Hannah Kay Pollock
Hannah Kay Pollock was born in New Orleans, as were her mother and grandmother before her, giving her a long family legacy in that city. She grew up in a home she describes as more conservative than strictly Orthodox, though her father was deeply observant and her mother much less so. The oldest of three children, with a brother and a sister, she was raised with the responsibilities and restrictions of being first. Her childhood revolved around her vibrant synagogue and the Jewish community center, where she spent Sundays with friends doing arts and crafts, watching the boys play basketball, and later joining Young Judea. The only grandparent she knew was her father's mother, with whom she had a close relationship.
Hannah attended Ohio State University, where she met Harlan on her very first night at school. After a memorable early kindness when he took her to the emergency room during a severe allergic reaction, the two began dating and married in September 1959. She left college after two and a half years to work while Harlan finished medical school. When he graduated in 1962, the family moved to Dallas, where Harlan trained at Parkland and Hannah worked at Sanger Harris until she was let go while pregnant. Harlan was later drafted, taking the family to San Antonio, where their daughter was born, and then to Washington, D.C., where he completed a plastic surgery residency at Walter Reed and rose to the rank of colonel. During his service in Vietnam, Hannah returned to New Orleans to be near family.
When Harlan returned, Hannah came ahead to Dallas to find a home and an office for his practice, arranging a generous starting arrangement with another physician. Following her mother's advice, she joined the synagogue Sisterhood to meet people, beginning a lifelong involvement for which she was honored in 2006. The Pollocks belonged to Shearith Israel, and a 1974 Israel mission became a profound turning point, creating lifelong bonds she and fellow travelers still call cousins. She raised her children, including Todd, Tammy, Stacey, and Cece, with a strong Jewish identity, and takes great pride that her family remains close and loving. A devoted dancer for most of her life, Hannah describes herself as quiet and unassuming, and her deepest wish is that her children and grandchildren continue to be good people, remain close, and carry on their Jewish heritage.
Full Transcript
so today is wednesday may 18th i am 2016. i am janine pullman and i am doing an oral interview of hannah pollock and the purpose of this today is to give you an opportunity to talk about your life and how you see your legacy for your family and for the community so that's let's get that's it and let's get started with um talking about the family and recognize that everything will be in the dallas your family but but everything will be in the dallas jewish historical societies archives my family right now not when i was growing up not anymore let's start with your family growing up and then get to today so let's begin
with that i didn't know what that was why i asked you because yeah you said the family right so let's start with your family about your parents your grandparents when you were growing up okay all right well i started i was born in new orleans my mother was born in new orleans her mother was married in new orleans wow so i have a long legacy in new orleans and um stayed in new orleans until i graduated from high school and went to college and i really never lived at home again as i went to college and then i got married and that was it but
um i grew up in a orthodox family but it was really i'd say more conservative than it was orthodox my father was very orthodox my mother was very not orthodox i mean she was really the opposite and when my parents got married my grandmother was not real happy with my father because he felt she was married he was marrying out of the religion anyway but i mean i did grow up in an orthodox show and um was wonderful i mean we had a vibrant show and had a lot of stuff going on all my friends we had always met there did everything anyway had a
great i think i had a very great uh childhood we were not rich we weren't poor but we were you know everything was fine and what we wanted you know what whatever um i had a brother and a sister i'm the oldest so i had to lead the way and i had all kind of restrictions that my siblings didn't have and um but i had only grandparent i knew was my father's mother i had her even until i was in my 20s which was great and my mother and my grandmother died in the same year which was not a good thing as both of my
parents died very very young and um it presented a little bit of a problem for my siblings not for me because i was already married but um what year was that what year was that that i got married got married in 59 okay how did you meet harlan okay well i went to i went to college in ohio state and harlan was there i met him the first day i was at school when he came to check out the new freshman girls and i was in a rooming house not in a dorm because they did not have rooming houses for out-of-state students this was a
really house we had 20 jewish girls i'm not sure how i got in there but that's where i was he came he from the fraternity was around the corner and the guys came check out the and um i met harlan that first night unfortunately what happened was i was at school the first week one of my roommates i've got really a different climate and i was just really dry my roommate said yeah i'm going to take a bath here just put all this all over you which i did the next day i got it and i was one big bump from head to toe i
mean i had terrible reaction and i didn't know what to do and people said oh don't go to the health center it's not a good thing and so i left now but one of my roommates said remember that guy he met he's gonna be he's going to medical school why don't you call him and he was living in the fraternity house which was around the corner from and i was like i can't call a guy but you better call somebody because i was i mean i even had fever so i said okay i bet the dust and i called and he came so sweet he
came he sat with me for hours in the emergency room i guess i should have known he was a good guy that he came somebody that he really didn't know and he actually picked me up and took me to the emergency room and sat for hours with me and he was supposed to be at the fraternity house doing whatever it was that they were doing and we we didn't really date right away but we did i guess and we started dating and i mean we dated other people too he then he went to medical school he was in undergraduate school and then he went to
medical school and he didn't really have time he would occasionally he he moved home he had been living in a dirty house and he moved home when he stood in medical school so sometimes after his class he would stop at the sorority house where i was and he would stop and say well i'm on my way home just came to say hello and he would call sometime at night well this is not we didn't have phones in the room we'd have cell phones i had to go downstairs and you know i mean it was not convenient and i'd go and he'd say well i just
called to say hi i said okay so this went on and on and finally i just said to him harlan i said if you don't have anything to say i said call me when you have something to say it was kind of a pause and he said you know what it's over time he said well i know i don't know i said you have to have colin you have something to say he said okay why don't we get married that was quick today i said what did i say okay anyway that was heaven and we got engaged and um we got engaged and it was
i guess it was i guess early spring or something we got married in september next year so what changes took place as a result of that i'm sorry what changes took place as a result of that did you stay in school did you move you know we well stayed in school briefly and then i had to go to work and my parents said you know what you want to get married and he's in school and you know so unfortunately i left after two and a half years i and i was i kept saying i was going to go back but i was working and um
he was in school and then when he finished school in 1962 when he finished medical school we moved to dallas and he came to parkland and i came when we came here todd with had a baby he was 20 months old when we moved to dallas and one of my brother's friends was working here as a musician a good friend and he worked nice and i needed to get a job and so he said i'll babysit and he did and i worked at sanger harris okay i was working at sanger harris and i got pregnant again with stacey tammy and i was and there was
a dress code i mean a serious dress code and you had to wear either black brown or gray and it couldn't be pants no pants i only had a couple of dresses at one time it was december and i was working and i was in purses and i was waiting on a lady and i had to get a purse and i at that time was a little bit showing not really much she went and she complained too to the office that i was pregnant and that i shouldn't be dealing with these purses and they called me in and the lady said i know it's christmas
and i feel really bad um and have to fire you because i you know somebody complained that you were there and i said i know when i filled out the form here you know that anyway but they didn't look at that you know anyway so that was the end of that at that time was it difficult to get another job yeah because you were studying yeah and then i was pregnant so whatever and um anyway so then stay there please it was fun too because we rented a house and it's like everybody i know now we're in medical school or residencies or something everybody lived
in the same neighborhood and we all were in these fox and jacobs homes and i mean it it's funny because now you know i i know all these all friends and there's a lot of jewish people in that in that group we live we rented that house for five years we wanted to buy a house and at that time you could buy a house to just take over the payments you didn't have to put down any money but the more we thought about it is that we didn't have any money harlem was making a hundred dollars a month and they were taken down for food
and laundry and that was we were taking back coke bottles and other kind of bottles to get them you know two cents or three cents or five cents and um of course things were a lot cheaper than because it cost me ten dollars a week and the food for the family of four family you know that was the face it was only three at the time tammy i mean stacy tammy was born after that stacy didn't move she didn't live there and so we were there for five years when he was at parkland then we uh harlan got drafted we moved to san antonio well
first we were supposed to go to japan his first orders in japan and then they changed it to the burg unit in san antonio and port sam we lived and i loved living in san antonio it was kind of fun but that's when cece was born she was an army house in an army hospital and in the army hospital you had there were no amenities other than you know everything you had to do by yourself unfortunately i got really sick and i was in the hospital they wanted me to stay there until i had baby then i was like in my sixth month there he
had if you wanted water you went down to wherever you get ice they would bring laundry for the bed put it on your bed and you were supposed to take care of it well i was really sick and there was a corpsman who knew harlan knew that harlan was interested in plastics or i don't know it was a whole thing and he and he was interested in something and so he helped me was like i'll come here and he would get the laundry he would get ice or water and he really kind of took care of me while i was there but they weren't only
one of me it was 75 75 yeah 75 a day for all meals oh everything it was and i was like they don't care you can stay forever and um i had i had two children at home and i had really nice neighbors who took care you now todd was in school he was in second grade tammy was in preschool then my neighbor was really sweet and she took care of him and being in the um army i mean he wasn't it wasn't like in practice he did get to go home and and um she was stacy was born fort sam yeah army hospital then
harlan got orders to he finished there he was at the burn unit in san antonio um which was tough it was really awful then he was in and it's still in the army and it got then we went to washington dc he went to him he went there he got a plastic surgery residency there walter reed we went to there we we bought a house he went there to find a place to live and the army is really really weird to deal with to tell you the truth um when we lived in san antonio we moved into a house there was a rent had been
on this market for the longest time somebody said would just ask them if they went around and they did it was a beautiful house and it really was it was really nice but the army is like we had by that time we had uh three children and the armies were actually the two and they said if you have two of the different sexes you have to have a room for each one well the army base didn't have anything there was three bedrooms and so we had to find our own whatever and we it was a really nice house and we like living in san antonio
then they went to washington where he did plastic surgery at walter reed that was good he got kept getting promoted then he went in as a captain he went to major when we got there i'll tell him that he ended up as a colonel at the end of because then he we lived in washington for two years and then he went to vietnam and when he went to vietnam even though i really we had a lot of friends and harlan had family in washington after thinking about it i decided i was going back to new orleans my parents were gone but my brother was there
and um and i had all these relatives you know aunts and uncles and cousins and whatever so even though i had a nice relationship with harlan's family in washington i went home so i was there when he went to vietnam how long were you there i guess in new orleans it was a little about a year and a half and then he wanted to come back to dallas it was very interesting because i came to dallas to find a place for him a house and an office then i came to dallas and i had friends here that i stayed with and i went looking well
i thought he wanted presbyterian and they only had they were just adding on to the professional building and it really wasn't it was really full the people i was staying with said they knew that there was a doctor who was leaving moving out and i should check with him and see if they get that office which was in the professional building when i went to check on it somebody else wanted it and i i was like i don't know what else to do i did i found a house and i rented a place and i found well so then i talked to the doctor who
wanted it and he was i don't tell anybody's names or anything but he was really nice and he said you know what they were adding on three more floors and he said let me make a deal with you if you want he said i will give your if you let me have this office i will give your husband two rooms in the office and won't charge him until he starts having patience and you can use my nurse and i thought and then when they finished with the rest he can move and i said great that was fine that was how it got into there so
when he came back to dallas i had the office and the nurse in the office and it was it was it worked really you know really well so we stayed there until they finished the other floors and he moved and um so that was that part so once you moved in back to dallas when did you start getting involved in the jewish community well prior to that when we when i first moved when before i finished medical school i didn't know obviously we didn't know anybody and my mother my mother we were always very involved in our synagogue very involved my mother was president of
the sisterhood my father was the father and the brotherhood i mean we went we did everything i mean that was my second home i wasn't that in the jcc both of those other than my home all my time was at the jay or in the synagogue and i mean i a lot of times in there cooking and doing all this thing and we went we went every week to services and of course the synagogue i mean it was a reform i mean was upstairs you know and interesting is that we had the men had names on their seats you know they sat in the same
place so my mother and sister and i would sit upstairs on this side because my father was on that side so that we could go home so that was then so when i was moving to dallas my parents were still living we moved here in 62 i mean my mother died soon after that but my mother and i didn't know anybody my mother said you know what you do she said you join the sisterhood and you'll meet other people other young people your age and get involved and and from there you'll find some other organizations you know that you might like but start with the
synagogue and the sisterhood and you'll meet people that's how you'll meet some people and of course i was working i didn't do it until after i stopped doing that and then i did join the sisterhood and you've been involved with the sisterhood over the years i know so i've been involved with the sisterhood forever and i was honored in 2006 i think it was that i was the whatever it was for the to our fun person i didn't want to do it because as i told you i don't like to be the center of attention i don't like to talk and that and that i
was standing there and i had to say something you know but i was one of those one i didn't plan anything i just talked and i said tell them about you know this is how it was and i grew up that way and my whole life was really with the with my synagogue and with the j everything was here i mean every sunday i was at the day with all my friends when i was younger and doing arts and crafts and whatever i always met my friends um and then when i got older it was fair to see the boys playing basketball and my father
played softball there until he had a heart attack then he was a coach so i was always there on sunday and when i when i was younger and there was some young judea and we met there and that was i hate to say when it was but when israel when we had the state of israel that's i was i was there we made that's our learn to knit because we made squares that we put made a blanket and this was in young judea to send to palestine yeah but i mean that was my childhood there was always something jewish and all my friends were jewish
i didn't date anybody that wasn't jewish that was my jewishness do you do you feel as if you continued that jewishness once in dallas and imparted that um sense of judaism and jewishness to the kids were you different than your parents well it was a little what no not really i mean we came to dallas and we i mean it said we belong to sheriff and we went to services every week and todd was he was little he used to crawl around the floor i mean but we always went to friday night service i mean today i mean i'm sorry that we don't have friday
night whatever together because every in here once they were in high school or they were we would be in this one had a ball game this would have something else it was so hard to get everybody together but i mean everybody knows and they have all the holidays together we separate one has one holiday one has the other half food everybody cooks everybody does i think we you know and it didn't in 1974 when we went on the israel mission that was a real turning point in our life both of us portland was harlan grew up you know conservative as a matter of fact when
i when we were dating and it was a holiday and invited the parents to his service i guess it was rosh hashanah and that was the first time i ever sat with the man you know in the school and i was very concerned about having to tell my father because my father was the one who was religious and i didn't know what to tell him that i did that it was like i'd never done it before but worked out fine so in terms of i was telling you about the 74 right i don't know how how we did it because we had no money i
don't know and whenever we get together i mean we call each other cousins because we have such a bond from that trap that we keep having reunions and it's like we call it cousins and every i mean even though we don't see all these people it's like they're our family and i think it changed so many lives for that trip and we really was like very concerned that it never was done again and arne sweden who actually put it together really got he got it was not a good thing he took a lot of slack from that and because he didn't charge so costs money
but it was not life i mean when we get together it's funny that we all say we don't know how we did it because this one borrowed money this or did something else and i was like we had no idea and we all had we were all just starting out in business or profession or whatever i think it's there was nobody in that group that was really established and everybody had small children and we all left our kids and we went for 10 days to israel it's like but it really did i mean it changed so many lives and if you look around at the
people who are in the group i may have been president of this and president of that and involved in missing and it was you know really it was a real life changing experience so from that experience and the other experiences you had growing up who would you say were your role models growing up from growing up and even in those early years having children obviously my parents i mean i only had i said i only had one grandmother my father's mother didn't speak much english did you speak yiddish [Music] i can understand a lot of things but i couldn't carry on a conversation we have
taken twice we took yiddish and we didn't have anybody to talk to so we really you know i mean he works and you look at a book and you see a lot of words we know you know when you look at a book with yiddish in it but you know no but my my father only talked to his mother in the edition and he had brothers they all communicated with the and his brothers were at a jewelry store and my grandmother used to just sit she didn't anticipate she said i'd go there she's reading then she was deadly forward or whatever it's called and she
said you see this she got married and it was some young girl and she kept telling me anyway but i had a good relationship my early years until i was eight i lived downstairs with a duplex and i lived downstairs she was upstairs at that time my father was the only one married he was the second the youngest and of course he didn't live out and lived with the mother until you got married so the other brothers were upstairs that were downstairs and my grandmother did every friday night the dinner and she captured her own chickens and i always said i was never going to
do because i used to go and watch her and she gets the chickens the chicken was running around and she ran the neck and out of the hole no never did but that's when i was growing up and when i was eight we moved to a house i still had a relationship with her but um it wasn't there she didn't babysit me anymore she wasn't upstairs and i i think i had more of a relationship than either of my siblings they didn't really have the same in any way but so when you look back on your life is there something that you think of that
you're the most proud of that you were involved in or that you did that i married harlan said you know i tell him all the time though i said i'm glad you that you may as he tell only a few years ago he said something like um i made you i made you marry me or something i said i'm glad there's been illness and stuff and then of course we were here kennedy was assassinated in harlem visit parkland and we went through that whole thing we been in a lot of areas things that happened and whatever anyway but it's been a long time and it's
i wouldn't do it again is there anything a story or any words um you know special words wisdom whatever that you would like to impart on your kids or that you thought about the community that you would like to share well i just i am very proud that they all get along everybody loves everybody they do things do hope that they will continue to have that same feeling that that they are really i'm very proud that they do me i know too many families that there's dissension and you know this one doesn't talk to that one and i don't have that with my immediate family
and i think they all they're not as involved as some that we would like to be more involved in the i think that they know they're jewish we have half of us were at sheriff and half are at temple evangel i mean but you know it's it doesn't matter and just they know they're jewish and i i don't know what happened with the grandchildren i realized i mean i have no idea i know one of them i don't think i would never have to worry about him he will always be jewish he's he's very he's just into all of it the others know they're jewish
i don't have jewish girlfriends you know and i don't know what will happen with them the one i know i mean i know he's been multiple times he's very involved in aipac he's been how old are the kids now the grandkids zach oldest one he is going to be 23 this year and one just was 22. uh he just graduated from indiana he was then he that's tammy's oldest he's he just met back here he's going to smbu law school zach is in in he's filmed our film really and he's he although he could have graduated but he's done four films his school it's perfect because he can take tom off he gets some credit at school but it isn't the same credit as being there so now he's there so he wants to graduate so he has another year before he can graduate not taking not doing any more films he said he's done some little episodes of something that they'll do in
the area that he can do just the episode and one of them was day watch and he crowds it up with he must let me have it whip up this girl he said he doesn't like he thought it was boring because it's not not creative and he it's not and he's he's very unusual very unusual he is very creative and he can he decided he wanted to play the guitar and he just read about it he went to play the piano he's now into cooking and he making up recipes and like i said well maybe you'd like to go to culinary school he said if
you go with me well i think i'll go with you but so those two and then we have the next two are at ut and they're going to be 20 this zoom this summer and the other two are six days apart and they are going to be 16 so tell me all their names well the oldest ones the next one is jackson and the next one is grant he's the one who's the most religious one and the next one is griffin and then we have kyle and abby abby is todd's the 16 year olds are chomping at the bed two times anything that you haven't
talked about that you would like to add is there anything you want to hear about how would you how would you like people to remember you i don't know i i guess i don't know i'm quiet i'm very unassuming i know i am i'm quiet i um i have friends but i mean i'm not i'm not outgoing i'm really not and i'm um i i don't know what to say i mean i seem to be i mean i'm all right you i didn't tell you that my whole life was dancing i mean i started when i was three years old and even even up until
i was like almost 50 unfortunately i can't do it but i saved my tap shoes and they're on in my closet on the shelf i always i mean i did ballroom dancing and other every and i always thought it was going to very similar i only wanted to marry somebody that really liked to dance like i did because i had a friend boyfriend that me and me were really dense and we took some lessons at arthur murray and we kind of helped there and um i always saw that and what did i do i married somebody who had two left feet and doesn't know left
for right and but it worked out well even though it didn't dance that's okay he had other that's right other things to make up for it exactly um so just just in case you have any special thoughts about how dallas has changed over the years the jewish community component or just the city itself any thoughts on that certainly has grown i mean there's no question about that that i mean it wasn't we didn't have the traffic when we when we moved back to dallas and after we moved we lived in a duplex and then we bought a house it was north i mean it was
on hillcrest hillcrest was two lanes and they still had horses going up and down hillcrest and they uh had people with guns i mean that you could see them to go stacy was in preschool at the j but i had to go north to find somebody to get in a carpool to go south so that you know for her to go to school to preschool and um in preschool she made a good friend that she still you know even though friend lives in new york just as close as i mean it's just amazing that they are although my guest my best friend still listening and
i went for my 50th high school union not everybody obviously didn't show up but there were about 10 of us that were friends only one still lived in new orleans which was kind of interesting she said my good friend she married somebody from new orleans and she still lives there nobody else everybody else would fall over which is sort of interesting i thought um but anyway that's kind of you know i guess i'm i'm just i'm a very simple person i i really i basically i am i'm i don't need any fancy stuff i mean i guess i'm gonna marry the right person i guess
because we're i mean we have very nice stuff we have great things and you know i mean we certainly can do whatever we want to do we travel i don't think i would have traveled as much if i didn't marry somebody like him who's ready to go in a moment's notice i mean we'd be all over i can't say that i don't have to have the latest i really don't and even we don't have to have the latest car the latest this or that yeah i guess we're pretty boring people but we both know we're jewish and think we tell our children and instilled in
them that there is hopefully they continue that way and then they don't marry somebody else i mean i didn't you know but he you know i mean at the time he got she went and not jewish but he said i don't know what we could say i mean he was he wasn't a teenager he wasn't he was in his 30s he was almost 40 years old when he got married what do you say nothing you know that's i think that's not the same thing anyway but i think this is great and thank you i know you weren't comfortable it's i guess i answered it you
answered almost all the questions and and if you think about something that you would like to have them i just actually i'm going to i just i i can i turn this on my children that's okay i just want my children to continue on and be the good people that i think they are and i think they will and you know that they continue to like each other i think that's an important thing that whatever they do and your blessing right thank you hank you