Barbara Stone
Barbara Stone was born in Dallas in 1941, but at age three her family moved to southern Louisiana when her father, a food chemist, was asked to run a food processing plant handling sweet potatoes for the troops during World War II. The move also kept him out of military service. The family lived first in Opelousas and later in Lafayette, a town of about forty thousand. There Barbara grew up in a very small, close Reform Jewish community. Her father served as one of the lay service leaders in a simple temple with no rabbi and no air conditioning, and community members without children of their own gave their Sunday mornings to teach the few Jewish children. Barbara's childhood was spent roller skating, playing cowboys and Indians, and gathering under the raised houses of the humid Gulf Coast.
When Barbara was thirteen and began dating, her parents, wanting her to marry within the Jewish faith, moved the family back to Dallas, a welcoming homecoming for parents who had kept strong Dallas friendships throughout their years away. She enjoyed high school and was involved in BBYO. In the fall of 1959 she began at the University of Texas at Austin, where in her first week she met Edward through a mutual friend. She discovered a love of learning in college and was determined to finish her degree before marrying. After graduating she married Edward within about a month and moved to Houston, where she established and ran a one-person clinical and research microbiology lab at Methodist Hospital, working for a professor of infectious diseases at Baylor Medical College.
In Houston Barbara worked amid early heart bypass and kidney transplant patients and participated in clinical trials of methicillin. Her career moves ended when Edward's work took the family to Toronto, which she remembered as a vibrant and beloved period, along with other moves before they settled again in Dallas. Edward eventually founded his own business, the Dallas Marketing Group. The couple raised two sons, Brian and Greg, and after joining Temple Emanu-El Barbara became a hospital visitor in a caring congregation program and served on the sisterhood board, remaining active for decades. She traveled widely with Edward, learning of world events such as the Challenger disaster and September 11 while abroad. Married more than fifty years, she offers the next generation this advice: get educated and learn to think for yourself.
Full Transcript
Barbara 1941 Dallas let's go back what do you know about Dallas when you're just a little girl very little because when I was three we moved to southern Louisiana and why was that there was a war on my father was a food chemist and a Louisiana had a lot of sweet potatoes there were food processing plants there to process the sweet potatoes for the troops so he was asked to go there and run the food processing plant we started in opelousas and that lasted just a couple of years when I was five we moved to lafayette and he did the same thing for a while
now was this a government job ahead or was this 40 if it was a private food processor it was a private food processing plant of course I was you know barely passed the toddler year so I don't know a great deal of detail about it yeah now what was the town in Louisiana you grew up in started in opelousas right right and that then we moved to lafayette which had about 40,000 people what was that like in lafayette what do you remember when you're a little girl um a lot actually as far as the Jewish community with a very small Jewish community very close my
parents were very involved we had a small temple reform very reform in the classic southern reformed tradition we had no rabbi my father was one of the lay service leaders he was not really deeply educated in Judaism but I our prayer book was in English although he made certain that I knew to recognize the Shema and could say the Shema in Hebrew there were some community members who would have a little religious school for the few of us who were children in their homes on Sunday mornings and thinking back I realize that was quite a contribution these were people some of them with no children
of their own could have slept late Sunday morning but they wanted to educate these children the temple had a small sanctuary a simple an organ a very simple social hall no air conditioning in a very humid Gulf Coast client climate so I remember a great deal of fanning myself services that went on interminably what did you do for fun is a little girl oh there were in our neighborhood I was one of four kids right at the same age of course I was the only Jewish one and we just wrong with the neighborhood we would play cowboys and Indians the houses were built up off
the ground on their belt on I guess brick pillars we would climb under the house and that was our little Club so we spent a lot of time under the houses we are roller skating a lot a whole lot now climbing under those houses what was that like a loud or was that like something you would sneak to do no my parents I'm sure they knew it ya know whether we didn't have to pretend to do it was there was nothing I presumably nothing dangerous under there yeah you know the most dangerous thing I'm sure ever ran into with a little green lizard we used
to we used to catch him and tame them and there are plenty of them around it was just kind of there was a game called kick the can which i guess is started some of the political expressions you run into now but it was it was there was nothing organized there was nothing scheduled we just played your grandparents you remember them at all I only knew one grandparent and I remember him extremely well he was a fairly small man very quiet very kind he liked for his little granddaughter to sit on his lap but he had a lot of other stuff in his lap it
wasn't real easy he traveled for a living until retired in Seoul stuff too dime stores and I ended up with an awful lot of toys and an awful lot of candy nobody box look by the box fall for one child where was he living he lived in dallas and then after he retired he moved to lafayette ok to be by you guys know is this your mom's dead or you're dead that's my mother's father ok and your other grandparents you didn't know they were going on they had passed away before I was born your grandparents born in this country or they come one exception all
of my grandparents were born in this country and what was the exception the exception was my father's father who came from Romania when he was a very young man in 1890 and the rest of my family goes back what as far as I could trace back to eighteen sixty a great grandfather was in Mobile according to the census in 1860 so long time us routes a long time right now did you have any stories from your great-grandparents of what I know I did through genealogical research so there weren't a lot of stories really that I can recall yeah yeah now that your folks ever talk
about the move to louisiana were they happy they made that move where they said they had to leave Texas well i think it was mixed that move did keep my father out of military so for my mother of course that was very positive moving to from city of dallas to the town of louisiana back in those days during wartime was a jolt from my mother yeah but she coped and they made a very good life they had a whole lot of very close friends I was raised by a community there were friends in the Jewish community outside the Jewish community but the small group of
Jews were the really close ones they were at the house all the time I was at their houses you know all the time you know the make up front porch with the rocking chairs it was very real part of my life yeah very lightweight easy delightful childhood except for water heat and humidity we SAT around and stared at each other a lot because you don't get very energetic in a climate like that where did you go to high school what the hell quest okay back and down when we were well when I was 13 and acquired my first boyfriend who of course was not Jewish
there was this quick flurry and we moved back to Dallas weight of it you guys up and moved back to Dallas because you went out at age 13 well the plan was for me to marry a Jewish boy and when you start dating in Catholic southern Louisiana and there are virtually no boys your age there's a pretty good chance you're not going to marry somebody Jewish and in those days it was very important and it was very important to my parents well no air marriage rarely happened well I'm sure you've heard that over and over again so did your dad stay with the same company
did he have to change business he at that time by that time while he was he was a food chemist I went through some career changes and by that time he was with mutual of New York doing selling insurance and doing estate planning okay he had to start over but it was transferable within the same company right that he had to begin finding new dance which he did and it was important enough to them to do through plus plus they had my parents had maintained very very strong friendships throughout the time we were gone in the Louisiana yeah Dallas friends so now you're 13 so
that was of course that was I'm sure that was him incentive also it was a homecoming for them it was not pulling up roots and starting over again it would came to a very welcoming place but how did you feel about that move now you're 13 years old you're established where you live you have all your friends and now you're with us well i had been to dallas a lot so i don't recall it being a problem for me whatever happened to that boy friend he probably married somebody oh but it wasn't that serious anyway serious ones came along later so tell me about high
school life now it was delightful absolutely delightful what'd you guys do a lot of dating a lot of party is this a obvious in the art service club we had you know and I enjoyed most of my classes I had a boyfriend almost entirely same boyfriend entirely through high school dated others but one serious one and we just had a wonderful time a lot of parties BBY oh I was a I was part of that although not not as heavily involved as my husband was but then he didn't have a serious girlfriend taking up a lot of his time when did you meet your husband
in 1959 fall so it was this right after high school then are you still in high school at the time no it was the first week of college okay first week ago uh he and I both went to University of Texas in Austin okay and he was walking with a fraternity brother one direction on the drag and Austin that's Guadalupe straight I was walking the other direction with a very close friend from Dallas and I've been friends with since confirmation class since moving here hmm she knew the boy he was with so we stopped talked introduced and I don't remember the exact sequence but I
do know he needed a date for oh you weekend and I guess he looked at me and figured and chill do so we got acquainted that way and had a major date come up pretty soon so did you like him well I like him a lot he was quite okay they didn't like him I wouldn't have I wouldn't have gone out with him anymore I wasn't wasting time with people I didn't like college years were pretty terrific because then I'd discovered learning yeah much more so than in high school really jumped into my studies and really got turned on by by learning new things challenging
things after college not as you guys wanted did you get married while you're still in school or no no no graduated first absolutely okay I was not going to leave college with a more get married without a degree okay and then after college what did you do married Edward within my my particular education ended in july because of what i studied and within a little over a month we got married and then moved to houston and got a job at Methodist Hospital establishing and running a small microbiology lab for clinical in research clinical and clinical research I work for a professor of infectious diseases at
the Baylor Medical College in Houston it was also part of the medical center and he was consultant in difficult infections at the time I was in some of the early days of heart bypass operations by dr. DeBakey there were some of the early kidney transplant patients at the hospital there were various other people who were getting somewhat exotic infections right right and that had to be fascinating it was absolutely wonderful I loved it yeah and I did everything in the lab it was one person lab and I did everything from order the equipment to figure out what was causing people problems were there any discoveries made when you were in this field that that became important to medicine today yes we participated in clinical trials of a a an antibiotic by resume ours and the product was methicillin which was the miracle drug to cure staph aureus that is now the one to which many microbes are resistant it has the the acronym MRSA methicillin-resistant but they were quite resistant at the time I was working on this and that drug did go to market so at the time did you realize the importance of what you were doing yes I did the doctor I worked for was quite prominent in immunology in an antibiotic work so yes we knew we were working on drugs there or what was his name his name was led ow okay now dr.
DeBakey in a world famous heart surgeon did you ever meet him oh yes I did tell me about him dr. DeBakey was well aware of his own prominence and my lab was right down the hallway from the operating room so he would come down and talk to my boss fairly often his patients were among those who had the infection problems and I remember one day he came in rather angry and he was kind of storming around and my boss also had a secretary and the two of us i guess we're getting a little jittery and my boss came out of his office and he said now Mike you stop coming down here and scaring my girls and he was pussycat after that what brought you back
to Dallas after we had been Houston for five years Edward took a job with Procter & Gamble who posted us to Toronto and we went several different places with Procter & Gamble and the clorox company and there were a number of moves in a fairly short period of time some of them to places that didn't go over well with me and Edward finally said we're moving back to Dallas he was offered a move that was sort of one too many but I was in Toronto he was I think supposed to be in California and I guess that's when he got the suggestion that we move
again and then again shortly after that so I got a phone call and he said we're moving to Dallas and I said he sure you want to live in the same city with your in-laws oh yes yes yes so I assume that a few more times and we did move to Dallas he took a job with frito-lay company and we moved here he worked there quite some time of year and a half or so which in those days considering how people moved in his field right that was a fair length of time and then he started his own business right and what was the name
of that business the Dallas marketing group okay in any state of that business till he retire until he retired ok no how did you feel giving up your career in Houston I didn't like it very difficult I dragged my feet as long as I could having children I said we did not have children immediately I was enjoying my job way too much I also felt like I should be an adult before I tried producing others and I was still suing my early 20s I hadn't quite finished growing up you know I thought a mother should be grown up we were married three and a half
years before our first child was born in an era when a year was considered about the right length of time to produce the first job I was having a great time at my job tell me about your involvement in the Jewish community once we joined temple emanuel which was after our children were confirmed very quickly i was asked to join the sisterhood and I was also asked to be a hospital visitor for a new program called keratin congregation and in that program i participated very heavily and eventually ended up Jerry and Karen Caucasian which led to board service and then I became more active in
a sisterhood and have remained active I guess on their board one way or another ever since which I'm starting in about the late 80s and I'm still quite involved it's a source of friendships great deal of satisfaction it was the happiest time in your life ah the happiest period was either that time in Houston you know no children no responsibilities and a job I loved the other happiest period of time is in Toronto we had a fantastic time a really good life it was a vibrant wonderful pulsating city clean safe well organized multicultural there were fine restaurants beautiful gardens festivals four seasons which we didn't
you don't experience in southern Louisiana Houston terrific people how did the Canadians take to the Americans there is a difference between America and Americans so we had friends who were quote anti-american because they didn't like American policies they didn't like the dominance of America over Canada but us as Americans we were we were people we were fine they liked us if we and we did everything we could fit in well if there was a if we had a complaint about the way Canadians did something you can be sure we never mentioned it to a Canadian and I had learned that from my mother who had
moved into this very different culture in Louisiana and you don't complain to the natives now the turbulent time of the 60s did that affect you at all I clearly recall sitting in a car listening to Kennedy's speech about the Cuban nuclear situation right and that was just before I finished my training I very clearly remember having just moved to Canada and hearing on the TV that his Bobby Kennedy had been associate and NASA nated this would have been summertime Martin Luther King had been assassinated that spring and then all of a sudden Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and I remember we had we had one child
boy and I remember looking at it and saying it will be no toy guns in our house I know why your children were were they born Brian was born in houston and our younger son Greg was born in Northern California in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions on the national scene and you referred to some of them was there anything else that may be really kind of affected you item list of the whole Vietnam era of course the Kennedy President Kennedy assassination yes moon landing at 69 for the first time and then of course the tragedy of 911 is there something else
that really stood up I remember the moon landing we were in Jasper Alberta and saw a very very snowy TV image of it and I thought it was because we were out in the middle of nowhere and it was not too many years ago when i found out that was the image everybody saw yeah but certainly I remember that and and all of the others you've mentioned the Challenger disaster we were we were in South America at the time and found out because someone who had been on a boat tour with us had gotten a text message from Belgium telling about it and the person
turned us and said you were from Texas aren't you and the Challenger had gone down over Texas yeah and we made a beeline to what was called an internet cafe at the time I'm not sure they still exist logged on to CNN and it was true when 911 happened we were in a small town in northern Italy and we heard about it because we were in some little some little shop and speaking to each other in English and someone else said a plane had hit the the twin towers and the Pentagon was burning and I thought oh it's another one of those orson welles stories
about you know the fake alien landing and when we headed back to the hotel a little bit later and walked in and they had probably the first wall hanging LCD TV i had seen on the wall big screen or look big at the time and there were there were the pictures of it and then and then we realized that was the succession point our younger son said you can't leave the country anymore oh that's cute this is a vacation or business vacation fishing okay let's make a okay you and Edward have two sons that's correct one granddaughter correct you're almost married 51 years now is
he still on trial every day there you go what is probably an too what advice does grandma have for the next generation grandma would say get educated and learn how to think for yourself did a great job did very good today thank you