Don Alan Croll
Don Alan Croll was descended from Jewish families in Poland and Lithuania. His mother's family, the Alts, settled in Buffalo, New York, where he was raised, while his father's family, the Crolls, settled in New Britain, Connecticut. His mother worked as a bookkeeper and his father as a salesman for a folding box company. He grew up in a traditional Jewish home near his synagogue, with a grandfather who was Orthodox and a mother who sang in the temple choir for 50 years. His family was active in Zionism, supporting Israel through Israel Bonds, and he grew up loving music, especially Broadway shows such as Man of La Mancha.
Drawn to performing from childhood, Croll earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ithaca College and worked in summer stock in Martha's Vineyard, later earning his Equity card in Charlotte, North Carolina. He first enrolled at Hebrew Union College but left to pursue theater, appearing on Broadway in On the Town and touring in Man of La Mancha. Deciding the road was no way to raise a family, he returned to Hebrew Union College and completed the five-year cantorial program. He served ten years in Nyack, New York, then moved to California and later Albuquerque, working as a cantor and teacher before an opportunity brought him to Temple Shalom in Dallas in 1996.
In Dallas, Croll found a welcoming community and devoted himself to his youth and adult choirs and to preparing every bar and bat mitzvah student to shine. He continued to perform, appearing in Dallas theater productions including a one-man show about Danny Kaye and roles in Caroline, or Change, So Help Me God, and The Sunshine Boys, and taught in the Melton program at the J. He counted Cantor Lawrence Avery and Cantor Elliot Dicker among his mentors. Over his years in Dallas he witnessed the city's cultural growth and its increasing acceptance of his relationship with his husband, Jan. He and Jan felt fortunate to build a life and lasting friendships in the community they never wished to leave.
Full Transcript
good afternoon I'm dawn Alan Kroll the Cantor emeritus of Temple Shalom and today's date is June 2nd 2015 all right if you will tell me a little bit about your family your parents and even if you know where your grandparents were from where they all settled my grandparents are from Poland and Lithuania Lithuania on my mother's side Poland when it was Russian on my father's side because my father doesn't speak you this she's bespoke Russian and not I didn't hear him speak very much at all Russian or Yiddish my mother spoke Yiddish my mother's family came from a town that none of none of us
never the cousins could pronounce it was amongst which we all looked for we where is it in Lithuania and the problem was that when the Russians took over they changed the name to Noma skya so then we outside until now and that's still there I had a cousin recently go and visit it which is a bucket item for me I haven't no phenol ever after so my the crawls settled in New Britain Connecticut and the alts my mother's side settled in Buffalo New York which is where I was raised and what did your parents do for a living my mother was a bookkeeper and my
father was a salesman for a folding box company Victor Wagner and son what was your neighborhood like as a young child growing up there the first one or the second one the first one was in a very Jewish area in buffalo near the synagogue in walking distance because I think my grandfather was Orthodox and the it was a conservative shul but it was on the right side of center if you will I mean they were very traditional I don't remember the men being separated from the women but it was still pretty traditional and I think my grandfather walked to Temple Beth David Humboldt Park Way
yeah yeah what did you like to do as a child what type of hobbies did you have was a child that's a good question because the only thing I can think of is I I like to listen to music obviously and I like to listen to later Broadway shows it's funny because when everybody was saying oh janis joplin I love her oh you know this Beatles song it's like no but if you ask me to sing a song from Man of La Mancha I can do it very well we may have to stop because Janice ooh what about later on in high school what kind
of interest did you develop well I was in all of the all of the school shows and I was in theater as well the variety shows and all of my friends were in the music department and I had a great great childhood high school was just happy-go-lucky and longer at that time had you already decided that that would be your career something in music yes yeah yeah so what did you do at right after high school and then on to pursue that after high school I went into the theater department College and God a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ithaca and then in my senior
year well let's go back a little in my junior June there must have been my sophomore and junior year if the college the theatre department had a summer stock theater in Martha's Vineyard so I spent two seasons there and we did eight shows in nine weeks so it was grueling but it was wonderful yeah and then when I graduated I auditioned for a company in Charlotte North Carolina and that's where I got my Equity card which is the organization for a professional actress let's talk about for just a minute Jewish background what holidays did you need particularly remember and we're fond of my mother was
in the choir and Temple Beth David and then when I merged she was in the choir typical David near Israel for 50 years she started when she was 16 and when she was 66 and my parents moved to Florida she joined a choir there and she was the lady she was the relative who relaxed the song sheets for Hanukkah because the cousins Club would get together and there would be Hanukkah party and then for Passover we would travel to New Britain to be with my father's family so those are the holidays I remember but of course we celebrated Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur you name the
holiday you know my parents were very active with Zionism a part of your life oh yes it was through Israel bonds you know I learned very early that my parents supported Israel through the bonds and they finally went to Israel after they have retired and I know that in the reform movement before Israel was a state the reform movement felt we don't need to press on forever you know a Jewish state we're happy in the United States and so even to this day the Israel bonds office in Dallas says they still have difficulty getting hardened reformed Jews to buy anything like an Israel product but
what path did you take after graduating college after graduating college I went right to New York and I applied to NYU in their theater department and I applied to [Music] Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of religion the Debbie Friedman School of sacred music and I said okay whichever one I get into that's what I will pursue so I got into Hebrew Union College and began to pursue a career in the can turret which was interesting because it was like out of the blue that I said you know I really should look into being coming a cantor I went to the rabbi I'm gonna sit Rep
Mike Goldfarb in Ithaca and he told me there was the reformed seminary was Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary was the conservative movements seminary so I applied to both and when I had to sign a piece of paper that said I would be shomer Shabbos and I would have to keep kosher I said and give up cheeseburgers I don't think so so I started my studies how long was that and then then where did that take you after that when you graduated let's see it's a five year course and I was in New York City surrounded by auditions and theaters and so after
the first semester I dropped out and started to pursue a career in the theatre first and meanwhile I got married we lived in New Jersey I get into a Broadway show on the town with Bernadette Peters from there I got an agent and I started doing shows tours and I did a tour of the Man of La Mancha which is that that's the picture on the wall he is the barber and I did it with John rate Alan Jones power Keele so and then soon after that I didn't get a job and I was very upset that I wasn't working little did I know eight
months was not so terrible not to be working that there are people who don't work for eight years but I said this you know if I'm gonna raise a family this is not a way to raise a family to be on the road and then come home and then so that I reapplied to HSC got in and because it was a five year course the guys that I started with out with in 69 were just graduating when I went back so it was like okay I'm gonna do this I've got I'm gonna do five years so I completed the course Donna a full-time position with
my student job became a full-time position in Nyack New York became I was there for ten years is there music director of our Mitzvah tutor and all that and then the theater bug bit me again and I moved out to California and the only way that I could make ends meet was to become a part-time cantor at different synagogues and a part-time teacher and I really never had an opportunity to audition for pilot season because it ran into the High Holidays a lot of times so I said okay actually my partner Jan said why don't you just pick one synagogue because Monday was substituting his
apartments for tutor at Miller Park temple Tuesday was being the bar mitzvah tutor at Beth Shalom in Santa Monica and Wednesday blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so so I took a full-time position in Westminster and then we moved to Albuquerque for two years and Albuquerque which I loved a lot I have a love-hate relationship with Albuquerque and then we moved to Dallas because there was an opportunity here at Temple Shalom so how long have you been here uh this is our 19th year we got here in 1996 so in 2016 it'll be our 20th year man it's a lie what are some of
the highlights that you can remember about when coming to Dallas and working guys thank you work at the the community was very accepting they weren't concerned that I was a gay relationship they were more concerned to find out if Jan was Jewish and that's what they were worried about I enjoyed working with the kids I enjoyed working with the adult choirs every Bar Mitzvah student was going to be a star up on the Bema whether they wanted to or not I make sure that they were as well prepared as they could be and if there were portions of the service that they couldn't do I
said don't worry we'll do it together because I've been through some I've been to some ceremonies where I was excruciating to hear the kids get through that Torah portion or after worship and that temple allowed me to do shows as well so I could do either a variety show I did a show with another Cantor from Fort Worth and my very good friend Lin metric may she rest in peace she was very active in the Dallas Theater world and she would connect me with people from the Dallas Theater world to perform at the temple which was great so I could do both do you have
anybody that you would consider your mentor years through the Earth's first at school there was Cantor Lawrence Avery who just passed away just passed away he was everybody's mentor I mean on Facebook you know everybody was singing his praises and how wonderful and he was just a terrific terrific teacher mentor person and then I would say my good friend Elliot dicker Cantor Elliot dagger who lives in Boca Raton he he gets me through is if there's anything then I don't know or don't understand or if I have to sing something that's a little more traditional he'll say why don't you do this piece now we
did study at Hebrew Union College we were exposed to traditional as well as Reform music but once you're in a reformed setting and you don't use what you've learned to Dobbin you know they say use it or lose it so I made sure however when I learned how lame Torah for the High Holidays for poram I would chant in the correct new sock the correct trope for the holidays and I would make sure that the kids who suited or the adults who did Torah portions at the High Holidays they also would chant at the right Trobe I'm not gonna call you retired but now that
you're semi-retired yes what are your aspirations my aspirations or what's reality okay what would you like to do oh well I would like to at this point find my way back into the Dallas Theater world I've had four opportunities to appear on stage in Dallas I did a one-man show about the life of Danny Kaye which I performed twice at theatre three and then they did a show called Carolina change and they asked if I would play grandpa stop Nick and I said you know I can't do Friday nights or Saturday matinees and they said we'll get you an understudy and then I got a
call actually Jack Calder the artistic director who just unfortunately passed away he suggested to the director of so help me God which is a an obscure play he said would you be willing to play the producer because we think he was Jewish I said sure and then so the show closed at the end of the summer and that went like Sunday that Wednesday was Arab Russia fun so I you know jumped into doing I do the High Holidays at the legacy in Willow Bend and Michael Cerreta who directed me in the Danny Kaye show he called me Friday and he said how would you like
to play the George George Burns role in the sunshine boys and I said I don't know I said I can't look at the script until Sunday or Saturday night because that's as he said it's I said it's Yom Kippur he said oh that's right that's right he said well you have to make a decision and I have to add to discuss it with Jan and he Jan said okay and she wants you to bubble and I said by the way when does the show go up he said oh this coming Thursday so for somebody who's scared that he can't learn lines I learned the script
in five days actually the first preview was Wednesday night so orther I can't remember so I wouldn't mind going back into the back aspect of my life but I also teach at the J in Milton program I teach in the Gesher part of the Milton Program which are the electives that people choose to take after they finished with the basic course thank you the city of Dallas changed since you've been here well I would say they're more accepting of my sexual orientation before when we got here you know the rabbi said play it down rabbi Roseman who was the senior rabbi at the time said
everybody knows but you don't have to throw it in their face so we said okay when I retired at my final service on May 31st I think everybody I think the rabbi I think the assistant rabbi I think the educator and I think my best friend and I looked at the congregation and I said Jan who is my husband they all broke into applause it was unbelievable because my first year here when campus wrecker was being installed at his temple he came to my installation he invited me it is I got to anonymous phone calls saying you should not be on the Bema you have
no right being on our bhima and if you go on the bhima i will walk out of the sanctuary so I went to the rabbi and I said you know is this the attitude of all of your congregants and he said no you welcome to come here you and your partner anytime you want to so that's one thing that I've seen you know the the Jewish as a professional Jew you're kind of you don't have much time to go on the outside of Jewish life the synagogue we do I mean we had opportunities to go to the theater but to experience Dallas in its fullest
was not so easy now we're enjoying kLYDE Warren Park Aurora is coming back in October this year which is the outdoor installation and of course we saw the building of the Winspear and the Wylie and so we've been very active theater goers as well culturally I think Dallas has made a lot of strides yes yes oh absolutely the Nasher Sculpture Center opened when we were here so when we have a commitment ceremony here we told everybody you must go to the Nasher Sculpture Center because it just opened it is you know put the art the art part of Dallas the cultural are on the map
because there were people from all over the world important people who came to see what mr. Nash had collected what are you personally most proud of anything or a couple of things I think the level of performance for the youth choir just kept building and building and building and I loved loved working with them I loved choosing music and I always try to find the most contemporary music that would speak to them that they would enjoy doing Bar Mitzvah kids I just enjoyed every week watching the kids take their place in the adult world of Judaism in closing is there anything else you can think of that you'd like to add to this well Jan and I have been very fortunate we enjoy all the members of the congregation we enjoy the friends that we've made here in Dallas we live in a home that we probably couldn't afford anywhere else it's interesting because people have said this is what said to us so where do you want to move to which we both say what are you talking about we never really discussed it nor do we wanna move anyplace else we're very lucky to be here thank you thank you so much for doing this you're welcome with me you