Harrell Pailet
Harrell Pailet was born in New Orleans in 1941, the child of parents who were first cousins and who also grew up in New Orleans. His father was a self-educated accountant admired for being able to talk with anyone, and his grandparents on both sides had immigrated from the Lithuania and Russia border region in the late 1800s and around 1900. Because of the Depression, his parents moved in with his mother's parents and never left, so Harrell and his two brothers were raised alongside grandparents and grown uncles. His maternal grandfather was a merchant who owned general clothing stores in small towns in Louisiana and Mississippi. Harrell recalled a happy childhood of streetcars, neighborhood movies, and long bicycle rides across the city.
Harrell attended a New Orleans high school where most of the local Jewish children studied, and he credited a senior English teacher with preparing him for college and law school. He entered Tulane through a combined program, earning degrees in business administration and law in six years. After passing the Louisiana Bar, he entered the Army in September 1964, transferring interests toward legal work but remaining in the transportation corps. Stationed in Germany, he worked in a transportation group that moved military goods across France and Germany. Marilyn, whom he met during Rush week their sophomore year and married during law school, joined him overseas about a month after his arrival.
As his service ended, letters from law school classmates convinced Harrell that Dallas offered better prospects, and since Marilyn's family lived there, the couple moved to Dallas, where he passed the Texas bar and has practiced law for many years. Harrell and Marilyn raised four sons and have seven grandchildren. Inspired by his parents' friendships with Holocaust survivors, by a grandfather who helped ship arms to Israel and once secured a congressional act to help a young woman stay in the United States, and by his in-laws' leadership in Jewish causes, Harrell and Marilyn became active supporters of Jewish charities. He treasures having visited Israel in 1965 and witnessing its transformation over the years.
Full Transcript
Harold 1941 New Orleans let's go back it's not too terribly long ago let's go back to you're a little boy what was what was life like in New Orleans it was uh great street cars going downtown uh with my mother going to Neighborhood uh movies uh have my dad take me out to Jefferson par Parish one time and showed me the illegal casinos that were there and uh snowballs Poor Boys uh it was a great time it was uh Park a block and a half from the house and it was just uh everybody all my uncles and aunts lived within six seven eight blocks of
of where we lived and it was just a great time what did your dad do for living my dad was an accountant and uh made a lot of friends and uh although he never went to college my uh uncles uh two of whom were doctors and one was a lawyer often told me uh that my daddy could talk to princes and my daddy could talk to poppers and he was well self-educated now was he also born in New Orleans he was Bor born in New Orleans and my mother was born in New Orleans my grandfather on one side was born in New Orleans in 1888
and my grandmother on the other side was born in New Orleans in 1890 now tell me about your grandparents do you remember them at all very very well uh my mother and father uh wanted to get married it was the middle of the depression and they put it off and my mother's dad went and spoke to him one day and said look get married move in with us and when things get better you'll move out well for various reasons my parents never moved out and my two brothers and I were raised in the same house with my mother's parents and I can remember having grown
uncles living at home and it was a phenomenal experience just to have such memories of my grandparents and my uncles it was just great what what did your uh what did your grandfather do for a living my grandfather was a merchant he owned uh General clothing stores in small towns in Louisiana and uh in Mississippi and uh as I knew him he had retired uh or semi-retired I should say uh he had had a coronary in the early 40s and uh he had uh two sons that helped run the business in the small towns one lived in Baton Rouge and one lived in a town
called am me Louisiana and they supervised the five stores that were in existence at that time now where was your grandfather originally from new orans yeah my other grandfather and my other grandmother on opposite sides uh were both born in uh the part of Lithuania they kept flipping back and forth between Russia and Lithuania and when did they come to this country uh my grandmother came to the United States around 1900 and my other grandfather came to the United States in the late 1800s now did they know each other no my mother and father were first cousins so my my uh my mama's daddy and
my daddy's mother uh were brother and sister so uh one married im a guy who immigrated in the late 1800s my aunt my grandmother her name was Rachel and my other grandmother carry married my grandfather uh Elliot right now your grandparents they came over from overseas did they ever talk about that experience to you very little next to nothing uh I remember asking my uh grandmother my mother's mother who called Mimi uh when I was an adult I said um you know how come you and Papa never went back to visit anything and she said I left there never wanted to go back and still
don't want to go back yeah and I think that was my grandfather other grandfather's opinion also now when you were a little kid what was the one thing that you really did for fun what was the thing that you look forward to when you were small uh had friends who lived very close and we'd all get on our bicycles on the weekend and I can remember my mother giving me a handful of nickels and some other money and we would get up up in the morning and ride all over New Orleans and uh the Only Rule was I had to call my mother every hour
to tell her where we were and where we were going yeah yeah and we'd be gone just about the whole day now back then though it wasn't like I take the cell phone out of my pocket and call M no no you fa the pay phone yeah find the pay phone when I think back on the areas we rode our bicycles to I cannot believe I pedal that fault you were born in 1941 obviously you don't remember World War II but did it affect your family at all uh I think the way it affect the family was that I had uh uncles on both sides
uh who went overseas uh one Uncle went to Alaska I remember and my other another Uncle from my daddy's side that was an uncle from my mother's side Uncle from my daddy's side uh was in Burma he was an engineer he graduated from LSU and uh the story was that quote he helped build the Burma Road uh having been in the army and recognizing what I did as an officer uh I can't say that my uncle really helped buil the Burma Road but I'm sure he did something on it now where did you go to high school went to high school a school called for
f o r t e r forj and what was high school life like for you it was a a lot of fun uh our high school is the high school where just about most of the Jewish kids went to and uh had some very good teachers uh there one teacher uh Miss Collins was my senior English teacher and uh I credit her with teaching me enough to get me through college and law school and uh on how to write papers she was just fantastic did she ever know that she was an inspiration to you I'm not sure uh uh I know I did go back
uh once and talk to her uh I don't know if she rather really knew that how important she was to to my career well after high school now was it uh in the service or off the college After High School went to tane undergraduate and law school went under a combined program where uh 3 years undergraduate and 3 years law school had to go to uh summer school to take quote required courses required senior courses and I was able to get a combined uh get a degree both from business administration and from law school so you knew at an early age then probably in high
school that you wanted to be an attorney my daddy wanted me to go to law school so it would be a great education for any field MH uh I graduated passed Louisiana Bar uh got out of the service came to Texas took the Texas bar and I decided that I could not have devoted that much time and preparation to something and not at least have tried it right so I started practicing law and here it is uh many years later and I'm still practicing what was it that brought you to Dallas well first of all my wife's from Dallas okay okay but the main reason
I came to Dallas was when I was getting out of the service I wrote my five law school study partners about five months before getting out and I asked them how things were going and if they could help me get a job and so on and so forth and three of them wrote me back and said they were no longer practicing law and one wrote me back and said that he was practicing law but the only reason was that his dad was a lawyer and he had a position in his dad's firm the fifth one wrote me back and said Harold I'd love to help
you but he graduated number two in the class I was not in the top 10% in fact I wasn't even in the top 25% and he said our firm just hires people who are in the top five forget about top 10% top five and uh we had uh adopted our first child while we were in the service and I started looking as a parent an obligation I had to my child and felt that uh Dallas had a better opportunity for me to take care of obligations to a child okay all right well let's go back a little bit talk to me about going into the
service when when was that went in the service in September of 1964 now you're you're out of college I'm out of college out of law school okay pass took the Louisiana Bar had already been notified that I had passed the Louisiana Bar I had RC Commission in the transportation call I went to the Army and asked uh if I could be changed over to the Judge Advocate and they said yes uh but we would require to give five years of active duty and Roc only required two years of active duty so I stayed with the transportation courp for two years uh and this is the
Vietnam era Vietnam was just really warming up right and uh I had asked to be stationed in either Germany Italy or Britain and I got Germany uh and went over there Maryland came over about a month and a half after I was there and maybe a month month and a half after I was there and uh as the two years preceded Vietnam kept warming up more and more and I was very fortunate that I did not get transferred there now what were you doing in Germany what was your job out there I worked in a uh operating Transportation group and our group performed what commercial
truckers perform we moved Army Navy and Air Force Goods all over Europe uh France Germany uh picked up stuff at the docks in brah Haven uh picked up stuff at ryin main airport picked up stuff at other airports and distributed to various bases around France and Germany how did the German people take at that time to the US soldiers uh the Germans generally speaking uh were very respectful and uh accepting of US soldiers uh they knew what was going on in East Germany and they knew their lot versus the people in East Germany right uh it was especially noticeable in Berlin how much uh the
American Soldier was uh was liked now you say Marilyn came and joined you um so tell me about when did you meet Marilyn obviously it was before you were in the service okay it was uh Rush week our sophomore year in college and I'm qu kind of still surprised that I never had seen her or met her during our freshman year and to say it was love at first sight is an understatement uh me for her I'm not so sure her for me and uh we dated got married uh between my Junior and senior year in law school and uh when Went to went to
Virginia for a nwe quote reorientation course and she came with me there and then she went home while I went to Germany to look around and then she came over like I said about a month later and was she okay with moving into uh to Dallas then too when we started getting serious I told Marl that we were getting serious and I needed her to know that whoever I marry we were going to live in New Orleans and just before I asked her to marry me I told her I said you know we're really serious I want you know that anybody I marry we going
to live in New Orleans and she was acceptable of that well we were in Germany and I got in the letters back from my my friends uh even my brother wrote me back and said two of his friends one wasn't practicing law and one was practicing law because of the same thing uh he went in with his dad and his older brother and they made a place for him so I thought about it I went to Marilyn I said Marilyn I'm thinking maybe when we go back we should move to Dallas instead of new wallins to which she got very indant and said you told
me over and over again we're going to live live in New Orleans I accept that I don't like to be teased I said no I'm serious she said you think about it overnight and you talk to me again tomorrow so the next day I spoke to her again and I said no I'm serious and I gave her the reasons and needless to say she was very happy yeah very very happy we come home uh two brothers and a sister here her parents are here she had grandparents here cousins Etc so she was very happy yeah yeah what was the greatest invention you saw in your
lifetime I'm not sure it was in my lifetime uh but I would think penicillin and M drugs have got to be uh if not the greatest they're definitely up there yeah uh health reasons uh having two uncles who were doctors who lived at home and worked at Charity Hospital doing their uh internship and residency and hearing stories of what they saw yeah charity is like Parkland is in Dallas right and uh well charity was like Parkland it's closed now uh and here are the stories of the uh illnesses that they saw and then my older brother was a doctor and I while I was in
law school he was in a medical school in interning and I would go visit him at charity and the things I saw which just so mindboggling on the thing what was the happiest time in your life I have to say now yeah I have had many many happy times uh of Maryland uh a first child each child after that uh I just I'm a child nut and what's the uh one thing that you and Maryland would do together that you would never tell your kids but now they're old enough so now you could tell them the only thing I can think of off the top
of my head is when we were stationed in Germany the Autobon did not have speed limits and I can remember driving with Marilyn in a car 100 miles an hour and you may not believe this but driving 9500 miles an hour there were cars that passed me as soon as we got Eric that drastically changed uh I did have to drive probably 80 to keep from being just totally run over but no more 100 m hour cars yeah it just yeah now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasions um you you know you live through the Vietnam War era of course uh President
Kennedy assassination here in Dallas something good the moonlanding in 69 um of course the tragedy of 911 was there something on the national scene that really affected you that you knew exactly where you were when it happened well there two times I know exactly where it happened one time uh was unfortunately when Kennedy was shot uh I was still two lane in law school and I can remember exactly where I was and someone told me that and I went to the uh Student Center to the coffee shop CU they had a TV there and I thought to myself surely someone is telling a joke uh
unfortunately uh Kennedy was not the most liked president uh in uh in New Orleans uh there were a lot who did but there a lot who didn't and uh so when he was shot I thought someone was uh making a bad joke uh so I remember that well and uh the second one was that uh when Nixon resigned my wife and I were uh in Mexico uh we were in Meo to pick up our two oldest children who at that time were probably about 10 and seven we had a living Mexican maid wonderful wonderful woman named Mary and she would always tell our kids about
all the things she did in Mexico all the things she did on that little farm and so on and so forth and she made the mistake of telling him that one day she was going to take him there and Marilyn and I I got caught up in it and I can't believe my in-laws didn't veto this but we agreed for her to take the two kids with her to Mexico by herself and you only had two kids at the time no at the time we had uh we had four uh but the little ones were two and one right okay okay or three and two
and we agreed to let her take him to Mexico and she took him by herself took him by bus had to cross the border we had had notorized letters for her uh and then we flew down to Mexico like two weeks later uh and drove to This Little Town out in the middle of nowhere and uh picked up the boys and came back and if any of my kids said they were let they 10 or n year old and six or seven year old go with their living uh woman to Out The Boondocks of Mexico I would veto it somehow I can't believe I did
that yeah but they had a great time oh gosh they still talk about it yeah we had a fantastic time you and maryn have been married 50 years you have the four sons and seven grandkids so what advice do you want to leave to those grandbabies the advice I want to leave to them is what my grandparents told T me what my parents and my in-laws taught me which is family is family they're your brothers and sisters they're your cousins you protect them you take care of them you do not let people speak ill of them if uh they do something wrong you speak to
them privately you do not expose them uh and do not allow other people to do that over the years you will have friends very very very close friends but friends will come and go your brothers will always be your brothers and they will always stand with you that's great advice before we started you wanted to make sure you mentioned your in-laws well I want to mention my in-laws and uh my uh grandparents and uh also my parents one of the reasons if not I can't say it's the only reason but one of the main reasons that Marilyn and I are so active in uh various
Charities uh especially Jewish Charities is we had tremendous inspiration my wife's parents uh I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say they were icons uh my father-in-law uh was president of federation president of Golden Acres he was president of the synagogue uh I'm sure I've left something out that he was active in what was his name irin bonsky okay and uh his wife Francis my mother-in-law and the thing I remember often was how much support my mother-in-law was for my father-in-law in doing this and uh just if it was a Jewish charity my father-in-law gave to it my daddy and my mother uh in New
Orleans welcomed and became very friendly with many uh what we then call refugees uh survivors of the Holocaust Etc and I can remember uh being taken uh to homes to visit or having them come visit uh on the thing my grandfather uh El felstein the man who was the merchant two things I remember was but uh in addition to being very charitable he and a friend of his were responsible for buying arms and getting them shipped uh to Israel before it became Israel and after it became Israel and he was friends with a lot of people I can remember being a small child and some
people came over to the house one night and they met on the porch and after they left I asked my mama what what were they here for and uh it wasn't until after I was a little older and I asked her again she says well they came because it was a young woman who was visiting from Hungary a young Jewish girl was visiting from Hungary and it was time for her to go back and the wait list from Hungary was so long that the only way you could stay is if you Exempted from the from the thing the only way to get Exempted is to
have Congress pass pass a special act for this person and my grandfather was able to get a congressman from a small town in Louisiana noted for its anti-Semitism to put a bill through Congress so that this girl would be exempt and be able to stay in the United States and I thought to myself he just he just had to I only knew him till I was 10 and he passed away he just must have really been somebody to be able to get a congressman in an anti-semitic area of Louisiana to sponsor a bill like that it inspires my wife and I uh to do things
Marilyn and I were fortunate enough when I was in the service to go to Israel in 1965 and I can remember and Marilyn remember as well standing and looking at the wall now not the religion wall but the wall around the city and seeing Jordanian machine gun imp placements seeing Bob wire seeing spots that we were told were Min and then to come back years later and see such a vibrant area where the Minefield was and no Jordanian gun in placements is just it's miracle and I old enough and young enough to remember Israel's formation Israel's uh war in ' 67 and the difference I
saw in the American public that allow Jews to stand taller you did a great job man thanks for doing this well thank you for having me