Harold Pollman
Harold Pollman was raised in North Dakota, where his family were among very few Jews in their community. His father immigrated from the Russia and Lithuania region around 1904, fleeing conscription, and after starting as a hod carrier learned bricklaying in New York. His mother, born in New York to immigrants from the same region, worked as a bookkeeper and secretary. The family moved to North Dakota, where his father built an entrepreneurial fur-trading business, buying furs from Native communities through a network of cream stations and selling at the international fur auction in Winnipeg. Harold grew up during the Depression and Dust Bowl, working from a young age and learning to grade furs. Jewish life was sparse, and the family traveled to Minot for the High Holy Days; later, in Grand Forks, his father helped consolidate two small congregations into Bnai Yisrael.
A gifted speaker who won second place in the national American Legion oratorical contest, Harold worked as a Senate elevator operator and an FBI file clerk in Washington while attending George Washington University. During World War Two he became a navigator on four-engine bombers, flew combat missions over Europe, was shot down over Yugoslavia, and evaded capture with the partisan underground before returning to Italy to finish his tour. After the war he studied law, earning his degree and specializing in oil and gas law. Anticipating the North Dakota oil boom, he built a practice in Williston, organized farmers into a land and royalty owners association, and served as counsel who drafted the state's first oil and gas laws and argued a case of first impression before the North Dakota Supreme Court.
Wanting to raise their children in a Jewish community, Harold and his wife, who was from Kaufman, Texas, moved to Dallas. There he became one of the city's largest builders of VA and FHA tract homes and a longtime member of the Dallas Home Builders Association board, serving as its first Jewish president. He remained deeply active at his temple and in Jewish community life, and for many years hosted annual Thanksgiving dinners in Pollman Hall for groups including choir members, Russian refugees, women and children from shelters, and youth clubs. Devoted to his family, including three daughters and five grandchildren, he described himself as a conduit for the good fortune passing through him, and said his proudest accomplishment was being able to give to others.
Immigration and family origins in the Russia and Lithuania region
The fur trade and rural life on the North Dakota plains
Growing up during the Depression and Dust Bowl
Jewish life in small North Dakota communities
Military service and survival in World War Two
Law, the oil and gas industry, and the North Dakota oil boom
Homebuilding and business in Dallas
Philanthropy and community Thanksgiving dinners
Faith, gratitude, and giving back
Full Transcript
Tech 2006 my name is Rosalyn Ben we are here today to take the oral history of Harold Pullman and for the Dallas Jewish Historical Society Harold tell us about your family you were from South Dakota North Dakota I'm from North Dakota my father immigrated to this country in 1900 and four or six I have his naturalization papers in my office knife did you look up the precise date my grandmother and my grandfather immigrated to New York substantially before then my from they lived in Russia in area at one time that was known as Lithuania and in Russia and then they emigrated to New York my
father my grandfather had a shirt factory and then my grandmother did not work in the shop my father came to this country in 1904 I knew my grandmother and my grandfather but my father came in 1904 and he immigrated from Russia and his first job was that of a THAAD carrier a HOD carrier carries the mortar up the escalated blanks he was not a brick later he could not lay brick but he was a HOD carrier and he carried the mortar up there but he realized that the odd carrier was the lowest paying common laborer you could pay so he learned Brick Lane and he
became a bricklayer shortly thereafter he met my mother who was born in New York her parents who had already immigrated here from Russia and Lithuania area and she was a secretary bookkeeper for the learner dress factory and dress shops she kept books and was a secretary and could type she went one year to NYU but she had two brothers who were right and they were destined uncle Charles and Uncle Fred and they were destined to become doctors her family could not afford for three children to go to college at the same time being a woman it came natural that she would be the fallout girl
didn't have to make a living their husbands made a living for them so she too went to secretarial instead into college and was a bookkeeper secretary and my father met her in New York after they went together for just a while my mother told my father that she had a brother in Minot North Dakota his farts your someplace and that he was a furrier and he made ladies coats out of mink and stoles out of mink and chokers out of red and silver foxes and she was going to go out and visit him and my father said can I come out and visit you and
your brother when you go to North Dakota she said yes so she went out and visited uncle a brown stain in Minot North Dakota the furrier and my dad told my uncle Abe that he knew something about furs from Russia and uncle Abe says why don't you move out here and you can buy furs from the Indians and sell them to bring him to me to make furs out of it can you bring me that book that is in the other room please that was just published by someone called America and I just got it about ten days ago that book is it here no
I don't think anyway and I there are I think twenty chapters and one chapters about me in my life so it might fit into something you might want to do yes so when was this one they went so they came out there the dates are in that focus risk so they went out there moved out there and I would guess about 19 mm 15 or something like that 12 or 15 and the reason I know that date is because my dad ran from Russia because they were conscripted all of the people to go into the Russian army and they're putting the Jewish boys in the
frontline trenches so he and his brother alter al ter ran away from Russia but when he got to the United States and North Dakota and had been here hmm five years ten years he joined the United States infantry and went into World War what one hundred and sixty fourth infantry in North Dakota and he was in the infantry in World War one my father was very entrepreneurial and what he did is that he had a pickup truck a little bit of another one I Drive today and he look why she doesn't know that book that was published by Harvard he went out to the Indians
and traded for furs and he got the idea that the farmers came in and brought their cans of milk from the cows every week when they brought in the cans at the cream stations he gave each cream station a checkbook it was really a draft book there's a technical difference there it doesn't clear without his permission gave him the draft book and so he had 20 30 cream stations around the state the draft books and they bought furs from the Indians and he picked up every week he would make the circle fine he had two trucks three trucks five truck and they would make the
circle and pick up these furs from the Indians that brought in to the cream space my biggest thrill two big swirls my big thrill was he took me one time to a knit off of an Indian Reservation off of Devil's Lake North Dakota used to be called Spirit Lake and then they called it Devil's Lake and he took me there with him to trade with the Indians one time and we've got went into what would be kind of like a Mexican adobe brick but it was blocks of mud made into bricks into a house and we spent the night there in that the big thrill
wasn't spending the night in the mud adobe hut the big thrill was then he took the battery out of his car and he took a radio out of this car and brought it in to this Hut and that particular group of Indians at the Fort Totten Indian Reservation I think they are super sue Indian although it's on the Cheyenne River so I don't know but there's sewer Cheyenne but he took me in there and brought that radio in within that night and plugged it into his car battery and those Indians heard this magic box for the first time in their life and they walked around
behind the radio they lifted they didn't know where those singing voices were coming from they lifted they looked and I was a young boy at that time and it was such a thing for me to see the Indians seeing their first music box and it was really the other big thrill then he took me every year when he packed up his furs and everything in about March or April that we had collected all winter long he had I've got pictures here for you later of his Skinner's his Indian Skinner's skinning these furs he was they were skinning the first he would dry them stretch them
on stretchers and dry them and put them on stretchers to dry and then he was bent bundle and and balaam mink what you ladies call Herman we called weasel WEA SEL but you call him ermine fancy but we had mink ermine beaver badger wolf coyote that's about it if I miss and he packaged them up and he would take them to Winnipeg Canada why that was the International fur auction where fur buyers came from London from New York from Paris from Canada and we went to Winnipeg and as a little boy before I was even bar mitzvah I was going to the International fur auction
in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada and being exposed to people from Paris in London New York around the world and I was living in Hicksville North Dakota so it was a real exciting young youth then as I grew up we went into the terrible terrible 1930s depression and North Dakota was hit with a double whammy both the Depression economically and the Dust Bowl and it devastated that part of the northern plains and people may move to Oregon we moved to Washington they moved to California and it devastated North Dakota at that death time I now was getting to be 1011 years old my dad said that I
was going to work like a man and not like a kid I went to school I never missed a day school but I was gonna work like a man and not like a kid and therefore I would get a full man's wages at that time the minimum wage the ways that was being paid the approved government federal wage was a dollar a day but don't get excited about a dollar a day because the day was ten hours long we got 10 cents an hour the day was 10 hours the legal federal law was 10 hours a day we got 10 cents an hour that was
a dollar a day in 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed the Fair Labor Standards Act and raised the wages from 10 cents an hour to what was called 2 bits an hour few people has 25 cents an hour the wages went to 2 bits an hour and I came home and I said daddy I'd been grading some furs and we went home for lunch every day and my little of Carrington North Dakota so population of about 6,000 mother went ahead of us from the bookkeeping typing of my dad's office she went ahead and made lunch on a kerosene stove my sister's job was to keep kerosene
all the time for the store stove and my mother went ahead and made lunch my father didn't went walked from work to home for lunch and I came home and I said daddy daddy I he left me behind I had been grading some furs and daddy daddy mr. Roosevelt I heard on the radio just passed the bill we're gonna get two bits an hour instead of ten cents an hour and that's two dollars a day because we're only gonna have to work eight hours a day the minimum the day is eight hours no longer ten hours he took my his hand like this I can feel it now and when Wham on my bottom and I said why did you do that he said sit down that sofa because I came through the front door and we like to the living room to go to the kitchen for love lunch he said Wham I said why did you do that he said because mr.
Roosevelt is gonna break every businessman in this country you cannot raise wages fifteen cents an hour in one year you raised it a nickel an hour the first year a nickel an hour the second year the third year nickel an hour or more and then you get to twenty-five cents an hour but you're used to it and you work it you don't cut the time from ten hours to eight hours and raise it to bits in one day while my dad was wrong it was about closed all the banks we had a bank you couldn't get money out you couldn't put money in my dad
had assigned chips to the grocery store for his men to buy groceries and then opened a bank with a new economic adjustment in everything I told you about grading first I used to be able to grade first for my father even as before Bar Mitzvah yet I got so good at grading minks that I could tell you a male mink from a female minguk by the field of fur oh wow how do you tell a man no carcass ok the carcass is gone the skin is dry you just got the fur how can you tell a female mink from a male mink well it's easy
if you've been with the Indians and you know about these things a female mink is mounted from the rear and when she's mounted it breaks the hairs on the back fur on her hindquarters and so the females mink fur is smooth and silky like the rest of the body the female fur is broken and brittle and so forth enough of the fur years enough of that I went on into high school I was yes talk about Jewish life Jewish life in North Dakota was alive but barely in the town I told you about where my father's fur warehouse was we were the only Jewish family
my sister and I were the only two Jewish people in the community you know I could be a part or I could be a separate nothing I chose to be a part I went to the Lutheran Church I attended I didn't went we always went to Minot for my holy days it was just 400 miles what make just two minor and but Jewish life in Carrington and was none existent the librarian in the city allowed her daughter to date me she wouldn't let her date any of the boys in the high school because I had a gentility and a way of mannerism the Jewish and
all that she wasn't Jewish but she would let Peggy deeply we moved to Grand Forks which was about 200 east of there and there we had a Jewish community my father became chairman of the building committee and built a brand-new shul didn't have the money wasn't money he was the building man that knew about building this construction and he became this little community of 30 families sometime got up to 35 families you know the story about the sailors that were marooned in an island the Pacific rescued after many many years and they were Jewish and when the rescue came they had built their palapa that
they lived in but they had built three jewels that was his shul and that was my shul and they said well why is her three shoes are just two of us and they said that's the show that both of us ate in my little town of Grand Forks we had two shows Uncle Harry and rabbi paper masters rabbi paper master was the main big uncle there he had a little show for a little show some Fridays we could not get minion with people working hard work we couldn't get minion for both shoes we would go to uncle Harry's show first have a minion and then
gonna rabbi Papermaster show and have a minion so that Uncle Harry could keep his shul when they built the new show which is there now bnei yisrael when they built that show my dad brought together the two actions with one understanding if you go there today you will say see bnei yisrael but if you walk through the show you will see another little show contained in there and that's my Uncle Harry show my dumb my not a real uncle I mean everyone's uncle and Aunty ever was grandma grandpa there was with only 30 families as kovetz respect but if you go to B'nai Israel today
and by the way I had 48 people at my break fast last week I provide the break fast every year I had 48 peoples 10 or servicemen our students from the university of north dakota and six were servicemen from the airbase out there but the rest was the 32 of the community but if you go there today and walk through that show you will see Uncle Harry show up completely with the old benches with the old where you sit there and Dobbin where you put the towels underneath when you leave it just my daddy and the orange cordage move your incarnation over the Bema and
he promised Uncle Harry that his shoe would live forever if you would consolidate with our show and that's if his claim there and there my folks are buried and that's it so that's the religiosity of the North Dakota plays small 20 families 30 families 40 families and my dad also a throwback but when he moved with my mother to North Dakota they were giving land grants to get settlers to come out there and he got a land bracken grant of land because he realized only land was wonderful from a bad man from rushman and he went broke the first year and lost his claim because
he had to plant ten trees and break ten acres of land and he didn't know up from down and he lost his land grant that's one in that little shtetl of character North Dakota I became I entered into the American Legion national oratorical contest nationwide and I won in Bismarck North Dakota I went on to from Bismarck I went on to somewhere else and then I went to home on Nebraska and won and then I went to the national finals of the American Legion oratorical contest and I won second place in the National American Legion oratorical contest so that was pretty much high school outstanding
art or a high school champion in oratory at the spring championships graduated high school at that point do I go on here from now yeah from from high school I wanted to go to the University and I knew I wanted to be a lawyer when I was born there was never a time I ever considered doing anything to be a lord I read Thomas Jefferson I read everyone that they had anything ever to ever do it law constitutions everything and so I told my mother I wonder who Law School where do you want to go to law school where else do you can you go
to law school Washington DC I want to go to Washington DC my mother was very politically minded Democrat and she was a precinct chairman for our for our senator senator Geraldine I Senators GRP and I was a strict strict American first person he was a pacifist he was against anything to do with World War two as was my mother she was a pacifist it was against all that and she called to talk to dr. senator Gerald Nye and he made me an elevator operator in the Senate office going in Washington that's when you had elevators that you had it cut it about eight inches before you got to the floor and it coasted to an even stop and I got good at coasting it to an even stop I went to Georgia where I went to school at George Washington University in the evenings and worked in the Senate office building and then the hours were wrong for me to work and go to school there so my mother did a few more phone calls and I went to work for the FBI
and I went to the work for the FBI as a file clerk my job was filing and going to George Washington University one of my great claims for fame in the United States history books of the world was that there were eight Nazis ja Viktor's that landed on the coast of the United States at the beginning of World War two and there were eight Nazi saboteurs and they were working up the coast to go to put poison in the water supply in New York and in Washington DC all made-up Nazi saboteurs were captured and off the coast by North Carolina preparing for their trial the
FBI had him in jail and everything preparing for trial their files were in the basement of the building I worked with and one of my jobs as a clerk was in the morning to go down to the vault sign out for the file for the sa C's special agents in charge and carry them up to their offices so I was instrumental in the eight Nazi saboteurs of America that landed on American shore at the time of the beginning of world war ii and i was very very impressed that i was participating in the conviction of these eight nazi saboteurs in world war ii when I
left for service and the pictures in my office mr. Hoover Jagger Hoover had a policy now when the men went in services they worked in the Justice Department building they were to come by his office and he shook hands with every man that we're leaving for service one of the thrills of working for the FBI of course was that on my floor there was another boy in myself and 120 girls all the other boys weren't already I hadn't gotten there yet so it was nothing to get on a train at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday and zip up to New York and the standing seating for Broadway plays the standing behind the rail
was 50/50 cents a person with your student ID so I saw every Broadway play before I went into service at 50 cents a night and I stayed with my aunt Gussie in New York and slept on her sofa the girls stayed at the YWCA went into World War 2 that went into World War 2 in nineteen hundred and forty-three and took my training became a navigator on heavy four-engine bombers and leave out here somewhere I was going to talk about but I forgot about anyway I went into service and went overseas I flew 50 combat missions over Europe we were shot up badly and crash-landed
in northern Yugoslavia which was then still in German territory and joined the partisan underground I was not an escapee I was not an escapee I was an evading the buggers never caught me and we joined partisan bands each man carried ten thousand dollars of gold seal currency out of brown our waste money belt this was in Yugoslavia uh-huh but we are we always had ten thousand dollars of gold seal escape currency the dollars that you have in your purses are silver certificates backed by The Full Faith and Credit of the government and sober this was backed by The Full Faith and Credit of American government
backed in gold bullion and the government would retrieve these escaped currency for actual gold bullion and the partisans loved that we walked behind German lines at night and worked our way down to the Adriatic coast at the Adriatic coast the partisans had a fishing boat that took us out to the island of this viz still there still spelled vis and VI z and they're the British due to their air sea rescue experiences in the English Channel the English sent in a pontoon plane to prop plane and it landed and you got 30 seconds to get aboard one two three five and we jumped aboard and
flew back at that point we could have been repatriated back to the United States due to our experience and our escapism and all that stuff but our captain called a vote only got back a couple days later we got rested up and we raised our hands and they said do we finish the missions or do we go home we had five to go to a man we voted to continue flying combat missions and you were based in Italy about amazed and very Italy and we still have a reunion every 10 years and there were 42 of us at the last reunion that made it back
the last time two years ago we go on every decade mark and there's stories to tell about that someday we'll do a long story enough they hear but story about the little children who wanted truck a lot because we got one Hershey bar and one package of chewing gum chewing gum one Wrigley's of one person every Friday the children knew oh they come up a Joe chunga at our last reunion those little children brought with them to the reunion those little children brought to them at our reunion their grand children their grandchildren came to the reunion and all the generations in between attended that read
because we had confiscated the land from them and bladed off a 500 year old olive orchard and vineyard to make our runways but we stayed loyal to the Larusso family all those years and that's a whole another story well back here after the service I went back to the University of North Dakota by the way I was looking for pictures someone asked for pictures and it reminded me of many things I had forgotten again I couldn't join any fraternity at the University of North Dakota for the simple reason that I was Jewish and they didn't take it in Jewish and I was there however that
didn't stop me from being vice president of student council I looked through these books the other night just fantastic things that I hate to even admit to but I was a president of the YMCA board for that but I couldn't join a fraternity president aalayam see a board I was the chief announcer and renew of a radio station KF JM k FGM is important because it's a second licensed radio station in America the first licensed radio station was licensed by General Electric is connected in New York the second one was licensed by the engineering department of the University of North Dakota radio station number two
in the nation licenses and I was a radio announcer there and on Saturday and Sunday because I wasn't once I got to college I wasn't going to show every Saturday my mom and dad weren't in charge anymore though I walked as a young boy before my Mitzvah I want to show every single soft day Friday evening every single Saturday morning and walked but I hesitate at this moment to call the old man home from show in North Dakota but after that I got a phone call when I was I came back from service and I entered in the University of North Dakota didn't go back
to George Washington didn't wanted to get get going get going and I went into my first year well I got my PhD and then I went on to the first year of law school and I got a phone call from Tulsa Oklahoma Tulsa Oklahoma was the world headquarters for the oil industry at that time and it was my brother-in-law Arthur and he said can you come to Tulsa for Thanksgiving this year I was in law school first year and he I said well I have to have my mom and dad if I can I was living rainforest going the University and then I said I'll
have mom and dad if I can but why he said I think you need to come here and visit your sister Lauren myself I said ok I will if I can get permission my dad put me on a Greyhound bus sent me to toss all Oklahoma and I said what is this business like I love your turkey it's been a wonderful meal what he said I can't talk to you I said so why am I here he says I can't talk to you what I'm going to tell you happens to be what do they call it not professional information private prep privileged no proprietary proprietary
information so I can't talk to you but where's the Hughes was standolyn Standard Oil of Indiana's Damelin he said we're spending millions and millions in that Jones days it wasn't hundreds of me it was millions millions and millions of the year is 1900 and 49 48 49 he said we're spending millions and we're not dumb Amerada Petroleum Corporation is spending millions of dollars and they're not dumb some day North Dakota may find oil you need to take oil and gas courses if you're going to practice law went back after a good sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner on the Greyhound bus and I went to Dean thermos guard
a real good strong Scandinavian name and I said Dean I can't tell you this there's proprietary information I can't talk about it but the oil companies are spending millions and millions of dollars on oil called seismology seismographic I like to explain that some time when I had time how sighs ma grafite was invented by a pair Perea French artillery officer in World War one by putting like a stethoscope to the ground and he could hear the vibrations of the German can and locate them so anyway a slumber Jane became a method for discovering oil and they were slumber Jane so I went back to Dean
Thomas car and said Dean Thomas guard can you inculcate into our courses some oil and gas courses to learn but I can't tell you why except you know that they're looking for oil all over the western part of North Dakota could I get some water and gas courses with my colleagues here mr. Pullman it's very interesting let me take it up with it the next Dean's meeting and we'll come back to me in two weeks I come back Dean can we have some oil and gas courses he said mr. Pullman this is a state finance institution using state funds and we cannot roll the dice like they all call companies now here's the famous words branded in a hot branding iron across my forehead here we cannot brand it we cannot gamble state funds here comes words on the remote contingent possibility that North Dakota may someday become a petroglyph forest province is that words from the Dean of law Dean a petrol difference promise remote contingent possibility alright I'm done with Thanksgiving I get on another Greyhound bus I go to the University of Texas in Austin Texas and I asked the Dean if he will let me in law school at the end of that semester and I said this is proprietary information but I have to study although he says I know they're doing a lot of that yes we have a wonderful we have all the courses you need enough as I'm walking away from the dean's office and cutting across the campus a man walks across my path and I say mr.
Maxwell what are you doing here and he said mr. Pullman what are you doing here and I said mr. Maxwell I asked you first yeah he says you know that's fair I'm looking to see if I can come on staff here as a professor at the University of Texas in oil and gas law it was my real-estate teacher from the University of North Dakota and he says what he I said I'm seeking to enroll he says I won't tell if you won't tell I said nothing so I went back to the University of North Dakota finished up that semester enrolled at the University of Texas in Orland gas law and mr.
Maxwell was a teacher down here I didn't have he said you're making B and B pluses and North to go I'd be pleased to have you as a student I took some courses from him not knowing the gas took some courses graduated University North Dakota and then I got a phone call I married a young girl from Kaufman Texas who lived out in Kaufman it was going to school at University of Texas he was going to take an education major she belong to a Jewish sorority down there I play Sammy down there and I was the oldest person of course in the whole Sammy chapter
because I was a World War 2 veteran so they made me the place president and I met this girl and the way I met her was on a blind date because her sorority sister Shirley block of El Paso Texas said she got a date for me for the Halloween party would I go I said well she is a nice girl you asked a wonderful girl beautiful girl she was still a beautiful beautiful girl and made a date with her and didn't meet her till the Halloween party she rode in on a broom cuz she was a witch of course and and so she and she
came on the broom and I met her we went to the Halloween party together and about two or three days later I said I have a confession to make she said what I said Bob Blankenship of Corpus Christi Texas has already asked me to go to her winter formal and I said yes to her I want you to tell me do I break that date or do I keep that date because I never dated another girl after the Halloween party I never went with another girl after I met that beautiful girl at the Halloween party never ever and she said and I loved her for
it they have ever since fired that she said don't break that date you go to the you go to the winter formal with Bob that blankenship and it won't change our situation at all it was very nice particularly since the other girl was in 85 she was an ST teen might my sweetheart so there we went went back to school in about April I get a phone call from the fellow whose pictures in this annual I saw and his name was Claire flickery and he was teaching at a rural school in North Dakota on a farm and he says Harold you're down there studying oil
I said yeah I'm down in Austin I got too much to go for my degree he said Harold get your self up to North Dakota I'm on the farm next to where they're drilling and they're moving in more and more and more equipment and they sure are cut to cut the camera they sure know they sure are pissy up here cuz he's talk with a heavy scandinavian accent they sure are pissy you better get your butt up here and I said well I Canada I went to Dean of the law school I said Dean I can't tell you this deep information but they're gonna discover
oil in North Dakota I gotta get out of here I know the man that's living on the farm where they're doing the drilling and he wants me to get up here fast I had met a man in this town of Dallas through a relative of Lee's by the name of M period B period Rudman and he was a wildcatter and he had acreage and I told him and I told Marty Friedman or a relative that I was heading for North Dakota and Rudman got ahold of me and he says there's no oil and gas colored attorneys in the entire state yet no one in there
practicing oil and gas law you're my attorney you're gonna handle all my leases up there and he was blocking up leases at ten cents an acre I told my bride cuz we've gotten married by that my last year law school gotten married we're in our last year I said we're out of here I went to the Dean of the law school I said Dean can I get can I take my exams a month early at that time you took the bar exam in February and you've got word whether you passed and then it was retained it was restrained you weren't given your bar subject to
your passing your law school exams in June but you didn't have to take your law your exams in June pass Law School and then wait another three months to get your bar degree is a waste of time so you took your bar early in February then you got here if you got your law degree the bar took effect I said I pass my Bardeen can I take my exams a month early and get out of here he says let me see what we can do about it he talked to each one of my courses they gave me an exam for the course they didn't tell
me whether it's the same one they had written for the other students I had one girl sitting on the left of me because there was just one girls yeah my name is Paul mantilla ll her name was pot off Bo TT so I got stuck with a girl on my left but it gets worse than that the first black admitted to the University of Texas law school was supposed to be seated in the basin being lectured separately from the class and the Dean rule that if that was not a full education because it's the repartee between students that's the real learning process where were they
gonna say sit this Brown versus painter where were they going to see them you know the case Brown versus painter anyway they said it on next to the North Dakota boy he had never met a black before he didn't even wouldn't bother him any and so I had the only black in the law school on my right side and Beverly caught off on my left side I was that's why today I'm an equal-opportunity officer for the federal government I signed every year so I came I told her I said they're going to discover oil North Dakota Claire blicker he just called me he's on the
farm next to there we got a u-haul trailer we loaded it up rented you all hooked it on behind the car drove to North Dakota didn't have any place to go went to Williston North Dakota Eddie Connelly Conlon CO and Li n who was the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in that town of Williston North Dakota had been governor of boy scout boys state governor of boys state when I was a young boy in high school when I was Attorney General for Boise State and I pulled into town contact the chamber Congress and he got me an attic and a house upstairs it was
pitch like this the woman put there our bed underneath the eaves like this I enjoyed it because I had to flip over her to get inside the bed she had a flip pot because we couldn't get up and stand straight up till we got to the middle of the room when you sat down the party you had it back into it like this and then you could get up and stand up in the middle of the room cuz it wasn't high enough that's the kind of attic she lived in when we came there beautiful girl beautiful beautiful clothes her father was in the clothing business
beautiful men's clothing but she nowhere to shop it and even markup at that time and so they asked her if she would do nothing not worked if she were just pretty and talked southern and be a hostess at the hotel where all the southerners were coming in and so she stood in the lobby and greeted him with the you all and welcome you all she did the all he you all stuff for the North Dakotans at that time and I set up a practice of law and I specialized in oil and gas law or anything else that would come through the door I drew well
I never handled a divorce and never handed in a bankruptcy but I handled business law and contract for all the farmers and I became the president of the Williams County land and royalty owners association and I organized all the farmers who were independence and leased up hundreds of thousands of acres for Billy Rutland and at ten cents an acre and 1/8 royalty and Billy was very very kind to me after he had leased what he wanted in a certain area he allowed me which was against the rules unless it was permitted authorized to checkerboard his leases he gave me permission to what we call checkerboard
his leases in other words I was permitted to buy minerals and buy leases on his information which is secret to information so after I've done the work on a certain block he's a picky Apple I didn't make money pick me pick you up ten acres here I'll pick you up five acres picking up 10 acres farmers didn't have any money to pay for their work if they wondered $25 deed or a $15.00 deed $25 will to be drawn I'd say uh you've got 1,500 acres he's got 1,600 acres you got thought because up in North Dakota you have to do intensive farming it is so
droughts written that you can't plant small you have to farm extensively rather than intensively so everyone's got 1,800 2,000 acres so I'd say uh just give me a mineral deed for ten acres ten cents an acre gave me a dollar you know dollar an acre for perpetual minerals he gave me ten dollars hey your bill is $15 give me fifteen go out there in front to scattering that that was a girl that was my secretary out on the front and she was greeting people in the lobby this one visiting with the all men and she was a like the Chamber of Commerce reader because she
spoke the language I'm from Dallas so anyway that's what I did I took ten acres from one and fifteen desert and it was worth ten fifteen dollars and I ended up with all those minerals and everything from that house history after we at least everything up and I done Billy's work well I became consul to the North Dakota State Legislature drafting the first code the first oil and gas codes for North Dakota law book and I just flew down to Oklahoma City and plagiarize the interstate oil compact Commission standard code and carried them back to the North Dakota legislature but I get credit for being
Attorney counsel of record for drafting the first oil and gas laws of the state of North Dakota I also handle the first case of first impression before the Supreme Court North Dakota first gated first impression by the way at one of my league of appearance mr. Maxwell professor had been hired by my opponent the oil company and will be we handle the case against each other and I won the case so I licked my professor on that particular case so that was then from North Dakota we got done pretty much they'd leased it up I'd done Billy's work and everything and she said she's pregnant with her first child which is Cheryl Pullman here in town and she said we both agreed that we couldn't raise one child as the only Jew in that Western North Dakota community there was one Jewish family added clothing store there the raw witchers so we made
up our mind that we raised our children in the Jewish community and you open everything up and we came back to Dallas Texas and I came back and set up a little office what a really an office Jimmy Alexander and Arthur Goldberg emptied out a stockroom where they had their forms and their papers no windows just the stockroom and they let me use the receptionist Donna Morgan as a scribe for me and for about a year I office top of that stock room no windows just just that room until I got started then I got an office and being interested in real estate law as
I was and oil and gas is a real estate course being interested in that I opened up and got acquainted with people who are developing homes and I became the second largest track builder of VA and FHA homes in the city of Dallas I poured eight out of ten slabs that were ever built in the city a farmer town of Farmers Branch so and now this was when 50 50 54 55 56 I became president of the Dallas Greater Dallas Holmen apartment builders creation and the only Jew that has ever been president of the Association and I was installed in an international ballroom of the
Fairmont Hotel wishes not to say that but I had heard every prayer ever committed for the installation of the president in the name of and I decided that I would have rabbi Klein to stall me I thought that was a good come up and for the first Jewish president of the Home Builders Association today I'm the longest standing member of the Dallas whole wide Association Board of Directors I've been on the board for 50 years 52 years now I just received the award year before last continuous member of the Board of Directors I go to Washington every May as a lobbyist peach session or flash
back to my mother about politics when I went into the military she was Gerald nine pacifist all that by the time I came out of my 50 missions shot down the whole Megillah my what mother was president of the American Legion Auxiliary and was active in the American Legion Auxiliary very very much she had a change of viewpoint from pacifism to the Holocaust and became no we didn't know a lot about the Ahly thought it was almost a secret thing especially living out there on the Prairie you know and we heard we had some German refugees came to live in our town but we didn't
know them and we didn't they didn't speak and you know but but once she got wind of what that thing was all about over there American for American first and all that when she got wind of it she became very active in the American Legion became president of America Zuri I came to Dallas and was very active in the building business and on every piece of land that I developed for 100 120 60 houses 40 houses 80 ounces I would leave out one corner the city was glad to give me the zoning because I was bringing houses with me so they give me commercial zoning
on the corner I could get it easy if I brought 50 100 hundred fifty two hundred houses to committee all those little pieces of land at those times I had Mexican employees but Latino is more appropriate nowadays but they were Mexican illegal and they were pouring my slabs laying my brick putting my asphalt shingles on doing my copper plumbing everything well in those days the housing business went from about February or March to October we promised everyone we'd get him in in time for school but builders we got him in we used to have to write letters yes they are gonna live in this because
they were transferring from Oak Cliff from here and there we had to write a letter to the school board to let him race through where they were going to be living but once we finished and got everyone in in October the business went to nothing until next February when we started building again for school delivery over the summer what are you going to do with all the Mexican help my subcontractors would lose all their help they would give him to me the owner of the company would go to California go to Arizona go someplace nice but they would give me all their labor and when
I was paying a dollar sheet for hanging sheetrock eight feet tall four feet wide she without her sheet they'd let me have the Mexicans with no overhead no indirect cost and no profit to them to hold their crews together over the winter and I would pay them fifty cents a sheet I would lay brick for a nickel a brick instead of a diamond brick if you go to some of my little strips around and I have strips and sinners in twelve or fourteen different satellite communities around Dallas now in the front they're very nice they're very nice they're done well for the time for the
50s or 60s to 70 they're nice but if you walk around the bear back they'll have 20 great brick 20 beige brick 14 antique brick 12 no one threw nothing away on my job and we've made these little strips and centers all over the community on the leave out pieces to leave out pieces what it was I what I called winter work in the housing business so I had labor at less than 50 cents a dollar I had scrap material and if you go into some of my dairy clean staring me which are now Vietnamese walk in walk out walk in walk out you sit
down there in a booth you can see every piece of sheet rock this big was safe because you can follow the tape inventions and pieces in there they're still standing they're still being rented so it was a matter of born in the depression working hard converting that experience into a saving attitude when you're building houses save the scrap and we built centers and strips and so forth and nothing that I'm telling you is great nothing's big this is not the big story these are not big famous people story I lecture in Harvard this will be my 15th year of lecturing to the Graduate School of
real estate only two candidates for a doctoral or master's degree I asked Dean gray head of the graduate school at that time I said Dean why do you send for a guy like me to come up here you got travel crows people you got Tishman brothers people you got Levitt people you got all the big names in America why does a fellow like me come to Harvard lecture and he said well mr. Paulin that's because you are mr. little man I said Dean you could have talked to me all day not put me down faster than that one sentence I missed a little man he said yes you talk about the nuts and bolts and we call you the muddy shoe lecture series and so four years after that I had a attache case on the last day of my lecture on Friday I never teach past Friday noon not because of religion it's just 30 minutes from New York from Boston and I get on a jet and I'm in New York by Friday noon and the whole weekend when I finished my lectures on the
series I used to open the at test shaped a take out a pair muddy high-top shoes and I didn't muddy them that's the way they were from being out in the field and I'd say thus endeth the muddy shoe lecture series and that I'll be back in Harvard next week say something okay oh let's talk about Dallas where's your wife is from Dallas well Kaufman from complex we moved into Frederick Square Apartments which we chose one because of the location because it was in University Park and secondly because they had dishwashers it was the first apartment complex in Dallas that an automatic dishwashers yeah that's
not important to you Mary Ann I don't think over the first in Dallas but okay I didn't know Carruth was that far behind what was the Dallas Jewish community when you moved here because you moved here so your daughter could be raised with a Jewish community the the temple was completely different maybe the temple was very reformed Jewish and it was not anything like it is now the temple actually now is more conservative than than it was then but the children had a well they were in the process of building the new temple we went to Services High Holy many services at Fair Park their
Park Auditorium and then we went to the forest Avenue theater and I don't remember it was Sheryl wasn't old enough for Sunday school but she started sunday school in the new temple building our firstborn was actually before we could hook up and head out of North Dakota's actually born in North Dakota so she wasn't it no she's actually born in North Dakota the other two before here Dennis and Harold can you tell us something about the Dallas Jewish business community at that time well Dallas housing business community I know about I don't know about the overall community but Carruth was had all the land in
the world at that time I have a ward in there that I received a couple years ago the pray Sir Hugh Fraser Hugh Fraser was very very involved in housing and he formed the Dallas Home Builders Association and now they have an award in his name Hugh Prater because he was a fine builder and built good complexes and since that time the Ukraine reward had been given to Dave Fox Bobby Folsom who was a mayor of Dallas and most of the people who are instrumental in housing I had the privilege of being awarded that year before last a hubris and the thing is it's not
given to the Builder for his building promise it's not given to the Builder for outstanding work it's what he has done the most for his community because an outstanding builder build because it's a profit to him he's trying to make a profit he's trying to sell his houses but what does he do o exterior to that and there were so many few praises Dave Fox Bobby Folsom Vernon and James Smith from Oak Cliff they were the builders of that day when we were trying when we were coming up trying to emulate him in those days you didn't have to sell houses there were 13 and
a half million men that were coming down the gangplank from service with your looks pardon me pardon me pardon me with their hands on their zipper and their girl in the house who had been writing them email you don't know what v-mail now now we call it email v-mail and what it was was microfilm that was done in reels and put in a reel and then redeveloped when it got to the boys overseas well they were standing in the doorway with that certificate to go down at the County Courthouse waiting and the board was coming down the gangplank with his zippered figuratively the fat gangplank
and the government and their wisdom decided that they were going to crank up this country and get it going so they made the VA bill of lights the GI Bill of Rights and you could get of no down payment no zero down nothing down home 4% interest but the federal government wanted the boy to have some equity in there they want him to have an equity in there so he had something to lose so they required him to pay the closing costs the closing cost was $200 there wasn't a prospective father-in-law a world that wouldn't put up the $200 and get that mooning girl out
of the house and so the father-in-law popped for the 200 I wasn't the Builder I didn't know a 2x4 from a 2 by 6 I didn't know sheetrock from gyproc I was a procurer I was a procurer I could get asphalt shingles where no one else could find singles I could find copper tubing that for plumbing I could find copper wire for plumbing I could get material I hired a general contractor Wayne Stiles subsequently had two boys who became builders in the community and so all I had to do is get the merchandise then I went down to Aubrey Costa love and Kosta I went
down to Uncle Louie who's Uncle Louie Louie Hexter he was a Pater familias of every builder in this city he was the Pater familias who went to Uncle Louie for everything and I went down and I said can I and they said yeah you can do it I don't know about Billy just get the stuff so I got mortgage loans from loving Costa Aubree Costa I got mortgage loans from Prudential Insurance nothing down VA government guaranteed it the down payment for FHA homes was five hundred dollars four percent interest and I went to building houses to me it was Williston North Dakota number two it
was a bonanza waiting to happen and I saw these guys coming back how I knew they needed houses and I knew a little bit about real estate from my law practice and I went and I scurried up money from Prudential was my big at one of my biggest lenders and lovin Kostov Acosta Uncle Louie advised me every time I had a question I'm driving down Webb Chapel and I see 60 acres of land empty and I say for to an acre that's 240 houses maybe if I if I massage the city I went get 5 to an acre that's 300 houses went back to City
Hall who owns that land they said a guy by name of rape Oh is he a big guy here in town nah he just some little guys does some building here in town wait a minute don't laugh that was nineteen that was in thingies so I said okay I could we could get the exact date very easily here so I'm going down Central Expressway and I see all that land at the corner of Central Expressway and Northwest Highway and their bulldozers are out there and there's Letourneau to eternals a huge machine that scrapes the dirt apart and there were ten or fifteen up there and
I drove in there and I said what is all that going on there and they say are there's a guy gonna build a shopping center on this murder I said who owns the land they said Carruth owns the land but he's flipped it to the Boy Scouts as a gift and the Boy Scouts have sold it to some guy by the name of Nasir we don't know if he's got title to it yet from the Boy Scout but he's starting to build so I said oh I'll call up my office I say Alice look in the book where is there diamond than a manager she
said the Republic National Bank building I didn't go to my office I drove down to the bottom of the Republic National Bank building garage underneath took the elevator up to the 15th or 18th floor found mr. Nash's office sat down in his reception room and said I want to see mr. Nash sure they said do you know him I said no does he know you no I'd like to see him I read every magazine he had in the reception room twice he finally came out because that girl said I wouldn't go away now get rid of this guy mr. Nash yes hereupon yes I'm a builder of homes and I build homes and I build all over in Farmers Branch Carroll in that area and I'm just about Auto Lots and you've got about 60 acres there maybe it's 50 and I'd like to buy it they said well I didn't have enough for sale I said I know but I'd like to buy it and let me tell you why I ought to you oughta sell it he said why do you think so come in my office sit down is it okay I went in sat down and he said why do you think you ought to
buy it why do you think out of selling well first of all I ought to buy it because I'm housing GIS and I can build I can sell them I don't even have to sell them I just have to sign them up as fast as I can get them built I need more land and I said you ought to sell it because there's a new law in the books and that is all that money you've got about ten litter knows out there and you pay those guys $100 an hour for that machine and I said that's a thousand dollars an hour and I said with
that much money being spent there's a new law that you don't have to take your cost and put it in the building and depreciate it over 30 40 years you don't have to take depreciation the government in order to encourage the generating of business to foment business are giving developers immediate right off of the developmental expense you can take a meat right off of every cent on the dollar you spend and you don't have to advertisers over 30 40 years and you ought to sell anything you can sell and take it off so you don't have to pay taxes on it at all at this
time with all that money you're spending he's in mr. Paul Minh you're preaching to the choir I know that law I said I'm sorry I just thought I'd hit on something that I'd let you know I said but I understand your tax attorney is Ruben Ginsberg here in town he said yes I said call Ruben ask him if what I said is correct he said what are you pay me for the land I said mr. Nezzer I don't have I have no idea what I can pay you for this land but I'll tell you what I will do I'll have my engineers develop a plan at my expense I'll have my architects design five houses that's all you had to have from five for FHA and VA then was five houses cookie cutter everything they said you have to have five houses in it I made every fifth one the same so I cheated a little bit before I put different shutters on so anyway I'll have a set of plans I'll file it with FHA VA they give you what is called a
CRV certificate of reasonable value and they attribute the value of the lot and the house seventy and I will give you every dime that the government says is a fair price for that lot I'll develop it and I'll use Warren Blackman of Austin paving company to develop it because he's developing your North Park and you can look at all of his bids and look at all the prices I did and I said in case you don't know me and maybe I'm not honest and everything call Uncle Louie Uncle Louie will tell you about me he says I'll do that he called Uncle Louie and called
me back in about ten days I said come to my office I came he said Louie Hexter said that you get the highest appraisals in the house in the city for tract housing you get the highest appraisal the highest suited RVs ravit from VA that they give and that you get the highest dollar and that I should go with you we didn't sign a contract we didn't sign a letter we didn't have an agreed price I filed with FHA VA I got the price appraisal on the Lots I brought it to mr. Nasher national says that's a good price for those laws and he equated it to raw land and we shook hands and he went over to Hector company and signed a document for closing and I signed a document and Ray Nasir two years ago at a Harvard luncheon and his daughter and net and I know the other one and and and the days and and the younger one the blonde came here she was there at that dinner ray Nasher got up and said that's the only man I've ever sold anything to in my life at no agreed price and he tells that story every time he
and I are together that's the only man I have ever sold anything to on a handshake and a no agreed price and we did and we shook hands and I bought it and close it and Ray Nasser tells that start we talked about it in show when we're waiting for the second shift to start on Yom Kippur he was sitting a couple rolls ahead of me and I said you got anything for sale at no great is it not lately and she the daughter says I want to go to lunch with you that this was several years ago when we were together and he told
that story to a luncheon group she said I gotta get together and have lunch with you my father never sold anything without an agreed price I said well there's an instance of it so that's the way I did it I'm still doing things like this McKinney went different and changed two years ago three years ago now the downtown section 40 years ago was all there was around the square around the courthouse that's all there was I built the first shopping center there was a shopping center on the east side of town were central expresso it went north I was 75 I built that held it
until the last couple years ago and it all turned Latino it all turned McConnell and I got the blue-collar workers I got the pickup trucks I got the food stamps and everything moved over to the east side of town what happened about three years ago I guess it's three years ago now the worst thing in the history of McKenney happened you're a historian I'm worsening him a Latino got elected to the City Council redneck hundred and twenty-five year old McKinney new historian stole a lot McKenney it's older than that I think and a redneck got elected to City Council but the story gets worse it
wasn't just a redneck horror of horror for the first time in the history of McKinney it was a woman can you imagine a worst combination in McKinney a female Latino on the City Council she sat through one meeting she sat through two meetings she raised her hand señores all of the good roads are on the west side of town all of the new schools are on the west side of town all of the paving all the potholes all the new light standards on the west side of town you are doing nothing from my people and they said miss Guterres you're right you're right we're gonna
point a committee and do a search on that immediately fast forward six weeks eight weeks señores no committee report the committee report is due we will have it here within the next month she comes in a month later no report nothing done for her people on the east side of town she introduces her to a gentleman she introduced the City Council to a gentleman who's sitting in the audience of the City Council gentlemen of City Council I'd like to introduce you to the president of LULAC latin union for latin american communities the national president was from Dallas that year she slaps him in and he
says gentlemen something must be done about this you have been federally funded to clean up your water system and you're mandated to do it but you've got a federal grant to do it with if we file a discrimination suit while the government is investigating the propriety of our accusation your funds will be impounded your targeting to build an executive jet board up there while this discrimination suit which could take 2-3 years is being investigated the government isn't gonna fund these things I think something needs to be done about it well that did it the council got busy they gave a grant to all Latino people
who wanted to move into my shopping center on that side of town and it was to $300,000 but they couldn't give it to me because they have to give it to every developer so they gave it to the merchants but they couldn't give it to the merchants because every Latino merchant that moved took it II wouldn't want to have part of that grant no what they did is they allowed the merchants to sign a note at the bank backed by The Full Faith and Credit of the city of McKinney and what they did is permit the Latino merchants to pay back the note to the
bank out of retained city sales tax and that sales tax did the city lose money and giving away their sales tax to advertise that note no sales zoomed they were getting a pittance they were getting virtually nothing in sales tax it's zoomed these merchants have paid off their sales tax abatement loans didn't cut and what did you do bar all that big old Harold your shopping center I did a matching grant refurbishment of my shopping center that had 30 40 year old roof on right at a 30 40 year old parking lot right so I matched the city funds with the improvement of the center
my merchants met with me yesterday from up there to look at land that I have in Garland to build another I have a super mercado I have a connoisseur air Caesarea meat market a taqueria at discoteca for disco music and I have another and I was in Garland before you got here this morning at 7 o'clock this morning and I was there and visiting on that piece of land with my men with my engineers with my people and I had my Mexican merchants down yesterday looking at the site we're doing socio-economic demographics on that area what I know that you've been providing Thanksgiving dinners to
needy people oh yeah the little yeah right can you tell us something about that well yes when Fahlman hall was built I saw it as an opportunity to use it a fashion other than for education and other than for as a adjunct Scholl which they use it for now over for show and everything so in very big my first Thanksgiving dinner to give thanks was welcome home from the pliers to her of Europe and so when they came back from their tour of Europe I gave Thanksgiving dinner for their carrying temple mangoes banner over Europe and I went to people in the social outreach people
Bruce Andrews other people related car and said hey this is a good deal on Thanksgiving dinner who do we get Thanksgiving dinners too I probably do not have this in sequential order but we have had as our guest the second one let's say that that'll work out a second it was after choir was Russian refugees first Thanksgiving in America who were living at golden acres in some kind of a dormitory out there you know about that and there were Russian people there I got wind of that contacted whoever I contacted and say hey this is their first Thanksgiving in America let's tell them what Thanksgiving
is all about so they were bussed over and David Karp learned through an a what I was doing and he had some Russian students studying music on the SMU campus and he brought me a violinist an accordion player a piano player and a singer and they sank Russian folk songs and Russian song and those old women were sitting on that front row and clapping and they were like back in their home again and then I had a bilingual Russian lady and I went to Barnes & Noble and I bought a little book like this it's the little book about the pilgrims first Thanksgiving in America
and was simply written and it showed pictures with a deer over his shoulder and with the turkey he was carrying to the pilgrims and I would read one paragraph from the Barnes Noble and she would read she would recite that paragraph to the Russians and so that was the second Thanksgiving after that there's a place in town here that has used to be a Jewish I'm used to be a junior college not to it junior college and they got a campus it's over somewhere I remember I used to drive by but now they use the dorms and the rooms for girls who are victims of
drug addiction and some of them stays six months some of them stay six weeks someone stay 18 I don't know how long but young women addicted to drugs go for so we had them for Thanksgiving dinner along with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dallas Greater Dallas and that's mothers and fathers duality of employment in the family don't get off work till five six o'clock and the Kindle off get out of school shouldn't run in the streets they take them to these Boys and Girls Clubs until the parents coming home from work can pick them up so we had the Boys and Girls Clubs from
all over next year we had battered women and children and there's a thing called Nexus you people know maybe more about that and battered women and children when some guy busts his a wife in the eye and she has to grab the children and run away till her folks her sister and comfort her or parents come from while one thing her back whatever they have to have shelter so we had the shelter women and children and other shelters I wanted to have homeless there from the streets to come in into the temple but security at the temple turned that down from a security viewpoint that
I couldn't drag everyone in from under every under every Bridge in town that that was a declination one of my most rewarding and I don't know which group it was I've got pictures on all this but and scrap you see my albums in here they're that big in there that full I've got hundreds of them but one of my most rewarding was a big group 200-plus that all wanted to see the Torah they'd heard about it read about something and we took them through the education wing and up on the Bema took the Torah out of the orange cordesh and laid it out and it
was chanted by the rabbi and by Rene Karp did some reading out of the Torah and they were fascinated by all namely Zhi Li Jian Alabama Li XI turn-key yeah he read out of the Torah and he eats he did the explaining part of what the Torah and what the scrolls me I haven't named all the groups but there's nine years of that type of Thanksgiving what in three minutes learning center the victory may have met was learning sound of course last year and again this year they're going again this year and you know what they do for educating into the language for adults and
children to become conversing tell us about your family today today that's a big story well are always starving Cheryl I think most of you know she's on she's an attorney by profession Cheryl was a litigation attorney and and she married a litigator and one was picking a jury and was like this and one had a jury out and was like that at the same time so she left being a litigation attorney and went to corporate counsel she was the highest ranked female because there weren't very many females on the corporate attorney staff for seven eleven and when I believe this is correct when 7-eleven was
doing work in Japan for the first time and she went to Japan didn't even share water Japan no yes but when the Japanese took over the management of 7-eleven over there she left and she left she retired to stay home with her children she left and became a house mother and a temple worker extensively our middle daughter I'm not finished how many children in Irish Cheryl is on the board of the temple National Council of Jewish convinced Jewish Historical Society I'm on our board and the Jewish historians and the Jewish Historical Society right and our middle daughter Janet is the linguist in the family she
went to Northwestern University Conservatory of Music as a music student when she graduated high school at Green Hill and did not like music theory and got into languages which have made a whole life for her she is currently the unerring counsel to Spain and has been for a number of years here in Dallas and she's very involved she's on the board of the meadows museum and she's very involved in Latino affairs in the city of Dallas and Marcy and our youngest daughter is married and has two darling little boys she has an MBA from SMU but she worked in the advertising industry until her children
she had two children and then it became so difficult for her to keep the hours that she retired and she stays home with her kids how many grandchildren how old are the grand how many we have five grandchildren Cheryl has to die at age 18 a freshman at the University of Denver and Benjamin 15 who's a freshman in high school at Green Hill and Janet has only one boy who is a sophomore at the mental college in in California and Marcy has to go boys 10 and 13 who are both at Green Hill Harold what are you most proud of all the things that you've
done and you've done many many things in the first litany extensive litany I fail to mention that I was a Rhodes Scholarship candidate and went off to the military and so forth but you know that's an accomplishment I guess source as president of Williams County Bar Association in Williston North Dakota a Jewish boy the only Jew and four hundred mile radius to become the president-elect of the Williams County Bar Association before I left the dark dakota to serve on that terminal case the first-impression Supreme Court in North Dakota the local awards the Prater award spectacular award the names on there do not I do not
deserve to have my name engraved with the names that I see that I read on that what do you list as a thing you're most proud of and I can tell you it's not that hard rabbi Zimmerman wanted to arrange called me and and wanted to arrange a dinner involvement Hall in which they dedicated Paul Munhall and gave me a hoopla dinner and I told rabbi Zimmerman that I would not go for such a dinner nor would I attend it nor would I be a part of any such thing I would have to reject his kindness and them and the community's kindness to the temple
families kindness I'm a senior question just in a second year I told rabbi Zimmerman that what he was looking at was a conduit probably kind of part of my construction that that I was just a conduit and that all that I am and all that I have is passing through me on the way to where God has chosen to pass through me to where it belongs really we have enough to eat coming out of depression 10 cents an hour dollar a day my mother got $10 a week for groceries and out of that she swiped enough to buy a dress my mother never went without
a hat and gloves up to her elbow I brought you pictures here always a hat always gloves up to the elbow my mother saw a very very big house in Grand Forks that she liked and loved she asked my father to buy it for her and put a loan on it holc homeowners Loan Corporation predecessor to FHA and he said we can't afford that great big house it was the second most sumptuous house on Belmont or old French name Belmont high mountains beautiful beautiful mountain and she said if you will buy it for me because men were everything if you will buy it for me
you will never make the first payment I will pay for every mortgage payment on this old taxes and insurance she said Sally you don't work she says I'll keep my promise she moved my sister out of her bedroom and took into school teachers and she kept to school teachers and provided their breakfast and their supper sometimes she packed him a lunch if there was enough leftovers other times they eat on the campus at the cafeteria she took in to six school teachers and kept him all those years my father did a little better I'm sure he helped her from time to time but when it
was ready to pay off my father got in the pickup with me and drove to Omaha Nebraska from North Dakota why because he had the check for the last payment then he wanted to pick up his papers he was going to pay off the note and he wanted to pick up his papers he didn't trust the government she'd give him his paid up mortgage I want to pick up my papers with my check and so we drove down to Omaha and slept overnight in the pickup was straw there and with the canvass one the most beautiful nights I've ever spent in my life under the
stars with my father sleeping out there and going to pay off my home I indict that because you have to know where I'm coming from to know where I'm where I'm hack you have to know where I'm coming from with what I'm doing when I say two rabbis Zimmerman I'm just a conduit rabbi I'm passing it through it's not mine it's mine to transfer over one of my proudest of I'm proudest that I've lived to this day to see that my children and my grandchildren and my wife no one has food no one has medical no one has housing no one has closing needs that
are not only provided for but sumptuously provided for the proudest I am is owe much this little hick from North Dakota has to give away I am so proud to be able to do these things thank you very much well I didn't want to waxey motion you