we're going to be there in December this year.
My niece is getting married in Johannesburg. Barbara was saying that she goes, you go as much as you can, if you can, when you can. Absolutely. We love to visit there. We love to see the family. While our parents were alive, we used to have them come out here as often as possible. When that wasn't possible, we would go there at least once a year. Our kids went to South Africa growing up, at least on an annual basis, basis because we knew the strong need for connection with grandparents and with immediate family. It was difficult coming across and not having any immediate family here. So we did whatever we could to go as often as we could and still do.
Well, we admire all that because it's certainly not easy. It's a long slip. Yeah, it's a slip. You sit 16 hours in a plane and you don't talk about it. My travel was to New York. Yours was across the world, you know, to visit your family. Tell me a little bit about citizenship. When did you get it? How did you get it? And what What does it mean to you? We became citizens in October 1986. We arrived in this country in July in 1978. I was on an F1 student visa. After that I was offered an immigration sponsor, Dr. Murray Ray. He offered me a job as well as to be my sponsor, and we're forever grateful to him.
And five years as a green card resident alien is the standard. And once the process was all put in place, we applied for immigration. And it was in October 86 we were sworn in, and it was just a joyous day for us. people often ask, do you see yourself as South African, do you see yourself as an American? There's no question I see myself as an American with strong South African influence. But it was one of the best days of our lives and I just hope that kids are grateful for Because we did that for them. Coming on your 30th anniversary. Coming on our 30th anniversary.
That's right. Very good. This may sound like a lighthearted question, but you've said it, but truly, can you put into words just a little bit, how is it, how do you feel about, no, I'm not writing it right. I know you're glad that you came here, but can you add anything else to that? You've already said many, many positive things. Just as in a finality, what else can you say about that? Glad about coming here, yes, but what else? What I can say is you don't know until you know. But we were looking for a place as a platform to continue our lives and have a family.
But didn't realize what the expansiveness and what true opportunity meant until you saw what was available here. just from a professional standpoint I would have been very happy I would have been very successful in my profession wherever I was but what I was able to do and what I was able to build in this country comes from being amongst people who are accepting and who are 330 million in number because that opens opportunity that you you sort of morph into that because it there And when you sense that there are no limitations and you can direct yourself purely to what your heart leads you and it's open and you're able to do it, that's what America offered to us.
And so we were able to expand what I was doing professionally and then take that to the rest of our lives because I see my profession not as an end itself but a means to what it provides to our lives. So there's been a richness to the way we've lived here that, again, I think we would have done fine wherever we were, but I'm just as excited today as I was 35 years ago when I started my practice, 34 years ago, because of the opportunities that this country and it has afforded us that would have probably been limited anywhere else had we not come to this country.
We recognize it all the time and we're grateful for it because it's been fabulous. I hope you don't have plans of retirement anytime soon. No, I've been threatened by many patients. No, no, I'm going to be staying in the game as long as I'm physically and mentally able to be doing it. Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate you doing this interview with us. Absolutely, thank you. and uh um