Craig Budner
Craig Budner comes from families with deep Texas roots. His father's side descends from Hyman Pearlstone, who came to Dallas in the early 1900s from Palestine, Texas, as a wholesale hardware merchant and later worked with First National Bank of Dallas. His mother's family came through Galveston, likely fleeing the pogroms in Russia, and settled in Corsicana, where his mother Doris was born in 1931. Craig's parents were high school sweethearts who married young and settled in Dallas, where his father became a banker at First National Bank of Dallas, working in the trust department for 36 years and rising to the number two position. His mother raised his two older brothers, Bruce and Keith, before Craig was born in 1964.
Craig grew up on Royal Crest off Inwood and later moved across from St. Mark's School of Texas, which he attended from fifth grade. A lover of baseball and statistics, he played baseball and excelled at competitive debate throughout high school. He attended Dartmouth College, majoring in government and policy studies and debating for three of his four years, then returned to Texas for law school at the University of Texas, where he met his future wife, Dawn. The couple, married for 20 years at the time of the interview, have three children, Will, Ben, and Lily. Craig began practicing law in Dallas in 1992, specializing in commercial litigation with an emphasis on insolvency, and later assisted Ross Perot's presidential ballot efforts in 1992 and 1996.
Jewish and community life ran through the Budner family. Craig's father was the founding president of Temple Shalom and a very reformed Jew who served on the board of trustees of Hebrew Union College, while his mother was more observant. His mother Doris, working alongside visionary Thelma Vogel, helped found the Dallas Jewish Coalition for the Homeless and the Vogel Alcove, a daycare for homeless children. Following in her footsteps, Craig served on the Vogel Alcove board for many years, including as president, and on boards of the American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Congress. In 2007 he and Dawn founded the Dallas Urban Debate Alliance, serving hundreds of students each year. A proud member of Temple Emanu-El, he treasures his family and the rich legacy of his great-grandfather Hyman Pearlstone, a celebrated baseball figure and friend of Connie Mack.
Full Transcript
and my mom's side of the family came through Galveston probably escaping the pogroms in Russia and emigrated ultimately the Corsicana where my mom was born in 1931 and so your parents were both living in Dallas when they married they were mm-hmm yes they were highschool sweethearts of sorts they knew each other from high school and got married pretty young I think my mom was 18 or 19 and my dad was 20 and they were my dad was attending the University of Texas at the time and came back and finished at SMU and finished his he was in the National Guard so he finished his service
for the National Guard mm-hmm so when they got married they settled in Dallas as well they did mm-hmm they did and what were they doing for a living at that point mom worked worked in the home and raised my older brothers who are 12 and 10 years older than I am Bruce and Keith Butner and at that point and dad was a banker at First National Bank of Dallas where he started I think when he was 21 years old and worked in the trust department and that's really where he worked for 36 years ultimately rising to the number two spot in what was then in
her first trust Department and so you were going then in what year 1964 mm-hmm and where did you live when you were a child we first lived on Royal Crest off of in would the little cul-de-sac of Inwood and when I was in fifth grade I started attending st. marks and we moved to st. Mark's Circle across the street so I actually can tell my kids I walked to school and then when I went to college my parents moved to Glen likes a house in Long Legs why don't you do like Tony for amusement when were child I I really liked strat-o-matic baseball I was kind of a nerd that way and loved baseball I used to sit with my grandmother my father's mother and you know she'd sit on the couch and score the Ranger games back in 1919 70s when they moved to Arlington and so I had a real love of baseball my great-grandfather was best friends with Connie Mack so there was all this baseball because he had spent so much time with Connie Mack traveling with the team and we had these amazing co-op this amazing collection of baseball paraphernalia and so I really enjoyed baseball statistics and things like that and I would play strat-o-matic which was a dice game that simulated a real baseball game but I was not to work kid to I spent a lot of time playing baseball and football and all the things normal kids would do and you went to st.
Mark's were you active in any school I was I was a I was played on the first baseball team three years and I always play baseball I played soccer till I was a junior but I wasn't particularly good at soccer and it conflicted with debate and my real the activity I was really strongest in was debate and I was on the debate team for all four years and debated competitively in the city and outside and after high school he went to Dartmouth we had to decide on Diamond my brother Bruce had gone to Tufts in you know in the Boston area and so I had
had exposure to the Northeast and saw that it was very different from Dallas I also knew that I had strong words in Dallas and very much wanted to come back and so I wanted to go to a college that would present an experience completely different from one that I would live in permanently so my dad was kind enough to take me all over we saw colleges you know in the southeast and all of the seaboard and you know Dartmouth struck me as as being kind of what a college should look like it was so beautiful and it was very very different from what I was
used to you know beautiful now he's in the background cold vs. hot and it was a great school so I applied early and was was fortunate enough to get which minded me and I never worked rather than I really had a wonderful experience there and what were you main interests in school I was a government and Policy Studies major and I went to Dartmouth not thinking I would debate I wasn't good enough to play baseball and I went not thinking I would debate even though at that time Dartmouth have the best debate team in the community but I was going to go be a normal student and I remember my dad was my mom and dad brought
me up and we were outside the Hanover n which is you know right on the grounds of Dartmouth and on the corner was this smiling you know fellow freshman named Chrissy Mahoney who was my would ultimately become my debate partner she says hey he's part of the debate meeting later today and I go now I'm not gonna debate and she said Helen you should you should come and it's now don't really I don't really want to debate and she's just come to the meeting so I ended up coming to the meeting and and of course I ended up debating and debating with her three of
my four years in college and it was great experience very time consuming but a great experience and being a government policy major made you think I'm interested in law it did I my brother was a lawyer my dad had worked with lawyers my dad always felt like in the trust apartment it had been he was envious at those who had gotten a law degree so we always told me get a law degree you don't have to use it to be a lawyer it'll put you in good stead and I heard that message also with debate I was comfortable with advocacy so I felt comfortable on
my feet and felt like maybe I'd make a good traveler which is ultimately what I did and when you went decided to go to law school you came back to Texas I did I did well I kind of the flip of my decision on Dartmouth I felt like if I was gonna practice law in Dallas that it didn't make any sense to stay in the Northeast and so I applied to Texas and SMU and was blessed to get into Texas which is a terrific law school and you know in it too was a very different experience for me being at a state school the law
school classes I attended were larger than any college class ever attended at Dartmouth and and in fact I think we had 500 students in a class at UT law school and we only had thousand at Dartmouth so it was a very large big state school experience but it was a good one in it it prepared me well and let's come back to Dallas during your childhood sure did your family belong to a synagogue they did my dad was the founding president of Temple Shalom and they they may not have stayed members of Temple emanu-el the entire time but I know for the bulk of my
that were members of Temple Shalom in when I was growing up we attended Temple Shalom War because my dad was invested in making it successful I suspect and so rabbi Besser was the was the rabbi at that time and we were we were close friends with that family mm-hmm and how did your family celebrate Jewish holidays to do you know my dad described himself as very reformed and you know he was on the board of trustees of the Hebrew Union College and really believed in the tenants of Reform Judaism and not you know it's an interesting it's an interesting issue that I've thought a lot
about but we we did celebrate the major holidays we always went to Rabbi Bester's and his family's that Cornell Corbin house for Passover and it was a rich experience but my dad never wore a yarmulke he you know did not know any Hebrew and was not really raised with an emphasis on that piece of the religion yet his his identification with Judaism was as strong as anybody I knew and my mom's side of the family my grandmother Lily Albert and my mom Doris were more observed that a little more wanting to pull the family to you know celebrate Shabbat more often and and do some
of those things but my dad would go to High Holy Day services my mom was really it was very important to her to go to services and she was a more observant Jew in the sense of the religious peace did you attend something and yet I was confirmed at mm-hmm and your parents were they part of any Jewish organizations they were they were a part of I'm sure countless Jewish organizations including I believe my dad was a part of the the Dallas Jewish Historical Society but they were very active in temple work and in fact you know I'm sure we'll talk about this more in
another point but my mom's Genesis with the Vogel alcove in the mid eighties was as a social action committee formed by Thelma Vogel and so that was a temple temple shared Israel Temple emanu-el Joint Committee that formed the Dallas Jewish Coalition for the homeless that had all the organizations in town Jewish organizations of town temples and affiliated organizations why don't we go into their interactions with the community at large sure when I got into got a little old or middle school or so my mom started working outside the home and started needle in a haystack which as you probably know was the first needlepoint store
in the southwest that they knew of so it was quite a one-of-a-kind thing with a few of her friends and really really did a lot of that at some point I think probably when I went to college around 1983 she started getting more involved in community service and charitable organizations and that's when she joined a committee with with Thelma Vogel and Thelma was really really a visionary she was older than my mom and had done community service a number of times and was really really poised and my mom was new to all this and they as the story goes decided to make the project of
this committee homelessness and they formed the Daleks Jewish coalition with homeless and then the project of that was the Vogel alcove which is what the organization is named today which is a daycare facility for homeless kids and it resides in South Dallas and my mom through that become became incredibly involved in a number of charitable organizations serving on countless boards Jewish Family Services family gateway too many to list so that was four principle focus and as you probably know Thelma Vogel tragically passed away in 1988 I believe and at that point my mom and my dad who had gotten involved to help my mom fundraise
kind of took the organization and really helped to create what it what it became today with the help of many others and and you know what my mom basically did was she was a very quiet leader and she would let other people find their voice in the organization and um a piece of the organization she wasn't a big tell you what to do person but she had a lot of wisdom and when she spoke people listened to her and people wanted to work with her and so to this day you see people who had worked with the Vogel alcove since its inception and they come
up to me with tears in their eyes and say it's because of your mom because she was you know she was a very she had a kind of quiet confidence and leadership about her that was second to none second at night mm-hmm let's go back to what you did after leaving so I came in 1992 a firm that was called Husum loose which is actually where I am today it we merged in January of 2008 with a firm called K&L gates and I started my career in 1990 I did I did commercial litigation worked on a number of you know that you probably remember the
late 80s Early 90s were a volatile time for business especially in Texas and I created a specialty because of the partners who entrusted me with work working on issues dealing with insolvency and companies that had troubled issues and were recovering money that might have been lost due to the wrong of people who didn't give a good advice or for other issues like that so the first big case I worked on dealt with the import the failure import that owned all the in banks and the litigation dealing with the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of currency taking over in court and whether that was
lawful and so that started my career and kind of a litigation went a little bit of banking and insolvency twist and up to I don't know if this will be of interest that you might be might cut this out or not but but in 1992 March I was called by Tom Luse one of the longtime clients of the firm was Ross Perot and this was in March I believe of 92 and he said Craig Ross has gone on the Larry King show and said that if he is to be put on the ballot in all 50 states by the people that he would run for
president of the United States and he said correct we don't know the first thing about what it would take to get on the ballot in all 50 states you worked on a brief with that had some election implications that I worked on as a young associate of a brief for the Supreme US Supreme Court on election law he says will you help us figure out how to have Russ gonna get on the ballot in all 50 states and that began together with two other young associates a small team of folks that would help mr. Perot and all issues relating to his to presidential election runs in 92 and 96 which was for a young lawyer an absolutely fascinating experience and one from which I grew to greatly respect Ross Perot greatly great a great opportunity we were wonderful wonderful what are their projects have been your favorites workwise we we had a big litigation matter for a company you may remember of our tech telecom and VAR tech was a what they call a seal AK which meant they rented the phone lines from the southwestern bells of the world and resold them to customers like you and me and that you know you
may remember a dime line 10 10 cents a minute before that business ultimately kind of went out of business because you know people use cell phones instead of long-distance VAR tech acquired excel which was a multi-level marketing company and they wanted to do that to expand their network of people who use the vertex service and there was a big piece of litigation that was multifaceted and it involved a big arbitration in Washington DC in front of three judges including the former FBI director William sessions he was also a federal judge and it involved a major fraud action that where I was able to appear before
Judge Barbara Len who I greatly respect and what was special about it was we were also very young in our careers relatively and we got to work with a an incredible client a guy named Michael Hoffman who was the general counsel of our tech at that time and the case was very high stakes it was bet the company it was there was over half a billion dollars a real amount in controversy a staggering amount for me to even think about and the camaraderie that the fast-paced nature of the case took on in fact the client trusted this very young legal team to handle it against
a very worthy adversary and despite the fact that one of the arbitrator's infection exceptions was the other side's selected arbitrator we won that case we want both pieces of the case but most notably we won that arbitration on a three-hour decision and it's always fun to win but it's even more fun to win when you do it for great people and you do it with great people and we had an incredible team of folks working on it and it was a it was a world joy and those friendships have endured for a long time have you been active in any civic organizations I have my
ass I I've been involved I'm on the board currently of st. Mark's where I course graduated from and my two boys will have been attend wills about to graduate I have served on the board of the Vogel alcove since the mid 90s and have served in every role there including I was president for two years I have been at that I was on the American Jewish Committee board I was on the American Jewish Congress forward and I no longer serve on those boards but Bandhu those organizations and more recently in 2007 my wife and I founded the Dallas urban debate Alliance which is a program that helps largely inner-city kids the D is D students participate in
competitive policy debate and we serve well over 500 students a year and it really gives them a leg up and and I'm very proud of that I'm currently president of the board and the the organization is now six years strong and growing and in fact last year among the 20 plus leagues in in the United States that have urban debate league Dallas won the award is the top league which has very little to do with me and a lot to do with the people who work with me including nicole serrano who's the executive director of the organization and my wife dawn who tirelessly kind of
works behind the scenes and gets very little credit and then finally I'm a proud member to manual let's move into your family how did you and your wife meet my wife was a law school student at UT with me and UT is broken down there are five hundred students in a class but then they're broken down into sections and you have all your first-year classes with people in that section and there are a hundred people in your section and then it's broken down further into a teaching quizmaster group which is the first new teachers you have right and it's also kind of at the beginning
of your social group and Dawn was in that group of twenty with me we were just friends really just acquaintances early on got to be better friends when we were on the Texas Law Review together and we both became articles editors so we shared an office there were three articles editors and we'd go through articles that professors submitted for publication and picked the ones we thought we might want to publish and we'd sit for hours and that in that little office with three desks and so we got to know one another we advised each other on all sorts of things and then when we were
anticipating taking the Texas bar exam and this in the summer and going on a trek which is which is kind of a tradition for lawyers on a bar truck before they start work we said we would have grouped together together you know a group together and so she grabbed us a couple of her friends I grabbed a few mine and we formed an incredible group of folks that traveled all around here together and I would say love bloomed a little before the trip and it blossomed during the trip and after and she's a special woman that I'm proud to Sam been married to for 20
years now wish she would you like from Dallas as much she was not she was born at Florida but moved quickly to her dad was a kind of a project engineer for NASA so early on she declare like in Houston were her dad worked for NASA and she went to Clear Lake High School so she then went to UT undergrad and and went to law school and by the way I should say was a chancellor at UT law school which is you know the top 16 students in the class out of 500 so she frequently reminds me that she did far better in law school
and tell me about your children well is our oldest he's 18 and he's a terrific kid who is he is incredibly charming and very good with words he's a he's a great speaker a neat kid with big heart he is right now he does a lot of things that are very kid focused so he's a he does camp counseling and he's worked with small kids and big kids and he loves psychology and he loves helping kids Ben is 14 and he's in eighth grade at st. marks Will's about a graduate by the way venez 14 and he's in eighth grade he is he's a great kid very different from will he they both love sports Ben is very active right now baseball and basketball and he's also got a little special spark in him and he's a good kid he's got a lot of people to kind of a lot of friends and a lot of people who look up to him he's a good kid and then Lily is our baby she's nine and she's a parish episcopal in third grade and lily is also kind of they're all so different lily is she
is our real prodigious reader so she has now read the Harry Potter books seven volumes almost five times all the way through and she can read a volume in a day and she's reading it it's not a fake deal so she just has this amazing capacity to to love to read love to learn and she's always got a smile on her face and kind of twinkle in her eye she said she's also a treasurer and you obviously belong to temple imagine what I do any particular projects that you're working on the earther of interest well I I've been on the capital campaign committee which is
now public that the temple is gonna add and kind of fix up some of some of the space to create a better environment for spirituality and I've enjoyed that I I've run through Bert wall for David Stern so it's it's a labor of love but we've but I you know I have a special affection for the temple and Rabbi Stern's leadership so I would do whatever the temple needed to do sure how's Dallas changed since your childhood it's an interesting question you know it's probably changed a little less since my childhood then maybe since my brother's childhood but I for me the DFW marked the
change in Dallas for me from a business perspective when Erik Johnson and those other great civic leaders have the foresight to put the world's greatest airport 25 miles from downtown I think it created all these incredible opportunities to use the land we have at our disposal to bring companies world except for a lawyer I can't okay it's like I am of offices in 47 cities and five continents to be able to practice law we're probably there are more per capita het world headquarters and decision makers in Dallas Texas than anywhere in the world is a pretty unique treat so I've watched the city really kind
of show its civic pride through the years and go from a city that you know I'm a student of history and maybe a city where its leaders and those with wealth didn't think as much about making the city a better place for future generations to really in the in the 70s becoming a city that was proud of the legacy it was leaving and so that that's I guess what I've seen you know and I've also watched from a negative perspective the in the eighties the failure of the banks and you know what what that did to my family that was a you know we were
a banking family but my great-grandfather and my dad were very involved in the banking business and so you know that was hard because it's a little kiddie kind of root for your dad's company and to see the company get get swallowed up by a company from North Carolina when NC and be bought the bank that was a big change for me but I've really I've really been proud to see Dallas Conn step up its cultural and civic game especially in the last 10 or 15 years how about the jealous Jewish community there's a different than it was when you were child you know it probably
is but it's it probably is a little lost on me I think my family was so assimilated in - into all phases of Dallas by the time I came along that I was somewhat oblivious to those kinds of divisions but but you know I I have seen I think organizations like the Vogel alcove pop up that weren't necessarily Jewish charities that were the traditional Jewish charity not that in any one is better than the other they're all great I mean they're all helping people less fortunate but kind of spanning the religious chasm that maybe existed so I've probably seen a progression of the assimilation and
frankly you know people make much of the distinctions between Orthodox and conservative and reform but I probably feel less of that today at least socially between the conservative reform communities that I that I ever did back when I was growing up and maybe that's because you know some friends we've got a sheriff for Sunday school and some would go to on them and someone go to a meeting well and you just know those kids but but that would be my observation one does Keith who is in the commercial real estate business with his little wife Elizabeth and they they live on you know in Wood
little area and they've got two great kids one who is getting his PhD at Berkeley in comparative literature and brilliant already published all over the world and his younger brother Lee that's Keith jr. is amber brother Lee is also a great kid and he's a law student in Boston and it's gonna be coming to Dallas to start his legal career next year my other brother Bruce and his wife Maria moved to Berkeley California about ten years ago I'd say and they have three terrific kids as well working house and our twin sisters and they live in the Bay Area and Brooke is involved in all sorts of sexual work projects including kind of revolutionary community gardens project in downtown San Francisco Allison is involved in Public Radio and Kevin the youngest of the Bruce and Maria Butner children is a is a new lawyer graduated from Berkeley law very recently and then he is in Dallas working for judge Lynn as her brief an attorney so we get to see Kevin from time to time but they've we see them a fair amount they come to Dallas a fair amount and visit us and we just look at a very close relationship and you've won a number of awards or best u.s.
bankruptcy commercial litigation Texas super lawyers best lawyers can you tell me a little bit about some of these you know in the in the legal industry there has been a spread of these kinds of awards and they've gotten a little self congratulatory I mean I'm I'm proud of those Awards they they they're their reflection of you know somebody in the community thinks I'm doing something right and they're they're really you know nice to put on the bio but you know I just you know I think of the great best lawyers who have been my mentors Bester Hughes the the current chairman of Kol Gates Pete
Kahless I work with can't ask you for many years who's the first African American chair of the ABA litigation section Jaclyn who is my wife's mentor you know and I'm still working to be that level of Super Lawyer that's a that's a crest that I'm climbing to accomplish but it's a it's a nice I'm proud that I've been recognized but but I'm I'm prouder to be associated and trained by some of the great people who have come before me what are you most proud of it I'm I'm most proud of my family I'm and I you know a lot of people said there was proud
of our family I'm you know I'm you know and that starts with my parents you know my mom pulled herself up by the fire bootstraps with the helmet logo passed away and was a very reluctant leader and has made a huge difference in the lives of tens of thousands of people as a result of her good work my dad who was a banker who could have just been a good banker but he was also an incredible dad always make sure to coach my teams always had a smile on his face in the morning for me and it was always there and proud of every accomplishment
ever had and you know kind of wasn't didn't were never rest on being a banker he created the largest a Roosevelt collection that was ever privately held as my understanding and gave a large chunk of that tesam you when he passed away you know I'm proud of my brothers who have always done you know done right and shown me the way and I'm incredibly proud of my wife dawn who kind of is one of those like my mom she works behind the scenes she doesn't need a lot of Pat's on the back and she just does it because it's the right thing to do and
I hope those messages have gotten to our kids I sure have seen a lot of signs that they have and it makes me very proud and I regret that they didn't see my parents longer than they did that was sad for me and I'm proud of my friends I've got I've got an incredible collection of friends who I have been lucky to run across their paths over the years and I may see some of them all the time and some of them not so often but they always make me just a little stronger they always call me when I'm a little out of line or
they think I could use a little tight straightening so to speak and you know they make me better you know they help me they help me keep doing the right thing every day is there anything that you would like to have that we haven't you know I think the one thing I don't know we didn't get into it too much for the story of time and Pearl snows fascinating if you want me to if you want that side of it into it and I don't know at all but I'm gonna tell you but I would I know and I learned I mean dawn really this
is one of those dawn doing something behind the scenes and you know no one really appreciates it that I don't appreciate it he in 1896 so he was still in Central Texas probably you know 19 20 years old he loved baseball which was of course in its infancy and he found out that the Philadelphia Athletics were barnstorming in New Orleans which for those who don't know baseball that was how these guys made their money they the season's over that didn't make much money during the season and they would go basically put on an all-star game in cities that didn't have baseball and they would get
the gate receipts and that's how they make their money and so he went to New Orleans to see the Philadelphia Athletics play and a player went up to him and struck up a conversation and said hey you've got enough spin on you should introduce yourself to Connie Mack well Connie Mack is probably the greatest manager ever to touch baseball he was the manager of the athletics for 50-plus years he was a player he heated more to change the game than probably any person and he and my great-grandfather struck up a friendship and my great-grandfather got a package in the mail and it was a uniform
of cleats and glove and it's a letter and it said dear Chi Minh I would like you to wear this uniform and sit on the bench for Philadelphia Athletics games for as many seasons as you can for as long as you can and as long as I'm involved with the team so he did he did that he shut down and my great-grandfather was very accomplished I think he was chair of the board at First National Bank of Dallas for a time we found out he was appointed by Franklin Roosevelt to be the head of the National Recovery administration in Dallas when he shut down his
business one month out of every year went to travel with Philadelphia Athletics who during that time had great years and bad years but during a lot of the time they were the best team in baseball and it was said that the players would shout on the road you know Hyman Pearl stone on the road with the Philadelphia Athletics Sporting News wrote him is the greatest fan in baseball this would have been during the thirties it would have been from 1900 essentially to 1946 you know right around there he helped Connie Mack sign two of the great players and fill out the athletics history pinkie Higgins
who was the son if I understand correctly of a Dallas police officer and Dave Danforth who was a famous football picture from when it was legal to do that from Baylor and those two would go on to have great careers and you know we have incredible memorabilia we were talking about my earlier about my uncle Billy I've got pictures of my uncle Billy when he was probably three years old and Babe Ruth's arms on the field before a game pictures of my great-grandfather on the bench with the team during the game we have a picture of my great-grandfather at the World Series in 1929 two
days before Black Monday four rows behind Herbert Hoover and he just lived the most fascinating life he got to be friends with Jack Dempsey and Herbert Hoover and he had a very rich and interesting life and I I only knew him for a couple of years but his his legacy carries on and some books he's been mentioned in history books about baseball and one day I'd love to I'd love to do his life justice with a with an account of that life that rich life but I thought that that would be working you know thank you anything else I don't know you I've been blabbing
you guys know is there is there not anything I've missed the perfect good well great thank you yeah thank you thank you right can you tell us about your family how they happen to settle in Dallas where they came from what I what I know on my dad's side is that Hyman Pearl Stone came to Dallas in the early 1900s from a little town Palestine Texas and he was a wholesale hardware merchant I think that was the family business my understanding is that side of the family came to Texas in the early 1800s and he was actually I was full brought to Dallas by the
Higginbotham family to help that family turn around hardware business and so he settled in Dallas and then started working with First National Bank of Dallas my mom's side of the family I don't know as far back I do know that some branches of my mom's family come from Corsicana and some were in San Antonio and I think my grandmother was the first generation to be in Dallas do you know anything about where they live you