August 3, 1972

Becky Topletz

Becky Topletz was born in Russia, likely in the 1870s, into a family touched early by hardship. Her mother suffered from tuberculosis and traveled seeking a cure, and Becky's father emigrated to America to earn money to help her, settling in business in Bonham, Texas. After her mother died when Becky was about nine, she was raised by her grandmother in Bialystok alongside a boy a few months her senior, who later learned diamond cutting and settled among relatives in New York's Maiden Lane. At fifteen Becky came to America, first staying with an aunt before her father sent for her to join him in Texas. She spoke Russian, German, Polish, and Yiddish before learning English.

Becky married at seventeen in Bonham and, with her husband, moved several times, living in Sherman and then Garrison, Texas, where they ran a general department store carrying everything from dry goods to coffins. In 1906 she traveled to Europe with her three young children so her husband could visit his aging father. The family later moved to Dallas so the children could attend Sunday school, since there were no Jewish families where they had been living. They bought their first house on Canton Street, across from the Sangers, later lived on Forest Avenue for about thirty-five years, and after her husband's death around 1956 she eventually settled in a small house of her own. Her husband ran shoe stores and later dealt in real estate and mortgage lending.

A lifelong member of her synagogue, Becky attended Shul faithfully on Friday nights, brought there by her devoted daughters, and was proud to be its oldest member. She loved to travel and had journeyed across the United States, Europe, Turkey, Egypt, and the Orient with her husband. She was a generous giver, contributing to Golden Acres and other causes, remembering Israel in her will, and helping relatives and refugees resettle after the Holocaust, in which many of her extended family perished. She raised six children, three sons and three daughters, and delighted in a large Dallas family numbering some eighty-five. She recalled early Dallas when there were only about three hundred automobiles and shared vivid stories of her husband's venture into the Oklahoma Indian Territory land payments.

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