August 5, 2015

Beverly Tobian

Beverly Tobian was born in 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. Her paternal grandparents came from Poland and ran a large, successful men's clothing business in Fremont, Nebraska, which was lost in the Depression, prompting her father to move to Omaha to remain in the clothing trade. Her maternal grandfather, who spoke perfect English and had apprenticed in Liverpool, was in the furniture business. She recalled hard times growing up, though she never felt deprived, and remembered small details of the era such as the iceman coming to the house. She admired her mother, whom she described as ahead of her time, curious about nutrition, and once traveling to California as a young woman to work for a Hollywood director. Beverly had an older brother nineteen months her senior, who was obsessed with airplanes and later served in the war, and a much younger brother.

Beverly graduated from the University of Iowa, where she began in 1942 and majored in languages, later teaching a freshman Spanish course as returning servicemen arrived. During her college years she attended a Zionist camp in the Poconos before the establishment of the State of Israel, an experience she found unexpectedly interesting. She married a hometown man and moved to a small Oklahoma oilfield town called Drumright, later to Tulsa, where she raised two daughters. As her first husband's bipolar illness became acute, she returned to school at the University of Tulsa, earning another degree and a master's so she could teach and support her household. After divorcing, she was introduced through her brother to Milton Tobian, and the two married within about a month of meeting.

Milton Tobian, from a prominent Dallas family long connected with Temple Emanu-El, closed his cotton business and, with the help of his friend Bob Strauss, helped launch Common Cause in Texas, moving to Austin before the couple settled in Dallas in 1975. Beverly worked nine years at the Bloom Advertising Agency, then devoted herself to community service. She became chairman of the board of Jewish Family Service, served as a temple president and led its social action committee, and was active with Women's Council and Mental Health America. She spent eight years heading a health and human services advocacy effort before Dallas City Council, fighting for seniors, the disabled, low-income residents, and healthcare, and worked to improve accessible transportation. Honored with the Maura Award and Peacemakers Award, she took special pride in her artist daughter and her granddaughter, an adopted child from China.

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