Doris & Sol Freed
Sol Freed was born in Dallas at St. Paul's Hospital and grew up in South Dallas, where most Jewish families lived. His father came from Ukraine and his mother from Poland; his father had been a cabinet maker in Europe, a trade that led to the family furniture business, beginning with a small used-furniture store on Canton Street and later in the Deep Ellum area. Sol grew up on Park Row and South Boulevard, attending City Park and Lamar schools and Forest Avenue High School, forming friendships that lasted a lifetime. Doris was born in 1931. Her father came from Volkovisk and worked in the produce business after arriving in Dallas, while her mother's family, including her grandfather who served as a rabbi, eventually settled in Galveston. Doris grew up in the close South Dallas neighborhood near Temple Emanu-El, describing it warmly as a shtetl.
Doris and Sol met when she was 13 and he was nearly 16, at a birthday party where they walked home holding hands. After a period apart, during which Sol attended Texas A and M and Doris worked at Page Boy Maternity, they married in September 1950 in a wedding arranged in a single week so Sol would avoid the draft. He was nonetheless drafted, trained at Fort Sam Houston and elsewhere, and served in Korea, where his business background led to a clerk's role. While he was away, Doris helped run the family furniture store and set up its bookkeeping. After the war they bought a small house in the Walnut Hill area for twelve thousand five hundred dollars, where their only son, William Allen Freed, known as Billy, was born. In 1963 they built a larger home in Northwood Hills, where Sol's parents lived alongside them in a three-generation household.
Sol built Freed Furniture Company into one of the oldest continually operating furniture retailers founded in Dallas, working alongside brothers Joe and Bernard and brother-in-law Aaron. He left day-to-day management in 1995, passing the business to his nephew, though he remained active well into his eighties. The Freeds were involved in Jewish community and synagogue life; Doris was confirmed at Shearith Israel and volunteered with organizations including Hadassah and the American Cancer Society, while Sol quit smoking after his son challenged him. Their son Billy became a devoted horseman and businessman in San Antonio, raising two accomplished sons, Russell and Tyler. For four decades the Freeds have hosted their son's fraternity brothers for a beloved Texas-OU weekend gathering. Reflecting on their lives, they pointed to integrity, happiness, and enduring friendship as their greatest legacy.
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Full Transcript
hey and we are recording okay so i am deborah polski i'm here today with doris and saul freed uh doing their oral history in their uh home at the bonaventure and today is thursday july 7th 2016. so if we could start by having you each tell me a little bit about your family background where they came from how they came to dallas what you know about where they lived and how they got here why don't you start talking my father to my knowledge came from the ukraine and my mother came here from poland i had i i don't remember a lot we never really talked about it very much but uh we grew up in south dallas in the area where today the city hall is and it was my father was a cabinet maker with his trade in russia and that somehow
led to the furniture business we started out with a little used furniture store on canton street which is that area in my recollection he moved his store to what is now called deep ellum okay and what that really means is elm street in the west or the east end of the downtown area again he stayed in the had used furniture and it provided a living for myself a brother a sister and another brother all of whom have passed away other than me it's been a rewarding career for me because that's how i learned the trade since 1948 to this day i still am active enjoy
doing what i do wonderful did they ever talk about why they came to america what prom was there anything in particular that prompted them they did it was beyond my comprehension and i just didn't pay a lot of attention to it we grew up as uh [Music] as grateful americans okay and you were born in dallas i was born in dallas in saint paul's hospital we grew up in south dallas as most of the jewish families did right and we attended the same schools that most of the jewish kids attended what elementary school did you go to i went to the first school was called
city park school it was not far from downtown right in lamar school which was over again in south dallas and most people will understand their accurate stream okay then we when i was 11 or 12 we moved to park row which was in south dallas and that's when i developed all my friendships and do you remember the house number we lived on oh yes 3012 park row and then we moved to 3019 south boulevard one block one block over i lived there until that's when darce and i met and she lived about three blocks away on south boulevard i met her when i was 15
and she was 13. and we held hands from that time and still doing it i finished high school and attended texas a m and got drafted into the army in 1950 december the 7th and i went to the when the korean conflict was going on i was in the army in korea oh really i was fortunate that i returned we got married uh in december of the uh excuse me september the 2nd of 1950 prior to going into the army and we did that in such a hurry we did it in a week because the government said if you're married before a certain date you will not have to
be in the army so i was 21 she was 19 in spite of it all i got drafted made it home two years later and uh have been happily married ever since where were you where did you enter the army because you were were you still at a m or were no you were out of college after school got drafted here in dallas and i went to fort sam houston in san antonio and there was a bit of a conflict they somewhere down the line uh they they usually say write your last name first and your first name last somehow they picked up my name
as fred solomon and until they got that straight they kept me at fort sam houston and then they finally got that straight and they sent me to fort riley kansas for basic training and i was in the infantry i finished basic training we went to fort lewis washington and boarded the ship and went to inchon korea and disembarked and there i joined well i take that back trained in japan to going to to korea i was we formed an infantry company and then the whole outfit was transferred to korea by then because i had a little bit of a background in business they made me
a clerk and which was i'm grateful for that so after 21 months i rotated back to the united states and then it came time to come back to civilian life and darce and i bought a little house we paid twelve thousand five hundred dollars and i remember the payment was eighty three dollars a month it was a joyful memory and our first son our only son was born at that little house and his name his name is william allen freed and his name is billy and all of his friends and we only know him as billy and he's been a wonderful son and has given
us lots of precious moments and where was that house your first house it was in an area called walnut hill oh yeah near marshlane webb's chapel and uh and walnut hill lane there was a whole little area that was built around them we had some friends that lived nearby were there was there a lot of jewish couples that lived in that area at that time there were quite a few but most of them lived further east around preston road in that area but it was a five-minute drive so it didn't matter a lot lived out in the casa linda area oh really that's where when
they came back from the second world war a lot of them bought out in the castle which was a little more like east yes east dallas correct but around the corner from us was bob and lois goldberg who now live in this building right so now all this time i started out in the used furniture business okay i had an older brother who joined in the youth furniture business he has since passed away and his name was joe we watched our business grow to the point where we brought in another brother and a brother-in-law into the business and their names bernard freed he was our
oldest brother and aaron clausner it was my sister's husband okay and we farmed freed furniture company and we had also sunny land furniture was part of the entity today uh i left the day-to-day business in 1995 and my nephew joe freak's son is now the proprietor and so the name has been around since actually the mid-30s i didn't start until 48. that's when we named the company freed furniture prior to that my father called it national furniture supply that's good and we never knew why we accepted it and then we were probably the oldest furniture retailer that started in dallas now there was a haverty's furniture but they're from atlanta right and other than that we're the oldest continually operating company and that element and a lifelong experience for me and even to this day i'm still learning but i have hundreds of friends and relationships as a result of the business and i get up i go to work every day and i'm grateful that i can that's great absolutely no so but she knows all the interactions so we're going to get to her very soon let me ask you another question so when you moved out to the walnut hill area what year was that 1952.
was that considered we built the little house 9846 bowman boulevard and was that considered like far away from where people were still living primarily it was far away from south dallas and this was the time in about 1950 when we married safeway came into south dallas on forest avenue they were going to build a safeway store south boulevard was one block north of forest avenue which is now martin luther king right when safeway bought the property on forest they also wanted all the homes on south boulevard because they wanted a parking lot over there and they bought up a lot of houses and a lot
of the jewish people sold and moved north that all fell through one of the houses was actually torn down other than that they all remained and that's now as historical section right south boulevard park row it's all uh has a historical sign on it back to bowman um that was when there were people who were just coming out of the army and needed reasonable housing and so that's when we bought this little house at 1200 square feet we had it furnish beautifully and we just enjoyed it so much and i remember putting in a window air conditioning and i said when we had the house
cool i said boy there's that 12 000 feeling and where were your parents were your parents still living in south dallas at this point my my parents lived with or my my father had passed away he had lived at golden acres but not at that time honey she's talking about we're back when we were on bowman and your father and mother still lived on south boulevard no they lived on pemberton they moved but that's where i was going oh so they moved north they moved north on a street called pemberton near hillcrest and creston road near northwest highway right our wall of hill lane anyway
uh my father passed away my mother uh my sister had a large home and it had some private quarters on the lower floor and my mother moved in with my sister and she was very comfortable and we got to visit frequently and when we built our larger home we were just three blocks away from her and where was that then it was on off of hillcrest and spring valley and it was uh what is it 7125 meadow creek oh yeah of course it's in a place called northwood hills and that's when we built the house in 1963 and we moved in when kennedy got shot
wow that day well actually we were coming back from a trip we were on an incentive trip to europe and we came back the day kennedy was shot oh my goodness and um our son when we built our home we built a home for my parents on the other side so there was a portico shay that separated our home from their home when we returned we found out kennedy was shot and of course the world was in a turmoil but our parents my parents lived with us till they passed our parents lived with us my mother lived with my sister it was kind of unusual
in those days because we were a sandwich family and in those days not too many people had their parents living with them but my dad was in the produce business got up at 4 30 in the morning my mom never learned to drive we tried when they moved from south dallas they moved to an apartment which is now over where most of the restaurants are on henderson knoxton okay there were a lot of apartments there and that's where they moved while we were building the home when they moved in with us it was how can i explain they had their privacy we had our privacy
and we were fortunate enough to have our son grow up with three generations again that was it was a gift i think to this day he cherishes the memory of his grandparents on both sides because his parents were actually they were on brookcrest which was a block and a half down not even three blocks so he could ride his bicycle to see his other grandparents grandmother his grandfather had passed away so it was quite unusual but very nice so tell me saul what do you remember being a kid growing up in what essentially is the downtown area and then south dallas having gone to the
high school and grade school that we did with all the jewish friends and as i say many of them are still friends today i was interested in sports and just having fun did you have to tell her that you were good you have to tell her you were good in sports all of us were good we just loved to play and enjoyed it and to this day i go to lunch every monday with there's five of us we all grew up in south dallas together we go to lunch and we reminisce do you remember this guy i remember when this happened and it's comforting to
have friends that are my contemporaries and all started from zero most of my friends i can't think of any of them that weren't somewhat successful in the business world i'm grateful that we've managed to to live our lives as comfortable as we had and as many friends as we still have our minds are still fertile enough that we can think and plan and go a couple of weeks ago have a son my son now lives in san antonio and when we go she drives wow why does she drive because she doesn't trust me [Laughter] so she drives there and back and i sleep wow that
keeps from having any arguments we enjoy that but we've had really remarkably good lives and still have as i say lots of close friends and we've gained lots of knowledge and we don't allow politics to enter into our lives to any great extent other than we shake our heads in amazement and we just try to make every day as comfortable as possible what about um religious life were your parents involved in the jewish community really never ever went to show my father always worked and for some reason my mother was busy raising her family it just wasn't a factor now i became more involved when
darce and i got married prior to that having moved to south dallas all of my friends went to hebrew school i would go to the hebrew school to play marbles that was a game where you used to shoot marbles and then we would play ball in the streets and uh they all were confirmed and they were bar mitzvahed and everything i never went through confirmation nor did i go through my lips can i interject a little bit absolutely dave freed who was his father was educated in europe as he told me too much he became an atheist that was his way of rebelling against all
of the religion that he couldn't accept so he had a strict religious had a direct religious education in europe and obviously it turned him off completely that's the reason that the boys and pearl were not subjected to any type of religious education so i thought you should have that a little bit of background and that that is very common also in our early upbringing we lived in non-jewish neighborhoods where so we weren't exposed if anything i had guys and they said come go to church and i would go to the church not having any idea what was going on but i went uh also a
little bit of history there there was an organization called the arbiterine right which i assume you've heard of yes and that was comprised of mostly people from europe who believed in communism believed in communism and believed that the american structure wasn't the way it should be at that time a lot of dave and eva's friends belong to that group of people and i'm sure you've heard many other they also had a school yes the arbiter rings show absolutely where uh a lot of the south dallas jewish kids went go ahead i thought yeah that's thank you for adding that because a lot of people don't
realize that a lot of the people who came from europe came with that socialist exact mentality and and um they were happy as it sounds like your parents were to be in america and felt very strongly raising four children she had her hands full and she was a businesswoman for whatever it's worth i would remember in the middle of the night i would hear this it was her chopping noodles to make noodle soup and she was up at all hours doing that so her kids would be fed properly but she also if they had an extra room in the house she would take a border
she did a lot of things in order to make life good for those kids and especially for pearl because pearl was the only girl and she wanted pearl to have the best the boys kind of offended for themselves and did okay there was a salvation army what would you call it well it was a gymnasium that was run by the salvation army and that became our place to go to play sports kept them off the street softball field and they had a basketball court and i think they might have had a swimming pool i think they did i remember anyway that's where we would congregate
and you say salvation army you don't think jewish right but we were there and that's where we learned i would say that the salvation army was the salvation for him because he was able to stay off the street stay away from those people who were not very well trained because sports became his complete outlook on life i'm going to do this look forward to doing and by that's how your time was spent right and that's where i learned how to compete and play and enjoy that youthful time in my life that's great did your family celebrate jewish holidays at all or uh or have we
like we're kind of new about it holidays but when i was a teenager i started going to the uh sheriff israel and for the holidays i would go and because that's where all my friends were right and my sister married a gentleman who was a chaplain in the army and uh so she became he used to do services in different cities and she became very much jewish and bi uh all of her children were very jewish but uh let's think my brother's kids they they were they grew up jewish well eileen was raised jewish and so those kids went to temple so uh all of
your nieces and nephews were raised all that next generation was great so they made their way they were all well educated they all finished college they all have good lives and which is probably exactly what your parents wanted when they came to america to to see that happen for the next generation and absolutely the generations after all right so now let's hear a little bit of doris's story tell us about your grandparents and parents and where they came from and how they got here and my father came from a town called volkovisk which is still existing i actually was given a picture this week from
somebody who went there his father had a grain mill that was outside of bulk of this and his father died when he was young and his mother was a bala bust no other way to say that the boys who went to hater from volkovisk and neighboring little stettles would have to pass my grandparents grain mill because the hater was on the so if the weather was bad my grandmother would keep those boys overnight and feed them and see to it they had warm clothing and and they would go the next day to hailer cater on the way back they would also stay my parents uh
back up a little bit my father became very close to the goldman and the shep's family in europe because these were some of the boys that went to hater i think the goldmans were from a town called zoblin if i remember correctly and that was close and my father actually came to this country with julius coleman julius goldman i forgot the other goldman's gentleman's name but i might have it but anyway um the reason my father came here well there were several reasons my father's brother's name was tevl and tevel had come to the u.s prior to and had gone back to europe we really
don't know why he met mr who had a bakery in dallas texas and at the time the union wanted to come in to the bakery and mr goldman didn't want to hire any union people so he went back to get boys to come to work in his bakery and so that was really one of the purposes my father came to the united states but when he got to new york my uncle got him a job in a factory as a cutter and then at night he went to school to learn to read and write and got his naturalization papers which he was very proud of
naturally i'm sure then mr schapps contacted him wanted him to come to dallas because he had some unmarried daughters that he wanted my father to meet my father came and as kind as i can put it was not interested in mr shepz's daughters but he wanted to stay in dallas and mr sheps lent him money to buy a horse and a wagon and some chickens he took his horse and wagons and went to carrollton and garland and all over and sold his wares and that's how he got in the produce business and that's how the families the sheps and the bearish and the goldman's families
remain close of the incidents from volkovisk now my mother's side my mother family was from a town called papalevi and the reason they were there is my grandfather america dollar schwiff was born with the name mergadot and when they were coming to get the boys to take them in the army there was a family named schweff who had no children they had a lot of money and so they took this child into their home and educated him so he took their name he took the name schwiff but he was actually born abrovsky and they educated him to become a rabbi my mother was a little
girl they moved a let me see how i can there was a forest and there were people that had that own this property and they would have their own rabbis shake it oil everything and that became my grandfather and it was called the sutter ranch whatever right and so this is where they stood it uh until he moved shishlovic which is now called swissla and swiftslap is in belarus that's where he got a little further educated you need for me to stop no we're good would you like a cold drink no i'm good you sure cookie something great anyway my mother was one of nine
siblings the older her oldest brother came to the u.s go to saint louis work with an uncle who was in the shoe the next brother came and learned the meat business in st louis then my mother was sent with her oldest sister and the reason my mother was sent as she said she was useless she was too old to be a baby but too young to take care of the younger one she was eight her sister was 18. her sister had learned to sew beautifully so she made her own truso she was of age to get married as my mother tells the story a horse and wagon came and picked them up with their trunk my aunt's truso and away they went and my mother waved goodbye to all her family not knowing if she'd ever see him again they got to where they paid an attorney to put them on the ship they got aboard the ship but the trunk never showed up so they were on the ship with nothing but the clothes on their backs and they had been they weren't in steerage they
were sent a first-class ticket by my uncle to get them there and the captain of the ship felt sorry for my mother so he would let her and my aunt sit at their table and they rustled up some clothes for both of them to get them to united states when they got here they went to ellis island and my uncle saint louis sent them passage to go to st louis and she's my mother and her sister stayed with this uncle and family until the older sister moved on to galveston my grandfather's sister who was abrovsky lived in houston they knew of people in galveston who
needed these people to come so maurice levine and becky levine went to galveston my mother stayed in st louis went to school there and then she left there and went to galveston with the rest of the family so my grandfather my grandmother and all of the siblings wound up in galveston texas wow one the second oldest son his name was hyman schwiff a very successful in the meatpacking business in galveston the the oldest daughter who was becky levine married maurice levine the oldest son was alfred schwiff and he married neddy schwiff they all lived in galveston the younger sister to my mother was lil borowski
and the younger one to that was sophie robinson and then there was another boy whose name was erwin whose son was just here two weeks ago so we were very close knit family and my grandmother my grandfather died uh i had the day somewhere here that i'll tell you when he died he was a rabbi at what was to ferath israel but it was on cedar springs there was a little in fact i think there's a mug and david still on top of that little church if they hadn't torn it down it was on the corner of cedar springs across from where page boy built
there um that became a church that's correct but they never took the star off i think it was still there unless it has all hispanic neighborhoods my grandfather died march 1927 which was right before my brother marvin was born in june of 1927. i digress anyway that's how they got here all of them and then how did your parents meet my parents met because i'd like to read you what my father said read if i had this excuse me bless you well i don't have it on there but he met a lady had a shade-a-long so he knew she was jewish and he asked her if she knew any pretty women and she said i know so and so and so my father and my mother and another couple double dated and my father said to my mother how many times did your last boyfriend call you and she said
at least once a day he said well i will call you at least twice a day so and my father was a romantic and the way he proposed to my mother was he bought her a box of candy and he had the candy people put the ring inside of a piece of candy and wrap the box back up and give it to my mother who was fortunate enough not to break her teeth risky business and i will tell you that there was never a valentine's birthday or anniversary that my mother didn't get a box of candy they had a lovely relationship did they meet here
in dallas and in dallas absolutely when he was in the produce and they bought a little house at 1920 south which was down the street from the first temple emmanuel a lot of jewish people lived there and they lived there until i was born in 1931 and they bought a house at 2708 south and they lived there till they moved till they moved with us on meadow creek and on the block next door to us was henry s miller next door to him was a family named bulman and he was what honey they made men's clothing i know but wasn't he a sheriff or a
i don't know anyway next door to the bulmans was the goldbergs that was herbert goldberg's parents okay next door to them on the other side i don't remember who lived in that house then the clans from lynn's can lived on the corner of south boulevard in oakland oh okay across the street from them were the goitels they had a thai manufacturing company which my aunt ethel who was the second oldest worked for next to them was lawrence miller who was henry s miller's cousin and he was married to a non-jewish woman so the only reason i mentioned that she was one of two non-jewish people
that lived on this block then there was the ackermans then there was the wiles w.y.l and then there were the goodmans and mimi aronoff who was mimi goodman lives in this building now next door to the goodmans was the he was in the insurance business uh and he killed himself on the front steps and i'll think of his name in a minute gosh uh very interesting can't believe i haven't heard that story before not then there was a family called fetching back they lived on the other side of myrtle and then there was helen and max rudy whose daughter is marilyn sweet who lives in
this building wow okay she and i have been friends since i was four months and she was born and she doesn't let me forget that i'm four months older uh the brom bergs live next door i have my wife's fellow live down on the car oh they wise bought the clan's house that was um where i'm going the other way toward where uncle saul lived anyway we all lived in the shtetl we just didn't know what a stetle was when it came time for passover rosh hashanah yum kippur all the men went to show all the women cooked and all the children went outside and
played we'd all be outside then when the men came home we went to our respective homes and had our service and that was my life so temple was sort of at one end half a mile away and cherith israel was on what was not padress pocahontas okay so that was a little further that was north and then to pharah to pharah israel later built a built on grand avenue where the the highway comes from oh right right right yes an artist right and gallery now that's correct on the corner of south boulevard and it's at atlanta there that's where the seagulls lived they had seagulls
liquor they lived on that corner the glaciers next block had the glaciers and the rachovsky's you know it was he talks about all of our friends that were jewish at the high school which they were but the high school was probably comprised of maybe 25 jewish we had gentile friends we just didn't interact because i didn't because i had so many cousins right and so many friends in the neighborhood but i had gentile girlfriends that i would go visit i actually do not remember any of my gentile girlfriends coming to my home and i don't know why but i remember going across oakland bridge to
the home of a little girl whose last name was lamb and the reason i remember that is she died very young and it was my first experience with death i had many gentile girlfriends but i don't ever remember them coming home with me which is so strange to me so your family it sounds like was more involved with the uh synagogue which we absolutely and what synagogue did they belong to started out in them okay the tama torah that was attached to a good azakam is my father gave a lot of money to make sure that that was built in those days as did other
people i stayed there in sunday school until it was time to be confirmed we joined sheriff israel and i was confirmed at sheriff israel i was 13 when i was confirmed in those days right as i explained to you earlier there was mr levine had a hebrew school on park row which is where most of the boys my brother's age who was four years older than i got their jewish education as well as the tamatore and the hebrew schools my brother taught bar mitzvahs when he was 15. so you can tell how educated they were it was it was an interesting way to grow up and a lovely secure way to grow up i would walk down to meet my friends the wilds had a granddaughter who was a friend of mine that lived across the street from him so what was that address on south 3019 i was 2708 so let's say three and a half blocks i would walk at night 10 o'clock at night we would study i would walk home with no fear can't do that today no not anywhere not anywhere unfortunately i grew up with a lot of good friends that
we still have some have passed away we've both been fortunate in that respect what else can i tell you were your parents active in the jewish community as far as organizations or the synagogue you know where did they um no my mother was not capable of doing that my brother was very active in everything you can name from boy scouts to everything else as a youngster i was in all of the things that were available to me in those days of course the war was going on and i will tell you that the millers next door had a son named jack and as you saw
in the movies when the boy came on the bicycle with right the telegram i can remember that to this day and mrs miller screamed i shall never forget that scream and that woman was never the same after that and her daughter carmen you didn't explain he was killed uh carmen miller became a psychologist and a very noted psychologist in dallas and stanley marcus also lived in our neighborhood right forest avenue high school produced a tremendous amount of not only brilliant young people but successful people leaders leaders in the community uh and there probably were not more than two or three teachers in the school that
had master's degrees our camaraderie well we were first generation americans right and education was number one that's all there was to it success was out there if we could and i remember when i was a little girl which was most unusual my father when i was six told me honey you can do anything you put your mind to and i believed him i guess i was a feminist at six he's done you well now so you all grew up in the same but didn't really know each other early days would you like to know how we met i would there was a family called ab
ablen that lived on park row right their older daughter joy was about to be 16. she had a sister named marlene who was my age joy had a birthday party in her backyard in those days she set up a victrola and we danced in the yard marlene was allowed to invite one of her friends which was me and we walked home and held hands and i felt something i had never felt before so that's how we met and how we became sweethearts i was 13 he was about to be 60 and uh he would come ride his bicycle at the time you lived on ackerd you were well i didn't live on that because i lived on pearls i'm pearl excuse me he would ride his bicycle over and it was a far peace with about a 10 mile wow right and we would sit and talk and then my father decided i was too young to have a steady boyfriend so they ran him off but my mother said to him you can come back when she's 18.
and he did but i won't ask what you did in the meantime well i'll tell you we both had different boyfriends and girlfriends which was in retrospect very healthy and he went off to a m and um i went to smu for a minute when i graduated high school my father had arranged for me to go to the university of texas in the scottish rite dormitory because he was a mason and a shriner he unfortunately went through a very bad financial time and i'm going to tell you why during the second world war there was what was called the office of price administration and it
was responsible for the produce and they had men that would come and buy produce for the army and obviously they weren't very honest and they would tell my father you sell me number ones but sell me number twos but charge me for number ones grade wise right my father was in the war in the first world war and was a very patriotic american and he said i can't do that so they went to the next person right so consequently my father's business tanked wow so the reason i tell you that is we never discuss money in our home he always came home we had dinner
at six o'clock everything was peaches and cream i had heard from a neighbor that my father lost his money so there was no way i was going to go to the university of texas and put my father in financial debt to send me to college so two days before i was supposed to go i announced to my father i'm going to work well it was not well received so i did i went to work at an insurance company i had no experience i didn't know what i was doing but they trusted me to count their money which i did and uh i worked there and
i went to smu for six months and then my brother marvin married and lived in an apartment over there off of cedar springs near inwood there was a neighbor who was a good friend with elsie frankfurt who was head of page boy maternity and they saw me coming out of my brother's apartment and said would you like a job and i said what's the job and they said we're opening our new building on cedar springs and we need a page boy and i was a little bitty and they said i said what do i have to do and they said we'll cut your hair like
a page boy we'll dress you up and you'll welcome everybody coming into the new factory sure i said do i get paid and they said yes so i did i had this horn and they anyway i've seen the pictures of the page boy okay well if you saw the page boy that was me wow and um they opened the factory there was edna the older elsie who was really the brains and tootsie gartner who's still with us and um after the initial opening elsie became fond of me and said would you like a job inside and i said doing what she said running the switchboard
i said i don't know how i'll teach you so in two minutes i learned to do a switchboard so i did that three or four days later she said you look bored i said well all i'm doing is plugging and unplugging she said i have an a an extensive album could you categorize this i said yeah bring it so i had like i'm sitting here i had the switchboard and then there was a desk behind so i categorized all of her albums that took me two days i mean like her um memorabilia oh she had uh records uh what we call records and those stories
actual albums actual albums yes and an extensive uh first copies and what have you so i categorized all that for her in two days she said you're through i said i'm through what else have you got she said would you like to come and help me devise a perpetual inventory system i said sure they had stores all over and the way that they would find out what was sold during the day was hello new jersey what did you sell so she and i devised a perpetual inventory where we would make a mark and a cross and so my job and i'd had that job until
what happened with the army as he told you he and i were supposed to be in a wedding on september the 3rd he was a groomsman i was a bridesmaid the week before we were sitting out in front of our they announced if you're married by september 2nd you will not be drafted he says to me we'll be married by september 2nd that's next saturday i said i guess so so my dad got up at 4 30. i went in and i said daddy we're getting married next saturday he said to whom that was the first question the second thing he said was this is not like picking a bunch of bananas i said i understand but let me explain if he gets drafted and gets wounded or killed i'll never forgive myself and i'll never forgive you he said well how are you going to do this i said we'll make it happen he said well you know you'll have to have this and you'll have to have that i said don't worry i'll take care of it so i didn't drive i was 19
years old i was working at pageboy and my friend marilyn sweet called i said you'll be my bridesmaid my sister-in-law will be my maid of honor we'll get married next week she said where are you going to get married i said well i'm working on that so i took a street car downtown and i went to the adolphus hotel a little history for you in those days there was no market center you went to the bakery well i went to the adolphus first all of the jewelry people would come to dallas during labor day and they would set up their wares in the hotels and
that's a market oh that's how they would greet their buyers so all the hotels were booked labor day and here comes a 19 year old asking for a room sheriff israel was not available temple emmanuel was not available sure if israel was being built temple of emmanuel was not available because of the wedding that we were supposed to be and a little more knowledge i had had a date with her herb yarish was the rabbi at temple emanuel and i'd had a date with him two weeks before i went to the adolphus the man laughed at me and said little girl we have all of
these people coming in no way i went to the baker and i talked to this man and he said there's no way i said listen and i told him the story about this i said my father says we have to have all these people he says how many i see probably 300. he said do we have to serve food i said tell me what you can do and i'll work with you but we have to have a room he looked at me and shook his head and he said i'm going to try he said how about sweets i said that'll work that'll be fine i didn't care it didn't matter i said but my father says we have to have an orchestra there is no orchestra he says i said well we have to have a hooker do you know what a cuppa is he said yes i know what a hookah is god bless this man when it was all over he gave me a sterling silver knife which i still have a bread knife he said i shall never forget you i said i shall never forget you we had a wedding in a week my girlfriend drove me to abrams road where there was a bridal shop in those days i was probably a size three the smallest size was a size 10.
the woman took the dress and cut up the i didn't care my friend jerry epstein had jerry had just gotten married jerry eckman had just gotten she lives in this building now jerry ripstein she had just gotten married and she said doris i want you to wear my veil i said bring it off it was one less thing i didn't have to worry about my family baked cookies there were no invitations everybody called right and then my mother made announcements after we got back we got married and away we went so that's the story that's a wonderful story can you believe that's really something but
i will tell you things that are shared my mother was not one that could make a decision so it would have taken her about three years to make a wedding god bless her anyway what else can i and obviously you didn't inherit that no from her no i did um okay so you what did you do while he was away uh in in the war in the army i didn't know there was an elm street he left he said would you go help my brother and and i said i'll do what i have to do so i told paige boyd that i was gonna have
to go work in the furniture business so i went on elm street did what i have to do they had no bookkeeping they didn't have any records nothing so i said we need to have whatever and we set up bookkeeping his brother joe was there and his father who was eccentric and the winos were my friends i didn't know they were rhinos the street was comprised of jewish pawn shops resale stores people that fix shoes that whole block my father had friends who would check on he never would i give my parents credit for allowing me to do what i did with no interference and
i lived with them i took a street car home or else my brother-in-law would drive me home if he didn't have elsewhere to go right until elsie called and said i need you and i said i'll see i cannot come i'm here she said i'll pay you five dollars an hour that was a lot of money she said if you'll come work from four to eight in the evening i said i'll do it so i would leave take a street car and a bus and a streetcar to get to cedar springs and i would work with her from four to eight o'clock at night and
then i would take us a bus and a streetcar to get home at nine or ten o'clock at night and uh it was my way of life till he came home from the service i learned a lot from her and there were times that i would meet my friends we'd play bridge on the weekends there were i had a social life my family you know rallied around me uh i would correspond with him every day and uh that shouldn't keep any of that by i have all the letters we just got a batch of over 300 letters from edwin tych oh really and his wife
but who's also saved every letter i saved every letter not that i wrote but that he wrote me they said both really amazingly amazing and numbered them oh really mine's in a box somewhere i hope they moved them here i do too that's wonderful yeah i mean what a wonderful record and if you ever want to donate them we'd love to have i remember writing him and saying if we could clear a hundred dollars a day this would be a feat that would take care of all of us can you imagine but the fact that they grew from no from nothing and nobody gave him
anything to being successful they worked very hard i'm sure and he still does he gets up every morning and he schlubs furniture if he has to it's hard for him to ask somebody to help him and i'm very proud to be married to a man that wakes up every morning with a smile on his face he's happy and at 87 almost 88 and almost 85 were very lucky sounds like it our son is married to a wonderful woman who's an attorney but retired she's raised two incredible sons 121 and 118 nafas what can i tell you as you were raising your kids how were you
involved in the community i was with save a life league hadassah i worked a little bit for all organizations but i do remember what turned me off i remember working very hard for an organization to raise money that was very needed and i got a phone call from a lady who said i poured tea and i didn't see in the paper my name for pouring teeth and i said that's it for me so that turned me off of doing anything active in organizations i worked at the store from the time we were married for nine and a half years before our son was born so
i worked up until then and then after he was born i stayed home until he was about four that's when we moved into the house the new house he was four years old and then i went back to work there and i stayed 13 years i was fortunate enough to have help while i was working and then i quit i went back for lunch one day and stayed for a couple of years i enjoyed going to markets i enjoyed helping him which i still do enjoy he's not computer literate so it's honey would you look this up and honey would you make this invoice and
honey would you and honey loves to do it that's what we do now what prompted you to start looking into your own family history you know i was always a nosy child i think from the time i was very small i told you the family was very close and my mother would call my uncle al cousin out and i would say why do you call him cousin al and she'd say well we just started doing that and i think i became very nosy and as i told you my grandfather's original name was and changed to schwiff so that started me digging and that's when i
found out the story of how my grandfather was adopted and took the name also found out that three of my mother's siblings were married to first cousins and that was a shonda so that's why they never discussed but this was a common practice yes very much very common one of my uh my mother's second oldest brother was married to a first cousin and you couldn't do that so they went to kentucky they had a civil marriage in kentucky who was that this was hyman and lille from galveston and she was the cousin that my mother came to stay with in st louis that's how they
met when her brother was there in the meek business so then they had a religious ceremony after going to kentucky the second one that was married was the one that my mother called cousin al that was albrovsky and my mother's younger sister lil and they married and had a successful marriage had a son who was a genius and two grandchildren who were geniuses and the third was sophie and morris morris and sophie had three children one is since deceased marilyn the middle annette who is the one that i do the genealogy with who is brilliant and the youngest son is jay robinson who is a
judge in our city here and jay's married to laurie and they have three children and a lot of grandchildren so a lot of stuff that's great great stories if you could give a message we we hope we always hope your children and your grandchildren and other generations will view this someday um if you could leave them with some words of wisdom or some reflection on your own life what would you tell them let's let's let's all go first integrity when you say something make sure you live up to that and do the right thing and and then also pursue your endeavors where you put it
depends on what makes you happy when you were out of the room your your bride said that one of the things she loves most about you is that you wake up happy every day what do you attribute that to knowing that i haven't misrepresented or misled anybody or i don't have to shy away from relationships because i'm never going to do anything makes it difficult to be around people okay and what about you doris i think he put his finger on happiness i would want my son cheryl his wife and the two boys russell and tyler to know what they've always known from us is
that we want them always to be happy no matter what their pursuit is they should have happiness from that money i'm sure can buy you happiness some way being proud of yourself and doing your own thing is what makes you the happiest he and i have set an example that we hope the kids follow our son has he's a wonderful husband she's a wonderful wife and they are two marvelous parents to two great kids we tell them all the time how proud we are of them and that's what we'd like to leave a legacy to know that we so far are very proud of everything
they've done and i'm sure they've done some things as we have in our life that we might not be too proud of i know at the end of the day they're proud of themselves because we can tell anything else we've missed i'm sure there's lots more information and and a lot more stories some of this stuff wonderful and you can have it we'd be happy to have anything you want to share with us i'm sure that i've left out a lot of stuff but i've talked a lot i talked to a lot of these encounters do you do we currently have we're closing in on
600. starting from local they're all people who either grew up in dallas or have lived in dallas or have some connection you know may not still live here but we're here at the you know it's the first thing i learned in coming to work here and that's that everybody has a story anywhere everybody has that's right and even though you may not think your story's that interesting or that it's unique right everybody's story important and and meaningful and adds to the world and the knowledge out there what makes the world go round everybody is a little bit different and every story is a little bit different
we get a tremendous amount of pleasure out of watching and his friends and i will tell you this little story when our son went off to the university of texas when he graduated he joined a fraternity a zbt fraternity mostly comprised of jewish boys right and when they're 18 they think they know it all and so when texas oh you came about mom i'm gonna bring some boys home to stay if that's okay sure and i said why don't y'all have dinner here and in those days they had a formal dinner that they all went to and i said then you can go to your
party oh no we're going to go out and whatever i said well my advice to you is they'll overcharge you they will serve you poorly and the food will be rotten but go ahead and do what you got to do so they did three o'clock in the morning they're all coming in starving and i'm making breakfast for them i said how was the evening the food was terrible they overcharged us so i said well put this in your memory bank next year come here and have dinner and then y'all go on to your parties i said bring your dates and then go do what you
got to do well a month before i would query my son and say are y'all coming here for dinner i think so children at 18 are not specific right and i'd say can you give me some clue about how many might be staying here and how many might be for dinner mama i'll call you okay well ad nauseam i called again i think there's 25. i said that's fine how many will stay here i had no place for 25 boys right he said probably seven or eight i said that's great and i began to prepare the food he asked me to make which was lasagna that was his favorite make lasagna and a salad and appetizers mom will be happy i said fine no problem so i made lasagna for 25 and put it in the freezer two days before i said you want to give me a list of the kids so he gives me 25 boys and 25 girls and says i said that's 50.
he said well i told you it was 25 i said you did so i began to make and we got long tables and we turned our house into a restaurant that was 40 years ago and 40 years each texas ou we still have them and now they bring their kids and their grandkids and when we moved in here this is what they brought us look at oh my goodness that was the original voice that came to stay is that not wonderful honey you got to give her the card that showed that fabulous not fabulous now they're all kids approaching 60 they have children and now
their children come so i've got to tell you oh my goodness one of their children two years ago we were inside alfie meyerson who is one of our son billy's friends when i would serve appetizers in between appetizers and dinner we'd catch up for the year this one had a baby this one unfortunately lost parents so forth and so on alfie myerson puts his hand up and the university of texas ex's band comes roaming through my house 10 members of the band of the band and everybody looked at me and said doris you've outdone yourself i don't know what's happening i am beside myself his
daughter got engaged on our front porch and he had the texas x's 10-member 12-member whatever it was van come playing through the house we all bawled we all cried oh my nobody the mother of the bride didn't know just the father of the bride because zach had asked her alfie for her hand in marriage and they this is where they chose to get engaged was on our porch can you believe how wonderful and they just we just had lunch with four of them we feel like they're our kids and we're blessed to have them and i have to tell you they're all successful from the
day they came into my home i said you're a wonderful group of young men i can't tell you i recognize the bonding immediately if there's something the matter they show up they may not talk to each other for a month if something good happens there there if there's something bad happens they're one of the fraternity brothers had bad luck they all pitched in and had a bar mitzvah for his son that's friendship that's special it is it's friendship and it's doing the right thing that's these boys and so that's our legacy is knowing that we've had this kind of knockus from we only have one
son he could have turned out to be a rotten egg but when we go to san antonio and people greet us your belly's parents i mean there's no money that can buy that no that's just make him cry it's a truth it is so special and i love the fact that that they consider us what we consider them good people and that's what they are good people what a tribute to to your warmth and hospitality and love and love that you and i really have made them your family and they've made you their family they have they include us in all their simcas but we've
never crossed the line it's always been what they choose and how they live and we're just there to listen she's got seven girlfriends that she grew up with and they celebrate each other's birthday every year right and it's like we're just lost school girls last year june feldman oh yeah and harry and june feltman they have alan feltman is their son and debbie uh ravenna wentz is their daughter uh we lost june last year uh yeah as i said i thought everybody grew up this way and everybody had friends like this forever until i found out it was special what i have and what he
has and then when our son was lucky enough to have friends like this and the reason our son is in san antone when he graduated college he came to us and said how would you feel if i don't come back to dallas what we've always told you is go do what makes you happy and he said well i think there's too many relatives in this business i need to go do my own thing and i said i don't care if you become a garbage man but be a good one be proud when you get up every day that you collected that garbage right and he
said well i don't think i'm going to be a garbage man but i think i'm not gonna come back to and as much as we would have loved to see him here we are so proud that he went out and did his own thing and has been successful knock on wood he wakes up every day with a smile on his face because he's proud and now he's raising two boys they have more of security monetarily than we did but he's raised he i shouldn't say he and cheryl have raised these boys with responsibility and with direction and when i said i'm proud of them i
meant i am proud of them so you have a lot more notice to look forward to absolutely i can't wait one the older one is going to be a petroleum engineer it's a five-year course she's graduating in four years the young one is a what's that scholarship a national marriage scholar a national merit scholar and he as you know is going to vanderbilt but and our son is a jewish cowboy oh that's true i forgot to tell you that that's true he's a businessman when he made enough to buy a ranch he bought a ranch when he was 13 years old saul had a client
who had a ranch out here not so far now but in those days way far out where dallas was filmed right and he said to sally you think your son would like a horse and solly said you know what kid wouldn't like a horse but he didn't think the man was serious christmas day a six horse trailer drives up in my driveway and let's out of gray gelding on my drive and my son had hurt his leg playing soccer at uh saint mark's and comes out in a cast and jumps up on this horse and starts riding down the street and the man who drove
him there said the shoes are not right i said the shoes i thought he was talking about my kid he was riding on in the street in the front of our home right bareback uh anyway it was love at first sight so what am i supposed to do with this horse and he said i guess you better find a stable it's yours so the next day we went out and found the stable and gray who was the name of the horse boarded on midway road at a stable where the green hill school is north of greenhouse and billy would ride that horse up midway down
belt line there was nothing there can you imagine we're all so that was pre lbj that was 45 years ago 45 years ago wow and he fell in love with that horse and as compton citadel which was the salvation army was the salvation for him i believe that horse was the direction for our son we had to go every day and groom that horse we had to feed that horse we had to make sure that horse had a farrier to take care of its feet we had all that stuff that he had to learn well when he was 16 he wanted to buy a car
i didn't believe any 16 year old should have a car and i still don't but that's beside the point so he found a car he had been working at the store and had saved a bunch of money and said um i will tell you at the time i was chairman of american cancer society in north dallas in those days it was done where you had a chairman and then you had underlings and people went house to house collected money and then you brought them back well i smoked and i would show the film and go smoke in the restroom and come out and show the
film with people dying of lung cancer and when he decided he wanted to buy this car i said well here's the stipulation you got to pay for your own insurance you cannot buy a used car i threw every roadblock there was in front of him and he found a not a firebird what was it called underwear thunder whatever we go down and we buy this car and the man says how do you want to finance it was a firebird yeah but it was called something else but anyway he uh billy said i had the down payment and he said well how do you want to
finance it i said we're not going to finance it i'll take care of the financing on the way home we got in the car and what does a smoker lights up a cigarette and he's driving says to me put out that cigarette i said listen young man you're old enough to buy a car but you're never going to be old enough to tell your mother what to do he said i've been waiting all my life to tell you to put out that cigarette nobody will ever smoke in my car you have stunk up the car you've stunk up the house and he continued to rave
all the way from downtown dallas to our home i was ready to kill him i was ready to throw him out of the car and literally kill him that night a client of his had agreed to take over my position as chairman of american cancer society and i was thrilled to death they were coming so when we got home i said to him you can go to your room and study but when these people leave you and i are going to have a desperate conversation i don't care mom i'll never change my mind okay he leaves the man and his wife come and they smoked
and i smoked and the ashtray i kept cleaning the hamstrings long story short that's the last time i ever touched a cigarette i woke him up that night and he said i don't care what you say i'm never gonna let you smoke in my car and i thanked him from then to today who knows what would have been otherwise he was a pretty smart smart guy he hated it he hated it and yet he held all that in until it was his he bought that car and it was his to say he's now 57 and he's still riding he's still roping and doing cowboy stuff
he bought one ranch and then he bought another branch and uh he loves it that's his that's when he has the smile and his boys when they were little bitty were shoveling you know what we're out of the stalls and keeping the horses groomed uh on one of the ranches he had where the girls of 4-h would come and they would groom their horses and board their horses there and ride in the arenas and he was responsible for a lot of good stuff there his original horse gray when he was 16 and got this car he announced i can't afford the hoofs and the wheels
so i said what are you going to do with the hooks he said i don't want to give up gray so we had an apartment in a ranch that we owned in colorado that was our next door neighbor and he called and said i'll come down and get gray and bring him up to colorado which is what he did so we'd go up to colorado i think the thing the one sentence that our son said wrapped it up for us we had gone for a wedding and he was in black dress suit gets on the horse and he's gone we didn't know where in the
heck he went when he came back i said where'd you go honey he said just me and gray and god that summed it up that's it and that's been his i guess this is where he feels the most comfort is when he's on a horse but he's had some mishaps uh but he's had a wonderful experience of being a part of a group called the rancheros do you know them i've heard of them yeah in california it's a group of men you have to be asked to join and they're all cowboys uh they're bankers and lawyers the good part of that life is you can
be a ranch hand and you can be the owner of the ranch and there is no distinction everybody treats everybody the same it's just how good are you and so he's met all these people men shouldn't say people met all these men from all over the world and they congregate in california outside of santa barbara santa barbara he has friends that have planes and he has friends that pick up his horse and drive it out to california i said i've heard of shipping furniture but not shipping a horse but this is what he does in his spare time and he's met people from all over
and they've become wonderful friends as well as has he's kept his old friends and that's very important to us that he doesn't distinguish between the new friends and the old friends and sounds like he really learned the lesson find what makes you happy and hang on to those people that are part of your life that's a wonderful you know that's a wonderful lesson to have passed down and i hope the boys i see them learning they're just at the stage now and i see them learning uh the younger one as i told you spent his senior year in high school in varagosa spain it was
hard to let him go but he said he wasn't happy in his senior year there was nothing that was making him unhappy but he said he wasn't growing he didn't see where there was anything that he was learning that was making him happy so they let him go he was living with a family abuelia and yo the grandma and the grandpa right the family that he was supposed to live with was the daughter of the boya and she had a fiance and a son and he was supposed to live with them when the grandmother saw russell she said you come live with me and so
there was a grandmother and a grandfather that he went to that's wonderful and he's bonded with these people they text back and forth now what disturbed him was the grandmother did all the work and the grandfather sat and watched television he'd get up she feeded breakfast she'd be come up they had a restaurant and russell who is the younger one that was in spain started baking cookies when he was 12. and he gave the proceeds of his cookie baking to the homeless in san antonio and he continued to do that until he was 16 and 17 and then he had other things so that diminished he became a cook a chef and he's good so when he was they had a restaurant and the abuelia said to him one night you make a meal for us that you would have a barbecue in texas so he did he made him a barbecue meal and she just couldn't believe that this young man could do and serve and what have you so he learned a lot and he bonded with
these people that he'll have in his life for as long as he wants it right but uh so if you can tell i'm proud i am a little just a little i can tell i'm so glad he's home i would never tell him that but i'm so glad he's back in the usa right especially since what we saw with this young man solomon who went to go to school of course he was in college but still it's a chance you take right and uh thank god his was positive what else well is there anything that you think you want to share that we haven't talked
about you got 85 years and 88 years of old people my goodness we could do this and have plenty to talk about still have the fact that we're still vital and our minds still work we have so many good friends and life has been wonderful to us all right well i think let's end there that's that's a great way to end it i thank you so much well i thank you for doing this eventually we will get you a copy of this um and thank you for your time and for sharing this information i'm going to give you and tell you so you'll know