Carole Wolanow
Carole was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, the daughter of a jeweler and a homemaker. Her maternal grandparents came from Kiev around 1906, and family lore holds that her grandfather traveled under her grandmother's family name, Cooper, to escape the Czar's army, so the original family name was never known. When Carole was about eight, the family moved to San Diego after her father was transferred to open a department in the May Company stores there. Between 1959 and 1961 the family lived briefly in Fort Worth, Texas, where a young Carole first encountered the segregation of the era, an experience that left a lasting impression before she returned to California.
Carole excelled academically, graduating from San Diego State University with honors in three years, majoring in psychology, and going on to earn a master's degree in counseling. She began her career as a counselor with the state of California. She moved to Dallas in 1980 with her then-husband, settling in Plano, and was struck by the friendliness of Texans compared to what she had known in California. After about ten years of single life in Dallas, she met her Israeli husband, Yoram, through a Texas Jewish Post singles ad, and the couple married on the first night of Hanukkah after dating for two years. Five years into their marriage they took on the raising of his two grandchildren, whom they have raised for a decade.
In Dallas, Carole quickly became active in Congregation Beth Torah, joining its board, helping raise funds for a new building, and serving as a founding member of its chevra kadisha. She has served on many boards, including six years at Akiba Academy, where she helped raise grandparent participation in fundraising dramatically, and she has volunteered with Jewish Family Service programs. She serves on regional and national boards of a foundation supporting projects in Israel, and while working as Director of Human Resources at the Anatole Hotel she served on the North Texas Food Bank board. Her proudest project is the Sarah Shanoff Memorial medical equipment gemach, a lending closet she founded in her mother's memory. Known throughout the community as the Hat Lady, she has visited Israel seventeen times.
Full Transcript
did you get involved with the Jewish Community when you got here yes I did um we became members of Beth Torah and um became very very quickly involved in in the synagogue um and uh I became involved um with the board of directors and one of the things that I got involved with um was helping to build the new building because when we were first members the congregation was meeting in a church right next uh to what was going to be the synagogue property so we needed to build a building so I got involved in fundraising to build the building and then um shortly thereafter
this the congregation realized it needed to uh buy Cemetery Pro plots and once we built bought AR plots of course we needed a he kadisha so I was one of the founding members of the he kadisha excellent and have been I've been involved in in heisha societies ever since then and continue to to this day um I've served for six years as a volunteer on the akba board uh served on the board for um six years and was uh tapped to um take over for a number of years the uh respons possibility of fundraising for the grandparents proudly ra uh raise the level of participation
from grandparents from 7% to about 49% over a 2-year period I've also helped volunteer um with JFS in a number of programs their food pantry the inclusion project um and hope to get involved with the uh resale shop because I'm one of their most Avid Shoppers and Michael fer claims he's going to give me my own private parking place um and one of my one of my very very favorite projects uh has to do with B Zion um which is um a foundation that supports several projects in Israel including the b z um Hospital in um hia and the ahava village in uh Kat biic
and I'm on both their uh regional board and their national board when I was working um for many years at the anatol hotel um as the um Director of Human Resources I had the privilege of serving on the board of directors of the North Texas Food Bank and this was many years ago but um I was uh very excited about the fact that in those years we were instrumental in beginning the pro the program that now continues where the hotel and restaurant industry give um large portions of food to the food bank which is distributed um to the homeless shelters in Dallas yeah out of
all the projects you've worked on what what's the one that gave you the most Joy the Sarah shanoff Memorial M medical equipment gach which is something that I started right after my mother passed away my mother moved here in 2006 after my father passed away sorry and um at the time she was 90 years old and she originally lived in town Village North and then when she needed a greater level of care she moved to the Legacy Preston Hollow mhm when she passed away I uh was fortunate enough to give most of her clothing to two of my friends but she had a walker and
a um wheelchair and a few other pieces of medical equipment left plus one dress and it was a very fancy dress so I gave the dress to Roa Rosenberg who has what's called what she refers to as a bridal gamak now if you don't know what a gamak is I need to tell you to understand this whole thing a gamak is kind of a lending it's a lending closet to put it kind of in Broad terms and they're very these gachs are very well known on the east coast in the Orthodox communities MH uh where you have things that you lend out to other people
so many years ago rala started this lending closet for bridal gowns and mother of the bride things so I took this dress to Roa and she happened to mention to me that she also keeps a wheelchair in the a roof in case anybody needs one and when I mentioned to her that I had these things of my mothers I didn't know what to do with them she says why don't you start a medical equipment gach and I said well that sounds like a good idea because I have my mom stuff and I also happen to have a very large shed on my property mhm so
I started this medical equipment gach in my mother's memory that was in 200 10 three years ago right and now and I advertise it on Shelly grams and other places in the community and now I have this shed full of probably a dozen wheelchairs lots of Walkers lots of shower chairs and bedside commodes and crutches and so forth and everybody in Dallas Jewish Community knows about it and these things are coming and going all the time being lent out to people that need them either for short-term or long-term use and to me um I'm very proud of this as a service to the Jewish Community
sure and that's something that I did personally in my mother's memory and it I'll continue to do it as long as Hashem gives me the ability to provide the service Carol 1946 Los Angeles let's go back what do you remember when you're just a little girl one of the things I remember is that my mother used to knit a lot and I would sit by her side eating um sour cream and strawberries and say knit one Pearl two sour cream and strawberries yeah that that was your treat huh that was my well it was sort of my treat plus um I have a cousin who's
three months older than I am and our mothers would take us to the farmers market in Los Angeles that was kind of the daily outing we go on our strollers to the farmers market which used to be really a real Farmers Market it's not like it is today which is a real tourist hangout now you were born right after World War II right was your dad in the war um my dad had been in the military um in the early 40s um but he had a a bad back and I don't think he ever really served um for any long period of time but he
had been in the Army Air Corp what did your folks do my father was a jeweler and my mother was a homemaker your grandparents do you remember them at all I remember my grandmother on my mother's side she she um lived with my uh Mother's younger sister my Aunt May um and I remember her a lot because I used to see her a lot when she was when she was uh living with my with my aunt my grand my mother's parents came from Kiev uh in 1906 and the story I was told is that my grandmother came first and my grandfather came uh they were
engaged at the time my grandfather came shortly thereafter to escape the Zar Army and instead of using his own name he came with one of my grandmother's cousins using my grandmother's name um they came as a supposed married couple on a ship um and when he got here he married my grandmother and they actually continued to use my grandmother's name so never do never did find out what the original family name was because the name went on to be Cooper which was my grandmother's original name and what did they do for a living my grandfather made things out of out of copper my grandmother was
a housewife yeah he my grandfather died before I was before I was born yeah yeah okay and then uh when did you move to uh San Diego we moved to San Diego um when I was um about 8 years old my father had been working for a company called finl company out of New York they managed lease department stores and so they moved my father to uh San Diego to open a department in the May Company stores in San Diego right right and that's when we me moved to San Diego yeah yeah and what was life like in San Diego what what did you do
as a child a fun day was getting on my bike and riding around the neighborhood and hanging out with friends and uh doing things that really you can't do anymore here because you can't go out by yourself and not come back till the end of the day right right we'd actually go out and do things like hanging hang out in the rafters of homes that are being newly built and eat candy bars and roam around the Canyons I mean we lived on a Mesa and we'd go down in the canyons and my parents wouldn't know where we were where we were till the end of
you ever drink water out of a hose from yeah of course we did and we' we we'd um play around in the hose and bathing suat we' just be careful we didn't run into snakes um where' you go to high school I went to high school in San Diego at at Crawford High School in fact this year it's going to be our 50th High School reunion and I'm going to go back uh for that I'll be staying with my my friend Nina who I've maintained a uh very close friendship with I've known her now for almost almost uh I guess 58 years she's like a
sister to me but there were two years that we actually came to Texas between 1959 and 1961 my father was sent on a 2-year assignment to Fort Worth so I came to live in in Texas for 2 years it was before the Civil Rights Movement dad was sent out here to open up the department at monics which no longer exists in Fort Worth and I remember a day going with Dad into the mons department store and I said Daddy I need a drink of water and I went to the water fountains and I came back and I said Daddy what color is the water and
he looked at me kind of funny I said Daddy what color is the water he says what do you mean I said well there's one fountain that says white and one that says colored and coming from California I had no idea what that meant well I found out very quickly because it was these were the days of segregation and I wasn't used to that in California well I found out in Fort Worth in those days that not only did the people there not like and I'm not talking about the Jewish Community because the Jewish Community was very nice but the most of the people didn't
like Jews they didn't like Catholics and they didn't like blacks and we were only there for two years and I was very glad to get back to California what was high school life like for you with you and your your friend oh high school life was was I guess pretty normal I mean we had a group of friends that we hung out with that we were very close with and um mostly Jewish kids um and we had parties and um my girlfriend and I were very close and we used to have slumber parties at her house and her dad was really funny I mean he
joke about getting up on the roof with a rifle and keeping the boys away now when you go back for your 50th reunion yes you're going to go back in a hat would they have known you to wear hat did you wear hats back in high school like that oh heavens no they wouldn't have known anything about well tell me the story about the Hat when I first came to Dallas um I belonged to Congregation Beth Torah M and it was typical to wear hats for Shabbat so I I would wear hats for Shabbat and then I didn't wear hats anymore except for Shabbat and
then um later on in in my life here in Dallas I became more observant and I wore hats ju not only for Shabbat but I decided really to become more observant and to cover my head and so I started wearing hats um all the time and I decided that I really liked hats and so hats became a fashion statement and I got into hats for not just the observance idea but also for a fashion statement so I started buying hats at garage sales and estate sales and resale shops and then I every time I would go to Israel I have a favorite hat factory IMA
which is in tpot and I go there on every trip and I've been to Israel 17 times times and so I I bring back hats from imaga in fact this is one from my hat factory in Israel and I'm now sort of known as the Hat Lady it's sort of a funny thing people say well we don't know you if you're not wearing a hat I've had people stop me and say oh is that you Carol I didn't recognize you you're not wearing a hat so I guess hats are just something that I really love yeah and I that's the story of the hats well
after school was it college or did you go to work oh no I went directly to college we lived um we lived very close to San Diego State University we're two blocks away and um my parents um we had a modest lifestyle but we were not able to afford me to go to w school but I had very very good grades and I went to San Diego State University I was very driven I went through through college um with honors in 3 years U majored in psychology went through graduate school and also with honors and got a master's degree in um counseling and uh immediately
went to work I went to work for the state of California um as a uh counselor within the uh um Department of Employment mhm well now you had um bad experience first time you came to Texas for those two years but then you came back yes yes I did okay what what made you decide you were leaving the West Coast the beaches the sunshine to come to the heat of Texas well um I was married at the time to my ex-husband and um he had a promotional opportunity with his his company and we moved to Dallas in 1980 which is now 33 years ago so
um it was a great opportunity uh for our family and we moved here um we moved to Plano at the time and Dallas was so different from Fort Worth and Texas really um and the people were so different at the time um I was quite amazed uh the first time I went to the grocery store someone offered to to carry my groceries out that had never happened in California that just was amazing to me and the other thing that just kind of floored me was that um would walk down the street in my neighborhood and people would say hello and quite frankly in California if
a stranger came up and said hello to you you'd think they'd just been released from a mental institution so so your second impression of Texas was much better absolutely absolutely Texans are very friendly folk and um we integrated quite readily into the environment and um did you tell me about meeting your husband now oh my goodness I had been single in Dallas for about 10 years I was in my early 40s and I was going through the usual dating scene here at the time The JCC had profiles and there were lots of other ways to meet Jewish singles but it's this is not an easy
City to meet somebody in at one point I had put an ad in the Texas Jewish post this was the time when the Texas Jewish post was was actually doing singles ads I had actually met somebody and taken the ad out at least I thought the ad was out I had stopped dating this particular gentleman several months later after I thought the ad was out I get this letter in the mail and I'm thinking well what this what's this all about I thought the ad was out well it turns out they put it back in as a filler it was so funny so here I
get this um letter from my husband to be we go out on a date and he takes me to the symphony and we really enjoyed one another very much and uh he wanted to take me out again and I told him I says well you're going to have to wait a week and a half because I just planned this uh sailing vacation with a friend we were going to go a bunch of us were going to go rent a 50-ft sailboat in the Grenadine Islands for about a week he had to wait a week I had had this great trip to the Grenadine Islands and
was talking about yorum the whole time I was gone and we C he came back we came back and I went out with him and that was it we were a couple after that now we did we did date for 2 years be before we married because he had been previously married and he was determined that he was going to make sure that it was right but um we started dating in October and he um did ask me to go with him he's Israeli and he did ask me to go the following April uh for Passover to meet his family in Israel and I accepted
the invitation and and I knew that I was being taken to be vetted we had a great opport we had a great trip and while we were there his sister-in-law said well when are you planning to come back to visit again and I said well what are you doing for Hanukkah she said nothing special I said well do you think we can come back for Hanukkah and we did we were married the following Hanukkah so our our anniversary date is actually the first night of Hanukkah how nice yeah but we were thanks to the Texas Jewish post yeah that's how we met my my husband
and I have had a a very great challenge which we hadn't planned on when we got married um of course we were both without children and then 5 years into our marriage because of circumstance ances with his uh daughter we wound up um with the opportunity uh raising his two grandchildren at the time they were 2 and A2 and 4 and A2 and we've now been raising them for 10 years so while I was never a mother myself I've now been the mother of two children they were both students at akba for a number of years my grandson spent years at akba and then went
to anon's and we're very proud that he's now going to be going to the Alexander school um he's a genius of a child and um very very proud of his accomplishments my granddaughter um Helen has been at akba now she's going to be going to Fair Hill tell me about your younger brother my younger brother is a very interesting story my younger brother is um he's a a year and 10 months younger than I am he's a scientist um he chose to leave the Jewish religion and become a sik and he lives in San Diego now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasions
you know that you lived through the Vietnam war that affect you at all actually um yes it did because a number of um my schoolmates were called from college to go to the Vietnam War right they were you know draft eligible and they got called out of school um they went to the Vietnam War and I was I guess what you'd call pretty much a hippie at the time yeah and I remember the years of marching against the war yeah it was very much a I wouldn't call myself a radical but I did a lot of marching in those days it was a turbulent time
in the country turbulent time the assassination affect you oh I it affected me very deeply I can remember exactly where I was at the time I was um in my first year of college I was sitting in my uh geology class I can actually picture the girl that was sitting next to me we heard about it right before class started I got up from the class I went and found a phone booth and I called my father at work and I told him what I had heard I was crying and crying and crying and I just walked home yeah I walked home I couldn't stand
to be at school anymore and I was devastated yeah yeah what was the happiest time in your life the happiest time in my life was when I married my husband yeah yeah I felt I had found my my true soulmate what advice would you want to leave to the Next Generation find a way to serve God to be content with yourself and what you have and also do the things that you personally want to do now not to wait yeah yeah so many people I know have waited too long and they haven't had the opportunities to do them good job today thank thank you