April 29, 2015

Carole Ross Greenberg

Carole was born in 1937 in Dallas at Florence Nightingale hospital, which later became Baylor Hospital. Her family history stretched back to immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents from Lithuania and Germany. One grandfather from Vilnius, Lithuania studied to become a rabbi in Germany, fell in love with the daughter of the family housing him, and left for the United States as war loomed, settling in St. Louis with her grandmother, whose maiden name was Meyerson. Her father, the youngest of seven, grew up poor and worked in the family cigar shop after his bar mitzvah. On the other side, a great-grandfather peddled his way to affluence in Texas, and her grandmother arrived as a child, cared for by the Salvation Army until family could be found in Fort Worth.

Carole grew up in Highland Park, attending Bradfield on Mockingbird and living on Larchmont when Lovers Lane marked the northern edge of the city. She remembers a childhood of freedom, before air conditioning, and the excitement when the neighborhood got its first television. During World War Two her father worked in a war plant while keeping his business open, and both parents served as air raid wardens. She was very active in BBYO, serving as president of BBG chapter 300, which later became known as Jennie Zesmer. She met her husband Jack on New Year's Eve after two years of college at the University of Texas and the University of Miami, and they married at the Baker Hotel in 1956.

Carole worked her entire life, spending 20 years as office manager of the family textile company and, since 1977, in the jewelry business, while her husband Jack ran a ladies ready-to-wear store for larger sizes. On the day of the Kennedy assassination she was working on the seventh floor at 501 Elm Street, directly across from the Book Depository and above photographer Abe Zapruder, and she remains skeptical of the official findings. She recalled the segregated water fountains near her family's business and the hostility Dallas residents faced abroad after the assassination. All of her three children and seven grandchildren were born in Dallas and live close by, and she credits her long, full life to family, faith, and the golden rule of treating others as you wish to be treated.

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