Goldie Falk

Full Transcript

I'm Jacob and I am talking with Goldie Falk, Mrs. Milton Falk, who is a native Dallasite, whose name was Goldie Angrist. And it's January 28, 1986. Okay, Mrs. Falk, how many years have you lived in Dallas? Well, I lived here from, I was born in 1910 until 35. Got married and moved to Port Arthur, Texas. Do you want me to tell you where I lived? And we lived there two years and then moved to Houston, Texas. And lived there about three years when my husband was calling for the service. And then his career. Just go on. Recap it. Yeah. Please. From there he went to Louisiana on the Newbers.

That was in 1942. And I took our son Byron with us and we followed them around from Mansfield, Louisiana to out on the field. We stayed in the boarding house with the other wives and children and I was pregnant and the doctor told me I had to find a nesting roof because I was having problems. So I came back to Dallas and our daughter was born in 1942. Yeah, so go ahead. When she was six weeks old, I left Susie in the nurse with my sister and took Byron, and we went to Fort Rooka, Alabama. And we were supposed to only stay three weeks when Byron got the chickenpox, and they put him in a military hospital, and they wouldn't let us see him, but they didn't want us to spread the germs, so we had to talk to him through the window, and he was in there for two weeks.

So when he got better, he and I drove back to Dallas because Milton was going on other maneuvers in Tennessee And the next three months or so I would try to join them in Memphis or someplace and leave the children They always thought they were getting orders to go overseas. And he came back and we went, after the maneuvers, we went to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was at the General Command School taking the course. And we stayed there for about three months and came back to Dallas. And from there we went to Fings, Arizona and was on a desert maneuver. And we only did a storm once a week, but we stayed out there from June to about the September arc.

About what year? This was 1943. There were no news going on all of those months. And from there he flew to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and I came home with the two children. My father came to visit to help me take the children back to Dallas. And then in December, he thought he was going overseas then, and he asked if I could come out, come out, so I left the children and went out there for about six weeks, but he did not get out there instead. After he finished at Fort Mimond, that was also a single-course school, we went on to West Palm Beach, Florida, and the army had taken over a hotel out there for the military and he was able to come home every night and we were there until what, it was almost, I guess a year, we were there until August, you know, November of 1944 when he received orders to go to Europe.

And he stayed until the following year. He was on his way to the South Pacific in 1945 when the war ended. So he came on back to Dallas. And he decided to get out of the Army. And instead of going back to chemical engineering, he was friends with the glaciers. And they asked him to work for them in a hotel So he worked there for about two years And we left Dallas and moved to Longview, and we were there a year, and he was still working for the hotel. And then they sent us to New Orleans, so I thought I was back in the Army.

And we stayed in New Orleans for two years, and we moved back to Dallas in 1950, and we were still at Glacier, and we stayed here. Milton was called back in the service in March 1951, but Byron was going to have his bar for that month, so I stayed here and we moved to Fort Bliss in El Paso, June 1951. And he received his orders in November, right at Thanksgiving, that he was going to be sent to Korea. So I packed up and moved back to Dallas in December and he left in January for a career that was 1952. And each day I stayed in Dallas with the children and he came back I think it was about August of 1953.

And from there we received orders to go to Syracuse and he taught military science at the university. And so, 1956, our son graduated high school there and our daughter grade school. And he got orders to move to Governor's Island. And we stayed there until 1958. It was an interesting experience being there because we took advantage of New York. And I decided it was time for me mid-life crisis to take up something so I became a nurse's aide. I took a course and went across nursing and worked in the military hospital, volunteer work for one day a week and enjoyed it very much. And we were there until 58 when he received orders to go to Heidelberg Germany and we had mixed emotions Hi Okay how was Heidelberg Well, I thought I had mixed emotions, as I said, about going there, especially in the birth of being killed in World War II.

But our daughter went to an American high school, and I didn't speak German. My husband had German in college, and he could make himself understood, but naturally most of the people, when they knew you were American, the American dollar went poor. They spoke English. And we did a lot of traveling while we were there because my husband would go on trips to Paris and sometimes I was able to go with him when he drove. And on our own we went to Italy and spent two weeks with our daughter there. and the next summer our son came over. We were sent over on the United States ship.

What year? We were sent over in 1958 on the United States ship and it was a beautiful trip with the military. It was not a military trip for me. Now when you said you went to Italy with your daughter, what year was that? I think it must have been in, let's see, in 59 our son came over for the summer and spent three months with him. He was old enough to travel by himself, although we did take trips. My sister Edith and Meyer Unnman came over and visited. We got company and they stayed in a German hotel. But we all followed in the car and went and toured Belgium and Holland and it was very interesting.

And then they left and that's when they asked Byron to come and live with them and go to SMU because he just had a year of Columbia but he stayed and graduated. And that summer Byron was there. I did take Susie and him and we went to England for a week. My husband couldn't get away to London. And I think it was an education for them to see all the places. And then the following year in spring we took Susan and we drove to Italy two weeks going around to And she would go on trips to the teenagers to ski and we all went to Garmisch.

We did go to Dachau. It was a moving, moving experience. And we were supposed to go on a Mediterranean cruise and then things were unsettled there. they canceled out the military going. But we were able to go on our own to Spain and to, we went to Austria and Switzerland, just one weekend that was close enough to drive. We went to I guess about ten or eleven different countries plus the smaller ones, Luxembourg and she received a good education in American school, but she left, she graduated, she was 17, came back to Texas to enter college, and she got a degree, and we stayed a year longer, and we came back in 61, and he was sent to Sacramento County, California, and lived there for a year, and then he was transferred to, We stayed, lived in Alameda, but he was in the Oakland Army Terminal with the Inspector General where he was sent to inspect different military camps and we didn't have any children at home.

We had a dog that traveled with us. She lived eighteen years. Her poochie died when we came back to Dallas. And I had took advantage of seeing all of the states out there. and the state of Washington and Oregon and going over to Victoria, basically around here and Nevada. It was really an interesting life, you know, to see all that. I miss family. We got back to visit though quite often. And then he retired in 1966 and I told him I followed around 31 years, so he came back with me to Dallas. And thank God, like I told you, we celebrated our 50th last November.

We trying it nice to be back with the son and daughter and the grandchildren It an interesting life sad at times but otherwise very enjoyable I think I've talked to that. Now then, when did your first generation of your family arrive in Dallas? Really, your roots are in Dallas then. You've traveled and you've come back to Dallas. See, my parents came, my father, if you want to know, and my mother's family, they didn't know each other, but they came from Poland to the United States and settled in New York. My father told us that he had a printing company and four of the older children were born in New York.

Name them. Beatrice Goldberg and Isadora Angrist and Sadie Solomon and Ethan Angrist. I'm sorry to say that out of those four, the only one left was Beatrice Goldberg. and but my mother's family all came to Dallas what about the rest of the kids you said there were four kids yeah but not my mother my mother and father and four kids stayed in New York they were children but my mother came to Dallas to see one of her sisters get married in 1905 and she was pregnant and when she got back to New York she told my father that She wanted to move to Dallas. So my brother was born in, you know, he was born in 1995.

I think she married in March and he was born in July. So they came to Dallas. And he didn't go back into the printing business. He worked for my mother's cousins, Julius and Jacob. And then he always did bookkeeping and things like that. And he started, I don't know what year Popple started with Magnolia Petroleum Company, but he worked with them for 25 years. And he retired, I think when he was 65. He was born in 1875 And in fact the whole family stayed in Dallas and the only ones that went away was Bernard and me Bernard went into the service and he married and was married for two years but I don believe they were together over six months He was in the army and he was killed in France in 1944.

And my husband happened afterwards to go through that territory and he met, I don't know if you know, Bill Edelman from Dallas, the captain of my brother's unit and he said he was killed while he was on guard. But he really was in the finance department, which is one of those cases. And I think all of them have all lived in Dallas and the children growing up, but we found out the third generation, we all belonged to Sheriff's Israel congregation, my grandparents and my parents, and I was the third generation. And then my son was the fourth generation, and his children, the fifth, would have been confirmed in the environment.

And some of the older sisters and brothers had children that are already six generations ago and there in Solomon Shester. So, I thought to me Dallas was always home. It's changed. When we were growing up you knew everyone. It wasn't the only congregation chair of Israel. It was Temple Emanuel and then Agudas Ockham. It was like a big family. Did you have any connection with Tephera Thisrael at that time as you were growing there? Tephera Thisrael? No, I really didn't. I think my sister Bea Goldberg and her husband one year went there when her in-laws were growing. I don't know if it was Agudas Ockham or Tephera Thisrael.

I can't recall. What is the extent of your Jewish education? Well, I was confirmed at Sheriff Israel. And girls didn't take Hebrew in those days. What year was this that you were confirmed? I was confirmed in 1924. Okay. And we had a junior congregation. I was president of that one year. And I really didn because my children my son was confirmed at Sheriff Israel and our daughter had about six years of Hebrew education And when we moved to New York, I thought, sure, she would have higher. But like I told you, she took two ferry boats to go over to high school and to Staten Island to go to Sunday school.

And they said, no, they don't confirm girls. So she was very disappointed and angry because she had had a good Hebrew education. And in fact when she went to college she took Hebrew at Texas University and the only one in her class was a Gentile man of 45 who was a preacher. But I did not go on with any, oh I mean I, we, I didn't keep a kosher home but we had Friday night services at our home every Friday night or the next week at my son and daughter's house. We observed that. What other, what was the extent of your Jewish education? Confirmation. Just confirmation.

Was there a post confirmation program at all at that time? What about your secular education? I graduated from high school and went to SMU for one term when I had acute attack of appendicitis. In the olden days they said you had to rest and take it easy and I didn't ever go, it was in January and I never went back after that. I did work at the Board of Education here in Dallas. Jenny Blumenthal was there, and I was just seventeen and a half, and I was frightened to death, and she took me under her wing and showed me. I was grading papers from, they had it all over the city of Dallas, questions and spellings and English and all, and I worked there about a year doing that.

What was education like in Dallas when you were growing up? There was still, like my older sister and brother didn't graduate high school. Edith was the first one in our family to graduate. She's a couple years older than I, and she got her degree from SMU, and of course, like I said, I didn't go back. And Bernard and Milton both got law degrees. They went at night school through SMU Extension And, but girls really didn't, some of them went off to college, but very few of my group that I know went. Now, in Edith's group there were one or two, yes, that went and went to SMU or Texas.

About what time frame in terms of years? Well, she graduated in 26 from high school, and she graduated in 30 from SMU. And I've met friends that I've met, you know, I traveled that were from the East, and they didn't graduate high school, and I thought that was rather odd, Jewish girls. They said that they had to go to work. Was that... Well, the Depression years, remember, came a long line. But did that affect many people in those days where they didn't finish high school? Well I know my brother is, was self-learned. He became an accountant at his own firm. And well B was very artistic.

She worked at A. Harris in the art department until my mother died. She was 17 so she quit so she could come home and help take care of all the family. My sister Sadie worked there at A. Harris, and they both were artistically inclined. She worked there, I think she married about 19 years. What about the boys? Did most of them finish high school? In my generation, yeah. Even though perhaps the girls came out? Well, in my generation, nearly all the girls, I mean from my group, finished high school. Because I went through grade school and high school was really good. But I think it was about five years or seven years before that that they really didn't get a high school education.

Partly two years or something. What was the extent of your Jewish observance at home When I was growing up we had a kosher home We were like I said went to Sheriff Israel but I can remember walking on holidays We didn't ride. I don't know how many years that continued. Where was the synagogue located? When I was born it was downtown, because I don't remember that. I do remember one thing when I was four years old that I recited on the Bema. It's how you remember one thing, Paboo Ben-Atomay's tribe increased. But, because we started Sunday school very young. How young? You did start. Do you have any memory of what the religious school program was like?

What are some of the things you studied? Well now, yes, the ethics, and we'd go on Wednesday to have like, for the confirmation treat, confirmation for the Jewish literature and ethics, and then of course every Sunday morning. But Popper used to take us, even the five, we always called them the five young the Yankees and the Rebels because Bob were born here in Dallas he'd take us on the streetcar he lived on Ross Avenue and take us to Sheriff Israel on the park Friday night services was it a late service then? yeah it was a late service about what year was that? well I'd say from 1920 to you know in fact my sister Dee Goldberg had the first wedding it wasn't even finished and they had it downstairs and she was in the first confirmation class did you happen to know that you Well, she had a picture that she loaned here from that and we lost it.

She loaned it to the shore. Uh Yeah to the shore But what year would she have been She was born in 1899 Please God she going to be 87 in March She must have been. Oh, those days we got confirmed younger. Now it's 16. We were confirmed when we were about 13. What about the year she was married? You said they were just finishing the show. Do you remember? Yeah, it was 1920. Now, were you always members of Sheriff Israel? As long as I lived in Dallas. I mean, my parents. Well, the parents. What about the holidays that you observed at home? We always... Passover, sometimes I can remember having 25 at the table.

aunts and uncles, especially with my mother being dead, they would come over and help with the cooking. I can remember even in growing up, I can remember the times when sisters would get together and make the filthy fish and matzi balls. I could just see how we all worked together in the days. And then finally when the family got so large with the children and grandchildren. We had to kind of divide up. But we always stayed out of school two days, Rosh Hashanah, two days. Every holiday that came along with the children don't seem to do now. But we did. We assured it did. And like I said, we always said, lit the candles.

I still do. Did you keep kosher? No, I kept kosher. Did you? Did your family keep kosher? Yeah, we had kept kosher, but when I married and moved apart Arthur. It would have meant getting meat from Beaumont, Texas, and we didn't have a car when I got married. It was about, I don't know when it was, 20 miles away or 30. It would have been inconvenienced, but my husband worked on a ship at the finding in the lab. Sometimes he worked all night, things like that. So I didn't keep kosher anymore. You mentioned he worked in the lab. What did he do? But all I know is it was gasoline, oil refining, taking tests and things like that.

He was already an engineer. That was his chemical engineer What about Jewish organizations Well as a girl I always belonged to the we call it the Junior Congregation and things but when I was older, Hadassah, and at one time when I came back, I think in 51, I belonged to B'nai B'rith and things. And in fact, but in traveling around, we even met in Europe, in Heidelberg. We didn't have Hadassah, but we would meet. We had a Friday night services there in a chapel, because Sunday it was Catholic or Protestant or something else. But we had a nice civilian and military congregation. We had a chaplain and his wife that, you know, we had a lot of activities.

Like I said, I can remember in Idleburg having lotkis in the hotel for the boys. And we had fish sent in cans from the state for Passover and the women used to work and get that. But I always, like I said, they always say, Mama don't make such a simus over everything. But I like to, when our grandchildren came here to Sheriff Israel in the nursery school and kindergarten, they would volunteer me to come down. At the holiday time, I would let the children in Hanukkah, I would get the dough made and give them all the symbols to cut cookies. And then I showed them how to make creplot and let them help me.

and they always volunteered because I like to cook. I said, sometimes you talk about a Jewish stomach, but, you know, things like that. What are your civic and cultural affiliations, or do you have any, and how has it changed over the years? I have not had so many since I came back. Unfortunately, I retired in 66, And six weeks later I had surgery. And the next summer I had surgery. And within two and a half years I had surgery on my back. I really, I'd say the first five years we were back, I really were unable to get out and to do things that I wanted to do.

But, uh, I had I joined the sister here and I joined Hadassah and I decided I didn't have the strength to do the things that, and with my husband being retired, we decided we wanted to just be together. We bought us a boat and we went fishing. We still have the boat, but we haven't done much fishing this last year. And we've done, believe it or not, with all the traveling, every year we decided to take a cruise. We've been on ten cruises. And we've taken trips to New York, and he had great nephews being bar mitzvahed. We tried to go to Tennessee, Chattanooga. We tried to keep up with family that we had missed.

I think my love of family. What are the locations of the homes that you have lived in since you were a child? Your earliest memory. The earliest one was Ross Avenue. Do you remember the address? Yeah, 3205 Ross. And from when to when did you think? 1910 till I think it was 19 years we lived there. 1910 to 19... 29, yes. I'd already graduated high school. I didn't go to Forest. I went to Bryan High. And Edith graduated from Bryan High. And Brother Milton was younger than I am. He graduated. We moved first to, I think, a street called... It was in South Dallas. English.

We only lived there about a year. We just got out of our home. We wanted to get away because it became business life. We had to almost take our father by carrying him out because he didn't want to leave. Okay, then after English... about what address on English Street? I think they were all close to Oakland. I can't remember the area. Was that south of Forest Avenue, English? The south or north? Right north. Was it closer to town or away from town? No, it was the same. Forest High would be back of the forest back of that way Grand went this way so which was south and which was north Grand was north So it was south South of Peabody?

Yes, south of Peabody. Okay. And from there we, I don't know how long we were on Peabody, I thought maybe we were about four or five years on Park Road. About what year did you move to Park Road? I thought it was 30, 31. And I was married in 35. And they stayed there. And I think when I got married, I think Papa and it was Bernard and Milton as well. They moved on Park Road near Harwood near the library. And I don't think they were there for the past six months when we gave up housekeeping because she wanted to work and the boys were in school and working.

And so they, Papa and Estros went to live with my sister, Edith, and one, I think Milton went with my sister Dee Goldberg, and they were already grown, and Bernard went with my sister Sadie Solomon. And then, I would come back to visit and all of them, but let's see, she, Milton and Eslose were both married in 38, two days apart, and Bernard just married, I know it must have been that. It was 41, that's when I was expecting to be here in Dallas. So my father lived over 95 and a half and he was left with him. He was going all over for his season.

Can you think of anything else you want to ask? Oh yes. What type of housing were your houses over the years? The house on Ross Avenue, what type of house was it? Was it a brick? No, a wooden house. Two story, one story? One story. Big big yard, three trees in the front and in the back. And in those days, help was cheap, and I guess with my mother being you know dying so young but even when she was living we have a washroom to come in Tuesday from 8 in the morning to about 10 at night washing on the washboard And she had a cleaning room And you have to have that many children But there was always a close connection.

We always had cousins coming over. In fact, I had a girlfriend whose mother was going up to Chicago when her daughter was having a baby. And we said, well, she could come spend the summer with us for three months. There was always room for more people. I don't know where we, like we were talking today, I said, I never slept by myself very long in life. But I think our children have told us, too, that even with them being two of them, that they miss that, what you do in a family with nine children. There was a lot of love. And I know at our anniversary party with all the cousins and the nieces and nephews.

And Rabbi Alstine told me many times afterwards that he had never been to a place where there was so much love and respect among the brothers and sisters and the cousins. And it just seemed to, the whole evening, it just filled with me. I said, well, we had gotten together on so many stages and they wanted us to celebrate. I forgot to tell you, my husband and I celebrated our 25th anniversary alone in Garmisch in Austria. It wasn't so good to see Hitler's place in there, all of that stuff. But, you know, like my father told me when I didn't want to go, I said, I just couldn't go there.

And he said, you go with your husband. You had to forget the sad part, especially the never met a gentleman that knew anything about it. Yes. Never, never. No, they didn't know it. I had a wife, she was a girl that worked for me, and Susan was there. She worked five days a week, and I gave her a room on the fourth floor, three. She was in Czechoslovakia. One of them was pregnant. She was married, but they were good workers. She was a German girl. And I tried to talk to them. They spoke English and I asked them about things, but they always said they never knew what going on When I was there I was secretary to the American Women Club and we had 800 members And I was a little too sharp as I shorthanded.

It was interesting that we had people like Art Art Book Wall came over, and we had a luncheon with Paris Motif, and let's see what her name... Oh. So this was Olivia de Hamillet came over? She came over to our luncheon. I had pictures taken, you know, there at the table. I wasn't too good a secretary, but you do meet a lot of people that, you know, and traveling, and I think it was a wonderful education for our children. Of course, our daughter was so young when she left here, when the first time she came back, she said, I could never live in a place where they have a colored water fountain and a white water fountain.

It made a big impression. What year did she comment on that one? Do you remember? Oh yeah. She was about 14, she was born in 42 and they still didn't have her, you know, they still say they were restricted because they, you know, went to school in the East and other places. Sure. And they didn't have it. Right now the funny thing she said to us, she's a casting audition director for advertising agency in New York and she had to get her, she was made the head of the department, she had to get an assistant and she said, now listen, one thing I can't do is hire a Jew because on Jewish holidays there's nobody left in the office.

She has a Jewish secretary of girls, and the bookkeeper is Jewish, and she said we can't envy some of the photographers. So she hired someone to work for her with an Italian name and found out she was a Jewish girl married to an Italian. So I've been using funny things that happen in life. Oh, boy. You mentioned that a lot of people, you know, and you had a lot of closeness in the family. Did you have any people that ever have any extended family living with you? Like uncles, aunts? No, but we certainly live with them. I lived with my sister Bea Goldberg and Nathan when I brought the two children back because it was World War II and I couldn't find an apartment.

And then like I went over to my sister Edith before our daughter was born and stayed with her. I left when she was about six months. Then I came back another time and stayed with her. And so I feel like I was the one that came back. But I know my husband's family, they had an uncle living with them. But we never, outside of friends, you know, coming over or things like that, to actually live in with them. It wasn't real, I don't think. But you know, I never knew, I guess we were middle class. I never knew that I had friends that said that they were so poor they didn't have anything to eat from the East.

I never had that feeling of being that poor. We didn't have a car, but when my brother got old enough in his twenties, he bought a car, but ourself, per But I never felt poor. I felt I had some cousins that were wealthy that had butlers and maids. I never felt the lack of anything like that. You know, now I don't know. I shouldn't even tell this funny story. We have two bathrooms. When we came back we bought a home. It had My husband made a study for one for himself, and he has plaques all over the wall from every commendation he got in his school he took horses with, and it's his study.

So when my grandson was, oh about, he was, no I think he was one of the middle granddoors, and she came over and she said, how many bathrooms do you have? And I said, we only have two. She might have been about four And I said why She said well we have four I said whatever I don want to clean four bathrooms So I never felt that I said I never had two bathrooms until we retired and came back here because of moving around we did Oh yes we did In some of the government quarters there were two bathrooms You said some of your cousins had butlers and maids Yeah in the olden days the Yonics they had Cadillacs and they lived on South Boulevard They were very wealthy, went from saloons to real estate, and then along came when they lost.

Was that, I want to say common, was that usual, like in a neighborhood like South Boulevard? Oh yes, yes. In the 20's? When? Yes, in the 20's. Before the Depression? Before the Depression, yeah. We always had help in the house. I remember my aunt living North South, she always had a maid every day. And, uh, help was cheap. When, uh, my son was born and we lived in Houston, and my husband was making 135, 140 a month, we got married, he made about 118 in the county, in 35, and Byron was born in 38. I had a maid for about six or eight months. I paid $4 a week for it.

Not to cook, just to clean and do the washing in those days in my hand. But I guess we always, in fact, I had never actually, until I moved up east, never had what I would have help come in to help me. And when I moved up to Syracuse, I found out that was sort of a thing of the past. You know, to have somebody to come in and help you with your washing or ironing or cleaning, your house monthly. That's when I really, not that I objected or minded, but really and truly that was a change. A change. A change. And of course overseas some of them took advantage of it.

You know they didn't do anything, but I still like to do things for myself. Now when you had daily health, did any of those people live in or did they come to work daily? In the olden days. In the olden days, when you were in Dallas. No, they came in daily. We had one washman work for carpet, I think 13 years, the same woman. And we had, her name was Lottie, and then we had one named Eliza, she worked seven years just coming in to clean the house And she came in every day Every day Not Sunday Not Sunday six days a week Maybe not Saturday I don remember Five days a week Yeah I imagine five days Was that usual Would you say that that was sad I keep trying to think back to the answers.

I think in the 20s and 30s, I think they did. In fact, before I got married, we lived on Park Road. We had a woman there the whole four or five years, I remember. I did the cooking. I wasn't working then. I wanted to stay home. and I used to like to write but I never did anything with it poetry. But I kept house with Papa and we had the colored slats on that. Come in and yeah I think it was very one of the things that happened. Beautiful. Has there been any intermarriage in the family? Yes. What were the circumstances and did they convert, did they not convert?

My brother Ethan married at 18. He was the fourth from the oldest and my sister-in-law never converted. They were married, I'd say about 52 years. He died about four years ago and she never converted, so they had two children. One was confirmed from Sheriff Izzo, one from Temple of Magdalene, and they both married Jews, and then one after 17 years got a divorce. She had two sons, because those two sons both married him. And the other had two, a daughter and a son, and they both, no, her daughter manager and son just married a temple and she converted and we have had a lot of nephew great nephews and great music and that I'm have converted it's interesting I said sometimes you you almost think that my father at that time did not talk to my brother but when the little girl was about a year and a half later, then they made out.

But and he had a world of love for my sister and I and the children What about the patterns where there been intermarriage and there are kids What happens with the kids Well, like I told you about the... Well, you said there are others that were great nephews and nieces. But now there's great nephews and nieces, and one's a great niece, and plus she has a daughter. They live in Austin now. and well the wife is Jewish, you're considered Jewish but I have some here where the two nephews two cousins marry a Gentile girl the men join share a visit now one of them's wife will come during the holiday the other one well she has a small baby and they didn't either one had Christmas I'm sure they were circumcised.

What will happen when they get older, I don't know. Would you say that what percentage, or over 50% are going to remain Jewish, or going in a Jewish direction, rear Jewishly? I don't know. I don't know. Do you know what the percentage of... What is the percentage? Could you give an idea? I have no idea. How many of them? I don't know. More of them. Because I know that they celebrate Hanukkah. You know, they get exchange Hanukkah gift. I don't know about if they give the wives Christmas gifts. I don't know. Are any Christmas trees in any of the families? I don't know. You don't know about any of the observances?

No, I don't know. What about... I know this is the one that converted, but she just got married this past September, I told about this before, and one of the shower gifts she got with him and Noah, and she seemed to be thrilled with getting it. That's interesting. Now you said you don't know if she's converted, though? Yes, she converted at Temple. Oh, she did. Do you know if she converted because she wanted to, or because she was getting married and felt it was a thing to do? I met her parents at the wedding, and they seemed to take it for granted. That's what Jean wanted to do.

Her father was odd. He was a Navy man, retired, and her mother had been in the Navy. It was lovely people. I mean I enjoyed talking to them and all, and there didn't seem to be any, you know, I felt a funny feeling sitting there for a wedding. Because I always thought I would never convert, so how can you expect somebody else to convert? Because I guess she wanted to because she converted, you know, before. Like I said, you don't know how long it'll last, but like I was sitting at the luncheon today with this woman, She said she had three children and two of the girls were divorced and the boys were 32.

She doesn't think he wants to get married because he sees what happened before. And they were both married to Jewish. So it's just, you know, there's so many divorces nowadays. It's not always for men and men. That's true. What are some of the things you've seen by way of development in the Jewish community in Dallas over the years? Well, I think actually it's grown and I think it's wonderful that they go later to Sunday school I think that keeps them in the Jewish feeling and all and I think with the AZA and the BBG girls I think that gives them I don't know if it gives them a religious feeling or if it's more of a social What do you think Although let see let say like this I know when Andy was inducted or whatever they called it installed a couple of weeks ago they had the Habgala surgery written in the son house in Dolanoke that night But, you know, they seemed to know what they were doing.

They had that. But as far as saying it's still a religious part, I don't know about that. And I think with all the... I don't take part in all those activities that are offered. But I said I try to keep up with sisterhood and some of the... I did more when my children were younger and grandchildren younger than I do now. I enjoyed working in the kitchen and helping with the luncheons. You know, that's not religious. It's just keeping your finger in the pot. Right, right, right. But don't you think that the... Or do you think it's a religious or is it more of a communal?

You know, just to be together. I'm Jewish and let's pull together. Well, there's definitely a cultural aspect as far as Jewish culture, Jewish, Jewishness. Do you think there's more of that as far as community is concerned? Yeah, I think so. Do you? I don know Good old lady See I don know enough to say that I do looking in because I not active enough Do you see as much closeness, would you say? Would you say that it's more diverse? I mean, what about the community in itself, how it's developed? Do you see more of unity? Well, you know, when it was small, it was more of, you were close.

Everything was one. I don't know if it was close. What about the Temple, the Reform group as opposed to the Orthodox and Conservative group? Do you see, do you have any feelings about how it was when you were a kid, say, in the 1920s? I think we were more together then. I mean, maybe it was, I don't know. I don't know, I just felt that way because I was part of it. What are some of the organizations you remember of? Well, back then, like I said, I belonged to the Junior Congregation. We had... Was that Sheriff? We had Sheriff and of course I was a Girl Scout.

We had a troop at Sheriff Israel. That's interesting. What years? Well, 1923, 24, 25. Do you remember who led it? There was a Mrs Colton here in Dallas was our sponsor Her daughter was Ruth What was her name And I think Bertha Newman used to help us out with things like that. That's interesting. Yeah, we had a Jewish troop. Any other, besides the Jewish congregation, you know, the junior congregation and the We had other, but I didn't really go to too many of them. Any other things, any other observations that you can make or would like to share with us? I think not so much of your time now, I think.

Well, that's right. But, you know, after all things come back to you, but like I said, we were very family oriented, family to do together. Was that the usual, or do you think it was unique as far as your family is concerned? I think, no, I think families meant a lot. I really do. Yeah. I do. Closeness of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, I think it was. Well, I thank you very much. Well, thank you. I didn't know I was going. Don't call me.