July 19, 2000

Harry Weisbrod

Harry Weisbrod was born on March 6, 1920, on the Lower East Side of New York, living in a four-story tenement on Pitt Street until he was ten. His parents were Orthodox Jewish peddlers who sold secondhand housewares and placed great importance on charity, once turning to a relative for help bringing family members out of Germany after Hitler came to power. He attended the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva and later Talmudical Academy, the high school of Yeshiva University, riding the subway across the city and reading newspapers along the way. After moving to Brooklyn at age ten, he went on to City College, studying accounting and business at a time when Jews faced discrimination in many professions.

During World War II, Weisbrod volunteered for the Army in 1942 despite poor eyesight. He served in an anti-aircraft unit, trained soldiers on searchlight equipment, was chosen for the Army Specialized Training Program to study French at Amherst College, and was later sent toward the infantry and the Battle of the Bulge, passing through Camp Maxey in Paris, Texas, his first time in the state. He was discharged in December 1944. Afterward he worked as a traveling auditor for a motion picture company, and while in San Francisco he met the Dallas-born woman he would marry on February 15, 1948.

The couple settled in Dallas in 1948, where Weisbrod at first struggled to find work before joining the IRS and later the Department of Labor, where he spent seventeen and a half years before becoming an independent labor arbitrator and wage-and-hour consultant in 1968. A committed political activist, he helped organize education-reform efforts and was outspoken against segregation. He and his family attended synagogue, kept the holidays, and held Seders, and he belonged to many Jewish organizations, serving as president of the ZOA. His sons became active leaders in Jewish and civic life, and he took pride in his five grandchildren.

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