Barnett Solomon
Barnett Solomon, called Barry, was born at St. Paul Hospital in Dallas on August 22, 1926. His mother, Sadie Angress Solomon, came to Dallas from New York City in 1906 at age three, one of nine children whose mother died young, leaving the older siblings to help raise the family. His father, Theodore "Ted" Solomon, was born in Bluefields, Nicaragua, where Barry's grandfather had business holdings; sent to the United States around age 14 for schooling, Ted eventually settled in Dallas in 1920 after answering a newspaper ad. His parents met at the Harrison Company, where his father worked as display director and his mother sold ladies hats, and they married at Sherith Israel.
Barry grew up in South Dallas, attending John Henry Brown grade school, one year at Forest Avenue High School, and graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1943 after the family moved to East Dallas. The family belonged to congregation Sherith Israel, where he attended Hebrew school, was bar mitzvahed, and sang in the choir. He studied mechanical engineering at what became the University of Texas at Arlington and completed his degree by correspondence. He worked for Western Union and General Electric before joining Texas Instruments in 1953, spending most of his career in management and retiring in 1989 at age 63, then returning briefly as a consultant.
During World War II Barry served in the Navy as a turret gunner on a torpedo bomber, joining at 17. He married Teresa Kastner, whose father Joe Kastner immigrated from Minsk and worked as a tailor and furrier at Neiman Marcus for about 44 years. In a remarkably close family, Barry's brother Lawrence married Teresa's sister, making their children double cousins. Barry and Teresa had three children, Scott, David, and Carol, and many grandchildren, nearly all living in the Dallas area. A lifelong hobbyist, he built model airplanes as a youth and, from 1961, sang in the Barbershop Harmony Society in both quartets and choruses, echoing his father's own quartet singing on early Dallas radio.
Full Transcript
[Music] I'm talking to Barry Solomon today is June it's okay did did you no she kicked the camera you're going you're on oh I'm talking to Barry Solomon today is June 27th 20 11 and I'm interviewing him for the archives of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society Barry where were you born I was born in Dallas Texas August 22nd 1926 St Paul Hospital and by the way my name is Barnett Solomon and a nickname is Barry so uh would you to know that okay would you like to be called Barry or barard Barry okay Barry tell me was your family born here as well not in
Dallas no my mother came to Dallas uh in 196 with her family from New York City uh she was three years old at the time my father came here from New York City right after World War I uh about two years later in 1920 you he was born in New York City too no as a matter of fact my father was born in Bluefield Nicaragua Central America what got him there well his father and mother for one the um my grandfather was a businessman and he had Holdings in Central America and uh he went down there to a very early age and built and lost
a fortune but uh my grandmother on my paternal side was born in in U mam Morris Mexico actually the home was across the border in Texas but the store was in Madam moris she didn't like to say that because she felt that people would think she was a Mexican instead of an American but uh she lived in Austin for many years is that what got you out of nicar Nicaragua well it was my father your father well when he got when he was about 14 years of age his parents uh sent came up to the United States for further education and uh he attended the
Tennessee Military Institute TMI in Sweetwater Tennessee so that brought him back to the United States and after that time I don't think he ever went back to Central America because the family eventually moved to New Orleans New Orleans yeah yeah uh where where did you go to school in Dallas well I went to grade school at John Henry Brown in South Dallas and uh then had one year at Forest Avenue high school and then my folks moved to East Dallas and I graduated from woodro Wilson High School in May of 1943 growing up did you have any Jewish affiliations well yes uh I attended uh
of course the whole family went to congregation sherith Israel I also attended Hebrew school at the old Dallas Hebrew school in South Dallas was bar mitzvot at sherith Israel and uh that's pretty much it tell me about your experiences in school as far as being Jewish did you experience any anti-Semitism not really in school uh I never did really uh either I was too young to recognize it or I ignored it but uh in Brown School many many of the and as far that in farest Avenue many of the children were Jewish so it wasn't a problem really it was more a problem out of
school than in school if you if it was a problem were is did your whole family stay in South Dallas or did they migrate well North uh my parents uh as I mentioned moved to East Dallas when I was in high school and then later on they built a home out near White Rock Lake do you have any brothers and sisters yes I have one brother and he's six years older than I am and uh as aide uh my wife has one sister and my brother is married to my wife's sister and uh so we're very tight-knit family yeah to say the least to say
the least how many children do you have and how many children does he have and have they retained the same closeness yes uh we lost one daughter in infancy but we have three children we have two boys and a girl and my brother and sister-in-law have two boys and a girl so uh around the same double cousins some ours are older because there's six years difference in our ages uh brother and brother and sister and sister I understand your father had a very interesting career will you tell us a little bit uh before World War I my father went to work for Macy's in New
York in the display Department primarily as a sign writer in those days all of the window displays had signs giving prices and what the objects were they don't do too much of the prices in Windows anymore and uh following that he went into World War I and uh his name Theodore Theodore Ted Ted Solomon after World War I he went back to New York City and uh was working at Macy's when he answered a blind newspaper ad looking for a display director in Dallas Texas and that was all he knew and in 1920 he came down and applied for the job and got it and
worked there until he retired at the the age of about 73 70 actually he was 70 I think when he retired but he was the display director for a Harrison company which was a prominent department store in those days it was and he was in theater as well as a hobby he was very interested amateur theatrics and uh was a not only an actor in the Dallas Little Theater but also spent a lot of time designing scenery and constructing scenery for all the theatrical Productions that they put on he loved it very much and your mother was she born in Dallas no my mother was
born in New York City and came here in 1906 at the age of three so she was almost born here and uh in her a little bit about my mother my mother was one of nine children whose mother died at the age of 39 uh my mother was a sophomore in high school when her mother passed away so she immediately had to quit school and help uh in the house take care of the younger children she had two older siblings one being uh a woman another being the man and the man of course went to work the young fell and the between my mother and
her s older sister they took care of the younger kids and kept house cuz my grandfather had to work your mother's name sad angress s woman okay and uh later on when the family grew up a little older my mother went to work at a Harrison company and that's how she met my father oh doing in sales my mother was in the milary department selling ladies hats and The Story Goes a little humor on the side that my father being the display director was fixing the mannequins in the window one day dressing them in he came to the military Department he needed a black hat
and women's black woman's hat and my mother being a koi little girl of you know 17 or 18 said what shade of black so that peaked his interest and uh they fell in love and got married in Dallas at sherith Israel same place I was married my wife now and you're grandfather on your mother's side grandfather on my on my mother's side he's the one that had nine children he's the one had nine children he was born in austral lanki Poland and he came to the United States I believe he was about 9 years old and he settled in New York and uh got into
the printing trade he was a printer in fact he printed my mother's wedding invitation no no excuse me he printed his own wedding invitation which I haden't have a copy of and uh later on a lot of the family had settled in Dallas and he decided to come to Dallas and be with the family since the children were beginning to come along nine uh when he got to Dallas he found out that he could no longer get a loan for the large sum of money it took to start a print shop so he went to work for one of the relatives running a saloon not
a bar a saloon in those days it was in Downtown Dallas right uh near where the old Dallas Times Herald newspaper building used to be and uh he said it was a prime location because it was right on the outskirts of the red light district so he got the customers going in and coming out later he went to work uh this is my grandfather on my mother's side he went to work at Magnolia oil which later became mobile which later became Exon and he worked in the Magnolia building downtown for many years was it hard for him to raise nine children or did the sisters
take the grunt uh I I can't answer whether it was hard or not to to know Papa you would never think it was hard but he did have some outstanding children that helped along the way because uh for instance the youngest child in that family uh of the nine esteros was only 10 years older than I was so they ran the the gamut and the older girls made it very easy and as they got married the next one would step up and take care of Papa so where are you in this chain I where am I well as far as age my age 85 mhm
in August this year yeah yeah but um are you one of the youngest no mhm no I have one cousin older than I am by 3 weeks I see Shirley Reuben Shirley angest Ruben I me in the family of nine in the family of nine mhm where were you well I wasn't in that family of nine it was my mother I'm sorry confused I got I got confused it was your mother well then where was your mother in that family raised three number three from the oldest and the oldest was theatric angress Goldberg yeah and uh then uh was Isidor angress and then my mother
there's uh some military activity careers in your family tell me a little bit about those going back to your going back to your grandfather who well who immigrated well my grandfather didn't immigrate are you talking about my paternal grandfather yes yes my paternal grandfather was born in New Orleans your boy that's my father's father okay born in maternal my maternal grandfather was born in australica Poland right okay right and he immigrated her when he was 9 years old oh okay okay M uh with his family with his he was 9 years old he just came with a older relative I and any brothers and sisters
that were in the military any brothers of mine mhm um my I have one brother Lawrence Lee Solomon he was in the uh National Guard uh he was not in the uh Army but was in the National guard for a number of years and so were you no I was during World War II I was in the Navy Naval aircore I was a turret Gunner on a torpedo bomber how old were you well I joined while I was still 17 but I was 18 a short time thereafter and uh shortly after I joined I don't think there's any connection but about a year later the
war was over I don't like to think I won it by myself but uh uh from the I got home on the night of my 20th birthday and uh everybody was celebrating my birthday sitting on the front porch I wasn't even there until rather late in the evening were uh there any Jewish organizations that you were connected with uh not really Bonafide Jewish organizations after uh after World War II uh a lot of Jewish guys got together and had various clubs and I was in a an all male club we call the hustlers and we used to have New Year's Eve parties and we had
football games and baseball games and things of that nature we probably about 20 of us this was before you met your wife this yes and and after we met yesh where was your wife where was your wife's family from okay and her name what is her name uh my wife's name is Teresa Kesner Solomon and uh her father Joe Kastner uh immigrated from Russia Minsk uh when he was 18 years old came to this country and uh came in through the Port of Galveston and had relatives in Dallas came up to Dallas and U he started work in the Old Country when he was 12
years old as a tailor and uh he was an apprentice and so that was his lifelong work and when he got to Dallas uh eventually after the Depression he went to work for Neiman and Marcus during the Depression and worked there for about 44 years strictly women's clothing he was the ace on women's clothing he also did he was work as a furer in those days uh in order to make a fur coat they made it from the pelts and they would get up on the roof of the nean Marcus building and lay the pelts out so they could grade them in the sunlight because
you could not do it under false you know incandescent Lighting in those days kid so that's kind of an interesting little aside no kidding and my mother-in-law uh I's see Shirley Stoler Kastner uh she too was born in uh Russia and her family immigrated to New York City where she lived for quite a few days for quite a few years we haven't talked about your children do they live in Dallas they all live in the Dallas area Plano in Dallas yes and uh I have two sons uh one daughter I'll start with the youngest their names that's uh Scott Andrew Solomon and his wife is
Tracy and uh they have two boys uh the next oldest son is uh oh Scott works for a an electronic communications company in the real estate department travels all over the Southeastern part of the United States on real estate deals the other boy is David Stewart Solomon uh he works for Texas Instruments he's been there about 31 years he's a vice president in the Human Resources he travels all over the world uh my daughter Carol Lyn Solomon Goldberg is a nurse she works for a large pediatric uh office here in Dallas uh she has she's the nurse administrator has 42 nurses reporting to her so
all the kids are employed and they're very busy they're all married uh I forgot to mention David is married to Susan they have uh two boys and a daughter yes you have two one a CPA uh one just has his master m in advertising and another one is uh in college as a s a junior well I have a feeling that you're a great grandfather not yet they're too bashful I forgot to mention my my cousin my cousin my daughter Carol has uh three children she has two girls and one boy uh the two girls are both School teachers uh the boy is a uh
pilot for American Airlines so uh that takes care of the children and their children and uh couple of them are married and a couple of them are still searching they all live in Dallas yes one boy lives in New York City but he's moving back to Dallas this month that's a victory yeah yeah I want to go back to living in South Dallas uh did you go to college uh while you lived in South Dallas no we had the folks had moved to East Dallas by that time when I graduated from wood Wilson High School yeah went to North Texas agricultural College which became Arlington
State College which is now the University of Texas at Arlington so that school has had been under several banners I went U one year before I went into the service I went one year when I got out of service and then I quit school for a while and uh continued after I got married by correspondence which today would be the same as taking uh college courses on the internet that's so that's the way I completed my education by correspondence what is or was your occupation well I studied mechanical engineering and uh for the first few years of my career uh I dealt pretty much in
engineering engineering draftsman and design that type of thing later and by the way my first uh employment was with Western Union uh they had recently Tak o taken over postal telegraph which was another large Telegraph company in the world and they were consolidating all of their plant around the country so I worked there for a couple of years and uh got an opportunity to go to work for General Electric where I worked for about four or five six years five years and from General Electric in 1953 I went to work for Texas Instruments and I retired from Texas Instruments after 36 years U most of
my things at Texas Instruments after about the first seven years or so was in management of one type of another and u i retired when I was 63 years old in 1989 and on a Friday and they hired me back as a consultant I went to work in the same office with the same secretary the next Monday so I worked as a consultant on special projects for Texas Instruments uh for about a year after I retired fulltime about halftime yeah and I decided uh I thought I was retired why am I working so we eventually brought that to a close and I actually could retire
and do the things I wanted to do do you have I was there 37 years now do you have any hobbies tell me about your hobbies oh Hobbies as a youth I was very interested uh in model airplane Construction and building and flying model airplanes and uh later on uh starting about 51 years ago I got interested in singing in a Barbershop Harmony group I had sung in the choir as a young boy at sherith Israel and I did a little bit in high school but then uh this appealed to me so back in 1961 I I joined the Barber Shop Harmony Society and I've
been in it ever since been active in it in both quartet and chorus work and nowadays uh our course sings that uh many of the senior citizens communities around the Metroplex in fact we sung probably about all of them including we sung at the Jay same quartet no no I've been in several quartets but I'm not in the quartet at the present time just do chus work now that's interesting yeah and by the way it might be interesting to note that my father was also in a quartet and uh in 1922 I believe it was they opened up radio station WRR in Dallas the quartet
he was singing with so that's a little aside I'd like to mention so the acon doesn't fall far from the tree M who are your role models my role models golly I don't know that's a tough one I never stopped to think about that before I think uh some of the role models could be in a way parents mhm and the reason I mentioned that is uh people who live through some of the harder times of the the last century primarily the Great Depression when many people were out of work and one thing another how they held their families together America and and kept moving
uh has always been sort of a a thing to me I lived on the frenches of that cuz I was a young boy but I never had the responsibilities for raising a family now we've had some poor recessionary periods here lately in the Dallas in fact in the United States but uh I don't believe uh as a provider for a family that it affected my family like the families in those days so I'd say that those are sort of my my heroes I was going to ask were your parents affected by the depression oh yes I believe every was one to to some extent I
I remember my mother uh in those days in the department store you got paid in cash okay and my father would get paid every Saturday so uh one day this during the Depression he had his salary cut 10% but what went on was my my younger brother had just been born and they just lawence and they had just bought a new automobile mhm but what happened was five Saturdays in a row his salary was cut 10% oh 50% so I well not really I used to joke with my mother I said well you know look at it this way it was always less money because
we taking 10% out of less salary but people weathered the storm we never went hungry we didn't miss any meals but uh I'm sure that the problems my folks had in those days and my father law mlaw was you know was evident but not too much to young people 10 12 13 years old was from your mother's family where there was nine brothers and sisters were you closely connected with them was extremely closely connected family extremely uh every uh Jewish holiday especially things like Passover we were all together and it was a mad house lots of little kids up to older kids running around the
grandchildren and so forth and uh we were very very close-knit family and still are to this day with the remainder of the family were the grandchildren were your parents were any of your were were any of the brothers and sisters of nine were any of them in the service in the Army and how did they yes uh I had an older cousin uh Julian Goldberg who was in the CBS up in the uan islands um I had an Uncle Milton Faulk who was in the Army and uh he was uh inuring World War II as well as uh Korea and uh Vietnam I believe and
uh one one Uncle my youngest uncle was in the Army he was killed in France about dday plus 6 right after the invasion and I was in the Navy so there was four of us three of us survived um what was it like growing up as far as are things different today as you remember how has Dallas changed in your view well there's many many differences today I can just I mean for instance I could go downtown when I was t 10 or 11 years old on the street car for three cents and nobody thought that was hazardous I could go down to where my
grandfather worked or my father worked you know living Pro years so nobody thought that was a bad thing today I don't think You' be doing much of that first of all downtown is not what it today is not what it was in those days but uh there was quite a bit of difference uh is you know there was segregation it's there was obviously segregation but a lot of the Jewish people that lived in South Dallas had uh help from the black community in their homes and uh people were treated just like members of the family there was there was not what people would think is
segregation today and then again when you got on the street car they had certain areas where the black people would sit and certain areas where the white people would sit they had water fountains that were white water fountains for the black it it was it was different times and U the city was a lot smaller but the people that lived in it didn't realize that to them it was a big city because you could go to other places you know around like Grand Perry Arlington those were little towns so this city seemed a big when it had 260,000 people but U that was a big
city in those days those days but uh you know I can remember parades downtown you could go down there as a child and uh just fantastic times all over the city you could walk on any Street any part of the city night time daytime you didn't lock your hat house you didn't take your car keys out of your car it's just different is there anything that I haven't covered that you'd want to share with us seems like I've covered family careers Jewish interests what would what what it was like well I can't think of anything uh really uh that uh would be interest great interest
uh I have watched Dallas grow but those that came before me watched it grow too just in different dimension you're so lucky to have your children here really am I'm very very fortunate in that respect are any of your aunts and uncles alive now have they all no the last one sounds like Esther Rose es Rose Ras and Esther Rose angry rascan was the the baby of the family she's the one that was 10 years older than than me so she passed away recently well thank you very much well it's been my pleasure I hope I told you what you would like to know I
think it was very