May 24, 2018

David Epstein

David Epstein was born in 1957 at the Florence Nightingale Maternity Hospital, then part of Baylor Medical Center, where his brother and sister were also born. The family lived in far East Dallas, near the streets of Oats and Ferguson, close enough to walk two blocks into Mesquite. His father was born in Dallas and was raised in South Dallas, which was once the city's Jewish neighborhood near Fair Park. His grandfather had immigrated through Ellis Island as a boy, traveling from New York to Chicago and then to Oklahoma before coming to Dallas after his own father died. The family later owned or ran a scrap business, and a large family tree hanging on David's wall traces many generations of rabbis.

David's mother came from New York to visit cousins and decided to stay, preferring the open spaces of Dallas. His father spent his adult life in the jewelry business, owning his own store before serving in the army during the Korean War and later working for several local jewelers. Growing up, the Epsteins were one of only about four Jewish families in their East Dallas neighborhood, and they kept a low profile in an era when it felt safer to blend in. David and his brother once made the long weekly drive to Temple Emanu-El for Boy Scout meetings, which was much of their organized Jewish life as children. The family moved to Richardson when David was in tenth grade.

David lived his whole life in the Dallas area, attending junior college and then UT Dallas while living at home and working. He met his wife, who had moved to Dallas from Chicago and California, while in college. Over the years he worked in the shoe business, sold tools, and spent more than two decades in market research running a call center, before starting his own home repair business. He and his family observe Jewish life culturally, marking Passover and the holidays and visiting the family plots on Dolphin Road, where some thirty relatives are buried. David reflected on how much Dallas has changed over his lifetime and on his mother's saying that every Jew in Dallas knew every other Jew in Dallas.

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