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19:28 Oklahoma City what do you remember when you were just a little boy well I remember growing up in Oklahoma City my father was from the st. Louis and my mother was from Waco Texas and they met in Oklahoma City and I was the oldest of three children in my family I had two younger sisters and we had a typical growing up I guess what my father was in commercial real estate and we had a little little two-bedroom frame house that I grew up in in northwest Oklahoma City and it was a typical growing up and went to grade school in the neighborhood and then moved on to Harding junior high school and later to Central High School graduated from central in 1946 my father unfortunately had passed away when I was 15 years old and I had no way to go to college and other than join in the military and getting the advantage of the GI Bill which I did and enjoy joy join the Navy spent two years and then they in the Navy and when I got out I enrolled at OU u and went there for four years and graduated in 1952 well let's go back a minute now how did you how did your parents both wind up in Oklahoma City to meet there well as as far as my father is concerned he had a sister that he was from st.
Louis born and grew up in st. Louis and he had a sister that had moved to Oklahoma City several years earlier and she talked him into movie to Oklahoma City back in the early 1920s said that he had advantage of finding a better job in Oklahoma City and so he did even he moved there and my mother was born in Waco Texas and when she was two or three years old her parents moved to oak on the city I'm not sure why they moved there but they they did and they were they both met in Oklahoma City now do you remember your grandparents at all very little I never knew my father's
parents and as far as my mother's concerned I never knew her father they had moved to California and afterward my grandfather died in California and I never I had never met him he she came and lived with us for about a month my grandmother that is and then she passed away after that what'd you guys do for fun in high school for one thing I was in the band and a played trumpet in the Central High School band and a lot of my act leisure time was spent the invent activities marching hit football games marching if you had parades down Main Street in Oklahoma City
things like that now we knew it when you went to school oh you did you play in the band then no I didn't get in the band I had been out of it for a couple of years and the the main problem with that was I needed to work but and I had a job at a woman shoe store in downtown Oklahoma City and that was took up my Saturdays and that's when the band played at football games and different things now you had joined the Navy before he won - oh you and that was right after or two right okay now after oh you
you graduate and it's Korean wartime and now you're going into the army that's why I have gotten into the ROTC program at oh you and when I graduated I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the quartermaster Corps and called active duty okay and where did you get sent well it started out at Fort Lee Virginia near Petersburg Virginia south of Richmond and went through a school there and after that they sent me to call Camp Chaffee Arkansas later was called Fort Chaffee you had was at Fort Smith Arkansas and I was there for a couple of months and then shipped to Germany after that
okay what was your assignment in Germany I was in the storage division of a quartermaster Depot in the south west part of Germany and and you know it wasn't too long after World War two how how did the German community except you guys they accepted us pretty good because they had good jobs at the Depot we haven't we employed quite a number of German civilians there and the pay that they got was better than the normal German was making on the economy right did they ever talk about the war at all with you guys a little bit sometimes if you kind of talk to him
about it yeah what would they say what did they think most of them felt that Hitler had miss Lemmon and he was obvious what happened to Germany they lost the war big time right and I didn't get into any arguments about the concentration camps or anything like that but I became good friends with a number of German civilians and the fact I was in one New Year's Eve I was invited to their home as a for a New Year's Eve party and have a real nice time with him what was your mission out there well we had the class two and four supply for all
of Europe we had petroleum products there we had clothing and different it was a it was a regular quartermaster of depo a large Depot and we had military personnel of course working there but in addition we had a good number of German civilian employees in never minutes of Korea no no I spent my time in Germany okay but where did you meet your wife I met her at oh you okay and what did you guys get married we got married on November 23rd 1952 it was after I finished my assignment at Fort Lee Virginia and before I reported to Camp Chaffee Arkansas and I had
10 days leave between the two assignments and we got married here in Dallas how come you got married in Dallas well she was from Dallas and that all her family was in Dallas and that was the appropriate place to get married now did you she go on to Germany with you no she ceased moved in back in with her parents and got a job working for a Sanger Harris department store in the cosmetic Department while I was overseas now when you come back home where did you guys settle down well after after we got home we went moved back to Oklahoma City and I got
a job working for the newspaper The Daily Oklahoman selling the classified advertising that was my first job and Reich came back okay and then where were your children born my son was born he was the oldest he was born in Oklahoma City and my oldest daughter was the middle child and she was born in Wichita Kansas we were living there at the time and my youngest daughter was born in here in Dallas and what finally brought you to Dallas I had taken a job and with the Western as an assistant store manager and they transferred me to Wichita Kansas after we've been in Oklahoma City
about a year after I worked for them for about a year I got a job with State Farm Insurance working as a claims adjuster in the in the auto division for State Farm and I worked for State Farm for three years in Wichita and one day we came to Dallas to visit my wife's family on vacation for a week and we passed we were driving down Preston Road and I pointed out to my wife that the State Farm had a regional office at the time it was located at Forrest and Preston and I this has pointed out that with State Farm to regional office and
she looked at it for a minute and she said well do they have claims adjustors here working in Dallas doing the same thing you're doing and I said sure they've got a claim office here and they have a lot of claim offices she said wouldn't it be nice if you could get on here in Dallas and it would be near my parents and the children would give I had two children at the time and when they would be able to know their grandparents better and everything and that put the idea in my head the next day I showed up at the regional office and talked
to the claims manager for Dallas and told him that I would be interested in moving to Dallas that I had three years claim experiences in Wichita Kansas and they were interested in me and about two weeks after I got back to Wichita they I got a phone call from the Claims Manager for the Dallas area offered me a job here I've made arrangements to move here and we moved here and I started working in the Dallas claims office on November 30th of 1959 it was the happiest time in your life well I think probably when my children were born I had throughout three wonderful children
my my son is a doctor now and he has he's a psychiatrist at medical city and he's the medical director of Green Oaks psychiatric hospital my oldest daughter is a classroom teacher at the dealy Montessori Academy and my youngest daughter is the director of the Irving Regional School for the Deaf you remember when you got your first car I sure do growing up when you had a car when I was very small but then we had to sell it we couldn't afford to keep it any longer after my father died and so we had no car I went to school on the bus to high
school on the bus and of course when I went in the Navy I didn't need a car and after I got back out of the Navy I remember going with my mother on the bus to buy groceries standing at the bus stop with several sacks of groceries at our feet and I thought to myself this is ridiculous could happen to go to the grocery store on the bus I need a car and so somebody I knew was selling a 1937 Plymouth I think it was for $600 and I had saved up a little money when I was in the Navy and that's what I purchased
my first car and that that was back in 48 it's a neat memory isn't it yeah in your lifetime we've had so many so much advancement in technology was there something that came along that you went wow how did we ever get along without this probably computers you you wonder what why and how you ever got along with that without computers and email and all of the different things that information that you can gain from the computer now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions obviously the Korean War era President Kennedy assassination something good the moon landing in 69 of course the
tragedy of 9/11 was there something that really stood out that affected you where you knew exactly where you were what had happened I remember the Kennedy assassination I was working in the State Farm regional office at the time on forest and Preston that when the word came through about the assassination all work just stopped ever everybody just couldn't hardly believe it and that was I don't think I'll ever forget that did it affect you at all not personally really just generally it did you and Ethel have three kids six grandkids no great grandkids yet know what advice does grandpa leave for the next generation my
children didn't need a whole lot of advice for me they they were pretty independent and they all did well between my three children I supported 18 years of college but every one up went to college for six years all right my son went through college and medical school in six years instead of eight years which is the norm told my my oldest grandson is is is that the UT Austin right now he's on a athletic scholarship he's a tennis player he's the captain of the varsity tennis team at UT I told him that although they the only thing we were expecting of him was to
make decent passing and grades did you and Ethel get involved with the Jewish community at all but we belong to this temple manual couples Club which is a social run group right and my wife has done some of a volunteer work she belongs to the dasu we belong to two fareth Israel traditional synagogue thank you for doing this today well you're quite well
