Hanna Lambert
Hanna Lambert was born in 1935 to a devoutly Jewish family. Her mother was born in Louisiana while the family traveled from New York to Dallas, and grew up in Dallas after her own mother emigrated from Romania. Her mother's first language was Yiddish, and she attended Cumberland Hill School before helping run a small grocery store attached to Hanna's grandmother's home near downtown Dallas. Hanna's father was born in Russia and came to the United States at age two, settling first in St. Louis, where his father worked as a baker. The family fled pogroms before emigrating. Hanna's parents kept a kosher home and observed all the holidays.
Raised in South Dallas, Hanna began Hebrew school at age five and later attended the United Hebrew Schools of Dallas. She was active in Young Judea, sang in a choral group that traveled around Texas, and lived in a small, tightly connected Jewish neighborhood. She attended Forest Avenue High School, then the University of Texas in Austin for two years and later SMU, where she completed her degree in speech, drama, and education. She married Raymond Lambert, an architect she had known since childhood, and began teaching in the Dallas public schools. When Raymond served in the military, the couple lived for a time in Europe with their infant son.
In Dallas, Hanna became a devoted community volunteer and leader. She served as president of the Starlight chapter of B'nai B'rith Women and later on the regional board, helped organize new chapters, and was deeply involved with Jewish Family Service, where she became its second woman president and participated in the Plays for Living program. She helped build Akiba Academy in its infancy, serving on the board and later becoming its early childhood education director and admissions director for many years. She and Raymond opened their home for Shabbat dinners and Passover seders and cared for aging parents there. She hoped the next generation would live compassionate, honest, and committed Jewish lives.
Full Transcript
Hannah let's start out talk to me about your involvement with the Jewish Community the Jewish Community is really very Central to My Life um I was raised in a very um very committed Jewish Community Family right and um I started with the Jewish Community when I was a little child I went to a Zionist Hebrew school when I was 5 years old Mr lavine's Hebrew school in South Dallas and uh then uh my father and mother kept a kosher home and celebrated all of the holidays and we lived in a very small Jewish community in South Dallas everybody knew each other um my father um
was a traveling salesman and the reason he was a traveling salesman is because he could uh monitor his own time and he could observe Shabbat ah and uh he kept kosher on the road and he brought his ice chest with him he knew every Jewish uh kosher home in Texas Oklahoma and Mississippi where he traveled he sold leather jackets for California sportswar company um so it was very Central to how I grew up I went to U herat Torah the Hebrew school here in Dallas at the time it was the United Hebrew schools of Dallas because uh all of the children from all of the
different synagogues came to that school together it was part of the Jewish Community uh and then of course I was active in Hillel and I started fundraising for the Jewish Community when I was in college when I was a young girl I was in young Judea and we belonged to the kadema club and um it was a a a wonderful organization and we would sing together we had a little Coral group and we'd travel around Texas and sing and Jerry seagull was our leader and we all had a crush on him because he was very handsome we take bus tours and uh and sing um
he's now in California and is in the movie business and his wife is an actress um so I lived in a little Jewish area on wend delin Street most of my neighbors were Jewish all of my friends was were Jewish my husband's family lived next door to me it was just who I was it was the fabric of who I was right now as an adult in the Jewish Community now how are you involved I was very active in bth women uh we I was president of Starlight chapter benth women and I was a young uh mother uh at the time and then I be
went on the regional board and we organized new chapters uh in different communities um and I was very active with um AIP Academy and the way that all happened is that there were no Jewish Day schools in Texas and uh we tried to have a Jewish Day School earlier it wasn't successful and we started again Marcus Rosenberg decided that in order to move to Dallas he would have to open a Jewish Day School cuz Anne Rosenberg said I'm not bringing my kids to Dallas unless you open a Jewish Day School and where and where were they from um well they're Holocaust Survivors and I'm pretty
sure they were living in New York and so my father was friends with Marcus and my son was 3 years old and he said uh I want you to send Craig uh to our Jewish Day School a keba and I said well that's un American how can you send a child to a Jewish school we have to be part of this American Community but he talked me into it and I sent Craig and Raymond was not that interested in in the whole religious aspect and he says well we'll try it for you year and if it's okay we will continue and we did and I
was very very active as a parent and I met some of my dearest closest friends that I'm still friends with that Raymond and I are friends with Leslie and Howard Schulz Shirley and er rinsky we all work very hard for this little Jewish Day School and its very infancy and I was a member of the board of directors I was um a um vice president of educ ation because my training was a teacher uh and I taught in the public school system uh before my children were born in fact a little bit after my children were G born and so as I was working um
as a parent um Rabbi mosac who was the head of school uh said that he thought it was time for us to have a director of early childhood education and he asked me if I would like to have that job and so I did and so uh that was the beginning of my career with the keba academy but for 20 years before I went to work for a keep Academy that was when I was very active in the Jewish Community as a volunteer and um besides benth women um I was very interested in Jewish Family Service and we did a lot of volunteer work there
um and um I we used to do a program called play for living my major in college was speech and drama along with education so we would at the time women H uh had very active organizations they were always looking for programs and so we would go to them uh to the different organizations and put on our plays for living and the purpose of the plays for living was to show people uh issues that people had to live with and and then after the little playlit then one of the social workers would um have a discussion with the people there on options of what you
can do what can you do when your parents get older what can you do if your children are difficult and that was very interesting so in my very uh interesting work with Jewish Family Service I was asked to be on the board and eventually became president of Jewish Family Service and I was the second woman president of Jewish family service about 20 years before Fanny shanan who was an outstanding woman here in this community was the first woman president and then for 20 years they didn't have any women and then so I was the next Jewish woman president of family service and I um am
very enamored with the community work that this organization does the help that they give not only to the Jewish Community but the non-jewish community um it's a phenomenal organization that reaches Into the Heart and Soul of people when they're in need and uh I I feel very good about the work that we do with that okay let's go back now a little bit tell me about your mom my mom was very bright she was saluted tooran of her high school class she was born in Louisiana on the way to Dallas her mother on the way to Dallas on the way to Dallas they stopped there
in Louisiana had their baby and they came on to Dallas where were they coming from uh New York okay okay my grandmother was from Romania my mother's first language was Yiddish and she went to school and learned to speak English and the here in Dallas grew up in Dallas she went to Cumberland Hill School and that little uh building is still in downtown Talis it's been remodled as an insurance company um my mother um my mother's mother my bubby Bubba claraa wild um had a a house on the corner on St Louis Street right near downtown Dallas and attached to her house was a little
grocery store and all of the Jewish people in that area and non-jewish people would come to her grocery store and I remember it very well uh because I was a little girl living there with her my mother my father and I um lived with my bubby and uh she would serve the people in the community and if um they couldn't pay she said don't worry about it I'll write it down but she never charged them if they really couldn't pay she was very generous and my mother helped her run the store and my mother never worked at a job outside of her home but if
she hadd been born in a different time and had the opportunity I know she would have been an outstanding businesswoman um she handled all of the business of our family and uh she inspired us uh to reach for higher education and and do well uh she was a very wise woman I remember we I we'd sit and talk and uh I'd have some problem and after we'd talk I'd say gee Mom that's great you really help me and she said you know what you helped yourself I just listened she was uh an exceptional woman an exceptional woman um and uh she raised my brother and
my myself really pretty much by herself most of the time because my father was traveling but it was always a big deal when dad came home yeah yeah uh what about your grandparents on your dad's side my father was born in Russia and he came here when he was two his mother and father lived in Russia and my grandfather was a baker um and he they live through a number of programs and they would hide in the cellar in the empty flower uh uh tubs barrels when the progams came through and they decided they really had to get out of there my father's father uh
Nissen Goldman came to Dallas he came to the United States he didn't come to Dallas he came to St Louis because he had cousins in St Louis who sponsored him and he got a job as a baker you didn't have to speak English to be able to be a baker and he saved his money and uh when my father was two my my grandfather had saved enough money to bring his wife and U my father and his sister to the to St Louis where they grew up my grandmother was an orphan Rachel Goldman she had been married before she was married to a very handsome
man that she was very much in love with and they couldn't have children and um at that time it was considered a Jewish Family if you couldn't have children you really needed to get a divorce and marry someone else so that you could have children and so they divorced and then she married my grandfather niss and Goldman and of course she had two children Harry Goldman and Bernice Goldman my aunt uh did she ever keep in contact with her first husband I have no knowledge of that I know that I knew that he was very handsome and she loved him a great deal so um
very interesting and she was an orphan as I said and she had very little education and her name was Rachel and she um spoke yish only she never learned to speak English so we had to speak yish to her and she could only read the sitter she could read the Hebrew but she was actually illiterate um because she had no opportunity to learn whereas my mother's mother came from a more aristocratic family when they came to the United States they brought beautiful furniture and uh Linens and all kinds of beautiful things and my grandmother on my mother's side spoke many languages and um was very
well educated so it was kind of an interesting thing there now tell about your high school life where'd you go to high school I went to high school uh here in Dallas at Forest Avenue High School Raymond Lambert was there he was a little bit ahead of me um and I was very active in high school uh we had all of the Jewish kids were at Forest Avenue high school now were you dating Raymond at all in high school not well when I was a senior when you were a senior he was already out of high school though yeah he was already in college but
you had met him when you were a small child I met him when I was five because his grandmother and his aunt lived next door to me and my very dearest friend Sue Lambert who is now Sue colleger uh and that's how and we all were in young Judea together we we knew each other but he so when did you want to start dating him well uh actually it was when he went away to college you started to miss him um and um that's when we started dating it was really really very bright very creative he was an architect and very tall and very handsome
and uh he would invite me down to A&M but uh it wasn't until that time now after high school did you go on to college or did you go get a job well I definitely went on to college I went to the University of Texas in Austin MH and I was a d mhm and I remember my father driving Sue Lambert at that time uh and myself down to Austin and our our car was filled with kralin these big pett coats that you wore under your skirts and um it was it was a fun time I was there for two years and then Raymond and
I got engaged so I might as well come home so I came back to Dallas and I went to SMU uh and it was cheaper than going than living in Austin and I wasn't going to date so you know so anyway um I graduated from SMU and uh Raymond and I got married and I went to school and I went I started my teaching career and I taught in DISD um and then you guys wound up going to Europe for a while that's right then after we were married um Raymond we lived here in Dallas for a year two years actually and um I became
pregnant with uh our son and uh Raymond was actually going to be sent he was to Korea and because I was pregnant um they allowed him to stay until the baby was born and then it ended up they sent us to Europe and how was your experience in Europe did you enjoy it yes we did very much so you know when I look back at it my baby was 4 months old we lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building and um it was cold it was very cold and I used to wash diapers in the tub in the bathtub and there was a
ringer on the bathtub and I would carry the DI diapers down uh in the winter time to the basement to hang and when you brought them back they were stiff was it uh but uh our our little apartment was very cozy and we had nice friends and the thing is that when I think about it now and I think about the Holocaust and what really happened in Europe and in Germany I think I was very very naive and didn't really have a full appreciation of the horror that took place in the place I was living I was in my little army bubble right and uh
I spoke yish I could go to the store and buy things on the economy because I yish and German are very similar uh the people who owned our apartment house were very kind and good to us and so now when I think back I think how on Earth could you take your baby and live in Germany and the German people accepted you and there problem I was didn't interact with the German people I was interacting with our American army people okay they were our friends when did you sort of realize you know like what you're talking about now is it years later or shortly I
think it was I think it was um years later yeah interesting interesting wow what was the happiest time in your life oh golly I think we've lived a very blessed life I I've had so many wonderful years yeah uh I can't really say the happiest time I've had a very wonderful life and I can't tell you the happiest time I really can't I loved it when my babies were born I loved being active in the Jewish Community I loved uh interacting with people my time at akba working with parents and children and making a difference in their lives as I was the Early Childhood director
for so many years and their admissions director I I loved our home having Friday night dinners in our home I I I loved the fact that Ammon and I were able to have my mother and father live with us um and the Beautiful house that Raymond designed that he designed just so he could please me it was big enough and designed in a way that we could have saders in our home we can have 36 people for seder right there uh we uh my parents who live when they lived with us actually it wasn't my parents it was my father my mother lived us when
we were before we moved into the house Raymond designed but my father lived with us after my mother passed away and it was like a little apartment that he had designed as part of our house and then later on his mother lived there with us and it gave us great satisfaction to open our home to our parents and our home is always open to people I love having people over Friday night is a time when we celebrate everything and we have guests and family and they all come to me now your first child was born before you went to Europe your second child was born
after you got back my daughter was born in uh when I was 27 years old Debbie Debbie Lambert Smith and both of the children went to a keep Academy and uh Debbie was a beautiful little girl and uh she was always very bright very very kind and sweet and um then after uh she after she grew up and went to college and married she blessed us with these two fabulous grandchildren and uh they also went to akba and now they're at yava High School uh so how can I tell you what's the happiest time in my life my son um very creative also uh and
he was extremely bright um very he was a people he's a people oriented person everybody remembers Craig and uh he was U president of his fraternity at Texas and uh he wanted to uh leave Dallas he wanted to spread his wings and so actually he went to Texas University because his father didn't want him to leave Texas cuz he want him to marry a a u Texas girl so he'd live here so he went to Texas and immediately afterwards moved to New York and he married a New York girl and uh they've had uh they have two great children so uh and my daughter going
back to my daughter married a guy who has a son that we're very proud of uh and so he's our fifth grandchild so my son um uh was is in marketing and um he uh he and his wife were honored in Stanford Connecticut as being um young leadership award leaders in Federation and he's been on the board at Jewish Family Service in Stan in Stanford so both of my children have uh LED very very nice lives and I'm very proud of them and their children what advice would you like to leave to the Next Generation we as Jews have a responsibility to carry on what
Judaism has blessed the world with and I want all of them to feel a responsibility to make this a better place and to live Jewish lives and raise Jewish children that are honest and fair and compassionate I want them to really think of their lives with insight and vision and how can they be good people you did a great job Hannah you really did wonderful thanks for doing this today I enjoyed it I enjoyed it very much great