David Golman
David Golman's family has deep roots in Dallas. His grandfather, whose name is remembered as Ava Shulam, emigrated from Russia and arrived through Galveston, Texas, on a ship manifest dated October 14, 1911, becoming the first member of his family to settle in Dallas. He then helped bring five brothers, two sisters, and his parents to the city. David's mother, remembered as Aleja, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and was later raised largely by two great-aunts after her father died, until her mother remarried and the family moved to El Paso. There she met David's father, who was in the service, and they married in 1958. David, born in 1965, is the youngest of three children, with an older brother, Mark, and a sister, Lane.
David grew up in North Dallas on a street bounded by Royal Lane, Northaven, Welch Road, and Strait Lane, in a home his parents built in 1963. He recalls a remarkable childhood among five families from Congregation Shearith Israel, with seventeen children on the street who played ball together, traded sports cards, and celebrated milestones with block parties. He attended public schools including Harry C. Withers, K.B. Polk Vanguard, Ed Walker, and W.T. White High School. He remembers a much smaller Dallas, with two-lane roads and open land stretching north toward Frisco and McKinney. After high school he attended the University of Texas, majoring in finance and real estate, joining a fraternity and the Texas Cowboys service organization.
David's family was long involved in the baking business in Dallas, along with extended family in the meat, liquor, and fruit trades. He grew up active at Shearith Israel, in Boy Scouts at Temple Emanu-El, and in BBYO and AZA, and played basketball at what is now the Aaron Family Jewish Community Center. Returning to Dallas after college, he became involved with the Jewish Federation's singles group and met his wife, Mandy. They married and have three children, celebrating bar and bat mitzvahs at Shearith Israel, Green Family Camp, and in Israel. David and Mandy remain active in the Federation, the JCC, and the Dallas Jewish Historical Society. Among his proudest commitments was attending morning and evening prayers for eleven months after his mother's death, reflecting his enduring devotion to family and faith.
Full Transcript
hello hi today is june 12th 2020. i'm joe reingold and i'm here interviewing david coleman hello david good afternoon good afternoon joe okay hope this works first of all let us know a little bit about whatever you know about your grandparents your parents where they were from what type of jobs they had where they grew up etc and how they if they did get to dallas got you got you so um i wish i knew more but my uh grandfather ava shulam he emigrated from russia spent i believe six weeks or six months excuse me maybe in germany and he arrived through galveston texas um i have the date down on a
ship manifest october the 14th 1911 and he was born actually i was born on his birthday uh april 15th of 1893 and to the very best of my knowledge is has been you know told to me he was the first goldman that arrived came through galveston to dallas texas he uh then helped bring five brothers two sisters and his parents here um so i guess that would make maybe my children fifth generation in dallas um and i guess my legacy i'm second second generation native dallas site um my mother alea she was born in saint louis missouri when she was three years young and she
had a sister that was six months their father passed away had uh two great aunts who were sisters one was married they never had any children and they in essence raised my mother and my late aunt until their mother got remarried when my mom was 15 and they moved to el paso texas my uh father was in the service and was in el paso and that's where he met my mother and uh they got married in 1958 and i'm the youngest of three children i have older brother mark who um was born in 61 sister lane in 63 and me in 1965. okay my uh family was in the baking business uh had a bakery here in dallas um until the early 70s had a lot of uh extended family and food business from uh meats to the liquor business to the fruit business and um have a big family in dallas texas very good what neighborhood did you grow up in and what schools did you go to etcetera and what did you like to do for fun as a child oh have fun i didn't have fun but um i grew up uh streets founded by royal lane north haven welch road and straight lane so north dallas is maybe
what it's called it's um a little bit you know west of uh jcc a couple of miles west i went to uh public schools harry c withers uh was went one year sixth grade to kb polk vanguard in 1976-77 which i think was desegregation in the dallas independent school district on to edie walker and then w.t white high school as a child i enjoyed it was really actually pretty unique the street that i grew up on there were five families from uh all from sheriff israel and uh there were 17 children on the street so you know we grew up throwing baseballs footballs playing football
in the yard not tackling too too tough with one another i collected sports cards we traded sports cards i had a coin collection i enjoyed playing basketball and uh i'm moving quickly ahead but when you know the first child on the street uh got married we had what was then called we called it a block party and uh we would have appetizers one house main course another dessert at house number three is one family they moved off the street but lived there long enough to get to participate in a fantastic event so that was uh you know very special memory of all of us growing
up on san gabriel were your parents always in that house or do they live somewhere else prior to having children yeah my parents they lived in an apartment um maybe like the knox henderson area they you know built the house in uh 1963 they moved into it and you know that's as the city of dallas was expanding north uh i guess along the tollway along central expressway they maybe were pretty far north at that point in time i remember as a child probably preston road was maybe you know two lanes each direction the tollway was two lanes each direction central expressway was a nightmare to
get on um you know with entrance ramps it seemed i'm sure they were a little bit longer but they seemed like they were all of you know 20 30 feet and you took your life in your hands as you tried to get on central expressway my dad he tells a story which is fact as a young child i wanted to go see pigs so we drove out to frisco texas out of preston road which again was two lanes the further north that you got it was uh you know one lane going out and it seemed like forever where today it probably is forever today just
because of all of the traffic but you know today you get on the toy and away you go i grew up in a time where lbj it really 6 35 it stopped it uh 35 on the you know as you're heading west and seen a lot of growth in dallas yes absolutely what kind of affiliations did you have as a child jewish and otherwise and what kind of things did your parents belong to okay so we were members as as i mentioned with our block party members at sheriff israel and uh you know growing up uh for us religious school it's kind of crazy relative
to today but uh you know we went in essence i think from 4 30 to 6 30 uh two days a week uh classrooms were full and then we went again on uh saturday morning shabbat and um you know so that unlike today where you know our children's lives have a lot of extra curricular activity sporting events you know that was probably one of the major activities that that i had i was involved in boy scouts there was a troop at temple emmanuel where i had the opportunity to meet a lot of you know um other kids that were interested in that other boys that
were interested in that um and i did not you know participate in a lot of sports probably at 11 or 12 i started playing basketball at the at that point in time i think it was the you know chefs community center today aaron family jewish community center and you know basketball was something that i always enjoyed played for my high school um was involved in in bbyo uh throughout high school as well okay what did you do after high school so uh as mentioned went to wt white high school and uh graduated thankfully and then went to the university of texas uh was a finance
and real estate uh major and was part of sigma mouthful you were fraternity and met you know many of my life long dearest and closest to friends were you active in anything on campus um you know fraternity life school life and then i was part of a civil service organization tough today today because they've gotten into some trouble of late but the texas cowboys was the name of the organization i'm familiar with it very well yes um how did you meet your wife and where did you guys live when you were first married and what did you do and what did you belong to in
your first newlyweds so when i uh when i moved back to dallas after graduating i you know pretty quickly got involved uh with i guess it was then called maybe new dimensions the singles arm of the jewish federation greater dallas i had the opportunity to co-chair the singles mission to israel with ann shaffer roxteen and the year after that janie schultz romanor and the guy that i met you know when i went they co-chaired so i was at a singles event and i was actually visiting with janie and my wife mandy carpom and she came in and i was in boy scouts with mandy's brothers
and mandy and i we never crossed in the high school or college in other words i'm at least four years older than her but i'm four years older than mandy and i knew one of uh you know so i i talked to mandy just for a few minutes what she she had just graduated college and what she was going to do she was actually moving to chicago a few weeks after but uh what she was going to do sounded very interesting uh so i just wanted to you know catch up we had some friends that we you know knew and crossed paths with and what
she was going to do sounded interesting so afterwards i called her up and you know we went out and i can't speak for her but i probably fell in love at least on date one or day two and unfortunately she had to go to chicago but you know i went up there and she came back to dallas to see her family you know about a year later got engaged and say two years later we got married we've got three children as i speak to you now 23 year young just got her masters from clark university in worcester massachusetts a 21 year old son who's a
rising senior at the university of texas in a rising eighth grade daughter in hockey day affiliations we've always been members of the jcc um mandy's mother was the program director temple emmanuel forever in seven days so mandy's got very deep roots at temple emanuel i've got very deep roots at sheriff israel and when you get married you've got a lot of things to kind of navigate and that has been one that we have in general have successfully navigated remembers it in both sheriff as well as temple our oldest two had their bot and well i would say but yeah daughter had her bot mitzvah sheriff
our son and our niece who were about six months apart they both went to and loved green family camp which is where my wife she went to camp and she worked there so we had a bene mitzvah weekend for them at green family camp in bruceville texas and our youngest daughter this past december we went to israel and had her bat mitzvah in israel and we're wildly thankful that rabbi rofman from sheriff israel he joined us there which really elevated the entirety of that experience have been involved uh you know federation uh dallas jewish historical society and other organizations uh both my wife and i
very good since you're a native callus what do you think how has dallas changed from when you were young until now and also how has the dallas jewish community changed from long ago till now if you can well dallas is uh you know the growth has been phenomenal it used to could drive from dallas to fort worth and you may actually see some land you could drive from dallas you know north to frisco or to mckinney texas and you could see land then uh today you see residential and commercial and office buildings you know from dallas to for any direction that you drive so the
growth in the dallas fort worth metroplex has been like off the charts and i just did a really poor job of explaining it but it's been crazy um help me on the second question that you'd asked ask and i apologize jewish community itself has changed any so dallas jewish community is is i was growing up um you know four synagogues or temple sheriff israel to ferret israel temple emanuel temple and that was probably the extent of you had the jewish community center naturally you had the jewish federation of greater dallas jewish family service and some other organizations today the dallas jewish community you know the
greater dallas fort worth jewish community expands you know 60 miles north or 40 miles north and who knows how much south and east and west and there's uh what was at one point in essence you know four synagogues or temples now there's probably 40 and um you know organizations that as i was growing up were probably a handful and now there's uh tens if not a hundred different organizations and you know what was maybe portrayed as a population as i was growing up maybe 25 000 i'm not surprised if the number is 80 100 000 today some phenomenal growth lots of different directions geographically and
a lot of different opportunities for people to get involved hopefully everybody in the dfw metroplex can find something that they can grab a hold of and say hey this is my own and find a home good speaking of which what family members do you still have that live in the area so um it's a fantastic question that you ask thankfully my father's still with us my mother um passed away 18 years ago my brother and his family are here my um sister lives in san antonio um i've got you know first cousin that i grew up uh half a mile from she and her family
live here her father my uncle lives here um another first cousin that you know her two first cousins both of their parents unfortunately have passed away but you know each of those cousins they probably live within three or four miles of where we live and then you get into the second and third cousins and unfortunately probably some i wouldn't even recognize but they live all over the metroplex what encouraging words would you give your own children to have them move back here and stay and grow up and stay here in dallas so at least we have the opportunity already with uh one child who's went
to school in worcester massachusetts you know she talked about staying up in that part of the world for some period of time she came back here hopefully she would you know maybe like to stay here whatever that is for her that's you know totally her decision but i think everybody recognizes the you know the beauty of having family uh close by in the beauty of having you know some roots in places that you're wildly familiar with so i'm hopeful that is something that they value you know we grew up naturally all the holidays having large crowds passover having large crowds um and not just my
family but mandy's family as well and some of that can be a little bit burdensome from time to time but you know i think our children they see you know the wonder in that beauty in that and at least that's something that they value and if they op not to come back to dallas or the dfw metroplex i do trust that they'll come back and visit often because they've got a lot of fantastic memories of growing up here you're very fortunate that's wonderful yes yes and now here's a tough question well maybe not tough but who do you think uh through the years might have
been what you would consider a role model for you um role model for me or you know people that i uh i guess maybe you know gravitated towards naturally parents and you know i make mention earlier i had you know a lot of family around but um you know some of the figures may be in boy scouts when i was involved you know as a child growing up in boy scouts and then in i think in high school naturally you know my high school basketball coach while significantly older than maybe what we would think of basketball coaches uh probably at that point somewhere in his
60s you know the uh the importance of you know practicing hard and working hard is something that stayed you know with me for forever okay and what project or activity or thing that you've been involved in are you can you think of that you were the most proud of it's um and i don't know that it's if pride is a right word but and maybe it is you know when my mother uh aleja shalom when she passed away um i was beyond any level of diligent as was my father and my brother and my sister not living here at the time of you know going
to morning and evening prayers if uh 11 months so in essence you know 330 days times two 660 opportunities to be at service you know i think that's something that was kind of ingrained in our brain not only we didn't need any help to know how fantastic she was but you know our judaism and our religion is important and um that's something that you know i very much took to heart and uh i'm going to use the word and i took very serious that opportunity that challenge and um that's something that that's beautiful yeah is there anything that i haven't said that you'd like to
add or well you've done fantastic you've done fantastic i appreciate it what do you feel um overall because i'm a native also but overall is there something tangible something special something unique i don't know about being a dallas site and about staying here pretty much all of your life that you can share with everybody well you know i think uh you know owning a little bit of the sense of history that you know comes with living in the same place uh you know all of your your life um and i think you know for my children uh there's some message in that you know to
you know the continuity of the stick-to-itive um you know the importance of you know setting your you know your foundation and remaining true to that foundation um and yeah dallas's dallas is great but it's you know it's grander than dallas it's you know the fact that they have the opportunity really to go to the same jewish community center that i you know grew up doing things at and to participate be it in um my son was very very involved in aza as i was involved and so it gives us the opportunity to share our stories uh while you know 30 plus years apart uh 40
with the youngest daughter you know hopefully we'll have a lot of similar experiences through different lenses and through a different generation that we can share with one another that's wonderful thank you so much david as we wrap up stay safe stay healthy and have a great summer joe all of that back to you and thank you for what you're doing thank you very much thank you you