Barnett M. Goodstein
Barnett Goodstein was born in Dallas in 1921 into a family already established in the city. His paternal grandfather, Philip Goodstein, immigrated through Ellis Island, worked as a tailor on an Army post in Montana at the urging of his brother Wolf, and later settled in Dallas, where he ran his own tailor shop and was known for giving away much of what he earned to anyone in need. His maternal grandfather, Sam Levy, came from England. When Barnett was about four and a half, the family moved to New York for his father's work with the Sun Star Manufacturing Company, living on Long Island Sound. At age six and a half they returned to Dallas after his maternal grandfather died and his grandmother, paralyzed on her left side, needed care. The family moved into her home on Forest Avenue.
Growing up on Forest Avenue, Barnett attended Forest Avenue High School, across from his grandmother's home where he ate lunch each day. His father opened his own pants manufacturing business, which went bankrupt during the Depression in 1934, after which he worked for Hagar in the Santa Fe building until retirement. Barnett remembered the streetcar line, nearby Fair Park, and a devastating hailstorm around 1929 that tore off their roof. He graduated high school in 1938, attended North Texas Agricultural College and Rice, and transferred to the University of Texas, where he fell in love with economics and earned both a bachelor's and master's degree by August 1942. He then entered the service during World War II.
In the Army Air Forces, Barnett trained in administration, studied Russian in a language program, went through infantry and field artillery training, and was ultimately sent to the China Burma India theater, serving in China and later Shanghai. In Shanghai he met Mira, a Russian woman born in China, and after returning home he sent for her; they married at Temple Emanuel in Dallas, officiated by Rabbi David Lefkowitz. Barnett taught economics at SMU and the University of Dallas, worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and on wartime wage boards, pursued a PhD at the University of Wisconsin, and finished law school in 1957, being sworn in as an attorney that December. He built a private law practice in Dallas. He and Mira raised three daughters and had seven grandchildren.
Full Transcript
Arnette 1921 Dallas Texas what do you remember when you were just a little boy my first recollection is Age 4 and a half because my family moved to New York in that time uh because my father went to work for Sunstar Manufacturing Company in New York and a trouser manufacturing company which was his profession and we lived on Long Island Sound from 4 and 1/2 till I was 6 and 1/2 and at my age 6 and 1/2 my maternal grandfather in Dallas died and we had to leave New York and come back to Dallas because my maternal grandmother was paralyzed on her left side and
couldn't move she moved around the house couldn't leave the house so we had to move in her home which was on Forest Avenue in Dallas it was rather large home three bedroom one bath and she lived there alone after he died so my mother father brother and I all moved into to that house when I was 6 and 1/2 years old what did your dad get into then when he came back oh well my dad was always in slacks law pants manufacturing when we came back here he opened his own manufacturing business in Dallas it went bankrupt in 1934 during the Depression right and he
went to work for Hager pants manufacturing company which was in the fourth unit of the Santa a building at that time I can remember walking up a long flight of stairs into a large room on the fourth floor of the Santa Fe building with a long table in the room and Cutters there cutting the material in that room make to make trousers she worked for Hagar manufacturing company uh in their sales until he retired at his age 6 5 he lived to be 75 and died well he was born in Dallas Texas about 1895 Dallas was pretty small when I was born here it was
very large I can remember 280,000 people in Dallas we lived on Forest Avenue when there was a street car line running in front of the home and down the street from us was the Fair Park that's still there but Forest Avenue isn't still there because they changed the name to Martin Luther King Boulevard I lived AC cat a corner across the street from Forest Avenue high school it's now James Madison High School how do you remember your grandparents on your other side oh very well my paternal grandmother and grandfather lived in a duplex on Forest Avenue down the street from us about half a block
away right directly across the street from Forest Avenue High School easy for me to remember that because every day at noon I left Forest High and went across the street to have lunch at my grandmother's house and then back to school and what I remember most about that location is a teacher English teacher named Edna r a rather famous teacher because they have an elementary school here named after her Ed n elementary school but she rented a garage from my grandmother and grandfather because they had a garage but no car so she left her car in their garage after school I would go over to
my grandmother's house and watch Miss R drive her car out of the garage with a steering wheel there was a stick because it was an electric car and she she guided it by moving the steering wheel back and forth across the wherever she went and she could go anywhere in that electric car she didn't take the street car but I have a tremendous memory of something that I recall maybe was about 192 9 while we lived on Forest Avenue Dallas had a tremendous hail storm it came through our shingle roof broke through our screen p uh glass windows and into our house and we hid
under the beds in the bedroom because the hailstones were coming in and the street car that was running down Forest Avenue stopped in the middle of the road in the middle of Forest Avenue and the people got off and ran into our home because the hail was so bad that and the Hailstone so large that if they had been out in it it could have killed them in fact it tore our roof off and just ruined that home fortunately we had some kind of insurance I don't know what kind then but we had Insurance to uh help some of that to rebuild it but it
was such a tremendous thing I've never forgotten the hail storm that we live through at that particular time and you remember what your grandfathers did for a living my paternal grandfather was a Taylor he came to this country landed in New York at Ellis Island and at that time he had a brother wolf goodstein who had come before him and had gone to Montana and he worked as a tailor on a an Army Post in Montana and he contacted my grandfather in New York who was Philip goodstein and said Phil come out here to Montana because you can get a job here as a tailor
on the Army Post in Montana he did he went there I don't know the year the date because uh before my time but then I don't know when or how but before 1900 he moved to Dallas and he lived in Dallas with his parents I think on Colonial because my brother was born on Colonial he was 3 and 1/2 years older than I he was born on on Colonial before they moved to Forest Avenue where I was born and he became a tailor in Dallas and had his own tailor shop at the corner of well it was a triangular corner I think around Brian and
Ross in Dallas where he he worked by himself in the tailor shop and I guess made enough to support himself and his wife but he gave most of it away to anybody who came by his store who needed money or who said he needed money and he always gave something to anyone who needed money or wanted money so he didn't ever have much money for himself but he was happy doing that and that was important and what about your grandfather what what was his job well Sam Levy came from England I don't know when he died when I was so very young that the only
memory I have of him is in a top hat and a morning suit that he would have worn in England because I'm sure it wasn't stylish in this country but the picture was and and his name was Sam he and my maternal grandmother Rachel lived together on Forest Avenue and I don't even know what he did he died before I was I don't I guess I was alive because I was 6 and a half when you uh graduated high school did you go to college or did you go right into the service no I graduated from high school in June of 1938 okay I had
been admitted to Rice Institute now Rice University in Houston before I went there because I knew they were going to have an exam in college algebra I went to North Texas agricultural college ntac now University of Arlington and I took college algebra there so when the professor announced we're going to have an exam in college algebra I said so what I was ready for it did you graduate from there no I second year I got into economics at Rice I said I went to Rice by the way in preaw I have to tell you my brother before me went to A&M he majored in electrical
engineering my father who was in texal wanted me to go to A&M and be a textile engineer that was the last thing in my mind but I never argued with him I just went to rice in pre-law because I wanted to be a lawyer he wanted me to be an engineer my second year at Rice I got into economics which is the sophomore course I became enamored with economics and decided I wanted to measure in economics rice didn't have any other courses in economics just the one so I transferred from rice to the University of Texas in Austin because it did have other courses in
economics in fact it had so many that well when I transferred they said you can't take but 15 hours as a transfer student so I said all right when can I take more they said when we see whether you make your grades after my first semester in Austin I made Three A's and two B's they said now you can take more the rest of the time I was in Austin I took seven courses a semester or 21 hours so I finished my Master's bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Texas in 1942 in August of 42 in August of 42 I went into the
service now now if it hadn't been for the war my graduate year which was also my senior year in Austin the University of Panama sent up to Austin and said we want a student a teacher to come here to the University of Panama and teach economics at Panama in in Spanish to the students here they said we will give him an interpreter in his classroom for 3 months at that time he has to be fluent in Spanish and do it on his own my department came to me and said you've had Spanish in high school and in college how would you like to do that
I said I'd love it they said you're in I said I'm out I'm in the draft I can't go this was 1942 we were in the war so I came home instead and I went to the Navy and I said I'd like to go to Navy or officer training school I want to be an officer in the Navy they said sit there and tell me the lowest line you can read on that chart I looked around and I didn't see the chart it wasn't in that room they didn't tell me it was in the Next Room finally I said to him where is the chart
he said you better go see the Air Force maybe they can use I couldn't see the chart I couldn't find it anyway I was so disillusioned then that instead of going to the Air Force and saying I want to go to Air Force OCS I just enlisted in the Air Force I said I want to go to the Air Force so they took me of course they didn't care whether I could see or not fortunately I don't know why but I drew a straw that said he's going to the Air Force t technical school in administration and that was in Denver Colorado for 8 weeks
and studied everything about how to run the Air Force office and I was graduated from there as what's called an MOS military occupational specialty of 502 now that was important later in in my military career career but then after I graduated then I uh went to Shephard field WIA falls in the summer for basic training in the Air Force wasn't pleasant and then I was sent to Great Falls Montana worst winter I ever had in my life 42° below zero and the wind blowing so hard that when we walked from our Barracks to the headquarters where I worked we leaned over into the wind at
a 60° angle but unfortunately Great Falls or mantana had what was called Willow walls came from Alaska the wind circled and changed went from the other direction immediately and we'd fall flat on our face cuz the wind stopped and was coming from our back instead of our front and when we fell we didn't get wet because it was sand the snow in Montana was so dry that when you breath it off your sleeve there was no moisture everything was dry there including the 42 below zero my brother was stationed at that time he was in the signal core in Anchorage Alaska when I wrote and
asked him how the weather was there he couldn't tell me specifically but he said just like the weather where you are well that was bad enough but in Glasgow Montana where I was sent for 4 days the weather there was 62 below zero when I was in Great Falls the uh agitant the colonel said we'd like for you to go before the OCS committee and I said okay so I went before the committee they questioned me when they got through they said good you can go to any OCS you want to I said I want Air Force administrative which is what I should have done
in August of 42 this has I think was 43 they said well that one has a 2-year waiting list pick another one I said I don't even know of any other I don't want to go to any other so they said well all right wait here so then the squadron commander at gret uh Glasgow Montana had a problem there and he called for me to come up there and help with that problem well I was in the Air Force we didn't fly I went by train to Glasgow Montana 4 days later I got a call come back to Great Falls went back to Great Falls
they said something has just opened and we know that you don't mind but you'll become an officer now but it takes 9 months instead of 3 months I said I don't care what is it they said you go to a language school well I had Spanish I said that's good enough for me so I left great fallos went to a star unit in Salt Lake City and from there they said you're going to Argan State College in Corvalis Oregon for Spanish I said okay when I got to Corvalis Oregon they announced we're opening a class in in Russian none of you has had any Russian
but you've all had language some language background so any of of you who want to transfer to Russian can do so I said sounds good to me I want to learn Russian so I transferred to the Russian well 9 months later and we had 45 hours a week of Russian area and language and we were pretty good in Russian then and we had only Russian teachers no English teachers some of them didn't even speak English but we didn't graduate as officers because we were in the Battle of the Bulge at that time and what we needed was Cannon fder we needed people to go over
there and get shot so we graduated from the Army specialized training program at corval D Oregon one night and the next morning we were bust out to a camp air Oregon which was an infantry camp now I went through infantry basic training not pleasant at night on our backs we climbed under barbwire with our M1 Gan rifles pushing the bar wire up so we could under the barb wire while Tracer machine bullets ran over the top they said whatever you do don't stand up those bullets are real Unfortunately they had Twigs there when we crawled and some people would hit a twig and that scared
them they thought it was a snake and they stood up never should have they did well that was the end of their basic training after basic training we were all transferred to someplace in the 70th Infantry Division I luckily gathered field artillery so I was transferred out of the Infantry into the field artillery while I was on the field artillery training to go over into the Battle of the Bulge the battery Commander called me in and said I see you've had a lot of mathematics in school I said I don't know about a lot but I had to take mathematics so I've had mathematics I
had college algebra I had trigonometry all that I had some algebra some mathematics so he said we'd like for you to be a spotter a spotter's life is 45 seconds in battle the spotter goes up with a Transit with the Infantry it's the front lines with the machine Gunners their like their lifespan is 45 seconds also you go up where you're looking at the enemy cuz they're the front lines and you take that Transit and you focus on the enemy I can't shoot back I'm focusing on a Transit but they can shoot me so here am I focusing on a Transit telling them back there
where to aim those big guns that my went shot for 2 miles and they behind the line and I'm facing the enemy I wants you to be a spotter well I'm in the service I said okay I'll be a spotter he said go home for your overseas Furlow soon as you get back we're leaving okay and went I had about three overseas furlos cuz I was transferred all over so I went home got back they said goodstein hurry up get into the battery Captain's office he wants to see you I I said what did I do now they said we don't know but it sure
is important so I got in to see the captain and he said why didn't you tell me you can't see I said you didn't ask me about Vision you asked me about mathematics he said well you can't be a spotter you couldn't see the enemy I said that's their problem so he said but you are trained for the office go run the office so I went into the office of the field artillery that was pretty good deal I didn't mind that so they would go out on a bwack to dig fox holes and learn how to jump in the Foxhole and Dodge the bullets and
I had to take my big desk that folded up and went in a truck I said Captain you don't expect me to take that big thing on a truck and put it in a foxhole do you he said no you stay there I didn't even have to go out on the bbwax I lived a Charmed Life in the service so I'm sitting in the office one day in the field artillery and the first sergeant said to me goodstein you're on orders I said orders for what he said to go back to the Air Force then I got interested that sounded good to me so I
went over and look and said everybody who had had any Technical Training paid by the Air Force he wanted back in the Air Force I said I'll go so I went back into the Air Force and then to Lincoln Nebraska what like they called a reppel Deo replacement Depot where they sent me out to other places and there they sent me to a group that was training b29 to go overseas into the battle well I wasn't going into the battle of the bull anymore and I was in the Air Force so I said that's good that sounds good to me but then I heard while
we were training there that we were headed to Sian an island in the South Pacific way out of nowhere but the b-29s could fly from there over Japan and back because they had a long range and that didn't sound good to me I'm in the war I don't want to sit on an island Sian so I put in for a transfer to a base or a group in the Soviet Union I wanted to use my Russian well the agant said I'm not going to let you go remember I was trained in administration I said okay deny it but send it on he had to do
that under Army regulations he said all right but I'll approve it only for the Soviet Union I said that's the only place I want to go if they don't approve me for that I'll go to sapan with you okay he sent it through came back immediately approved but why I'll tell you later I left there and went from there to Miami Beach from there to Puerto Rico from there to Bam Brazil bam Brazil to natal Brazil at Natal Brazil which was on the Atlantic coast we went swimming in the Atlantic we ate bananas and coconuts and everything was fine we're waiting to go overseas finally
I got on a plane which happened to be a B24 English labrador bomber four propeller driven engines no guarded here for sound it was so noisy inside that plane that you couldn't talk to the person next to you without getting up and sitting on his seat armrest so by the time we left Natal Brazil at night and the next morning when Dawn came up we saw a little speck of an island down below they said that's where we're going to land I said boy what a pilot he flies all night long and in the morning he finds that little speck on the ground they said
well he probably slept he went on autopilot all night so he didn't do anything the plane flew itself we landed on Ascension Island well Ascension Island was right off the African Coast we stopped there which is nothing but a an Airfield and every time we stopped every time you land in the Air Force or anywhere they fed you I guess that was to keep us from getting too air sick but we sure ate a lot yeah because from there we got into a c46 c46 had a round bottom c47 had a flat bottom otherwise they were the same we got in that and Ascension Island
and we flew from that over to Africa and all these names have changed so I needn't give you the names because they aren't the same but we went across Africa across the Nile I saw the blue and red Niles come together out to the Mediterranean and we landed in Karachi India karashi is in Pakistan today and then it was in India so we landed in in Karachi India and as soon as I got there I went into personnel and said when do I leave the Personnel officer said what are you talking about I said I'm going up to the Soviet Union when do I leave
for there he said you've got to be crazy the Soviet Union won't let us land a plane there if it's shot we have to get it back out of the Soviet Union to land we don't have any troops there they wouldn't let us I said then what in the world am I doing here here he said well we needed four 502s administrative specialist in the China Burma India theater the first one who came through chose China he's gone the next two who came through were twin boys twin brothers they wanted to stay together they wanted to go to China but they couldn't cuz we needed
two in India and they wanted to stay together they stayed in India you're going to China that's how I got to China I didn't ask to go there I asked to go to the Soviet Union I got to China well I got to Chen Kong China then from there up to well I call it chandu but we were 32 miles from chandu and in China we were out where the loo tribes the head hunters lived and where the Chinese Communists controlled everything cuz the Chinese Communists were fighting the Chinese nationalists and the nationalists were supposed to be fighting the Japanese but we were fighting the
Japanese they were fighting the Chinese Communist and we were there with the Chinese Communists so our nearest Village was called sining it was a mile and a half away but we lived in a compound among the Chinese well I'll make a long story short when the war was over group headquarters moved into Shanghai I was in Squadron headquarters in chandu group headquarters radioed for me to come to Shanghai but I was in charge of writing special orders and I knew if I had put my point in my special orders they wouldn't let me come because I had enough points to go home so I left
the special orders off my points my orders so they didn't know I had enough points to go home and I put me on orders to go to Shanghai I didn't want to go to China stay there a year and never see Shanghai I'd heard of Shanghai all my life so I sent everybody all over put everybody on orders where they were going and I was on the last plane out of chandu I looked back and saw a whole field full of P38 twin Fus Lodge fighter planes but we left them there just abandon war with a war with Germany had ended and the war with
Japan had ended so I flew to Shanghai when I got there Commander called me in and said what what are you doing here you have enough points to go home I said you sent for me well he said yeah but you why didn't you go home I said didn't want to go home wanted to come to Shanghai he said well you can go home anytime you want to so we can't give you a regular job we're going to put you in charge of transportation that was nice because I got in with a group of fellas Jewish fellas and I saw to it that everyone someone
on our group had a vehicle each night while we were in Shanghai and I gave vehicles to all the people there so they used them officially during the day and at night we gave them for whatever they wanted to do with them well since we had a vehicle one of our fellas came back one evening and said come on we're going to a Russian wedding I said said why a Russian wedding he said because we've got transportation and the wedding is here and the reception is here and we have to take the patrons from the wedding to the reception so we've going on our transportation
to take them I said okay well there I met a girl a Russian girl who spoke Russian well that was nice cuz I like to speak Russian to her and I became friendly with her I lived in a hotel there I'd invite her over to the hotel to eat with us and she'd invite me to her home to eat with her family her father oh by the way her family of course Russian had their business of coming from Russia before the Soviet Union into China with merchandise that they would sell in China buy Chinese merchandise take it back to Russia sell that merchandise in Russia
bring it back to China that was how they made their living while there her father was stabbed to death was killed in China then the revolution in in Russia broke out 1905 and they couldn't go back to Russia and then it became the Soviet Union and they didn't want to go back then so they stayed in China they moved to tinin and this woman this girl was born in tinin China when she was four they moved to Shanghai at that time her mother had remarried and her stepfather had a bar in Shanghai that he ran he was a saloon keeper I saw him but I
never really met him and didn't know who he was except to know he was her stepfather her mother by the way who was the bread winner of the family made lingerie customade for the Russian women who lived in Shanghai and she had Chinese tailor who would make the merchandise for her that she sold there so they all came to her home on Sunday afternoon for what they call tiffen tiffen in England is a high tea where they serve sandwiches and tea and uh light lunch so I was in uniform and I was invited to her home for tiffen and when I got there all the
Chinese all the Russian women were there for tiffen with her family and seeing me in uniform in Russian they all badmouth the American soldiers for getting to China and running up all the prices for everything all over Shanghai so every time they'd start that they'd say Z so stop stop he understands everything you're saying don't say anything so I killed their afternoon for them they couldn't condemn the American soldiers so they didn't have any fun anymore anyway unfortunately I could get cigarettes for 5 cents a pack 50 cents a carton I never smoked I always traded them for juice or something but this girl smoked
and I didn't know smoking was bad at that time I gave her cartons of cigarettes and she became so addicted she never did stop smoking well finally I left China although while I was in Shanghai I got to take trips to Hong Kong Canton all over cuz I didn't have anything to do so I had a good time for several months and finally had just they said to us the Marine Raider a little vessel is going to leave for the United States it's the last one we have all of you who want to go who are eligible to leave better go I had met a
friend who was from Dallas he said to me let's go it's the last vessel they're going to have I said tell you what you go I'll tell your folks hello when I get there before you do he said why I said they brought us here they have to let us go home they'll fly us home you go by boat I'll fly he left I stayed I flew so when I decided to go home they said take such and such a flight I went out and got in a four engine remember all this is propeller driven now a 4 engine plane going to the Philippines then
Japan and then to Hawaii and home they started the first engine it started the second engine started the third engine started the fourth engine broke the starter and it wouldn't start they said get off can't leave no plane we'll start a different plane tomorrow night well I H couldn't go back to my hotel I checked out so so I hailed a petty cab which is a a Chinese driver on a bicycle with me in the back and I went to this girl's home in Shanghai and they had a everything was walled with with glass broken glass and they didn't trust anybody there and they had
a padrone who said slept there and minded the front gate so I knew how to get to him I said padrone let me in gave him a package of chewing gum he thought that was wonderful i' hung the moon for him so I went in because there the homes were all built up every they had one room on each floor up and the bathroom was the top because the when you flush the toilet gravity took the down and it couldn't start from the bottom or they would have been in trouble so I went in and I said I don't have anywhere to go I have
to stay with you tonight cuz I can't leave till tomorrow night they said okay you can stay in my this girl's room but she couldn't stay there she went upstairs to stay with her sister so I stayed in their home that night and the next night I went back to the airport got on another plane and instead of going to the Philippines we flew over Japan to the Hawaii in Hawaii I was bumped because generals and Admirals were going from Hawaii to the United States so I had to stay in Hawaii about 3 weeks with nothing to do but enjoy Hawaii so I had a
good time there finally got a plane to from Hawaii to San Francisco remember I started at Miami Beach came back to San Francisco went all the way around the world by air big war I really fought a lot of bar in that war anyway how did you get mirror home no I came back home and I went to work for an oil amily oil company but I didn't like that so I heard that the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Dallas Regional Office had an opening for someone I went up there to apply for the job and he said no we don't need you here but
I need you out of SMU to teach see I had a master's degree in economics so I said well I want to teach but I'm not ready I need to learn something before I start teaching he said we don't have time for that all the veterans are coming back and going to school we need you now I said okay I'll teach so I went to SMU and started teaching economics ICS there and while I was there the University of Dallas had its second year it started one year and then it added a year so the second year they came to SMU and said we'd like
to get one of your instructors to come teach economics at the University of Dallas so the department got me and another fell he was had his PhD and he was Catholic and they got us to a lunch with the president and the dean of men at the University of Dallas and we had a lunch with them and they could choose whichever one they wanted to go to university of Dallas he had his PhD and was Catholic University of Dallas was a Catholic school they chose me I don't know why anyway so I taught there and at SMU and I Tau at SMU in the daytime
and at night they did didn't pay me enough so I could retire so I had to head as many classes as I could stand to make as much money as I could well after my first year there I was in the second year at at SMU and I decided I looked over all the girls in Dallas not one of them I wanted to marry so I wrote back to Mira in this in China and said would you like to to marry me so I sent for her and I went out to San Francisco met her ship when it came in and we flew back to
Dallas and then we were married I guess one Saturday night at Temple Emanuel on South Boulevard in Dallas by Rabbi David lefkowitz a reformed Rabbi who would turn over in his grave if he saw what was happening to our reformed temple in Dallas today with all the yamalis the taluses the robes none of that and and all the Hebrew hymns and a caner and an assessin caner and Rabbi leis wouldn't even want Hebrew in it he wanted English with were in America now we're reformed Jews we speak English and we did everything was English in his service and I was confirmed at that Temple in
South Dallas and we were married there my folks thought uh they lived on Livingston in Highland Park at that time and they thought that my wife coming from China didn't know anything about running a household in the United States so they weren't going to let us go into an apartment by ourselves so we had to live with them and while there they taught her how to cook and how to shop and how to do everything to live in this country which was fine because I was teaching all the time and didn't have time to well that was 40 married in uh 47 in 48 I
went to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas as a general Economist and stayed there for a year and in 49 I decided if I was going to have a career as an economist I better get my PhD so I said to the head of the department I have to leave I want to go get my PhD in economics he said I understand so my wife then and I left in June of 49 to go to the University of Wisconsin because I wanted to take labor economics we went to Madison Wisconsin drove into Madison in June of 49 the temperature was 93 the humidity was 93
we almost turned around and came back it was terrible they had heat but no air conditioning they didn't know air conditioning in Wisconsin it was cold anyway we lived there from 49 to 51 I finished all my courses from my PhD finished my language exams didn't need anything but writing a dissertation which I would have stayed there to do because I was teaching economics there working for an economics professor which is what I did from to make money while I was taking my master my doctorate there but at that time the Chinese Communists had taken over China and they told the Chinese living there that
they had to become Chinese take statement they had to become Chinese citizens or some citizen of some country or leave well my wife's mother didn't want to go to the Soviet Union she didn't want to be a Chinese citizen so she left well when she left my wife said we have to take her with us I said okay but I can't say here we were in a third floor apartment we had to leave Madison and come back to Dallas to get her a place to live in Dallas so we left Madison in 1951 and moved back to Dallas with fortunately in 51 fortunately for me
the Korean war was on and I applied to the United States government for a job with the wage stabilization board which was in office then for the Korean War and I had taken labor economics fine they wanted me in the way stabilization board where I became director of case analysis I present all the cases to the parte board public and Industry and labor all of them and I was there from 51 to 53 when the war in Korea ended and there I left but at that time her mother had come with us and I had bought a home in Dallas on Beachwood Lane where our
kids two of our kids were born and we lived there on Beachwood Lane and in 1954 I went back to SMU to teach again so I I taught then to 1960 but at that time I went to law school while I was teaching on campus daytime Dallas College downtown at night when I wasn't teaching at night I went to law school at night I was determined to get that law degree that I had started rice for a few years ago and it finally one night I was at registration the dean of the law school came over to me and said Barney you can't teach this
year law school has a seven-year rule you have to get through in seven years or you're through I said I won't teach I want to get through so I stopped teaching and started law school fulltime at night and finished Law School in 57 then most of the law students went to Austin and took a course by some law professor who taught everybody who was going to take the bar they all went for a crash course because he got them through the bar I was teaching I couldn't take off to go to Austin so I just studied here went to Austin knockwood passed the bar well
that was in 1957 in December of 1957 I was sworn in in Dallas I couldn't go to Austin to be sworn in before The Supreme Court cuz I was still teaching so I was sworn in here and I TOS them to 60 in 60 I said got to start practicing law so I said no more teaching and then I had an offer to go to the Austin College in Sherman Texas good college to teach economics there 60 Mi away I said no not going to do that I'm going to practice law so I started practicing law in Dallas in December 1957 so 58 I was
a lawyer I was too old to that time 36 years of age nobody wanted me in their law office they wanted 22 3 24 year old kids at 36 who needs you so I had to open my own office I was my my own practitioner so I was fortunate then I met a life insurance agent and by the way he worked for Northwestern Mutual life best life insurance company in the country and he took me with him out to West Texas he had oil people everywhere that he was selling life insurance and after he sold them the life insurance he said to them you need
a will here's Barney he'll write you a will so he got me in the law business to do that for his clients and that was fine cuz I did other things for them too and built a practice well you and Mera had three daughters seven grandkids well we had first daughter went to Boston and married a man there who had his Doctorate in Education major in Psychology and went into psychology as a profession and she went into public health because when she came back from Austin she went to Houston the School of Public Health and got her Masters in public health so they were in
Boston she worked in the hospital they worked in the hospital together then he decided to go into practice in Pennsylvania where his family lived and they moved to Westchester Pennsylvania and she moved to West chancer with him and they had a son and a daughter and she opened a nonprofit uh Clinic there for plan Parenthood she just retired from it 26 years later after she built it up she left it and she's in she on retirement from it but she's now on her own as a consultant and he's in private practice in Westchester as a clinical psychologist tell me about your other two daughters yes
the middle daughter Heather Anne went to the University of Texas graduated with a bachelor's and then a ma bachelor's and she majored in Arabic then a master's in social work she spent two years in Israel teaching English to the little Israeli students then she came back here she married a man here and they had two daughters their older daughter now is at the University of Oklahoma ma majoring in early childhood education she's going to be a school teacher the younger daughter just became a freshman at Pierce High School in Richard and your third daughter my baby daughter had a son Seth and later thought she
was going to have another child turned out to be twins a boy and a girl she had twins so she has three children and the older child Vance is now working for their father her their his father in the battery business because Henry North American distributor for ranata batteries from Switzerland Robin worked with them as National Credit manager for several years but then as the children Grew Older and she needed to be with them more she left that and went home to be a mother now all the children are grown and gone and uh now she has to take care of me I'm her last
child well thanks for doing this today man you did a great job thank you very much well you're welcome