Brudus Meyerson
Brudus Meyerson was born into a Jewish immigrant family in Fort Worth, Texas. His father came to America around age 14, apprenticed as a tailor in New York, and was sent by an immigrant aid committee to a tailoring job in Fort Worth, where he boarded in the boarding house run by Brudus's grandmother. There he met and married Brudus's mother in 1907. The couple raised five children, four boys and one sister, in a crowded home on Pecan Street where extended family, some 25 people, lived under one roof with a single toilet, a memory that stayed with him all his life. His mother kept kosher and observed the traditions faithfully, and Brudus grew up in an Orthodox household even as he later questioned the meaning behind the rituals.
Brudus graduated from high school in 1929, just as the Depression began, and found work through his father as an office boy for a Jewish insurance man named Oscar Seligman in Fort Worth. After Seligman died, the agency was sold to Harrison Kennedy and Company, which kept Brudus on. Over the years he rose from office boy to full partner before eventually going into business on his own in the 1960s. He married Bernice, whom he met when she was young, and they remained together for 65 years. Their family faced heartbreak when their son Sandy died in 1949 at the age of five and a half. Their son Mart went on to become a well-known and successful figure, a source of great pride for Brudus.
A thoughtful and curious man, Brudus described himself as something of a loner who explored many spiritual paths, including Unitarianism and Buddhism, after Sandy's death, before returning with renewed conviction to Judaism, which he came to see as a privilege and a blessing. He struggled openly with depression, which ran in his mother's family, and later worked with his psychiatrist and friend, pledging his brain to research. Active in B'nai B'rith and connected to the Scottish Rite, he was known for spontaneous acts of generosity and gut-driven kindness. He embraced the teaching of Hillel to be kind to one's neighbor, and near the end of the interview, at nearly 92, he reflected with humor and gratitude on a life he called full and complete.
Full Transcript
it's just a reminder that god is always above us or all around us depends how you tell you how you view always god's always there always there and and where where wherever we are and whatever we do it's above so it's us way of showing humility now is your name ron do you uh do you feel that god is what what is god that's an interesting question have you ever read do you remember reading [Music] um yeah remember reading that do you remember the protagonist whose name escapes me what's a protagonist the the main character right do you remember he at one point he's being
hounded by the law and he runs away and he hides out in behind some bushes at the side of a creek and he gets word to his mother to to let her know that he's okay and and he he's gone into hiding and he'll he'll be there until until the heat's off you recall that yeah okay his mother finds out where she is and comes to see him at at this hideaway and they're talking and at one point she asks him how do i know where you are and he says to her i'm paraphrasing because i don't remember the exact quote he says wherever you
hear of people standing up for their rights wherever you hear of people helping other people wherever you whenever you hear of people banding together to to help themselves and better themselves and to stand up against tyranny and oppression and and poverty and so on and so forth you'll know that's where i am now and that's the best definition of god i've ever read the thing that confuses me is all of the uh it seemed to me like pleading and begging and then in their prayers and in their slalom solemnities and i think hillel would put it i was just looking at that here can you
read it yet yeah he also has he says that after the talmudic research and so forth it all comes down to one thing be kind to your fellow man that's right and i i don't see that's that's where i part with the jewish ideas of prayer to me it's a i call it the divine arranger and you don't have to do any pleading it's unconditional love it is unconditional love so while the commotion how have i oversimplified it no i think that one of the things that that we're not taught in judaism that we learn later when we study is that our relationship with god
because it's so intimate because it's like a real relationship it takes on different personalities so sometimes just like a child begs and pleads and cries and moans and life isn't fair and all the stuff that children do sometimes that's our relationship with god and other times you mean the individual's relationship right and so in prayer what the beauty of jewish prayer is that it gives you times to have all kinds of behaviors with god sometimes it's begging and pleading and sometimes it's you know being forthright and saying do this and sometimes it's saying how much i love you and sometimes it's actually angry and all
those things are in our prayer all those different relationships and it gives credence to any way you want to approach this device exactly so my approach to it is one of simplicity i guess so therefore it's acceptable right absolutely and the uh i went to the services in new york and they they went through the rabbi roamed around and he repeated and they it just seemed like a it was a routine that was absolutely a i can't i can't speak for for the reform prayer uh style but certainly within within the orthodox and the conservative we've lost the meditative element of prayer is one of
the one of the part purpose and part benefits of of prayer is the meditative aspect when you say the same the same words every day day in and day out year in and year out you develop a it becomes almost a meditation and so so it has many of the benefits of of meditation reflection heightened heightened awareness um and and that's that's something that that's over the years over the generations has has been lost was it always like that for you what was what was it like with me it was uh growing up uh i came from my orthodox family my mother kept kosher and
they they felt that they were pleasing god if they might lit the candles or if they dressed up and went to school on on high holidays but otherwise they my dad used a run around on the electricity that he could get power without going through the meter and he did he did all kinds of uh things that i that i would consider a holy person wouldn't do and my mother was so adamant about the uh the need to light the candles and to keep kosher and all like that that she lost the meaning of it like you explained or ron explained that it takes into
consideration the jewish faith takes into consideration all aspects the child begging or they've grown up accepting and the the need to give so and then when i when i announced that i was going to marry a girl that was in the reform it was almost like marrying a sexy they uh they didn't like it they thought that i was well i'll tell you their their religion was more of a superstition to me than it was when i later found out because i went in all directions especially when sandy died uh in 1949 we had a little boy five and a half years old that died
i think i told you yeah and i was uh before that i was going the usual path you know just uh religion and all like that was a secondary thing was it like that for your brothers and sisters well they uh tell me about your brothers and sisters i had one brother that we were that i could think something he would say it that was my youngest brother how and uh hal had an and i have a domino abdominal problem since he was 18 and he was always suffering as operation after operation and he became addicted to his uh pain relievers and i had another
brother that was opportunist and he would take advantage of any move for instance bart furnished the cash for us to buy some lives a man that my brother had this opportunist found and it later became very valuable so mark i advise mark to buy ed out because ed would would infringe on any opportunity and so mark decided that a hundred thousand dollars was so he gave he had a check for hunter and he had said lord i want the 100 and i'll take the hundred but i'm gonna borrow eighteen thousand and that was his way of getting uh a little more out of the thing
so ed was always a grabber my sister was a complainer she she always she was a beauty that's her up to see where that guy's holding that oh wow yeah that's her husband who was a table officer during the war and they were a beautiful couple and she tried to be that self-like person all of her life and still is she's in a home in philadelphia now so he still never was a person you could uh accept as equal she was always she was always hanging on you put a dear girl and i've talked to her every week when i was in new york we
went by there oh yeah did you have other any other sisters no one sister and there was four boys wow and jules was a slipper he he'd take anything that he gave it never occurred to him to uh to be the mocker to be the uh the giver whenever if the house needed some roofing he would call me or call mark and say my house needs repairing he just wouldn't he always looked elsewhere for his redemption where did you grow up in florida so the whole fam how did your family get to fort worth my dad came over when he was 14 or so and
he lived in new york he was a taylor apprentice so when they the committee in new york found wherever they would find a job for these immigrants these green horns they would send them there give them the railroad fair so they needed a tailor in fort worth so they sent them to that job and he stayed in my bubbies my grandmother's boarding house and there he met my mother who was one of the three girls that lived there and later and he married her in 1907 and then when they they had these five children now the other sister the sisters they married and they brought
all them brought their husband their family there to their one house at 407 pecon street amazing i'm interested and whatnot then how did you when you were growing up did you live near them did you live near pecan street when you you know when your parents well i was growing we we were in that house all of the cousins and all those 25 people lived under that one roof and that's the reason i've always uh laugh about the they call it the barlows we'll know about us living here we got three bedrooms and three baths and two people and two sets of phones and two
uh computers and all like that and here we were 25 people living in wonder shack with one toilet and that's that's the irony of life i guess you might say and i've never forgotten it i've been uh rich i've been poor and i've been underweight and overweight so i've had some extremities to deal with and i'm pretty well rounded out in life you found a good balance yeah i i know i know pretty much about balance i guess you know i like that word how did you meet bernice we were in a play and that the shul gave and they called bernie she boy she
was outstanding she was a beauty and then i met her actually met her when her mother called called my company that i was working for who sold fire insurance so she wanted some insurance on her furniture so i went out there to on college street to in those days we had to really solicit insurance now there is a you beg then take you so they i went out there and i was talking to her mother dana we later became very close friends i see this little girl sitting over there doing her book work or whatever she was a student in class about 15 years old
and i couldn't get her out of my mind here i am 25 years old and i'm 22 years old and she's 15. i'm listening so when left she knows you know the story so um when she was 18 we got married how did you how were you able to see her i mean what synagogue did you go to well i went i was like i say i was indifferent to it because i was still uh uh i felt like there was something deeper that i was that i didn't know about our religion at first i thought it was shallow because the kids ensured they uh the kids ran around and talked and they it was always so you could always hear noise he didn't seem to have the
solemnity that other religions had then again i had the exposure of i was an athlete i played football and i was only a jew on the team so i had a chance to vacillate between the my fellows all in the football team and uh my religion it was always a question mark you know i think that uh i mentioned about sandy when we got married in among other things sandy got sick and he died in 1949 and somebody sent me a uh some comforting material from the unity church and i looked in that direction and i began to get interested in that so i went
to the unity what was it like in your i'm going to skip around a little bit yeah so so you were playing football in high school yeah and then and what was it like being the only jew on the team well it was a classical example is we were playing against forest high school here in dallas and fort worth and dallas were big natural animes i never dreamed that i'd ever come here so we were playing football and uh they were killing us forest high school had all the foreigners the mexicans the jews the germans and the chinese everybody that who was not ethnic to
our people they went to forest time so in the in this game it must have been 25 to nothing they were killing us and we dreaded forest high school so in the in the huddle he says let's get those damn jews come on man that's valley voucher hold on i said i said brownie his name was ernest brown he was a quarterback i said brownie you've uh you've been very disrespectful in that remark because you know i'm jewish and i never had a hidden bed and he said all brutus don't pay any attention i was talking about the dallas jews not the fort worth tears
so uh that epitomizes the relationship but i saw then an insight that most people who don't like jews i saw then and there that they don't understand just like we say let's go down to the chinese and get to get something to eat or let's go to the greeks and have our meal and i don't think that they have the deep-seated animosity that uh i've seen the jewish forwards and so forth where they're always scared and and elaborating about how bad uh they had incentives i think that we are we're our own worst criticism critics of the of this and a sometimes of people would
say sure you've got it easy because you've got a rich son and all like that so you don't see any of the disharmony that happens but i think i've seen it all through my life and i don't think it's just it's any semitism is as bad as uh as it is made out to be by we the jewish people and i think since we've got israel and shown what superior soldiers we are and pilots and it's they're the best trained pilots in the world so i have a a different viewpoint it seems in the average person not always anti-semitism like that i think part of
that was from growing up you know where people knew you and then knew you were jewish and saw it you know so like the personal way that you were just talking about yeah uh and i looked in all directions i went to unitarian to buddhism i looked in all directions and finally i'm back to judaism realizing that it's everything it's it's as good or better than anything any direction i've looked at before and i'm so proud to be a jute i think we're lucky to be born jewish because we have that the genes that maybe the greeks do when they're athletes you know they're the
finest athletes in the world the greeks so having that heritage of being jewish i think is uh is a privilege okay so let's go back to time so you you were playing football in high school and then you finished high school what did you do after high school i took the third that that was during the heart of the depression i graduated in 29. 1929 and that's when the depression started that's when the stock market fell in the fall of 29 that's when i got out of jobs were really scarce so my dad found out that there's a jewish insurance man oscar seligman in fort worth that needed a handyman office boy so i applied that afternoon and i got the job and all the next day i turned away people that were applying for the job that he had that he had advertised in some in the paper i think an oscar was an education in itself oscar is selling them he was a jewish german refugee and he was very
definite in his uh and his calling he believes that if you had a job if you're supposed to be there till two o'clock you can can't leave until two he made no exceptions to the stern uh directions that you've thought they say that that's typical of the german people so i learned a lot from oscar about what not to do with your employees and he died and they sold the company to harrison kennedy and company an established insurance agency in fort worth and they took me over and to make a long story short i um i went from office boy you know for that selling
my business too i became a full partner wow with marshall kennedy harrison they dissolved the partnership and kennedy and i went into business so it went into a people partnership and we had some employees that couldn't stand the idea that the office boy is now the owner he's not the boss now the boss so they did they they treated me with with what i would term disrespect especially one woman maddie bell so i went to canada and i said i'm gonna fire that girl that woman he said oh and boy she she was his uh his uh arms and legs she did everything and he
didn't want he said british what the heck were drawing 1750 a month each which was big money in those days he says we've got fifty thousand dollars in the bank said what are you pushing the pushing for he says we you got it good and but i i still was driving under this idea that i had no respect so i i resigned wow and went into business myself in 61. and i never did make the money that i did before and i never did get any bigger than harrison kennedy company but i learned that i couldn't uh could run a bit of this and uh everybody in the business on a first-name basis and said all this formality that oscar had done did you like it did you like what you were doing uh no after uh after i retired in 77 you know in 72 i retired i looked back and saw that i had 45 years of i didn't realize how much i didn't like it i should have been a teacher or a philosopher or
something like that that was my my uh my basics in that department so what was your day like i mean you so you met okay so you started in this company with seligman and then you met bernice right you were number one you met bernice and you started your family where did y'all live what was your life like at the beginning with sandy and then later more well uh no first mort was first i'm sorry mark was five years older than sandy he died in 49 so mark was about 12 years old well i had to adjust myself to this young lady because my partner
my boss and later kennedy he always told me he said she's got the prettiest behind i've ever seen oh he was lusting after i see that now she she was really something else if i in another life if i don't think i'd marry such a pretty girl [Laughter] anyway um sandy turned me in the direction of life is more than we think it is getting power and money and all that like that and the funny thing is that i learned that the thing that i wanted the most power and money came to me and i was with trying we tried to to direct the fate
and i think that the thing that this divine arranger that i spoke of has has its own intelligence and we don't know what it is like this bus tragedy that we just had that may affect and project the oncoming generations of the young people 500 years from now it might have some good effect to it and i don't think the divine arranger thinks in terms of time or space and since life is eternal i don't think yet or he or she the divine arranger pays any attention to whether death is involved or not and we hold it as a criteria of success or nonsense where
they're looking to see what could have saved the children not realizing that this is all part of of a dynamic that we're that we'll never know what it's like and so therefore we accept instead of trying to probe and cultivate so should we be i mean should we be probing and cultivating or should we should we accept i think that ex accepting with this attitude is the best way not to i'm a victim and we use protests and i'll take my awakening not in that attitude but uh there is a intelligence and whatever happens even the holocaust that's part of the scenario and we should
accept and not try to frown on it or seek revenge and vengeance and so forth was it was it were your friends like you what were your friends like did they think like you cranked even my own wife don't feel that way she she's more like a normal person she thinks and she sees it and i think that she is the type of person that you could talk to about anything but she don't seem to have the the curiosity or the depth that i have uh in uh seeking out these things princeton when i hear about a new church or a new idea i want
to i'm curious i want to go to it and i like to i'm curious i just like to see and create things that maybe i might be like i was before just seeking to change my religion or something but i'm more of a jew than than they think i am and i think that that's the way that the jewishness is supposed to be so do you think that you were that you were attracted to people who are very grounded while you were exploring and and checking things out i mean did you have you know what were they like what did you do with your friends
what was it like i didn't have many that felt like i did i would seem to be a loner and i didn't have many friends that were along the path like i was so i i i assumed an air of tolerance i let everybody just do whatever they want to or whatever they feel like doing and i'm friendly to anybody that wants to use any of my ideas or uh this culture or this frame of mind or whatever you want to call it so i i'm i'm pretty uh i'm pretty tolerant of anything and everything except i accept i mean and i like what hillel
said hillel said as i mentioned before that you can take all of the studies and all of the involvement and all that kind and put it into this plain word just be kind to your neighbor and everything else fall into place that's right how did you call it how why do you call your white cream when i saw her she had the crinkliest hair so i and then i was i guess another reason was i was so embarrassed being a 22 year old fan liking this 15 year old and then 16 and i'm 23 and then 17 i'm 24 and then i think i think
craig married me to get out of the house because she was only 18 years old and she knew how attractive she was appealing to man so i we've had our ups and downs like i say we kill each other 20 times we've divorced 50 times and all of the stuff that goes on there's nothing abnormal about our parents it was a it was an average marriage but we didn't we were fortunate that we didn't make it final right on any of these things right so we've been together 65 years now and we're crucial companions and friends i think that's where we're supposed to be now
i didn't mention that i also had another serious thing i was a victim of depression and it ran in my mother's side of the family she and all of all of her siblings had some form of abortion control really how did you know that because in those days it wasn't called that how did you know in those days they didn't know anything about it they they give you advice about it lift yourself up get hold of yourself and so forth they didn't know about depression and so forth and it came on me suddenly and i've read since that it's not unusual for uh afflictions like
this and mental uh emotional problems to come when uh when you least expect it they'll hit you wrong side i was in a movie and all of a sudden i got this horrible feeling of hopelessness wow suddenly where how old were you i was about i was in my early teens i must have been 13. and it was so scary and so emotional i tried to tell my folks about it and they said oh well you're growing up give you an animal would they know although my mother had to have shock treatments and so so i knew it was in the family but i didn't know the uh the pain of it it it is the most painful problem that a person can have and i i studied it and had treatment the best in the world i have a psychiatrist now who was a very close friend he was my he was my doctor and between us we learned a lot he
he i'm in their research in there and i'm dedicated or given my brain when i die they're going to look at it and see and i'm in the you know do you know dr chapman sandy chapman sandy's gonna be on the tv tomorrow between eight and nine good barney texas and she's she emailed me and says she would appreciate it if you would listen to it and give me your critique on it which flattered me but we're close friends she called me into a meeting one time where they had some of the outstanding people trying to raise money for the brain study and i and
they were looking in every direction i uh commented and they applauded the comments and i was i was really flattered because i was telling them i said you don't go after people because you want to study the brain you have to get in inside of them you have to talk to them about for instance if somebody wanted some money from me all they'd have to do is to mention depression and discuss it with me instead of coming to me and saying they're doing a study on this thing you have to get into it with people and um what's the name of the guy that fell
off of a horse and had playing polo oh norman brinker he was there and some other big person was there and they they they they both said that boy that man is really right and i i was only expressing what i what i thought and they accepted it as being the prime uh intelligence about what to do did you know that did you know that already or had you had experiences with people like what were you passionate about when you were younger and trying to raise money for something or not i was in the binay breath and we tried to get members and so forth
and i was always very shy about being on the pulpit or on the stage it still frightens me but i practice i always say something or do something but it's still a fearful thing but i guess that's what they say i have heard that if you really like to talk and expound and so forth from uh from the from the podium beware you're a board oh that's great so you are always better one-on-one yeah in fact that's i always tell people when they asked me to write a book so so i joke about writing the book i said we've got an excellent title yes tell
me about your family your family now what do you think of them what do you think of their lives you know about this this unusual situation where leslie comes in that was one of the highlights of my life and it gave me a chance to really prove in my heart that i really do appreciate these types of scenarios that come up for somebody in fact one of my friends said how can you count how can you condone such a thing as this girl being pregnant out of wedlock i said that that's way way behind on on the agenda the fact is that i've got a
beautiful ready made and they couldn't understand it and i don't mean to depreciate their feeling but they're they're not along the path as far as i'm so my family now is consists of these of these there's three of them and i think that marty is is gelling with leslie and i think that things are coming along pretty good and the fact that mark's up there sort a guide on it's helping it too helping him too huh yeah it's helping martin is helping them and i think we're it is a unique situation and i think it's a tremendous blessing it's one of the highlights of my
life to think about that little girl there see above there that's her your mother next to martin that's a football picture and again i i think that uh our contribution to march success and his ability to fly free like he does is part of our schooling he we sent him to town on the bus when he was four years old as an adventure and i think that gave him uh confidence and also i sort of had a sign too that you take it anyway you want to on the morning that he was born i saw this the foot of the rainbow was in the yard
of the hospital really at daybreak so these who knows about these things mart has been a a great uh blessing to a lot of things you know through his zedaka which brings me to my next my next imposition that's a resume that maybe that i'll give to you that maybe you can help i'll be happy to what we can do i'll be happy to did you did you and bernice did you plan i mean in terms of you talked about the way you raised more to fly free and to be confident did you think about that and say we should do these things or were
you yeah i mean i felt an innate need to do this i took him up in an airplane when he was 12 or 14. i encouraged him to play football i think we we really programmed the boy to be a success he's a free thinker he thinks of things like when he first went in parole into eds with parole one of his innovations were was to get the people's his prospect's attention when they would say how much is all this going to cost us he'd say he found an answer that's uh that's irresistible he said we'll charge you one half of what we save you that's irresistible and it's beautiful free thinking and i think that's we programmed and he moved in that capacity by giving him a lot of
running around he went to panama when he was 15 or 16 on a friend of mine was going in he rode back into the plane and all those kind of things that that drew comments of uh it's dangerous and why would you send a young kid like and so forth but we taught them to be to be uh brave and accept and who are your role models to do that how who are your role models in life and then and then later who are your role models in terms of parenting i think it was a god-given uh blessing that i had i can't recall anybody
it seemed to me like i was always venturing on something new and uh innovative and not with that purpose a blessing of knowing what right thing sort of in the innate consciousness of this are you close with your parents did they help you no they taught me mostly what not to do and sometimes when you're exposed to these kind of things you'll take you'll either become like that or you'll rise above it and i think that i know some of it and forgiveness i uh i forgive them over and over again because they had a lifetime lifestyle that they were operating under and each person
has their own scenario i think that it's all important the good the bad and the in between to do this and at the same time i admire capacity to observe this unusualness in your fellow creature well i adore you and uh you know i always wanted to know i told you a million times that you remind me so much of my own grandfather and i wish i could have the chance as an adult to have ask him these questions and have these conversations remember your grandfather and i and me we didn't invent it it's just something that's here and with us and we just have
the blessing of tying into it remember we're not to be praised for this insight we're just we just feel that it's a it's a grant and a privilege and a blessing yes so i'm uh i'm aware of judaism and our capacity and our genes you couldn't want to be in a better group than we are and we've got to appreciate who we are or we don't have to hold still while the hitler marauds us we can we we're the best fighters in the world so if you were going to talk to if you were going to give lessons now let's say you had the chance
to be the teacher that you wanted to be or the philosopher what would you tell people young people now today the hillel thoughts what would you tell us about being jewish or about living in this world or about business i would say one thing except all of the the different types that you see in the world accept uh drop the judgment don't don't be too judgmental and forgiveness forgive these things never even forgive the holocaust this this was a part of the scenario that our people went through and living and dying is not part of the it's not to even be taken into consideration for
instance these people that died in the bus rate or uh there's not the measure of whether you're successful because your children didn't die and these did that it's really an immaterial thing although i realize and respect the deep feelings that people have about life and death and i'm also a little scared of a country i'm not a brave person that come and get me and you know i'm ready and all like that i'm i'm open to the to the prospects of what's on the other side and i like it's it seems indelible in me that some wise person said we're going to be we're going
to laugh out loud of what's on the other side hello it's the private line oh okay okay well if i have some more questions can i call you back sure did you know that did you like that it's fine it's unusual and i'm i'm meant to tell you you got your airfix and it looks great thank you very much it's shorter every time whether you eventually curly yeah yeah nine years just over nine years nine years we started late we did the opposite that you did we started very well that was your uh it worked out great yep that was your assignment remember we all
have assignments it's not an accident nothing happens accidentally everything has a meaning to it and everything is as it should be we're where we're supposed to be and that that's a great comforting idea are you happy with the way your life turned out yes and surprised all this is a sort of an aftermath of the things that i've done and i seem to enjoy the success of mort you know and it's better than having it yourself really it really is having a well-known person wealthy a fellow like mart is better than uh having the recognition yourself and i and i love yuri eight and that
i did all i have to do is just look good everything else is taken care of do you think he feels the same way i mean do you think that he wishes that well he he the mart is is very undemesti monster too you never know you have to until mart you can't you can't get to know him unless you feel and he's not he's not easy to peel but i take them like it like as it is i take him like he is when he works out his own things he i'll tell him something that i think is the right procedure and he'll uh
he'll uh battle me or maybe on it but later on it comes out in a way that he had to eat that he don't even know himself that's some of the some of the wisdom or some of the okay solutions one second just ran out of date was he always that you know that's another strange thing used over and over sure we'll fix it so it's permanent so tell me so is mort always that way i can i there's a there's a chasm between the little boy and even the young teenager and the grizzled period old man that he is now i've tried to make
a tie in and i can't do it so maybe that's the way that's the way it's supposed to be that suddenly you have a friend or grown up that's very interesting do you think was it did you feel that way i mean i feel that somewhat with me when i was a kid and now i'm an adult do you feel that is that what happened with you as well or do you feel yes and i i would give a thousand dollars for one minute if i could talk to my dad and tell them and i understand that i forgive and also one one other thing
that's always bothered me that i should have done he was dying and i we left him to die alone and if i had to do over again i would have just comforted him and been with him at the very ends but i wanted to escape the discomfort of them being there i had next emotions about it sure what was it what was the last question well what was fun in terms of when you were growing up what was the fun stuff that you did with your with your siblings or with your parents there wasn't much fun in those days but see which leg i have
a tremendous sense of humor and the humor is our best friend i found and temper is our worst enemy and they're very incompatible you can have you can't have one without the other so i guess that i had fun in almost everything that i did and i feel that i've had a full and complete life especially being 91 years old and in january of the 92 and then in insurance after you reach the sixth month or then you go to the to the top of it so in july the fifth i'll be 92. in the old days they used to do insurance that way they take the nearest six months this is wonderful well it's been a it's wonderful for me and i still feel amazed that anybody would know these or dig into these things especially you because i know that you're a deep thinker you're one of us thank you very much now you have so much wisdom to impart that this is a treasure well i've made that humorous stuff they always say you ought to write a book and everything well i've got the title you know what my title is now what from passion to prune for juice
65 years with the same person that is so great i just heard do you know um audrey and b rappaport well anyway there are a couple from waco and they've been married for a long time and i just had lunch with them last week and audrey said that she tells all of her friends that it was only the first 50 years that were hard well that's the truth that's right uh you have you read it they say what do you live what do you tribute your success to and i said you have to be lucky that you wouldn't make permanent interesting you have an unusual
life don't you you're the stay-at-home person i am and she works and i like that each person should fit wherever they should wherever they hit best regardless of the culture or the social amenities that goes with it you know usually the man's right but if he's if he's if it's reverse then that's a bar little observation let it be right we're very happy with it very unusual and uh you seem to be proud of it too don't i made more promise that i get to stay uh part of the family as far as helping all of you with your tanaka and the girls and you
know that kind of thing is children yeah so and anything i can do you know i still want to always be able to help you know the people that you send yeah she's not she's not going she's not leaving the family she's just going off to college that's it i'll come back you're still expected for shabbat dinner that's right you uh i recognize in you a very valuable person and i feel absolutely confident in things like people this this woman i had lunch luis martine you know me he took me to lunch into charlie phil's place you know it's early foul charlie found is one
of us he's a jewish fellow that's that he's a i guess you'd call him a promoter a business promoter he's uh he takes place people like southwest airlines and public people i just met her at this time and i had you in mind when she said i'll just send you my resume i gave barry edmunds potter uh-huh you know these people they i feel sorry for people in contact with me they don't know what to take how to take it that's a treasure that's why people don't look at treasures always you know well like for instance i don't mean it boastingly but yesterday of the
new employee at the scottish rite it was her birthday 19th birthday and i follow these gut feels that you have i said i thought to myself i'm gonna give her a gift 19. so i only had 20 dollars so i'll call her out of the little party that they were having and i don't even know her name and i said uh have you can you give me a dollar and she said yeah just a minute so she gave me the dollar and i gave her 20. i love it i said this is your present well it is unique but it came to me out of this gut feel and it made her extremely happy because it was so so when i get these gut feels about things i usually do well you anytime you need help with any of those gut feeling problems you can always call yeah you you you are a valuable person to have because like i say you're a barlow thank you thank you you might be too but i don't know