Clint Risner
Clint Risner was born on September 3, 1939, in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and grew up with an identical twin brother, Thomas, and a younger sister, Linda. During World War II the family moved to Camp Howze, a military installation near Gainesville, Texas, where his father worked in civil service and oversaw German prisoners of war. After the war the family returned to Lone Grove, Oklahoma, where his grandfather had run a general store and his father opened a grocery, filling station, feed store, and ice house. Clint's father was of Jewish ancestry but agnostic, and his mother's family was Baptist. At age nine, relatives revealed the family's descent from the Tobias Risner line, a revelation that made a lasting impression on him.
After graduating from Ardmore High School in 1958, Clint attended the University of Oklahoma, deliberately separating from his twin so he could establish his own identity. At OU he became active in the Hillel Foundation and lived culturally as a Jew. Following graduation he took a teaching position in Bogota, Colombia, at a groundbreaking nonsectarian school that welcomed Catholics, Jews, and Protestants, where he organized Jewish holiday events for students. He was teaching in Bogota when President Kennedy was assassinated, an event met with deep mourning in Colombia. He later lived and worked in Peru for five years and briefly in Venezuela before political instability and the nationalization of his savings prompted him to return to the United States.
Clint moved to Dallas in the early 1970s, where his twin brother and other relatives lived. He worked for the Dallas Independent School District as an interpreter and visiting teacher, earned a master's degree at SMU, and built a large English as a Second Language program at El Centro College. During the 1970s he established ESL classes for Soviet Jewish immigrants at the Julius Schepps Community Center, work he described as the most significant thing he ever did. After his mother's death he formally converted to Judaism, taking the Hebrew name Tovja bar Avraham, and helped organize an early gay and lesbian congregation. He remained deeply active in the senior citizens program, serving on boards, and with the Dallas Jewish Historical Society, guided by his commitment to tikkun olam and acts of loving kindness.
Full Transcript
did you finally go through the conversion when you were in dallas yes yes i got back i did and how did the jewish community embrace you totally totally i was very active here even before i converted it was julia shepp's community center and leo lawford my soul rest in peace called me one evening and this was during the 70s when we were getting the soviet jews in dallas during the gorbachev administration and he called me he said i've heard of you and i know about your program at el centro college could you come to my house this coming sunday and do a demonstration a lesson
for a thirty soviet jews i said sure and i did and he said i want you he said i want you to start an esl program at the jewish community center for soviet jews and i did and i had a big program here for two years and what else do you do volunteer work for the community center you mean now yeah i'm very active with the senior citizen program i'm on the board i'm with the dallas jewish historical society have been for years a family here has more or less adopted me ever since i moved back to dallas in the early 70s ruth andres came
and interviewed one of my classes here at the julia sheps community center with the soviet jews and she was so engrossed with english as a second language she became a teacher herself and they would invite me over and and i became close friends of them it was most significant thing i've ever ever done have you seen the jewish community in dallas grove over the years oh tremendously very large because when i came in the 70s uh you didn't have ahmad i think to fairth israel was at that time an orthodox show now i would go to temple emanuel when we would come to dallas from
ardmore because my mother's sister camella rubin lived here in dallas and uh no i mean dramatic change incredible clint 1939 ardmore oklahoma what do you remember when you're a little boy i remember very vividly the day we left and moved to camp house texas it was a military installation west of gainesville and uh that was very dramatic for me to see how old were you at the time four okay okay all right and we moved there and my dad worked in civil service with the government and ironically he was put in charge of all the german prisoners wow and that was that that i remember
very vividly um now when you were four years old did you really understand what all this was meaning okay okay after the war we moved back to um the ardmore area the name of the town is lone grove oklahoma small town my grandfather was a merchant he had a general store and then my father decided that and he retired and my father decided after the war he would reopen this open buy a business there and he did and and we went into the grocery business general store right when i was i was six seven years old okay now do you remember any stories though of
the prisoners of war did your dad ever say oh yes so yes he would take us down there to the uh area where he worked and the german prisoners would play with me and my i'm a twin i have an identical twin brother and it amused them and and actuality was really the first foreign language i had ever heard i had heard choctaw and chickasaw because that area had a very large choctaw population but i'd accepted that as native of oklahoma it wasn't a foreign language right right but and the germans would play with us and throw us up in the air and they would
make things and get them to dad to give my mother like little walnut shells and lamps i still have those today what was life like for them in the prisoner war camp here well when the war was over they didn't want to go back to germany they wanted to stay here and they had to go back do you know if any returned to the united states later then i don't know i wouldn't know that because when the world was over i remember very vividly when roosevelt died that was terrible news then truman became president i remember that clearly and uh the atomic bomb we didn't
i didn't know what it meant because i was just barely six years old i had a very uh adverse experience at six see i was born september the third 1939 i wanted to go to school and because the schools were so crowded in gainesville you had to be six prior to september the first so i was delayed here and that's when the war was and then we moved back to long grove to our home there and then bought this business and went into business there now does your mom go into work with your dad yes okay do you remember your grandparents at all oh yes
i'm fortunate to have remembered three grandparents and no let's see one no three grandparents and two great-grandparents wow tell me about your great grandparents first well see my mother was was not from a jewish lineage okay uh her name was pruitt cosette pruitt p-r-u-i-t-t and i remember going over to their house in ardmore and i would meet my great-grandmother and one day my great-grandfather came he was a retired rancher and then my grandparents uh he his name was thomas reisner and his wife's name was gertrude reisner and remember when she died she died shortly after we moved back to long grove and i remember going
to her funeral and it was traumatic because she was buried on mother's day oh boy and and i remember how sad my father was now she was native american chickasaw french in english and then my mother's mother her name was roosevelt prut i didn't know her husband clint pruitt because he had died at a young age at the age of 33 so i had the privilege i call it privilege of knowing three two great grandparents and three grandparents now where did they originally come from you know the riseners my grandfather thomas reisner they called him tom he came into indian territory oklahoma didn't become a
state until 1907 right and he married his wife gertrude hayden wilmoth and opened a store a large general store my dad worked in the store and then he then after his wife passed away in 1947 my grandmother he went to oregon where some of his children had moved and stayed out there for a while and then he came back to oklahoma and remarried now the grocery store that your folks had started um is that still around today that that uh did they do it for the rest of their lives well they they sold it when they retired okay because see in those days the stores
were family-owned and then the supermarkets began to open and and mom retired and they sold the store it was next to school we had a very good business it was a general store at an eye stock filling station feed store and also we sold kerosene in those days people used a lot of kerosene and dad gave me and my twin brother a business he said the ice stock will be yours and that area around long grove oklahoma and ardmore was booming in oil production i mean at night during those years you didn't have air conditioning you had water coolers sometimes we'd have to sleep outside
and you could hear the drilling activity and the noise and be so loud you could barely sleep so we had a tremendous ice business and that's it okay thomas and clinton this is going to be your business and i want to teach you how to save your money for you to use when you go to college and that was our business well how old were we at the time uh 7 8 it's great we worked in the store all of us and we had a lady that worked for us to take care of the house and the cooking and cleaning sometimes we had our part-time
me he opened this tour as well now being a twin certainly you guys got into a lot of trouble i i imagine you look at this there's got to be stories that you became him and he became you and you know okay let me elaborate on that for a minute people will say don't you like being a twin i said no well why i said i never hear my name we were called twin by everybody right we went through grade school middle school and high school the twins twin hey twink come here twin because they couldn't tell us apart and now we went to elementary
school in long grove in middle school but we went to high school in ardmore dad wanted to have a better education so we transferred to ardmore high school because he was determined that we'd go to college so when we graduated from high school in 58 i said thomas let's make a deal let's separate i'll go to ou and you can go to osu i said i want to hear my first name for a change and he said good i agree i said we've heard twin all of our lives and i want us to discover our own individual identity by separating at this point in our
lives i'll go to the university of oklahoma if you don't mind you go to oklahoma state university and that's exactly what we did now when i went there from 6 59 until 63 it was called the hebrew university the southwest we had an extremely large jewish population no i don't know why they would choose ou we had five jewish houses on campus three fraternities and two large hillel foundation how was it though for the first time really separating from your twin uh it was i thought the right thing to do because i had never been an individual right right i didn't know my own identity
i knew that being identical our voices were exactly alike when we would call home from college our parents would say which one is speaking thomas or clinton right i did detect that our writing was different and academically we're we were different too he was strong in the literary arts but i was strong in math and science and that way in those ways we were different since we both went to state institutions the first semester the finals were during the same week and my brother was always very weak in math especially algebra and he called me one night there norman he said clint do you have
a final tomorrow i said no i don't this is monday evening right he said i have my college algebra final tomorrow i have an f going into the final he says you get in that car and come up here to stillwater you're going to take my final exam for me i said what he said yes he said i acknowledge that you're very good in that and i've always been poor you know that i said thomas we can't take that chance because if we're caught we will both be expelled from college from school and both being state institutions will never be able to be accepted anywhere
else in oklahoma in oklahoma he said how are they going to find out he said i'll verse you who the name of the instructor is my roommate here at the dorm lewis a tall basketball player is taking the same class it will be tomorrow morning from 10 to 12. he will show you where to go where to sit in class because i had a sign seeds you'll wear my top coat and you will take my billfold and i said well our writing is different he said no now look he said in math it'll be mostly figures and most of the professors have teacher assistants that do their grading so i did i drove up there that night they smuggled me into the dormitory they didn't want anybody to see me i went to the class the next morning and uh of course i was versed but the instructor's name was his name was mr king dave which i shall never forget and uh i made one mistake scotland the class was over it was ten to twelve two hour final exam and it would count fifty percent of the grade uh the mistake i made i finished early like 15 to 12.
and i went up there to turn it into mr ken kate and he looked at me he said thomas what's the matter did you give up i thought oh my goodness i should have thought he was usually probably the last one to turn in this day and i said no i'm tired i've been on dexa dream for four days cramming crashing for this test this is all i can do he said i sure hope he pass it because you know what your grade is so i had to wait out in the hall until lewis finished because i didn't know how to get back to the
dorm so when i rang at 12 he and being a tall basketball player for osu here his students were coming out said thomas what happened did you give up and he ran by me and grabbed me by the caller said eisner let's get back to the dorms immediately made a on the final he got a c out of the course son of a gun and and we have an exclusive here and now everybody knows what you guys did i think that's great so how did your brother repay you he bought me a pair of new shoes there you go there you go now you also
had a sister well yes uh linda is six or seven years younger than we are right she was born in gainesville she was born during the war you guys just switch all the time always trying to confuse her no she could tell us apart i had a mold here and thomas didn't i would use that as an indicator to distinguish between the two of us now the i just want to go back for a minute back to that uh that a on that final nobody ever knew no not to this day that is just remarkable is that the uh the biggest thing you guys did
well if you couldn't go on a date i would go in his place here in art more or if we uh we would test ourselves first we would double date in our more being a small town of 30 000. saturday night you had the previews to go to the tivoli theater 10 15. that was the big social event for young people at that time right and we would double date and we would until our dates were going out to get some popcorn and drinks what would you like and when we would go out we would switch jackets and go in and they wouldn't know me you know i would be thomas and they would be playing now after college but let me share this with you quickly okay it was very confusing for our customers in our business because we had a filling station the general the store itself feed store which was on the right and i stock thomas
would fill a customer's car up with gas and he would go inside to get change i would go inside from the eye stock which was oh 50 yards from the store to get change and the customer in the car would start screaming at me bring me my change bring me my change i said it's my twin brother he'll bring it to you it was rather confusing oh i'm sure so after college did you go back into the family business or what did you get no when i graduated from university of oklahoma they had already sold the business by that time i decided i didn't want
to stay in oklahoma any longer i had a very good life there in art and more a lot of friends i wanted some adventures so i took a job in buota colombia this was in 62. my senior year at ou there was a woman in one of my educational classes that told me about this private school in bogota colombia that was looking for teachers and she said inquire and i wanted to learn spanish i had taken spanish in high school i was intrigued with spanish because my great great grandmother was a spanish ancestry her name was elisa orenta sultana de prut but anyway good to the point i inquired and i was offered a job so mother to work in columbia as a third grade teacher it was owned by a very prominent colombian family with some pears but the wife of
dr rafael sampara was american her name was charlotte and so they offered me a job but i would have to pay for my trip there but after two years working there i would be reimbursed so i dad said no no you're not going to south america there's communist and you know it's dangerous i said papa i don't want to stay here in oklahoma i want to go to a place that's different i'm a different culture and i definitely want to learn spanish he said no so i declined the offer and within five days i received a special delivery letter and a telegram from charlotte sumper
with the plane ticket offering me the job the contract we will pay for your fare and come immediately it was september the 8th and the position hadn't been filled so i went to miami went to the columbian council and got my visa and went to bogota colombia wow what was that like oh how different i mean really different yeah uh dr simper and his wife charlotte met me at the el dorado airport in bullet hole i robbed at nine o'clock at night i flew on braniff airlines radio doesn't exist anymore and uh what shocked me was how cold it was and i had not brought
any warm clothing with me just a few items because i thought it would be a warm climate being near the equator and so when i got in the car i said why is it so cold they said we are very high elevation here over uh 9 000 feet colder in mexico city and that's why it's cold i said oh i seen the i know i said where will i be living she said we've made arrangements for you to stay with our private priest padre reyna who is half columbia and a half italian he's a nice home and he would like for you to come there
and you can rent a bedroom from him we've made those arrangements and also there's a brother and sister living there from germany walter and teresa schmidt he's working with siemens electric in bogota german company and she's teaching in the german columbus school i said okay so i went there and it was a great experience it really was and what exactly were you teaching third grade third grade all classes yes self-contained but i found this she was very uh innovative in the sense and revolutionary right she opened the first american style school in bogota boca is a large city that was non-sectarian that accepted all religions
co-educational and no uniforms because all the other schools prior to her opening kalaheo abraham lincoln were not co-educational you wore uniforms and you either went to the catholic school there was one other school that was protestant called nueva granada or you went to the colombo gabriel school the colombian hebrew school therefore all jewish kids had to go to the colombo hebrew school but she included everybody and was phenomenally successful and this was in 6263 and therefore we had a large jewish population there we were getting a lot of cuban jews i had five jews in a class of 16 and three of them were from
havana cuba how long did you stay out there i stayed in bogota uh four years but in meeting the needs of the jewish students there i saw quickly how deprived he was according to colombian law you have to provide religion for every faith christianity jewish or catholic well the first christmas in this school i discovered it looks as if the christian's messiah has returned nuns and monks will going up and down the house singing christmas carols and everything and i said there's nothing being done for the jewish kids we had about 60 jewish students so i had a good friend francisco converse colombian he was
a student his senior year at los andes university an architect in architecture and his nickname was patra so i had my prayer books and jewish things with me and i had i told him i said it's hanukkah i want you to construct from me on a large construction paper or hanakia in the description below regarding could you do that for me he said sure and he did a magnificent job in color and everything so i took it to school the next day and and put it on my door of course i got mrs some peers permission and she said well sure i'm glad you're doing
this clint well you wouldn't believe the results they were like all the jewish students there looking at this and she said clint what do you know about judaism i said well it's hanukkah is the same time as christmas she said would you do a hanukkah program for our christmas play and because the ambassador to colombia will be there and we would for the jews to be represented and i did and uh i was very intrigued to have had that opportunity because the parents of these kids started calling me wanting to know who who i was would you come to our country club bogota had a
large jewish popular population a big jewish country club pluto carmel and now at this time you weren't jewish though no i had not converted because my mother's people were not jewish i did attend temple in ardmore and at the university of oklahoma i was very active in the hillel foundation right right now was your dad jewish his people were when they came to this country but he was agnostic my family was not religious right really they weren't right right now mother would send us to baptist sunday school baptist church but they wouldn't go another you know said she was baptist but daddy was agnostic and
in a small town that was really the only social event you had was to go to church right right i was not happy in the baptist church i would get in discussions with my sunday school teacher over the concept of the trinity i said how can you believe that jesus and god are the same let's look at the lord's prayer that explicitly tells you that he's not the same as god i never could feel at ease with that i was very active in the baptist church as kid i played the piano well we had piano lessons and uh but i just didn't feel comfortable with
accepting jesus same level as god or as god in the flesh i said no no no you're wrong i will get in to terrible arguments with not terrible arguments controversial discussions with my sunday school teacher saying it states clearly in the first commandment there's only one god and no manifestations of god okay well what brought you back to the united states well i was in colombia four years and it became very politically unstable i was learning in pesos i didn't go there to make money i held down two jobs i was teaching in the elementary school in the clayton abraham lincoln and also teaching english
as a foreign language at them with the ministry of education of colombia and i left columbia because my salary had evaluated almost nothing and went to miami and was in miami a short time offered a international position in peru and i went there and i lived in peru five years wow and it was exciting i earned in dollars i had a good standard of living and then we had a military takeover in peru dictatorship and the company was a subsidiary of standalone of new jersey and they gave me a transfer to venezuela but to a very remote place called amway venezuela and you would ask
venezuelans where's emway they had never heard of right right so i said and the company became petrol peru after it was nationalized and they offered me a good salary and solace if i would stay there and keep the school open for the other english-speaking kids with all servicing companies which i did for two years but the straw that broke the camel's back and making the decision to leave we had a military takeover there a dictator and one morning we read in the papers that all foreign bank accounts had been nationalized and our monies have been converted into peruvian solace so it's equivalent to the peso
peso and i didn't have much money at that time as nine thousand dollars so my nine thousand dollars had been converted into solely without my permission but the government told us that if we left the country we could get our money reverted back to its original currency and that's when i left the country and did you come to dallas with that came to okay and why did you pick dallas my twin brother was living here and i have relatives here okay okay and then what'd you get into in dallas when i returned to dallas i applied for a position with the dallas and penn school
district i was already fluent in spanish after nine years i had gotten a degree in spanish at the catholic university of columbia in bouleta and they gave me a job immediately to work as an interpreter for the dallas school system in west allis and oak cliff but they would label my position as visiting teacher slash school social worker and i had taught english as a second language in colombia and also in peru teaching english to the uh peruvian employees for international patrol petroleum company and had had almost 99 years experience in teaching english as a foreign language of course in this country they call it
now teaching english to speakers of other language teslas but when i first came here was called esl english as a second language so i came back in 1970s offered a job here and i went to smu to get my master's in education in linguistics bilingual education and linguistics and while i was there dr linda ray sam says glenn i notice you've had considerable experience in teaching english as a foreign language in south american i see years almost nine years she said dr ray witherspoon from el centro college is my friend i told him about you he wants to call you and talk to you and
he did and he said we don't really really know what that is but we're getting more hispanics here at el centro college i'm head of the department of educate continuing education he said come here i want to talk to you and i said sure i came in i explained to him it was english as second language in my experience and he said would you be interested in starting a program here he said i saw yes on a part-time basis he said i'll let you have two classes strictly on a pilot basis well it became a phenomenal success phenomenal and i developed the largest esl program
in dallas at that time wow wow and when did you convert my mother was against me converting she knew i had a tremendous affixation to judaism because at the age of nine years old our house was at the back of the store you know a lot a lot of businesses family owned business houses are next to the store or back the store dad came back there and i never i shall never forget thomas it was the month of march and thomas and i were making kites on the forward living room floor and dad said boys i want you to come up here to the store
uh you've i have some relatives here from tulsa we want to reveal something to you so we went up there and they were very good looking relatives tall black hair con dark complexion three brothers paul robbie and grover eisner and i said what is it he says we have an oral tradition that we tell each generation our ancestry our ancestry is and we are from the tobias rise in her lineage he says you know i don't practice judaism and my cousins in tulsa don't but we make it a tradition to pass this oral tradition on to each generation so i go back there and said
thomas what does that mean we didn't have any jewish students here at long grove and he says i don't know he said i've heard the term jewish kind i don't know what it means does that mean we're jewish guys i said i don't know but anyway uh grandpa always had jewish friends coming by his store he had a friend from arden or jake bodovitz and we went to high school in our best friend was jewish and my mother's sister had married into a jewish family from russia victor rubin and camalon and and the jews there in ardmore took a liking to us and would invite
us to the temple and we did go and when i went to ou i was active in the hill elf foundation so did you finally go through the conversion when you were in dallas yes yes now my mother was really against me converting to judaism very much against it she was in bad health had congestive heart failure and envelope from rheumatoid arthritis and she said i know when i'm gone you will convert to judaism i feel this she says that right i said yes she said do you realize i'll never see you again i said mother don't say those kind of words i said that's
baptist talk no don't say that judgmentally and when she passed away that's when i proceeded with my conversion my hebrew name is i took it after the first risener that came from holland to the his name was tobias reisner so my hebrew name is tovja bar avraham that's the name i accepted you know most significant thing i've ever ever done in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions um wars president kennedy assassination something good the moon landing of course 9 11. was there something on the national scene that really stood out that you took notice of oh yes when i was in bogota when president kennedy was assassinated and mrs simper sent her daughter to my classroom it was about 1 15 in the afternoon and she said clint mama wants you to come to office immediately and i said what's wrong she said she'll tell you and i went up there and the rest of teachers were there and she was announcing she was dismissing school and get the children ready to leave because president kennedy had been assigned even down there there was a big effect oh see
they had just been there john f kennedy and jacqueline before i arrived and uh being catholic first got the president the buses we got the kids ready we're all in shock the school was outside of bogota outside on the octopiste of the freeway and as the buses were entering bogota around two o'clock it's a colombian custom somewhat important dies they hang out the columbia flag with a black ribbon on it flags were out everywhere and the colombian government had declared three days of national mourning for president kennedy and that evening around eight o'clock i heard a knock at my door and i opened it it
was some of my adult students from el centro from my esl classes at night and they had brought food and a bottle of scotch and we want to be with you because we know you're in mourning and i was just overwhelmed i couldn't believe the expression of emotional grief and love for for president kennedy and what advice would you like to leave for the next generation uh i firmly believe in doing a mitzvah for people uh and making this world a better place to live to kunal and to be active in your religion and do good deeds for people if you can on a daily
basis without expecting a reward and and be as much service as you can when you retire great advice man in closing i would like to share this with you my speech at my uh the root service convergence the title of it is my quest for judaism i wish to express my gratitude to all of you who are with me today as i become a jew i particularly say thanks to rabbi mark kasserman renee carve jan tillman philip einstein and gail freeman for their guidance and instruction when how and why did this quest for judaism begin with me at the age of nine my father's people
revealed to me that the riseners were jewish before coming to this country and that our lineage was from the tobias reisner clan this revelation had an indelible impact on me even though i was attending baptist sunday school and quite active in the baptist church however during that time i felt uncomfortable accepting jesus as god which resulted in debatable discussions with my sunday school teachers in high school my best friends were jewish attended services occasionally at temple emeth in ardmore oklahoma with my friends after leaving high school i went to the university of where i again became involved in the jewish culture and religion i worked
for a jewish fraternity as a house house boy even though i was not jewish the members wholeheartedly accepted me as one of their own i was invited to participate in all fraternity social events eventually i attended shabbat services with the fellows had a jewish girlfriend and i lived culturally as a jew upon graduating from the university of oklahoma i took teaching assignment in bogota colombia at kalaheo abraham lincoln this school was the first school that accepted catholics jews and protestants therefore there was a large jewish student body i worked with the jewish students organizing jewish holiday events for them at the school supporting jewish students
in a predominantly catholic was especially rewarding for me upon returning to the united states i became involved in the jewish community in dallas i was instrumental in setting up english's second language classes for the soviet jews during the 70s at the julius sheps community center which is the jcc today i attended services at temple emanuel and became involved in organizing the first gay lesbian congregation bethel banana in i also explored the other forms judaism however after a period of time i felt more comfortable with the reform movement reform judaism offers me the choices i can relate to in a contemporary society today i convert to
judaism because i believe in one god no manifestations of god in the concept as in the concept of the holy trinity most significantly i don't believe in the concept of original sin we come into this world with pure souls created by hashem as a jew i will engage in ongoing acts of tycoon perfecting the world helping to make the world a better place to live through donating my time in community service and social action projects i want to assist in repairing the damage caused by mankind i will also do acts of loving kindness a mitzvah one that is performed with no expectation of reward i
am spiritually rewarded when i do a good deed for others a mitzvah is a joy for me sadaka giving to charity is very important for i enjoy giving to charity knowing that the recipient will benefit from my donation i will become an observant jew by studying torah and attending services i want to keep god in its voice commandments i will become active in synagogue activities by volunteering for communities fundraise and serving on boards i will become involved in the jewish community at large by joining jewish organizations and supporting the state of israel i particularly want to remember those whom have passed on that were a
major influence in my quest with unforgettable memories i recall their beloved names uncle victor rubin ida yafi wiener and dina epstein-andres like ruth the jewish people have become my choice of people their torah my torah and their god my god my soul is no longer in a state of diaspora it has returned to its jewish roots and hashem thanks for doing this today