Dr. Gary Solomon
Gary Solomon's family had long Texas roots. His great-grandfather was born in Hempstead, Texas in the 1880s and later moved to Fort Worth, and his paternal grandmother came from St. Louis. His father was born in Fort Worth in 1924 and his mother in Dallas in 1929, attending Forest Avenue High School. His grandfather opened the Red Goose Shoe Store in downtown Fort Worth in 1935, a building that still stands as a historical landmark. Gary's father worked in the shoe store and his mother worked in support maintenance engineering at General Dynamics. Born in 1951, Gary grew up in Fort Worth with a younger brother, Hal, and a younger sister, Wendy, both of whom later lived in the Dallas area.
Gary attended McLean Junior High and Paschal High School and worked long hours in the family shoe store on Fridays and Saturdays. His family belonged to both Reform and Conservative congregations in Fort Worth, and he was active in temple youth groups and BBYO, along with community service projects such as feeding the poor and helping orphanages and children's hospitals. He studied science at the University of Texas at Austin, doing molecular research in biology, and married his childhood sweetheart, Razi, whom he had first known in preschool carpool. He went on to Baylor Dental School and completed a general practice residency at the VA hospital, before entering private practice in Dallas. He and Razi raised two daughters, Jennifer, a special education teacher, and Julie, a lawyer.
Settling first near White Rock Lake and later in Richardson and the Hillcrest and Campbell area, Gary remained active in the JCC, the American Jewish Committee, Torah study, and Congregation Shearith Israel. His signature contribution came during the late 1980s and 1990s, when he organized Alpha Omega dental fraternity's effort to provide free care to Soviet Jewish immigrants. Working with Jewish Family Service and using offices at Medical City Dallas on Sunday mornings, he recruited over 30 dentists, wrote grant proposals for laboratory costs, gave lectures to newcomers, and led a program to replace gold front teeth with white restorations to improve immigrants' job prospects. He continues to mentor and teach young dentists and to celebrate Shabbat and holidays with his family and grandchildren.
He also treasures family traditions, hosting Shabbat every Friday night and staying closely involved with his grandchildren Micah, Ellie, and Asher.
Full Transcript
CC today to hear the oral history of Gary Solomon and we're going to start by asking Gary tell me about your family where did your parents live where did your grandparents live where did they come from well they came from Europe and my great-grandfather was born in hempstead Texas back in 1880s 1890s and he migrated to Fort Worth Texas where he had his family there and my grandmother would turn off paternal grandmother came from st. Louis and my father was born in Fort Worth Texas in 1924 and he married my mother who was born in Dallas she was born in 1929 and Forest Avenue high school and she they were married before the migration from the south dallas to the north dallas and we lived in Fort Worth Texas where my grandfather opened a shoe store in 1935 it was called the red goose shoe store and it still remains there although it's not shoe store anymore but it's a historical landmark in downtown Fort Worth now and what about your parents what did they do for a living my father worked in the
shoe store and my mother worked in general dynamics and supported maintenance engineering for the Air Force and the general Namor's the contractor for the military and are you an only child your brothers sisters I have a brother Hal who was younger than me and a sister Wendy who is younger than me they both live here in the city how it works at a bank and Wendy my sister wendy is now retired and so you as a child you lived in Fort Worth and went to school there I went all through school in Fort Worth and we went to west cliff high school McLean junior high
school and Pascal excuse me mcclain junior high school and Pascal high school with the vast majority of the jewish population that we all did the same thing okay let's go back a second and you were born in what year nineteen fifteen nineteen fifty k and when you were on in school what kind of activities etc where you're interested in I always liked science and math and sports that's what I did and I was just active in various organizations and enjoyed those quite a bit we played baseball I was on baseball team and we enjoyed it being a good time and footwork it was fun what
was the neighborhood like where he lived in the neighborhood was a middle-class neighborhood and we all knew each other we played in the streets together we played in the neighborhoods together my bicycle to school and we played we played a lot that was a fun time to play the this was when I grew up there were really no malls and the big activity was downtown for work and certainly I as soon as I was able they put me to work in the few store and I would go down on Friday after school and saturday we would work until nine o'clock Friday night and on Saturdays
we'd come down and be open the store at 8 30 or nine and we stay there till nine it was an easy 12-hour day for us easy all right what about Jewish affiliations during your childhood did your family belong to a synagogue we yes we belong to both of them and there was a reform temple beth-el and a conservative ahava Suliman we were we were both of them and I was a member of Temple youth and I was a member of us why we also belonged to the Trinity community center info worth of which we released you know we had a lot of fun out
there we stayed there a lot I was very active in bbyo as well and you know a lot a lot of community service organizations a lot of projects and you know a lot of activity it kept is quite busy we liked it mm-hmm and did you go to Hebrew school sunday school we did we went to Hebrew school at how I Sholem and at one point we switched over to Temple and we finished up our sunday school education to Temple and what interactions did your parents have with the Jewish community I remember that my mother used to bake a lot it seemed that that was
a very popular thing to do the ladies would go down and cook for shabbos and major holidays and she would cook a lot they would make sandwiches for the poor I remember and mostly those kinds of things I don't remember a lot but we celebrate certainly celebrate all the Jewish holidays decorated the house for Hanukkah and sofas and so forth and we had a you know that's that's what we did and what kind of interactions did you have with the broader community I would say that most of our interactions were associated and strengthened through our Jewish we started in our Jewish roots and branched out
in various projects to the community whether it was feeding the poor or going to one of the orphanages that was one of our pet projects or finding toys for the Children's Hospital most of our interaction with the general community was through our community projects through our Jewish organizations and how about in high school what kind of things did you like to do I'm goodness we continued our sports and we continued our projects basically BBI bbyo became a very important part of our life as we all could drive in high school and and we did we drove all over and you know I remember picking up
the younger members because they couldn't drive and bringing them to projects into meetings and so forth and that's what I remember and I was there a lot of contact between the people in Fort Worth and the people in Dallas at that time well that's an interesting question there was a lot of rivalry between the leaders of Fort Worth and leaders of Dallas we had family in Dallas so we would come a lot I remember that to go shopping in footwork you did not have to dress up to go shopping in Dallas you didn't have to dress up a little bit more I went off to
college in 1969 to the University of Texas and when I returned when I graduated and came back to Dallas to go to dental school there was new terms that I hadn't heard before like Metroplex when before I left the fort worth television stations who would not have reporters in Dallas and vice versa but now they all had reporters in each other cities and it was one big metropolis when I came back is an interesting evolution and what what were your interest in studying on you were in college science physics chemistry and biology that was my impetus to get into no school and I did research
I did molecular research in the biology department and had a laboratory and that's that's where I studied I was married when I was 20 so I didn't really have to worry about a lot of social things I could study a hot and that was very helpful well go back to that in a minute what made you decide to go to dental school I knew that I wanted to be a doctor when I was young and that and i think my childhood dentist was as was a role model nice gentle person always took care of people and I think that was in the back of my
mind so you went to dental school immediately after right I went through UT Austin about three and a half years and got into baylor dental school and i just came right from austin to dallas and Rosie my wife Razi got a job with the disd he is a teacher and it was really fun we could we could really be if he got a job in the administration building which was very close to the dental school so we could actually get by with one car back then and save money was a lot of fun back there and so I got their dental school in three years
and I got a residency in general practice at the VA hospital and that was fun and it just continued that the things that I love which is science and chemistry and blindly you know those kinds of things okay now let's go back to their work more the interesting stuff how did you meet your wife well that's an interesting story actually we were at a carpool together in preschool and four and you know as through you drift apart because and I just remember her from back now in junior high in bbyo days is when we got back together and started dating and it just blossomed from
there and so we were childhood sweethearts we stayed together in college got married I was still in college when we got married and that's how that's going to spend together ever since that's right and when when were you married in we were married in Fort Worth Ahava Shawn it was it was a large wedding and let's see we will celebrate our 40th anniversary here this summer and you know just it just flies fast so you were married in okay yeah 72 71 71 71 okay a math is not my strong point and do you and Rosie of children we have to we have two children
we have our oldest is Jennifer Jennifer a very special social very social child as we grew up if you were at a party or a function and they have children there she would be holding these children so Jennifer grew up to be a special ed teacher and she's here she's married she has two children of her own and you know she's a special chama his second daughter is Julie and as a young child she would argue with me when we play candyland now her arguments were well-founded so I let her win and Julie grew up to be a lawyer so Julie's here she has one
child and let's go back you were in dental school anywhere in Dallas and you just want you decided to stay in Dallas or did you want to go back to Fort Worth what happened there ok as we went through dental school and as is the graduation loomed closer and closer we decided that we like Dallas we and it's close enough to our parents in Fort Worth that we decided to stay in Dallas the residency helps cement that decision by because that was here in Dallas also and so we stayed in Dallas and I got a part-time job during my residency and after that I just
transitioned into private practice and just kind of flowed isn't very very smoothly and where did you live when you first moved to Dallas let's see when we first moved to Dallas we lived near near the White Rock Lake area because it was kind of close to the dell school he could shoot down I think one of the streets down there it was a beautiful area to to walk around also and most of the time we were down area apartments to you know various compartments and things like that well after that when you open your own practice after that I we move we bought our first
house in East Richardson can't really recall the date 78 or 79 something like that and there was a lot of Jewish people over there there was pockets of large Jewish community I was always important to us to stay within Jewish communities and we were acted the JCC our kids were active they had a got on the Cultural Arts Committee here at the JCC and we had this very small budget and I remember they got a new head of cultural arts here and he had grandiose ideas and that he told talked to me about them and they was Richards almond I said sounds like a good
idea let's do this so we increased our budget from I think a thousand to about ten thousand dollars and we brought a great if we brought Israeli singers and dancers in and we had a it was a really it was a big push and it was a very successful program here and when your children were growing up what was the Jewish community like in Dallas I think that it was it was a fun group for us we have a lot of friends my kids like i said earlier burst socially had a lot a lot of friends and julie started at solomon schecter school and transferred
after about the third grade to public school jennifer was the solomon schecter school hadn't really gelled yet since she was mostly in public school again they were very social a lot of friends and they stay very active who is really I think both of them liked their childhood they had a lot fun with their childhood and we we had moved from East Richardson to near hillcrest and Campbell roads which was another big Jewish area and they could walk to school if they wanted to and they all went to Bryn field elementary school which so many of the kids did and park hill elementary and Pierce
high school so they they had this big group and they all went to school together and I mean it was it was a fun time and about this time was the beginning of the migration of the Russians out of former Soviet Union to the United States and I know you were active in that movement and do you want to tell us a little something about that sure in in the late 1980s about 1986 1987 the soviet union announced that it was going to allow Jews to lead and they started trickled in at first in Dallas we saw small groups and the community really sprang into
action try to resettle them congregation sheriff Israel had their own resettlement program back in those days then in 1989 about september-october the groups became larger and the waves came faster in the 1990s in early nineteen ninety the floodgates really opened the thousands and thousands of Soviets came into our country and they really came all over the world and instantly dentist and physicians and other professionals spring into action to milk resell them alpha omega is an international dental fraternity and the local dallas chapter sprang into action i was handed the responsibility to organize this effort and what we did we triaged hundreds and hundreds of people
we we sought out offices in medical city dallas we used the officers weinberg dr. Jenn Reisman dr. kevin mcbride I had found over 30 dentists who were volunteered to help treat these Soviet Jews as they came over here we triage to the Jewish Family Service was fantastic they brought busloads of soviets here they had translators and transportation and I organized a series are a system by which we prioritize the need there del need and as we work them through the system and on those Sunday mornings we used Sunday mornings because the medical city dallas was almost a vacant but we were sure we sure filled it up when we were there and and after well interesting story a side story a the the
journalists or service would provide us with translators and so we could translate with the folks I had assigned to me a teenager who spoke beautiful English and during the time she was very interested in the x-rays and what I was doing and so forth so I asked her parents if they would let her come work in my office when they got settled and so they did so her name was Masha soponda pop she came to work for me in my dental office Masha after a time went on to become a registered dietitian at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School later she applied to Baylor
dental school became a dentist and share her office is still here in plano but that was an aside going back to the resettlement and to the triage of medical city after we had done all that we start I have rotations of dentists and so as the need came up and we would rotate to the dentist that your family service would provide transportation it became obvious that we needed more money for laboratory working so i made a i wrote grant proposals and the zal foundation was fantastic as they responded each and every time to my request and as these folks came in the the dentist all
provided their work for free they're their offices were for free but they need some extra money to pay the lab laboratory bills and so the self induction was was fantastic for that next I gave lectures to the jewish family service to the immigrants as they came in and interestingly enough one of the most common questions was do we need to boil the water here in Dallas before we brush our teeth or before we drink with it or eat with it and it was an interesting time there the next thing that came up was that we recognize that Soviet dentistry was inferior to ours and we
had to overcome a lot of that we also discovered that they put gold in the front teeth and this gold work was limiting their abilities to get jobs and get well-paying jobs and so what we did I organized the next program to remove the gold from their front teeth and put white in their teeth so that they can get better paying jobs and get integrated into the society little easier and so that went very well too now it's 2011 and the Soviet immigration experience is behind us the Jewish dentist of alphamega really stand now assisting the Jewish Family Service in any way we can we
still treat anybody they send us for free and we take care of them currently there are people who have it I live their money and outlive their savings they still have needs and so behind the scenes we still take care of them has the current economic situation affected that as well it has actually affected dramatically we have seen a bit of an increase there was a low prior to 2008 and after when the recession hit in 2008 we started to see more and more of this and people are living longer and they're running out of their money so we step up to the plate and
like I say behind the scenes we just take care of the home and that's that's kind of a short history between 1986 and 2011 Dallas Jewish dentist right and um have have you been active in other organizations in Dallas as well yes I have over the years I have been involved with the JCC and their synagogue I have been involved with American Jewish Committee have been involved with studying Torah I mean all these years at the various congregations and you know went to Israel with with one of the one of the tours and we stay we stay active and you're a member of currently remember
of a congregation share with Israel we have a hawk of about 20 of us that we have been together for goodness i would say over 20 years now and we have monthly or more meetings and these meetings and it's a fascinating the way they put the harbor us together through the synagogue because they grouped us together by our children's ages the commonality of the group was our children and that has sustained the group for all these many years and there there's another there's a couple of other habra groups and and we have meetings together and now there's a melding of the groups and and it's
nice because there are there we still continue the things that I did in high school about making food for the poor we still do that as a group even today as groups in making sure LACMA know baskets and taking it to build an acres and so forth so we're still we still find ourselves involved with the community and now you've been kind of a mentor than too many of the the dentists in the area how do you conduct that role well I I love to teach and I volunteered in the Graduate department at the dental school and I teeth don't have taught down there and
I was on the admissions committee for the dental school and I really like to mentor I like to teach I like to encourage I like to provide energy into an organization and I mean I still do that people come to me and it's just fine I've been on the board directors the Academy of General Dentistry and various organizations I stand ready to help whenever I can and now that the Soviet era has more or less pass do you have any feedback again from how all this is going 20 years later um I see people periodically that I helped over time and it's fun to catch
up to find out what they're doing now and how they have integrated into American society how they have their children have grown up and how their children have married and some of them are still my patients currently and it's just it's the cycle of life as we just keep going and going and helping each other tell me about your family today today we have my parents have passed away my father-in-law has passed away my mother-in-law it remains with us we have her at the legacy and we see here every day the children's my daughter's see her most every day and we bring the grandchildren up
I mean this is part of the cycle of life that we have to keep going and we have shabbos at our house or one of the kids house every Friday night and it's something we have maintained since they were little and I think I don't know whether shabbos keeps us or we keep shabbos but that's it's a tradition that we keep going and we celebrate all the holidays and that's is that that's that's what we do tell me about your grandchildren oh goodness um the oldest is Micah he is currently seven years old very athletic very bright kid and I used to pick him up
every Friday afternoon from his school and we wished it for my guests from when he was about 18 months till he's about five or six years old and we would go to the mall and I would talk to him and we would play games together and it was a really it was a neat bonding experience that we had and he now plays soccer and he plays computer games and he stays very active his sister is Ellie and she's a delightful girl who was just now following in her brother's footsteps and soccer and sports and so forth and she he's a fun kid she's like her
mother very social always excited full of energy she's like she's a great little child as well and julies got one son Asher who is two years old both of the Levine academy at solomon schecter and he's picking up in their footsteps to explain basketball and soccer and it's it's really a lot of fun to watch these kids playing charians oh and sure you and as you were developing your career did you have role models I had a lot of role models actually and I I selected them maybe my role models began i think is my teachers at school the ones i found qualities and my
teachers that my rabbis that I admired and I picked out certain qualities mostly from my teachers that I admired business leaders I remember when I was goodness I probably was nine or ten years old and my mother came to me she said vice president lyndon johnson's going to speak in my office tonight would you like to go and so asked him why sure so I went and I don't remember what he spoke about because they rather dry for a nine-year-old but afterwards I went up in this big looming person he's a giant of a man and he shook my hand and however nine-year-old shakes hands
was very meek and timid he said son let me show you how to shake a hand so grab my hand and grub that he said this is how you shake a hand and it was an experience that I have never forgotten so it was a lot of you know magnificent moment and what are you most proud of that you've done oh I would say I'm most proud of my children the way of my wife and I have created environment for my kids that they can grow and expand and develop their own gifts and talents and they have and I think I'm most proud of that
because that took 24 hours seven days a week 365 days a year of working you know you can never let up I think I'm second most proud of my grandchildren because I do the same thing for them as tired as I maybe if they ask me to get up and play or something I get up in play because it's important to be involved and active with their lives and continue to be a role model to them is there anything that you would like to add that we haven't talked about oh I just thank the Jewish Historical Society for this but what you do you do
a magnificent service of the community and I'm proud to be part of it and I'm proud to be here today I want to thank you very much thank you very much thank you thank you you