Diane Wernick Benjamin
Diane Faith Wernick Benjamin was born in the Bronx on January 21, 1943, sharing a birthday with her mother, Paula. Her father, Sam Lewis, was a furrier in New York with a trained opera voice, and her mother was a writer, artist, and musician who had spent part of her youth in Russia after her family, led by Diane's socialist grandfather Frank Olenburg, went abroad seeking a better society. After her parents divorced and her mother remarried, Diane was raised on a 50-acre farm in Rockland County, New York, one of the few Jewish students at her high school. She has two sisters, Beverly and Dr. Rayna, and she credits her mother and her aunt Faye with inspiring her lifelong love of art.
Drawn to a stronger Jewish identity, Diane studied art and art education at City College of New York and took classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she met her first husband, Rabbi Nissan Wernick. They married in 1962 and served congregations in New Jersey, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, and Baltimore before coming to Dallas in 1971, when he took a pulpit at Shearith Israel. The couple had four sons: Stewart, Bruce, Barry, and DeFrey. After her divorce in 1978, Diane earned her real estate license in 1979 and built a long, successful career, raising her sons to work hard, hold their heads high, and become leaders in their community.
Diane has been deeply involved in Jewish organizations, including a longtime membership in Hadassah and service in her synagogue's Chevra Kadisha. In 2007 she was honored by Bnai Zion, an organization supporting a hospital in Haifa, and she later served as its president before handing over leadership in 2019. She remarried, finding a devoted partner in Jerry Benjamin, and together they blended their families. Guided by a strong faith and by her mother's resilient spirit and lessons about never giving up, Diane hopes to be remembered as a God-fearing woman who raised her children to be a light unto the nations and who mentored younger people in her profession.
Full Transcript
we're recording today is february 20th 2019 hi my name is elizabeth fader and i am interviewing diane benjamin diane how are you i'm terrific great great great great i'm going to start by asking you first what's your full name and what were your parents names as well okay my full name is diane faith it was wernick benjamin and my parents paula olenburg is her maiden name and she her her she had been married to my father sam lewis and then had been married to my stepfather and uh her her death her name was paula greenblatt okay awesome and the boy i'm sorry and my dad
of course was sam lewis any recognition with louis aza or no no my gran my father actually i took the name from relatives of the lewiston family in philadelphia awesome so your parents are from your dad from philadelphia yeah and where was your mom from my mother was born in the bronx although she lived as a teenager in russia okay when her parents were going back to utopia she was a a uh what they call david horowitz would call a uh red diaper baby okay i gotcha um so if you don't mind me asking where and when were you born okay i was born in
the bronx in january 21st 1943 and actually i just celebrated my 76th birthday and it's always a bittersweet birthday since my mother passed away because we shared the same birthday january 21st well happy birthday to her may her memory be a blessing for sure do you have do you have any siblings and if you saw what are their names yes my older sister is beverly lewis russo and um and my uh younger sister is dr rayna lipkind and she is in florida um if you could tell me since you grew up in the bronx you said what did your parents oh i did not grow
up oh oh no i was born in the bronx okay when my mother remarried we moved to rocklin county new york and i was basically raised on a 50-acre farm okay in new york city thank you for directing me i apologize um what did your parents do for a living my mother had many she actually started working after she after i got married and but she had worked as a teenager at the moscow daily news and she's been a prolific writer she's an artist and played the piano musician uh i always felt like she was the most brilliant woman i knew and um mr dick
that really i miss her great deal every day i do and um but professionally she worked for the lamont geological observatory in new york for columbia university she worked for the jewish federation here in dallas when she moved here to be helpful to me and she had a lot of talents she even baked for marty's restaurant actually she baked her uh famous um i forgot what it's called uh mandelbrot what about your father my dad was a magnificent beautiful opera voice and he was trained for the opera but he was a furrier in new york had his own first salon what was the name of
it uh it was called the store it was called star of spurs or something like that because he used to sell to theatrical people very very cool and my stepfather was a pharmacist and a psychologist and he was my stepfather for 18 years um can you tell me about the neighborhood you grew up in like uh what what were some of the schools you attended and like just some like major like traits that you think like you can remember from your childhood when in the neighborhood well i was raised in a predominantly christian environment um my sisters and i were one of the few jews
in niagara junior senior high school for example my oldest sister and i my kids sister went to valley cottage elementary we were i was raised in an environment that was mostly christian it was the first republican stronghold i believe outside of new york city on the way to west point on the west side of hudson river and i loved living in the country we had used to walk to my bus was about a quarter of a mile from my house it was very rustic we had deer we had coming up to our windows and it was a beautiful environment in which to live as far
as my family belonged to the niacc synagogue temple israel where actually kent crone was a a pantry that same synagogue it was a um i went to niacc high school and while most of my friends went down to saint ann's to some type of a religious um they had religious training my sisters and i would go to study hall very few of us remained while the majority of i believe that community were catholic and i did not feel that i'd never felt any anti-semitism although i always gravitated more to being with my jewish friends from let's say spring valley new york which was a strong
jewish community close to where i was raised and most of my friends were were not jewish and i and yet i longed to be uh more in a more jewish environment and so i was i went to new york city after i graduated high school and i went to city college and also i took some courses at the jewish theological seminary in new york in the art students league because i was also a um an artist an art student and i wanted to be an art teacher why what made you want to go into that kind of with my kind of career path the art
part my aunt was a fabulous artist my mother was a wonderful artist and i just gravitated to that that interest i loved painting and loved art and actually my oldest sister is also very artistic and my nephew is a very well-known artist as well as written books and so with my nephew david anson russo is a very popular artist what was your aunt's name excuse me you're you that you that you're in kind of contributed to your passion for that what was your name faye she had a 100 acre farm in heights town new jersey and we used to go there often and she was
a very very prolific painter and i have in every room of my home today i have at least one of her paintings and i remember her dearly she had sons and my mother had daughters and so she was a dramatic influence upon me because i think i was like her daughter or sia yeah anyway she uh diane faith i love very much faye what was her last name family fur was her last name her husband was a chemistry professor and um soyfer is probably was a descendant of a scribe you know the scribes are called self-hearing um tell me this you said that you grew
up in a predominantly christian neighborhood you went you rained down that family were basically secular jews yes and um and i gravitated more to uh mourning and desiring a more an anchor in my life my parents were divorced and i wanted to um i felt very comfortable in a more than jewish religious environment and that's what gravity i gravitated towards going to the seminary where i met my first husband fantastic and so when you you said you had a lot of friends in another it was called spring spring valley yes certainly new york if some of my my high school friends were from spring valley
area which had more jews but um i was kind of a loner yeah in high school i had a stepfather he was a psychologist he was not a good person and unfortunately uh and i'm going to say this on film he molested me and my older sister he married a woman with two children and in those days you did not talk about these things of course so oh i was uh my mother finally divorced him i'm i'm sorry about that i didn't mean to bring that up um you're gonna start here i'm sorry about we just got very important it's important to come forward and
recognize when they're ills in society and when people hide behind whether it's a religious cloak or whether it's behind the profession or even behind the beard which is a mask i think it's important that people are forthright and in order to eradicate the ills of society you have to face them of course um what i've wanted to ask overall is do you believe that um hanging out with your friends and that and that area um were they part of like any youth could like the neighborhood youth organization or nifty yeah actually belong to nifty okay because i was raised in a reform synagogue but in
new york the reform synagogues were more um practicing of observance of jewish rituals and so forth farther west you got they were different the reform movement the same texas is not like 3-4 movement in new york uh new york you're more surrounded by more exposure to jewish observances and so forth so i would imagine when i was growing up the reform movement was more like conservative absolutely so where did you i think i already say this but if yoga mind is going a little bit farther with me um where did you go to scotland what was the name of your high school like what high
school was nyack high and nyacp named after the niagara indians in the hudson river valley fantastic and we were raised in a 200 year old home which um uh probably the revolutionary war was fought on my property where i was raised and as a matter of fact to this day after the property was subdivided uh there are two streets named in honor of my sister reyna reign elaine arena court in valley cottage new york very cool but uh and then i went out to city college city ccny is now city university in new york i guess and i studied art and art education and then
i also had a scholarship to brooklyn museum in conjunction with long island university but i chose city college and and also my mother's best friend was the registrar at the jewish theological seminary uh jerry rosenfield and she encouraged my mother to have me take some classes at the seminary because she knew that i was gravitating towards more of a jewish identity and you felt very strongly about that and i think that your parents fully supported you with embarrassment my mother uh thought that that would be you know fine with her it was enriching and uh but she wanted me to be she would have liked
and i been an art teacher i was studying actually i wanted to study through architecture and architecture but um i was discouraged because in that day and age very few women were accepted as architects as well as jewish women so i being an artist and loving art i decided i was going to be an art teacher and then i was at the seminary and that's where i met my husband who was a rabbinical student at the seminary what's his name your husband my first husband was uh nissa wernick rabbi nissel wernick and he held the position here in dallas texas in sheriff israel so i
will get to how you got from new york to dallas in a little in a little bit um but um i guess i think that you were the president of the binay zeon foundation what is the mission of that organization and uh how what was your time how many years were you there when did you start when did you end and how did you become involved with that organization in the first place well first of all i have been very very devoted to the jewish community here in dallas and actually throughout my adult life i have as i said gravitated to enjoying my heritage and
feeling that i had a mission here on this earth to promote the well-being of jewish people i have 36 members of my family that were perished in the holocaust and my grandfather frank olenburg had a dramatic influence in my life he was a writer he was of course very much of a from a hasidic background in europe but in america he helped to start the labor unions he was a strong socialist communist i would say because he picked up his family sold his property in pinkskill new york to uproot his family to go back to what he thought was utopia and luckily they came back
before the because but my mother and her sisters had an opportunity to see their grandparents and family in poland before they were tossed into the ovens but i personally had devoured everything my grandfather would tell us in his broken yiddish english about his his family his life as well as um my mother was very well read and she was an activist herself and i remember as a child how she would uh be very much against the killing of the rosenbergs who were claimed to have been spies and and when i would come home from school she would be watching the mccarthy trials on tv and
i felt that that was a very wrongful blight in history um so i was raised with my mother specifically who was an ardent uh activist when when there was an ill she felt that if we did not stand up and speak out for any of the ills of society that we were accomplished to the crime do you think so you won't be playing after this what were in the name of your grandparents on your my grandfather was frank olenburg his mother's maiden name was gilner now the gildner is very important for my family because most of my family are in georgia and it is my
understanding that my family were remnants of the spanish inquisition and it was told that my family came in through georgia some of my family the family that didn't go to poland but through the spanish inquisition the jewish people went to portugal that was more receptive to the jews after the spanish inquisition and then they went eastward to holland because dutch west india gave the jews burger rights which is citizenship and then family went east to poland and yet some of my family went to latin america and the family that went to latin america the gilner family came into savannah georgia in the 1700s on the
william and sarah ship and the governor oglethorpe would not allow the jews to disembark because he was an anti-semite and then lo and behold a plague befell a savannah and he realized they were jewish jewish doctors on board so apparently some of my family came into georgia at that time because of that incident but in any event i have family in georgia you asked for my grandfather's maiden my grandfather's name was olenberg it was hollenberg and before that in spain my mother said my grandfather said it was helene so your mother always i'm sorry and my father's family was from my grandfather uh was from
kiev and my grandmother was from bessarabia which is moldova oh yes very very very diverse background that's great the best type of thing to have but i can miss out um so your mother obviously her grandfather and her history was she definitely carried that with her so i think she was very like she made a very you know understanding and maybe you all your you and your siblings understand how important it was to keep intact your jewish identity yes especially in a world with the thumb which was going on and things like that so that's fantastic so i take it then when you started working
with the banane xeon foundation that was something that you kind of brought over you guys kind of pushed you to go that you know how that happened actually i've been a strong supporter of hadassah and i've been on the hebrew gadisha after my divorce from my husband of the rabbi i was married to him for 16 years and i have four children from that marriage very proud of my my children who are all leaders in their community i gravitated i when i was divorced having done volunteer work and having taught in hebrew schools when i was a rebecca i needed to make a living and
so i wanted to do something in volunteer work that would require the least amount of time but had the greatest impact so i um joined the hebrew khadijah of my synagogue which is holy society that prepares the deceased for the funerals and that enabled me to be a mom where i could do that early in the morning if i was called upon and then i could devote my days to making a living for my for my four children and i also had always been a life member of hadassah and i was an ardent hadassah a member and supporter and i was vice president of membership
and then president vice president of fund development and i really valued my relationship with hadassah until i found that the mission of hadassah was somewhat diluted with politics and i'm a very strong right ring right winger so i did not appreciate some of the philosophies of hadassah but i did value the incredible medical research and technology and i still am a fourth generation life member of hadassah and i was given several awards but um in ninth let's see 2007 i received a call asking me if i would be an honoree for benezione now i had been a member of zoa zionist organization of america as
a matter of fact my first husband founded the first zoa organization here in dallas which we called the lew predator zoa in honor of lou creditor who's deceased but he was a very fine leader in our community [Music] the zoa metamorph into bernay zion it's another story but uh the jewish federation here in dallas had promoted uh in the 80s the um or maybe even the 70s the oslo accord and then the road map and i was not in agreement with land for peace for israel so i kind of um was happy that bernay zion a organization not political because it treats all people um
had invited me to be an honoree and in with pastors stephen um oh my goodness all of a sudden my mind's anyway the pastor who was at the lover's lane united methodist church so he and i were asked to be honorees from binet zion and i appreciated the good work that the hospital did for northern israel and served northern israel whereas hadassah is a very big big institution and um out of jerusalem i felt that the bani zion hospital was basically unsung and um and he had a very vital role as a hundred and over 100 year old hospital that served all of northern israel
and located in haifa it overlooks the the bay which houses israel's refineries and is targeted by lebanon to the northeast and actually had been the recipient of of destruction some destruction during the 2006 lebanon war but anyway in 2000 and it was 2007 i was asked to be an honoree and then i was basically after i accepted that i felt that to accept an honor from an organization i wouldn't be a hit-and-run driver i would stay involved otherwise why would i take on you know just this special honor if i wasn't going to be committed to its cause and so i stayed and i helped
with the organization and eventually i was asked to be president so i took that role on i believe it was in 2015 yeah so here it is 2019 and i just um handed over the gavel to very very capable john piser very nice so congratulations that's fantastic thank you for for supplying yourself to that organization um let me ask you so we talked about your first husband and then how did you come from new york to dallas can you go expand on that well my husband when we were married in 1962 december 18 1962 and he was ordained in 1966. while we were married he had a student pulpit in new jersey and then um uh and i continued i worked at the seminary also and uh at the jewish theological seminary and i was a secretary to the and to the dean of students and i was taking classes and then i was also rushing to take classes at city college in new york and then i was teaching hebrew school and when my husband was ordained we got he received a position in um in union new jersey union new jersey our first congregation was temple israel union new jersey and my son stewart wernick was born in
hackensack new jersey the home of the new york giants and we had a pulpit there for a couple years and then we he had a better pulpit offered to him in salt lake city utah so my second son bruce was born in salt lake city and my ex-husband received his phd from brigham young university while we were in salt lake and it was a wonderful uh the mormon were wonderful to us and because my ex-husband got his phd from brigham young university uh they offered us you know the sun the moon and the stars converted but of course we were certainly not going to do
that um but we had a very wonderful experience living in salt lake city and i enjoyed it and then from salt lake we had a pulpit opportunity to move to atlanta georgia and since most of my family was in georgia i really enjoyed that so we went to sheriff israel actually in in atlanta and then my husband taught at emory and uh and he had this pulpit at um at sheriff israel which is a conservatox synagogue in in atlanta and then from atlanta we went to um oh wow he lost his position actually in atlanta i don't know unfortunately my husband had a tendency when
things were going very well he kind of put a wrench in the works he had some personality conflicts and problems but i was eight months pregnant with um my third son and uh i'll never forget i was in the synagogue i was actually in the supermarket and i was pregnant and i was crying and rabbi ishai who was from the spanish portuguese synagogue in atlanta said robertson why are you crying why are you crying i said well here i am eight months breaking and i don't know where we're going to go because my husband lost his position in atlanta so he says don't worry the
lord will provide and um lo and behold the next day he had a pulpit opportunity to move to baltimore so my third son mary wernick was born in baltimore maryland and we and he had a student pulpit oh he had a pulpit as an assistant to uh rabbi rosenblatt whose father was the famous cancer yesterday rosenblatt and so uh we stayed in in baltimore i say long enough to have my baby barry where nick was born in sinai hospital in in atlanta excuse me in baltimore which i'm proud to say is south of the mason-dixon line and we were there for actually just nine months
and then he had another opportunity to come to dallas texas so that's why we're here because sheriff israel um had an opportunity at sheriff israel here in dallas and my husband applied for the position and and a wonderful wonderful former president of sheriff israel saw levine a blessed memory i came to baltimore and just had the baby and so i wasn't able to come for the interview here in dallas so sullivan came to down to baltimore to interview me and uh he said it was my chocolate cake that wins the deal you know since the deal you're so you're sons you you say how many
children and he actually had four sons and when we came to dallas my fourth son was born eventually in 1977 which we moved here in march of 71 and barry was actually two months old when we moved here and um my baby of fry and warnick is named after my grandpa frank and frank oliver and defry was born in texas and uh and that's what brought me here for four boys and do you have any daughters no i don't have daughters but i have wonderful daughters-in-law and my husband jerry benjamin who i married to now 32 years i was divorced here in dallas unfortunately my
husband was a very my husband the rabbi rabbi wernick was a controversial person he was uh dynamic had a lot of charisma he was 6'4 and very handsome and and athletic he played basketball here at the jcc and and he played the piano he's had a lot of wonderful um attributes unfortunately he was self-destructive and and he left he abandoned myself and my four boys and left us penniless and um uh it was a it was a light it was a real sad time for my family and it's a story in itself that people tell me i should write about but anyway my mother always
said every knock is a boost so and she said diane don't worry one day you're going to send him a thank you note so i immediately went to work i had several jobs as an artist i was doing menus i was doing signs i was doing calligraphy and and the jewish community was surprised i would venture to to study real estate and i would go to rabbi opsires backyard and he would quiz me and test me on my real estate so i'd be prepared for my test and i'd study with him real estate not torah um i got my license and uh and became rookie
of the year for uh my company at the time was paula stranger actually the first person that held my license i'm going to give credit to mitchell rozanski who is a city councilman in dallas okay his mother was an old-time realtor bert realty and she uh was my first sponsor as a realtor so i want to give credit to her um helen rozanski absolutely though what year did you start going to the real estate so i got my real estate license in 1979 i was divorced in 78. and you were here in dallas in dallas and i stayed and people said to me are you going to stay in dallas and i said well why not why should i didn't do anything wrong and and i told my sons i said you're not going to feel in any way embarrassed or humiliated or anything when we go to i want you to hold your heads up high and walk down the front row center aisle of the synagogue because um you know your father loved you the best way he knew how and what he did he did to himself and we are move forward with our
lives that's was you know my mother taught us she had gone through a lot of difficult times herself and she taught how to um not survive but not to be victims not to be victims we weren't we didn't i don't want my boys to feel victimized of course so you i go i'm so sorry so um we just had a dramatic uh sense of uh of you know what was was and you move on and move forward and you make um lemonade out of limits so let me ask you this so you know i can tell or that your grandfather's your mother's father made her
understand how important it was to identify you know to be proud of who you were proud of your judaism your mother made you understand and your siblings understand be proud of you or be proud of your your judaism proud of your culture do you think you know after everything have happened did you like implement that to your sons like were your sons part of bbyo or nifty when they were here in dallas and how did you feel like imp how did you feel how important was to implement those lessons that were tossed down throughout generations to your kids okay first of all my boys were
like little princes because they were not only the rabbi's son of a very prominent prestigious congregation the plum of the southwest if not the entire united states sheriff israel was a plum synagogue and they were a little of treated royally and we had um they weren't spoiled but um you know we had a membership of the uh the colombian club at that time and i used to bring my children with me to the colombian club while most of the women left their kids home with their maids because at that time everyone had a living mate it was very inexpensive and i used to take my
living with me to the club with the kids and i kept them at my side and they were when when after my divorce i told my sons that they had no time for drugs or alcohol or any problems that some of these kids would you know juvenile delinquents you know i said you got to get out and work and i trained them to make their beds as they were getting out of them and um and to be productive and uh they and my son stewart who one time was a little prince and had two redheaded sons they were cute to look at too the next
day he was washing the toilets at the jcc to help put bread on my table so and he was working at age 14 at targendos mopping the floors and stuff so my sons would were taught to have a strong work ethic and to be responsible for their own actions and i told them one of you will be if not all of you will be leaders in the community one day and make the name wernick it means something in this community and perhaps you would even be a president of your synagogue so aim high and my mother always said be like a grave digger start at
the top and um and just aim high and be a success so stuart uh was president of the um in high in in high school he was treasurer of the senior class at hillbrook high and bruce was president of the senior class at hill at hillcrest high school and barry was president of student body at saint mark's annaphriem went on also at st marks helping the coaches he was also one of the star football players at st mark's school and they wrote about him because he wouldn't play on arrow kill kipper and um and yet he was one of the stars of the football team
and he's now a federal prosecutor in washington d.c puts terrorists in prison and obama took them out i want that on the record and then also my uh third son barry has been a shaliah zoa in israel he lived in russia he lived in moscow and he helped the cia and he helped to establish re-establish jewish communities in russia he speaks russian fluently and he also speaks hebrew and he is an attorney in dallas he's also a movie producer and he's done a movie with judd nelson from the breakfast club and and he's most recently did unfortunately for his wife a sister who was murdered
in bottom texas he did a doc a program for 48 hours in unsolved murder mystery and then my um older son stewart is a very very successful businessman he's an investment banker here in dallas and he has three children all of his girls went to acaba and yapna and one lives in israel right now and one studying in israel will be going to the university of michigan and my other granddaughter is very proud of my children and my grandchildren she's studying in singapore to be an engineer and she'll be going back to university of maryland and then the oldest daughter graduated yapna and she's now
a cpa in new york and my husband jerry and i have jerry has three boys as well and that's another story because i was very blessed to have been introduced to him okay that brings me to our next question so very convenient so how did he meet jerry i didn't meet you yes okay well i had everyone in sheriff israel's system is fixing me up when i was a single lady and i was very very blessed that i had people who were caring about me most especially irvine donsky of blessed memory who was past president of sheriff israel in the federation he was like a
father head of her whatever he would if he didn't approve of somebody i went out with he would let me know he'd call me into his office and say i know he's going out with his person and he was just a wonderful wonderful person and his daughter marilyn palette is a dear friend but um i'll never forget uh the donsky's uh francis and irvindsky were very uh caring of me and um and most of the sisterhood at sheriff israel they all had a cousin and uncle of this and that they were always fixing me up so i was never without the date but the thing
is that um my children with most important people in my life and i was very selective and i did have a second marriage a short-term second marriage to someone from houston texas to texan and uh unfortunately that did not work out well i'm married for the wrong reasons and then i was with i was single and rebecca greenblatt who lives here in dallas she introduced my husband to me she had given him a list of of names of jewish women five days and he called them all except for me and then he asked rebecca for another list and she said did you call everybody he
says well i didn't call diane because i think she was too religious for me so although jerry belonged to ferret israel and raised his children there and he came from a kosher home and he was knowledgeable about judaism because when i did date i was very concerned also that i would have a home that was a kosher home that was important to me because that's how i raised my children and that i had would marry jewish and that he would whoever i married would have common interests with me so um anyway uh i had uh so rebecca told jerry that she wasn't gonna give him
another list until he called me so jerry being a very very honest person not very honest he is honest neither are you not he can't tell a lie and so he decided he'll call me on shabbat on saturday thinking i want i'll either be in show or i won't answer the phone so he called me on saturday and it just so happens i answered the phone and he asked me out and for sunday evening to go to dinner at gershwin's and i accepted and i had we had a very long nice conversation and then he asked me out again and we basically closed the place
we were talking and he asked me out again i said no i can't go out with you so he said why not so i said well first of all you have a new york accent so he says so where are you from i said you and then uh i said well i said another thing is you're a salesman and i don't go out with saturday so he said so what do you do so i said oh i sell houses so that was like two and then i said besides but you're too short i don't go out with anyone under six feet tall oh wow so
he says well then he said well why do you look so pensive i said well i was just thinking about all the short guys i could have been going out with you know i had been sabotaging myself and and anyway so we went out again and we we had a lot of shared interest and he was the father of he is the father of three fine young men um andrew benjamin david benjamin andrew lives in seattle david lives in san antonio he's an attorney and richard benjamin and my husband jerry had unfortunately suffered a tragedy where his first wife who he loved naomi and he
had taken a young boy into their home to give him a safe home he had been child abuse and unfortunately he murdered naomi i'm sorry and i don't know if you're familiar with that story but but nanny have been it happened 1980 and naomi was a beautiful lady and she president of akiba pta and jerry's oldest son actually is the first chronologically and alphabetically to have graduated from akiba academy and our sons kind of knew each other through achivo so that was nice that we shared a concern about jewish education for our children and uh anyway so we um got married at the fairmont and
uh and jerry unfortunately had his own tragedy with losing his wife and i realized that when i was dating that sadly most of the men i dated were divorced and they had lost their life estate to their exes and they were mean and bitter or yeah and they really weren't good for others and one of the things that i loved about jerry was the fact that he's a very good father to his children and i felt if he'd be good to his he'd be good to mine and he was and he is yeah that's for sure no no joking that's fantastic at the great great
great he sounds like a great man i'm glad you guys are like that's fantastic um i'm gonna ask a couple more questions and we'll be done um you've been through a lot and you've done so many things the jewish community and you've contributed so much and you've done a you know you've been a mother a wife and you've been a contributor to your community jewish education and just making sure that your boys and you know everyone you can know is to be proud of who they are you know wherever they came from to be proud and don't be afraid to stand up for what you
believe in what you stand for so time has passed and so tell me one thing you want most people to remember about you if there's anything if people could go in the archives at the historical site and look at your video what does one people one what's one thing what you want to memory about you to your contribution to the jewish well i think that perhaps um i look to god i'm very very blessed that i have a strong faith and uh and my religion has been important in my life um i i feel that my faith in a better tomorrow has um always been
present and that i feel that it's unfortunate i i see our country is is going away from uh religion and i feel very comfortable in the presence of strong christians who know the bible and i'm very disappointed and sad when i see people who of the jewish faith who forgot that they're supposed to be a light unto the nations and that they are worshiping false idols and um and it's very painful to me so what would i want as um to be remembered as a person who is god fearing and um who has raised her children to be enlightened to the nations great um last
few questions you've been a very successful in your in in your enter in your field of business in real estate um what does for future people graduating just people in general who are wanting to get into any sort of a field of business or field and what what are some what advice would you like to leave for future entrepreneurs for future business well i've been very very happy to say that i have mentored uh young people and i have uh in my uh this will be my 40th year i'm celebrating my 40th year selling is selling real estate i'm still working and i'm mentoring a
young lady now who went through went through a divorce she has children and i'm so proud of her and i encourage her to get her real estate and um and i i think the best thing you can do is to help a younger person or another person to um be successful in and what is the success and that is somebody who loves what they do i think regardless whether you could be a poet a doctor you have to enjoy what you do i love selling real estate i love all my clients just about all of my clients have been become my friends and uh and
i take real joy in the fact that i help them um profit and as a jew we don't glorify poverty in order to help another person you have to be able to have the wherewithal so i'm i'm encouraged to see that i've helped some young people and who have become successful realtors and i'm really feeling good about that um i don't consider it competition because to me competition is healthy and that's what this country has created with you know the the opportunity uh to compete and and make yourself better when you know that somebody is out there who's good you try and be better and
free enterprise i'm all for it um so what can i say as far as my profession i just am happy that i've become a realtor helping people take a house and turn it into a home and that's and and when i go through the different houses it's interesting i actually some people say oh don't work with jews diane i love working with my people i and if i cannot help my own why should a stranger you know that's the way i feel and i love working with jewish people i work a lot with christian people because they like my value system and they know i
will be there and protect them and and and and not just be good at what i do but i will i just they know they can trust me absolutely and it's more important to be competent and to know what you can't do of course you know absolutely last question for you uh and thank you again for all this um i think we've talked about in this interview and i've ran a couple times you're very proud of where you come from your family your grandparents your kids everything you've been through but you've always maintained we've basically said that you're very proud of your culture and your
religion and considering everything for this next generation of teenagers and everyone going through this the next generation of future people going into the world what is one piece of advice you would like to leave for them in regards just to whatever they whatever they want to do in this life and how they want to represent themselves what is what is one piece of advice you want to leave for the next generation you know my mom lost an eye in a freak accident and yet she used to drive all the ladies to choir practice at temple emmanuel late at night they were paid to drive they
didn't know she had one eye yeah and she never felt uh that she was handicapped my mother lost her breast she had breast cancer and when the when doctor asked her what do you want them uh man mastectomy and love bacteria whatever my mother said you know we're all terminal and i'm not i'm not abreast i'm a person and i'm gonna put my grandson's basketball socks in my bra and my mother had a very wonderful spirit and encouraging and she taught me not to give up you never fail unless you stop trying okay and um and i guess one of the mottos which i put
on her um on her memorial um when i sent that thank you notes because she hadn't been buried in sheriff israel um was one of her favorite expressions what is the biggest room in the house the room for improvement so she always strove to be better and come and it inculcated that in me and i appreciate it i miss my mom all right you sound like a fantastic woman so at the end of the day that's you would if anything you would implement that meant to the future generation that is there's always room for improvement no matter what step you take right right all right
diane thank you so much for doing this so we really appreciate this and this will be a great contribution to the archives oh well thank you you did a wonderful job you really had me damning quite a bit thank you so much my pleasure