December 24, 2007

Donald Zale

Donald Zale grew up in Wichita Falls, where his father managed a Zale store, and the family later moved to Dallas in 1946. His childhood was shaped by the family business and by close ties to relatives across Texas, including his beloved grandmother, whom he fondly called Bubbe, and who learned to read alongside him as a boy. He recalled learning discipline and attention to detail by winding and pricing watches in the store from a young age, lessons in merchandising he carried throughout his life. He married Barbara, his partner of fifty-three years, and after a memorable blizzard-plagued move to Denver in the mid-1950s, the couple returned to Dallas in 1956.

Zale devoted his career to the Zale Corporation, working his way up from Saturday shifts as a teenager to leadership roles in acquisitions, real estate, financing, and international sourcing of diamonds and precious stones. He helped take the company public in the late 1950s and became its chief executive officer in 1971, a position he held until the company was sold in December 1986 following a years-long hostile takeover. He often marveled at the responsibility entrusted to him at a young age by family leaders such as M.B. and Ben, and he took pride in growing the company from about forty-two stores at the time of his marriage to roughly sixteen hundred by the time it was sold.

After the sale, barred from the jewelry business by a non-compete agreement, Zale found new purpose when Dr. Charles Sprague invited him to UT Southwestern Medical School, where he became chairman of a new referral hospital that became Zale Lipshy University Hospital, which broke ground in 1987 and opened ahead of schedule and under budget in 1989. He also became deeply involved in philanthropy, both earlier through the Zale Foundation, including support for Bishop College where he taught night bookkeeping classes and served on the board, and later through the renamed M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation, which he used to keep his far-flung family united in giving. He and Barbara raised their family within Dallas Jewish life, with children and grandchildren active at Temple Shalom and Temple Emanu-El, and Barbara long a volunteer in the Temple Emanu-El archives. He summed up his philosophy as protecting one's integrity, loving one's work, and giving back.

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