Billy Jacobs
Billy Jacobs was born in Manhattan on February 13, 1948, during a heavy snowstorm. His father, Sanford Sandy Jacobs, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1924, and his mother, Gloria Feldman Jacobs, was born in New York City in 1927. His father's family traced its roots to Russia, Romania, and Eastern Poland, while his mother's ancestors came from the Alsace region of France and western Germany. Billy spent his earliest years in Washington Heights, living just above his grandparents, before the family moved to Valley Stream on Long Island when he was four, following the birth of his brother Gary. He grew up in a largely Jewish neighborhood, immersed in sports and Little League baseball.
When Billy was eleven, his father's job transferred the family to Dallas, a move he described as a major turning point. The transition brought culture shock and years of isolation, worsened by antisemitism he encountered at school. He attended six different schools in five years as new buildings opened across the growing suburbs. A summer baseball league at the Julius Schepps Community Center, coached by Marty Goldman, began to draw him out, and a second turning point came in tenth grade when a neighbor, Freddie Shapiro, introduced him to AZA. Through these connections he formed enduring friendships and helped begin the Christmas Day Classic football tradition. He was bar mitzvah at Temple Emanu-El.
Billy attended Texas Tech before transferring to the University of Texas, where he joined the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity and remained a student for ten years, earning two bachelor's degrees, a master's, and a PhD in learning disabilities. He taught and coached in Bastrop, worked at Fort Hays State University in Kansas, and built a career in special education, eventually running a private diagnostic practice in Austin until retirement. He married Brenda in 1987 and settled in Wimberley, Texas. A lifelong athlete, he returned to competitive baseball in 1993 and helped win world championships in senior leagues. Shaped early by encounters with segregation, the Holocaust, and the Vietnam War, he remained a committed advocate for equality and social justice.
Full Transcript
foreign good afternoon my name is Mitchell Myers I'm with the Dallas Jewish Historical Society today is August 29th 2022. it's my honor and privilege to introduce my good friend Billy Jacobs how you doing I'm good Mitch I'm glad you're here thanks for being with you I'm going to be good no matter what it's fabulous so tell us your full name born William Robert Jacobs and when were you born I was born on February 13 1948 in the middle of a big snow dorm in Manhattan and yeah that was my next question you answered it I love it so uh why did your parents select your name um Robert I have no idea William is from a great grandparent uh so I'm told beyond that I really don't know okay and tell us where your family's from parents grandparents yeah um Mitch the my dad was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1924.
my mom was born in New York City in 1927. my father's parents came to the United States from Russia and parts of what's now Romania and Eastern Poland at the turn of the century so the late 1800s I've seen a manifest from the boat that came over that left out of Hanover Germany both his parents were born in the United States those were his grandparents my mother both her parents were also born in the U.S both from New York and her great grandparents came from Alsace rain region of France and from extreme Western Germany near the French border in the region of Assad Florin and they they actually came to the United States in the
late 1800s lived here I've seen pictures of my great grandparents from my parents wedding and they were still alive in 1946 and never met them but you have met your grandparents and they lived in New York yes growing up yeah when I was born we lived in Washington Heights and the apartment we lived in was one flight above my grandparents on another so up until the age of four I hung out around Washington high as we went to Fort Bryant Park which is still there and my memories are all from home Motion Pictures I don't recall any of them to be honest about at the
age of four we moved out to Long Island a town called Valley Stream because my brother was being born and my parents wanted to have a bigger place and more of a community to live in Beyond an apartment building so my brother was born in 1952 his name was Gary Jacobs my mom's name is Gloria Feldman Jacobs my father is Sanford Sandy Jacobs okay and I lived in Valley Stream I'm from age four up until age 11. would you a Forest Road Elementary School the neighborhood I lived in was about 80 percent Jewish I had no idea at that time what beyond that neighborhood the world was like I thought everybody was Jewish then never occurred to me really uh when they had Jewish holidays at school the only kids who went were the kids who weren't Jewish there are a couple of times I went to school on a Jewish holiday just to see who was there and it was maybe four other kids out of a class of 20 they weren't Jewish now that neighborhood I loved I had a lot of friends Sports
was real big one of my earliest Sports memories was in the Little League parade on July 4th in downtown Valley Stream are Green Acres which is a subdivision I lived in Green Acres we had a team and I was on the team in second grade as I was the youngest you could be on it some of my friends hadn't turned eight yet but I had so I got to be on the team in March at home pictures of that and that feeling of Marching In the uniform and being part of the Green Acres Little League was as exciting the feeling as they ever had in
my life at that time that's fantastic yeah that's great so to describe your family's personalities at that time living with your mom and dad and your brother and this is in Long Island I guess more recollection than I would have to say that I wouldn't call my family aloof as much as I would say that my dad was busy working pretty much all the time I didn't see much of them my mom was a very young mother she was only 18 when I was born so my parents were younger than most of the other kids parents um and I think my mom was probably in
over her head she didn't really know what life was like to be a parent of two kids I can't remember a whole lot of contact that went on family wise or family business unfortunately I spent almost all my time out of the house hanging out in the neighborhood with friends my brother Gary was born with what was then called a club foot he required numerous operations before the age of two which required lengthy hospitalizations back then in 1953 54 time period and those were all done at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York so during those operations my parents were basically gone from doing any caretaking
with me and I stayed with my grandparents in Washington Heights during those periods so they moved out to Washington Heights with you just for short periods during the surgeries and the recovery period it didn't interfere with school or upbringing but I think what it did do is made my mother especially nervous about our safety and the permanency of people she was scared I think of losing loved ones never really knew why until later on but at that point in time I always thought there was kind of a distance unlike a lot of other families wasn't a lack of Love or caring that the we were
always taken care of but I think there was an emotional disconnect that my mom was probably never capable of and I think the truth is also it was also true with my dad he was the youngest of five kids he and his parents were not very close to him my mother was only two children in my mom's family but her older sister was 10 years older and she was raised by her older sister not her parents so you said your dad was busy working what kind of profession did he have then he worked for Downey flake donut company which was the sponsor of the howdy
Duty ship and that to me was really cool because he arranged for me to meet a couple of the characters from howdy Duty including Claribel the Clown who actually came out to honor the Jewish rexbox on Atlantic Beach and I can remember I have a picture of a sign that said bar mitzvah's in the background and then me and my cousin and my brother with Clarabelle the Clown in the foreground of that picture uh the contrast was funny um but he worked for that company and that kept him busy um but the childhood in Valley Stream which really nice it was it was it was
I was always out in the neighborhood got in a fair amount of trouble climbing into construction that was done on what became the Green Acres Shopping Center which was actually the first Mall on Long Island it just at that time but I got up on the roof and got a tour all over me and the cops came and picked me up and brought me home and uh that's something my parents never Edge now when it came to Religious Education and a Hebrew school I went to the reformed Hebrew school in Valley Stream I hate to admit it but I hated it I to me it
was interfering with playing basketball or baseball my Hebrew school teacher felt I was a troublemaker he called my parents in a couple of times and said I wasn't paying attention and if I wasn't going to take it seriously I shouldn't be in Hebrew school so I was pulled out and I didn't return while we lived in Long Island and went right back to the to the playgrounds and just hung out and played Sports I was not a particularly good student I did well but I really had very little care about anything that is just enjoying Sports and trying to catch all the Yankee games on
TV can you recall or are you still friends with any of your friends back then I kept in touch with a couple of the guys I was closest friends with in little league and do Amateur Basketball up to that time they didn't play football in New York um but basketball and baseball were big one of them Chuck Dremel went on to University of Maryland became a starting quarterback and I saw him on TV against Oklahoma uh during my sophomore year of college I realized I was the same guy his wide receiver a guy named Peter Blumenthal when Japan and was set the all-time receiving record
at the University of Pennsylvania at that time Jeff Dremel went on to be a very successful financier includes in Connecticut Peter Blumenthal lives in Florida and he's became a dentist and is retired as an oral pathologist but I kept in touch with him so 11 years old second or third grade do you move somewhere did you yes my dad was transferred and this was if there was such a thing as a turning point in my life this was it because we went from an idyllic neighborhood in Long Island New York to Dallas Texas when we arrived during the move we stayed at a kind of
a kind of a camp setting in Upstate New York during the move we had to be out of our house but the home in Dallas wasn't ready yet so we stayed there and when we got to Dallas after a month in Upstate New York my father had already bought the car there and it was in mid-august and we opened up the car door and then and the needle on his speedometer had melted I was in a 54-4 and it's the first thing I can remember it was that it was so hot that it melted the needle in there the dashboard when I got to Dallas
it was culture shock we were in a new neighborhood that where tons of homes were going up definitely the baby boom time had no friends I had no Sports contacts and I basically hung out of my room for the next five years how old were you when you moved I'm sorry I was going into sixth grade so I was 11 and a half years I moved okay I went to sixth grade at a brand new school the Golia elementary schools the first year we were in Barracks they did not have a permanent building in seventh grade I went over to Kerry Junior High School I
went there from seventh and eighth grade and then they opened up a new Junior High School called Marsh junior high so we were in the first class for marsh Junior High the next year in 10th Grade I went to Thomas Jefferson High School for one year and then they opened up a new High School wty High School when I went there in 11th grade there was no senior class there was only 10th and 11th grade there so we were the first graduating class in 1966 but that man wants you through six different schools in the space of five years and so there wasn't there is
no permanency to most of the things from friends to schools to neighborhoods I pretty much stayed to myself in my room listening to music watching TV until I my parents happened to pondish Junior ships Community Center in between sixth and seventh grade they took there we were not members at the time and we lived pretty far away we weren't close and they had a summer baseball league and I played in on this on a team in the summer baseball league the sudden the sun came out so and my coach was Marty Goldman people I still know and still love he treated me fantastic he's the
first older guy I'd ever been around who wasn't authoritarian figure and didn't yell he was just a nice guy and really encouraged me and the other kids on the team and it was blast and I met a lot of guys who become future close friends at that time I just didn't know it when I first met them so your first activities was going to the Julius chefs Community Center exactly meeting Marty Goldman met Alvin Miller at that time I remember Alvin very well and a guy named Alan pastel I met a guy named Butch Ryder some guys around the league A humorous story unfortunately from
that time it wouldn't be humorous to him was that anybody who showed up at the center wanted to play baseball was on the team and our right fielder his name was Morris konovsky he was pretty heavy set and wore glasses and was Notorious for eating pickle slices during the game and by this pool at the chefs Community Center you could always get little baskets of sliced pickles and he brought it to the game and he was eating them out in right field during the game and a ball was hit to him took one hop Ed him and broke his glasses he spilled the pickle juice
to his eyes and had to be taken to the hospital for pickle Birds and I will never forget that story most people don't believe it happened but it did and so that's kind of an unusual story as I can recall some elements in my own life but for some reason we got away from the community center maybe it was too far away my my mother didn't didn't want to tape me my dad was a new company was a traveling salesman who's gone for weeks at a time and I hardly ever saw him and my mom was left stuck in a new community with no friends
at first she felt isolated myself and my brother felt isolated being Jewish furthered that isolation I think and I most definitely remember going out to the playground at Kerry Junior High and some of the kids throwing pennies out on the blacktop and saying let's see who what Jews will pick it up fairly common occurrence I don't recall ever being included into any of the social scenes there was just some kind of ostracization that occurred that was below the surface that I wasn't aware of but was most definitely there did you get involved in the Aza or bbyo and how did you get involved if you
did yes that was the second Turning Point really of my life was was 10th grade we had moved into a new home in the WT white neighborhood that's closer to the Jewish convenience center and down the street there was a family and there was a kid named Freddie Shapiro who was in Kaplan ACA is a year older than me and when I was 15 I don't know if it's really ideal or my mother spoke to his parents and said hey take Billy get him into Aza get him out of the house and he did and from that point on that became the focal point of
the rest of my time in Dallas so I went went to college so were you uh Bar Mitzvah also here in Dallas yes I went to Temple Emanuel rabbiolin uh connected to Bar Mitzvah and I had to deal with my parents I went and started going to Hebrew school soon as we moved to Dallas and and the arrangement was and I was at 11 and a half so I wasn't that far from Bar Mitzvah time deal was I would not have to go to confirmation and get confirmed if I got permission so that's what I did and I did get more mentioned when I was
in seventh grade and that was the end of my religious education at that point okay and then the next three years you're still in that stand in your room listening to music yeah I played Sports you know with with my school teams but I was isolated from everything else but it's not part of the in good then Freddie introduces you to Aza and bby-o and you you Thrive that's another turning point for you so tell us some about that time 10th grade 11th grade 12th grade that was in 10th Grade what I remember most clearly was that it was the week after the Kennedy assassination
so it was early December of 1963. I went to my first meeting and I was at the at the Jewish chefs Community Center and it was an interesting group of people and I was pledged then so or whatever they were called a guy named Arthur Eisenberg was the head of our pledge class and I was in a group that included somebody who would become a lifelong friend a guy named Mike Eisenberg who he knows Izzy Eisenberg you know immediately we started playing flag football basketball softball and you know that was that was my area of strength so I I fit in pretty well they were always looking for decent athletes to fill
out their teams so I kind of fell in with the older group of guys at that point that that were playing on the mostly 12th graders team but as 10th grader I played with those guys one of the people I played with a guy named Mark benno who later became a pretty well-known musician we uh we there was a lot of pretty good athletes a year older than I was and we had some darn good teams in softball I was just starting shortstop in 10th Grade and we went to Fort Worth for the Fort Worth tournament and we won it for the first time ever
so as a result of winning that we all went over to mark benos and he pulled out this album by a guy he called Bob Dylan who I had never heard of and he played the music and that was my first introduction to folk rock music in my life I never heard anything so neat and that came from Mark Brenna and I eventually got in with a crowd of friends I met a guy named Mark Shore between my 10th and 11th grade school year when I was transitioning from Thomas Jefferson to White that summer we were at a friend's house and I met this guy
who told me he was going to White told me he was going to go out for football turned out it was marked and we immediately shared a sense of humor and that's kind of all it took for me if if we could laugh that was enough and Marcus turned out had a group of friends who always got together played football and hung out uh and just enjoyed each other's company and most of them were also in Kaplan ACA Mark had a joint chat I was in Catherine before Mark but he went to my school nobody else did it Mark and I who went to white
high school so we became pretty tight friends and we started I carpool with him we'd go to places together and we became best friends for the rest of our lives at that point first Mark told me he was going to be on the football team and he made it through one practice and quit so that didn't work out for Mark but everything else did um and Mark's best friends included a group of guys who are still very close friends today they played a crisp game on Christmas Jewish kids of course had nothing to do I don't need Chinese food um so they he told me
they played a football game and at that time there it was not a ceremony already and they just happened to play on football so that'd be a fun thing to do so I joined that group so the first time I played was 64 probably Christmas is 64. and I met during that time or just before that some really great guys that included Seth Meyers we called the bear rahish brother Ronnie a year younger they had a little brother who traced around following them all the time called Mitchell who I'm talking to right now Steve gutow who was kind of the de facto head of the group a notorious prankster named jumbo came in Warren Gaiman was his real name but we call them jumbo a real little guy who was a cheerleader at Hillcrest High School called Chuck Lewis two younger guys who would come along who were younger than I was named Mike
Allen Danny Lichtenstein a friend of theirs named Albert Goodman a friend of Andy a buddy who lived at their house Mike grossfeld who was close friends with both Seth and Ron and his parents were away and so he stayed with them during his senior year and all of us hung out together and they kind of took me in as part of the group and that's remained that way for almost 60 years until today so this Christmas Day classic was uh football on Christmas day as I recall sometimes that you played during the day sometimes you play maybe on the weekends I don't know I mean
we played all the time it wasn't just Christmas we didn't it didn't become a classic right away it probably took five or six years before somebody came up with the idea let's call it the Christmas Day classic and we didn't celebrate it as a classic until year 10. and from that point on it it became a tradition although we had started that tradition and never stopped it from 1964 on but I didn't think we knew we were forming a tradition at the time that I could recall mostly it was a good fun game very competitive relatively speaking it was tackled football it was rough some guys wound up in the emergency room but when the game was over then we all went and partied and it was just something everybody started really looking forward to yeah it's great that's great stories so let's put in perspective what's going on in the world and uh I
know when you had just moved to Dallas John F Kennedy was assassinated obviously that's a big impact what other world events were impacting impacting or shaping your life or everybody's lives that you're around for me I think the greatest shock I experience was when I was in sixth grade parents took me down to the Majestic Theater downtown Dallas the bathrooms are in the basement and I went down to the basement to use the bathroom and I didn't understand it because one sign said white and one said colored and I went back upstairs and asked my Father which one am I supposed to use I did
not didn't understand what it was all about when he explained it to me could make sense of it the first time I had really heard of such a thing and that had a lasting impact to this day I think from that moment on one of the main themes that I focused on is inequality and that's what I was focused on in high school in college I drew I followed several friends like Steve couto when we did certain events for registering voters and predominantly black neighborhoods in Austin when we were in college marching for civil rights joining civil rights organizations I joined the NAACP still have
my card in my pocket was one influence that maybe superseded everything until Vietnam had a I did a in 12th grade at white high school I took a course called problems of democracy and you were supposed to for your for your semester project research out what you consider to be a problem for democracy and present it to the class and teach you and then give a test on it and so I picked out the Vietnam War that project this was 65. 66 school year I researched it real heavily presented all the information Allen I got a a on presentation and research and a B plus on topic because the teacher told me it wasn't a relevant topic at that time yeah somebody else did it the Dallas Trinity River Expansion Project and got an A which never occurred by the way um and I remember being incredibly deflated at that time I several kids from our class went on to Vietnam they were in ROTC and immediately went to Vietnam and that all came back but I remember just feeling really deflated thinking that how can I be so far
off to think that was such a big deal and I'm being told by the teachers not my classmates however were very complimentary because I read in the annual that they signed at the end of our senior year that they thought it was which one is you in the class to actually present irrelevant good for you so Vietnam was a big deal race relations was a big deal and one thing I did skip over that I should go back to that really has influenced the whole entire rest of my life took place when I was in fourth grade living we were in in Scarsdale where my
aunt my mother's sister her husband and two cousins lived and I was upstairs watching TV in my aunt uncle's bedroom and there was a show on about the Holocaust I've never heard of it I started watching it until my aunt caught me and told me I wasn't allowed to watch it pulling out of there but I had seen enough and I had been around a larger family extended family family gatherings at my grandparents apartment and had seen people with numbers on their arms I didn't know what they were nor did I asked but that's when I found out and I was told then just don't
bring it up never talk about it but when I found out what it was and that it was real I would have to say that it left a hole in me there are man's in humanity to man I couldn't believe it was something that was real I thought it was just something you'd see in a horror movie and I found out reality was worse than any horror movie you could ever see ever since that was only reinforced race relations by Vietnam and then just by the political climate in the U.S in the late 60s so yeah these are major things that have shaped your life
looking back on them they're easy to point out those those three areas right there so you've you graduated high school now now what you're going to go to college yes I went to Texas Tech my freshman year where'd you get on Sir Texas Tech Texas play baseball Texas Tech our baseball was not part of the Southwest Conference that year we played an independent schedule probably to save money for travel so as a freshman although this wasn't true at other universities I could play varsity back then freshmen had to play fresh football but I was able to play varsity and as on the Freshman as a
freshman I was starting on the varsity team with that fisherman year and I had the first coach I ever had that I loved a guy named Cal siegrist who came from the New York Yankees organization that was the head coach of really enjoyed it playing pickup basketball over the holidays I broke my ankle it took me almost two years to recover from that and that was the last baseball I played for almost 40 years when I realized I couldn't return and play I transferred to the University of Texas and play baseball there's no use in staying in Lubbock and back then the prime buffer sticker
that people had on the back of their cars was lucky me I'm leaving Lovett so I had two of those um so I transferred to UT most of my friends that I've already mentioned jumbo came and Mike grossfeld Chuck Lewis were already members of sigmal from you Sammy fraternity it was a given I was going to join the Sammy's and I got there and I did for the next three years I was immersed in a family fraternity it's pretty much all I focused on because they were DieHard sports fanatics and we and that's pretty much I mean we went to school and I was serious
about my classes then finally but we just had a great time playing sports intramural sports particularly hero Sports first with the Sammy's through my undergraduate years during our senior year the Sammy's became the first Jewish fraternity to win the fraternity championship at a major sport never happened before we almost went into basketball but came up one game but you worked but in softball we won the fraternity championship at the University of Texas first Jewish team to do that and so that was really neat we celebrated that for quite a while I graduated uh in May of 70. it was I had a low lottery number I was going to go in to the service got called for my physical for late in May of 1970.
so as a precaution I applied to the Peace Corps and got accepted when I went for my physical you still had to go and take it my ankle injury was such that I was declared for f and was not eligible to be drafted had no idea that was going to be the case but it was so I didn't have to go in the Peace Corps but I was already committed and I wanted to go back to grad school so I wound up going to the Peace Corps for two weeks we were stationed in Puerto Rico in Palm City Puerto Rico and I was supposed to
be a community organizer assigned police supposed to be what I was training for and while we were in Ponce every afternoon I went over to American University at Palm City and play basketball and I'm there on their campus I met some people who ran a breakfast program for the poverty areas on the beach in Palm City and they wanted to advertise that so kids who weren't getting breakfast could get breakfast so I volunteered the Peace Corps uh printing press for that and we used Peace Corps printing press to print off flyers and what I didn't know since it was in Spanish was at the bottom
of the Flyers that said sponsored by The People's independence party which was apparently an anti-American group so when the Peace Corps found out they politely asked me to leave so that was a rough two weeks I'll tell you Mitch I was back two weeks all the classic friends had thrown me a big party when I laughed little did I know that two weeks later it'd be bad having been kicked out of the Peace so I went back down to University of Texas and started on graduate education got a master's degree I got I finished out a teaching certificate as an undergraduate I had a two
bachelor's degrees and I got a master's and then ultimately stayed in college and got a PhD specializing in learning disabilities so I wound up being a UT student for 10 straight years from 66 to 76. and I played in the murals for 10 straight years and during that time end up making a number of the all-inter mural teams that they would announce kind of like their all-star teams for each division I got so well known that there's no way they didn't put you on the team so I set a few records for making the most all intramural teams while I was there in football and fight football and basketball and handball and softball especially that's a great 10 years it was a great time it's a great 10 years well uh let's see so any Jewish organizations at that time that you're
going through at UT for those 10 years now just a fraternity we get some holiday stuff with the fraternity but that was it and any events uh during your four years at college that are shaping your life obviously the Vietnam War um other than that any other events family everybody's still healthy with you Mom and Dad I think the main event that might have shaped me was the May 1970 March against the war it was right after the Kent State shootings twenty thousand students at the University of Texas in Austin showed up and spent the night on the main mall including Izzy and Mark short
and Steve Gupta we were all out there Izzy during the middle of the night was walking around the main mall in his in his bathrobe and we started a chance saying where's Izzy because we couldn't find him at the time in about 20 minutes later throughout the whole West Mall you heard people yelling where's Izzy so somehow as he became famous during the Vietnam March the next morning we marched from the West Mall through the capitol Rotunda once we got through the Rotunda people kind of split up and then reformed in the front of the Capitol where there was a wrought iron gate and right
in front of us were several hundred Texas Rangers with shotguns we came to a stop at that facing them and somehow Mark and Izzy and myself were near the front of 20 000 people it wasn't intentional it just happened to be there people from behind us started throwing bottles at the DPS Troopers so they retaliated by shooting tear gas so we got a taste of tear gas and ran that the symbols of the entire 20 000 people in March but certainly was a highlight for us my brother his four-year young younger was watching it in Dallas on TV with my parents a down station was
carrying it and he distinctly remembers my parents saying I sure hope Billy wasn't at that March the next shot on TV was a close me with my fist in the air yelling free marijuana uh I wasn't there to see their expression but uh from what Gary told me was pretty incredible priceless so yeah after college 10 years you can't stay at UT they got no more classes doctor what's the profession what are you doing now I went to teach at a for a couple years first I coached during during the last couple years of my doctoral program I was a teacher and a basketball coach
at Bastrop High School I was there uh their vac which stood for vocational adjustment coordinator since I had a Special Education certification I placed kids in jobs and supervised them these are high school kids who were over 16 who could work and go to school at the same time so I was oversaw them and I also coached the Freshman Basketball team um the thing I can remember most was our freshman Keen this is Bastrop Texas 1975. about a 70 black school our first and second team were all black players our third team we had 15 on the team had a couple of white kids but their parents were pretty prominent around school I can remember getting a lot of pressure from their parents I said why not my spice and my son playing well our team went undefeated that year we the last game of the season we played LaGrange we had Johnny Johnson on their team who went on to be an All-American at Texas and an All-Pro defensive back in the NFL and we we won that game so we had an undefeated season still have my team picture from that year and for the next year I was not rehired to coach it's crazy because Texas right so that was that was Texas there it was a very racist town there were two students who are black who were killed that year in town not at the school but in drive-by shootings that was Bastrop Texas in 1975-76 the kids were great I didn't see any problem among the kids teammates got along there was no color very among the kids it was the parents so at this time are you married girlfriend I was married had Ben was born in 1974.
in 1976 before I left Bastrop there was a charity game for special education that I set up where the country western station and Austin caveat had a traveling basketball team that would brought a bunch of UT athletes out to play against faculty at schools to raise money and I set that game out I US during maybe February of that year it was after football season the thing that stands out in my mind is Earl Campbell who's one of the Texas players who came to play the basketball game he couldn't even jump on basketball but he was there and I had a picture of him taken with my son there's two at the time and that was a highlight that was really cool after that I moved to teach at Fort H State University in Western Kansas it's the State University on the west one in Western Kansas teach special education as a professor get that for two years and frankly I I missed Austin and I didn't care if I wasn't going to teach at a university I just wanted to come back so I came back to Austin after two years had a daughter Leah who was born in 77.
got a job teaching special education for the Austin Independent School District I worked at the children's psychiatric unit of the Austin State Hospital which is but the teachers were all provided by the Austin Public Schools State Hospital we're up there with my best friend a guy named markelle Baum great guy great basketball player from St Louis what's the fraternity brother too um until 1986 in 1986 I decided to set up a private practice diagnosing children with learning and that is something I did and hooked in with the Austin Children's Clinic which was a private pediatric clinic so there were five pediatricians and myself and I stayed in that in private practice until I retired I got remarried met had gotten divorced had custody of both my children and met my wife Brendan in 1987.
we got married and moved to Wimberley Texas she had just finished her PhD at the University of Texas in special education as well just got hired to be a professor at Texas State University which was in Southwest Texas so if we moved to Wimberley it was a lot closer for her I've lived there ever since we've been there for almost 35 years that is any uh any grandkids I mean seven grandchildren seven seven grandchildren can you tell me their names uh Stevie Brandon Anthony uh Isabella Ava Jake and Reagan fabulous Brenda had his son Colin when we got married he was five Colin is now
a pilot for Southwest Airlines he grew to six seven it was an excellent basketball player at Liberty High School had a chance to come up to Dallas area and play for for a community college or Junior College chose to you wanted to fly planes made the right decision and he went from from Delta Airlines to his dream of Southwest and he's been with them for eight or nine years now uh Ben is a football coach he loves sports just like me he was an assistant coach for 27 years until he was hired if you had football coach this year an athletic director is your son
or yes be 48. the second player of the second generation to play in the class behind a Myer's son there you go we have Scott Myers Scott Myers his first Ben was sick very good Jewish identity while you're married with kids is it more pronounced now is it no no um now Ben was bar mitzvah there was a while there I I thought he should experience that and he did go to Hebrew school and he got very mentioned did well but personally I never went and I think it was all reflected back to the first time I saw the Holocaust video and I didn't believe unfortunately unlike most of
my friends that do with such a thing as a God he would permit something like this I didn't believe there was a god when did you get that full depth of that I mean your four year fourth grade you can't get the whole depths of what's going on I think it evolved as I had various experiences regarding racism being taunted as Jewish when we moved to Vietnam War I think all of those kind of coalesced in my mind at some point where it finally I finally realized I went to a lot of French Jewish events bar mitzvahs and things like that and weddings but I
just didn't feel the connection religiously I felt the connection culturally yes somebody asked me if I identify with being Jewish yeah I identify with being Jewish from a cultural perspective but not from a religious perspective and I even took Hebrew in college that was my language at University of Texas I took two years to Hebrew trying to get myself back into it but it so I'm going to back up to college because you were there from 66 to 76 yes so there's a couple of years in there where the University of Texas football team fabulous right and you're watching the 68 69 70 71 so
tell us about that I mean I know you're a lot of sports that was great you're right then for I think the grand total of 25 a year when you enroll each semester you would get a CEC event ticket which got you into all athletic events and all music events at the University sponsored for the entire year so to go to football games you they would draw tickets you never knew what you're going to get but yes we we started attending in 67 that was the transition year for Texas but starting in the middle of 1968 roughly a time they put James Street and his
quarterback and started the triple option they were incredible football team to watch and they ran off their 30 straight victories I saw all the home games they won two national championships and I was even at the game in 1971 where they played UCLA where it looked like they were going to end their string of undefeated games and they came back with a miraculous catch graduated Phillips quarterback in 71 and kept the stream going until Notre Dame beat him in the cotton ball that year so it was great so he James Street replaced Bill Brown and Bill Bradley who became a great cornerback and made a
great career in the NFL I was all pro defensive backs and one one more question about sports at UT because I know you were a huge fan probably before most people knew about it was women's basketball at the University of Texas it was you know it started very quietly people didn't know what was going on because it was at the old Gregory Gym didn't see but 1200 people and they weren't part of the NCAA and it was AI aw or something it was special women's organization that had basketball and pretty quickly on they hired a woman named George Conrad who was extremely successful and she
built a fantastic women's program and it continued for about 20 years there was a time they went over 100 consecutive conference games I think you'd have to look it up but it's something like that and they won a national Channel they won a national championship with Clarissa Davis undefeated yeah and Andrew Lloyd those were there undefeated you're right yeah unbelievable because I remember talking to you about it yeah I think it was Southern Cal they played Reggie Miller's sister Cheryl Miller was their big star in Texas beat him so uh what do you do for fun tell us a little bit about that now or
you know let me go back to one thing sure yeah that I just remembered basketball men's basketball was in the old Gregory first come first search and I had seen a Sports Illustrated article about new sophomore remember freshmen couldn't play LSU has a new new star coming named Pete Maravich so myself and Mark ilbomb we had read the article we'd heard about we went to see that game sat on right behind the LSU badge front row we were the first ones there we wanted to watch him or not had the floppy socks um I guess he's 19 years old it was only a second or
third Farsi the game and we were talking to him from the side and asking them to throw the ball behind his back and just joking with it it was really neat so I can say that up close and personal we got to see Pete Maravich at the very beginning of his college career and obviously he said a total points record that'll never be even with three points shots no three-point shot he only was allowed to play three years because there's no freshman ball then but anybody that good now is going to leave for the pros and he averaged 42-43 and 44 points a year for
his sophomore Junior and Senior year right they would put two or three guys on him yeah and we saw him throw a full court fast breakdance between his legs that's great that's a great story so back to what do you do for fun now beginning in um night I played very competitive softball from early 1970s all the way up to 1993. I was on an all-black softball team in Austin called the Austin Warriors I was the youngest one on the team everybody else was probably 10 or 15 years older than me um and we had a great team we played Gibbons Park in East Austin there were just about eight teams in the league myself and two other people the only white people in the league Warriors and they were the best team and I was there strictly for defense I could get a hit every single time I went back that's still bad last but I was their best defensive outfielder so he stuffed me where all the
fly balls and I stuck with that team for a number of years it was a wonderful experience we were sponsored by several different bars and nightclubs and so after the games we got to go there and just hang out they would they'd raise money for trips by volunteering to be bus boys and some of those to get tips to use to pay for our expenses to go to out-of-town trips one in particular that stands out was outside of Wharton Texas we went in to play at Victoria catch tournament and we we didn't get finished till about one in the morning for the first day of
the tournament we didn't have any place to stay so we went to get a hotel room and they wouldn't give hotel rooms down here to black players so they set me up to get a room they told the black players that your rooms were filled they sent me up to get a room I didn't wear my uniform I just went up I got them so we all popped in there and spent the night that's another thing that reinforces this stuff then so that was 1970 two or three I think I stated played in that lead for a long time when that team finally dissolved and
went to a Hispanic game that was a real fun it was very family atmosphere things I really didn't have as a kid I really enjoyed the whole family atmosphere of both teams everybody was welcome there the kids could sit on the bench if they want there was no separation of players and fans and family they'd have announcers from Rick black radio station to come out announce the games and really made it a special event that's fun that's all great stuff anything now that you'd like to travel know the side of sports or you know yeah we like the national parks national parks so that's what
we've been doing most of the time when we're not we've gone to Europe five times primarily Paris area and Amsterdam that's where we found out uh and it and uh trento Italy those areas that we really love but that's what we like to do one thing I admitted was that are baseball softball team got to the point that we got played for the U.S championship for the new triple sa which is United States local sloping Softball Association this is the highest level you can play in this country for our age group that was the 35 and over tournament we went to five of those and
generally there were one to 200 teams that were entered and we never won it but we got as high as Fifth and we never finished out of the top 10 to us but we won numerous Texas state championships that's great great so um I'm going to ask you three questions that are a bit they're they're not specific so think about them and give the best answers you can what accomplishments are you most proud of the wow I don't know and I'm overly proud of anything I've done I guess being fortunate enough to be married to Brenda and of course your children grandchildren those are Givens
I think but I should State them having good friends like you mentioned you Ronnie and Seth and Mark dude would have to think that avoiding the traps putting people down throughout and standing up for Injustice I'm pretty proud of that it was a big Concepts yeah I mean it was in a small ways but none your little things I've done over in my life that I haven't been saying that and I guess I started playing baseball again I mentioned you know getting hurt at Texas Tech in 1966 I picked up baseball again in 1993 it's a long time in between um and started playing men's
senior baseball starting with a 35 and over League all the way up to 75 and over now during that time we put teams together that have won the world champion so that's pretty big accomplishment when you consider it including a lot of professional former major league players I think it is absolutely so can you tell us a little bit about what your view of how the world is different today obviously big differences and the early years growing up in New York and in earlier this and just some just some things for perspective that's a pretty profound question um I don't think people are different thing
you know the peripheral things in the world of change obviously through technology climate change social awareness the combination of all of those brings the contrast of The Have and have-nots in the world and so much greater Focus I hate to admit it but I've got a very pessimistic View have changed and most of my friends know that I talk to seriously about things but to me the human species particularly the male Homo Sapien of the of these species is kind of a failed species in my view the harm that this species does to each other the Injustice that is put upon each other and the
planet now is a very sad thing to observe I think the human species Homo sapiens specifically will be the shortest lived species in the history of this planet I think our lifespan will be much shorter than mammals insects fish because I think we'll run ourselves into a mass extinction at some point and I think that's primarily due to the human male and I wish it could be more optimistic because there are a lot of good people in the world but for some reason those who seem to call the shots there's a line the Masters make the rules for the wise men and fools so Bob
Dylan line I think it's pretty true no matter where you look whether it's the African subcontinent South American subcontinent Central Europe Asian continent what's foreboding in this country um it's to me a very pessimistic I wish I saw will you think I'm way off on this and I hope I am but it's sad to say Mitch that's my help that's your outlook so thank you for answering that I know it is those are tough these are tough questions but uh can you say one thing that you're that you want your family and friends to remember about you um I think the one thing they would
all agree on is that I've always tried to make people laugh can't tell that in this interview but uh but that's generally the case I think all my grandkids would tell you most of my friends would tell you that and people like fall with I think given my Outlook in life I thought you can always have thought that the best way to do it is try to find humor in the moment to try to enjoy the moment by bringing laughter because that does seem to be a universal thank you for that so uh last thing unless you have anything to add after this question is
what advice would you like to leave for the Next Generation that watches your oral history including your grandkids but we'll see this down the road beware of leaders they'll take you where you don't want to go that that's my advice is anytime people are trying to take away rights I think you have to look very close at those kind of people equality should be the overall human rule nobody's better nobody's worse than anybody else we're all just people and if we can solve the need to dominate then I think maybe that's great advice and I hope a lot of people watch this interview because it
was fantastic is there anything else Billy God no well I want to say thank you from the Dallas Jewish historical society and for myself