Helen Stern
Helen Stern was born in Dallas in 1926, an only child of the Depression. Her father came to the United States alone at age sixteen, around 1911 or 1912, arriving through Galveston without speaking a word of English and carrying a letter of directions to a family in South Dallas who took in boarders. He was the only one of his family to leave Diersburg, Germany early; two brothers came later, and other relatives, including his mother and sisters, were lost in the Holocaust. Helen's mother was one of nine children from Germany whose family settled in the Pacific Northwest near Spokane, Washington. Her parents met in Marvell, Arkansas, where her father worked as a bookkeeper, and married before moving to Dallas.
Because of her father's work, Helen's family lived for six years in Oklahoma City and San Antonio before returning to Dallas and settling in the Oakland area in duplexes. Her father worked as a bookkeeper and later entered women's fashion, running a small dress factory with a partner, Bernard Marcus, traveling the road selling sportswear to merchants across Oklahoma and Texas. Helen attended Stephen J. school, North Dallas High School, and finished at Highland Park High School. During World War Two she attended the University of Texas at Austin, where wartime gave the campus an unusual, close-knit character. She met Arthur Stern, six years her senior, just before college in 1943.
Arthur served as a Navy officer, taking part in the North Africa campaign, D-Day, and the Rhine River crossing, and much of their courtship happened through letters. They married on March 23, 1947, and Arthur returned to the family insurance business. Helen worked in her father's office and raised three children, all successful in law, medicine, and photography. Beginning in the late 1950s she volunteered with the Temple Emanu-El Sisterhood, producing its yearbook, serving as treasurer, and helping with a significant book series alongside Pauline Chriss. She later worked with the National Council of Jewish Women. Helen remembered the Kennedy assassination vividly and reflected on the values of her hardworking generation.
Full Transcript
hell in 1926 Dallas Texas yes in the depression depression baby I think that's why I'm an only child well tell me about that what do you remember when you were born as I said I think on South Boulevard and when I was three years old we moved away for six years Tok loma city and then san antonio think because of my father's jobs i don't have a lot of recollection i remember in san antonio we had some distant cousins but then when we moved back to Dallas we moved to the oakland area her show we lived in duplexes herschel and prescott off oakland near Throckmorton
and so I lost I'm a native Dallas I'd i think but i had no South Dallas you know socialization so I didn't go to school with all these kids and I don't know who's related to who to this day I have a total vacancy of all that wonderful growing up in South Dallas going to school with each other like everyone did I don't have one close friend in Dallas that I grew up with well no you moved around you were very young that was for your dad's work yeah well you're the boy he was really sort of a bookkeeper and then he got into women's
fashion and ended up with a small dress factory with a partner did your folks ever talk to you about the depression at all is a little bit older nope I really didn't ask enough questions you know you always regret that you didn't ask your parents more about their life now tell me more about your dad got into a business with a partner it tell us more about that mar Brooke it was Bernard Marcus and he was really the pattern cutter it was more sports wear blouses skirts and my dad was the outside you know he traveled on the road with the line to all of
the stores in the Oklahoma Texas area all the merchants a lot of Jewish merchants and and he took care of the books and the business side and they had a few operators it was very small but it was worked well it was really just I guess toward the beginning of World War two and so do you remember the word off well I actually went to college during World War two so it was a very different kind of at University of Texas Austin we have to say now we used to just say UT but it was a different kind of college life which worked out great
for me because it was more like a girls school during the week but so many of the guys were gone and there wasn't as much competition for guys so the girls really became very close which I understand before wasn't the truth yeah this one didn't in the sorority house didn't speak to that one and but we really were like a girls school and on the weekend with all the army camps nearby there were gobs of guys especially a lot of the Jewish guys would come to the Jewish sorority houses on the weekend for socialization so it was a very different college experience that was your
day was he involved with World War one at all no okay I always think of my dad because he was the only one in his family that came think he was 16 and didn't speak a word of English got off at the train station and had a letter of directions to stay with the family in South Dallas who evidently took in boarders and ins you know he just waited there until someone understood what he was saying and welding which bus to get on now where did your dad come from he came from dears burg Germany okay and he was 16 years old and he came
by himself he came through Galveston what did what did he what did he tell you you know he's 16 and his family wanted him out of Germany I really you know don't know what precipitated is coming since none of the rest of his family one brother the two brothers came later but he was the only one that came early and did he ever tell you anything at all about that traveling the trip or anything else I just remember he came from Galveston and how he got from Galveston the ballast I don't know you know what year it was that he came I think I've tried
to look back make 19 11 or 12 19 11 ok you never saw your grandparents stood on your desk right now ok what about your grandparents on your mom's side oh really my mother's family were from Germany she was one of nine children and they came also young one by one but they settled in the Pacific Northwest very strange in the north east corner of Washington State like north of Spokane Washington really near Canada an idol now do you know why your dad was sent to galveston in your mom said well I know that my mother's family came because they already had an uncle that
had a store in Cabo Washington right right so so where did your parents meet well it was interesting my dad was working for someone in Marvel Arkansas which had a little Jewish it was tiny little town but there were some Jewish people living there he was a bookkeeper my mother had a sister living and marble who was expecting her third child so my mother came to help her sister so my mother and dad met was a little bitty tackling this flip in Arkansas and got married moved back to Dallas now your family that was left in Germany there was world war one and then World
War two did you ever hear any no I just know that two of my brothers did come to this country one lived with us for a while and was in Dallas the other one on to California but the others were all lost in the Holocaust sisters and mother so I never knew any grandparents on either side really thats know back to high school what was life like for now I as i said i will lived in the so climate area with a small elementary school Steven J hey which is another school now it's still there i think it's some sort of special girls school I
went to north dallas for two years high school there were very few you can name the number of jewish students on one hand and then we move north again two doors from Holland Park High School and I did my last two years in highland park and there again I really you know didn't go all through park city school so there were more Jewish kids there but nothing like the South Dallas crab so I always had some close friends but I never had a crowd of friends you know that I hear other people talking about you know now your husband Arthur where did you meet him
was in high school college after practice six years older so that's a big difference at a certain point in your life so he was a native Dallas I'd grew up in south dallas with all of a lot of friends and i met him just before I went to college in 1943 and he was finishing up at SMU his father it was really sort of a pioneer in the credit industry was credit manager of a Harrison company and really booked in the accounting department buddy new credit was the name of the future and even that a Harris he gave his best customers little wooden disk to
identify themselves in sort of a precursor to the credit card that so Arthur father took ill so he had been at university of texas for two years dropped out his father just started insurance business and his mother was helping and there and his auntie at a single ant and his father passed away in 1940 and then Arthur went to SMU to finish up and he would take his classes in the morning so and then he'd take the streetcar downtown to his office to work in the afternoon and then he went to the service as a officer school in the Navy and so most of our
romance was via letters and then when we dated had a few dates before I went to college and he went to the service now where did was the station in the war well he really did North Africa he did d-day and then he did the rhine river crossing and he had some interesting stories he always said he had a good war and his last year he was at Camp Elliott in California and I was in the sorority house so he would go to the bar and get a roll of quarters and call me so when the phone rang at the sorority house at midnight everyone
said that either tell us Summers was somebody one of his stories from the war well when they were going to do the and river crossing was in small boats he LCVP he said his first boat his crew was out of portsmouth naval prison so he said he didn't want to turn his back through up the rhine river crossing they were doing you know they lifted these both small boats the crane and then drop them down in the water so his boat had a rock and he told his commanding officer he said I'm not going to take that boat out it's hit a rock it's going
to be cracked he said well he said you know he could have been court-martialed but evidently he won his point and the next day when they looked at the boat it was cracked so he comes home from the war is this when we get married then yeah he comes home from the war and I'm back from college and you know we dated a while and then we got married on march the 23rd 1947 and the went back into the insurance business yes okay and did you go into work or did you stay home well I know I stayed at the beginning I worked in my
father's office and did a lot of the book work and our first apartment was on one of his clients customers had bought an apartment house on mckinney avenue across from North Dallas I school so there was a vacant apartment and my mother and I went to see it my parents never were property owners they really didn't buy a home very late and so I had a bedroom a separate entrance a bedroom a bath in the sitting room and I told Arthur after I'd seen the partners that oh why don't we just you know we have a great setup here why don't we live there so
either set the tone immediately for our marriage she said you can live with me and apartment or you can stay home and live with your parents hey what did you choose talk to me about your children now well I'm very fortunate at three wonderful grown children my oldest son was I was always a good student I didn't learn a lot because I memorized very well I didn't realize it at the time and so I sort of thought my son was like me because he was sort of a natural student really and he went to you know the public schools Kramer Franklin hillcrest and then he
went to east to brown went to Harvard Law School and even clerk for supreme court justice married a fellow law student and lived in he's lived in Bethesda Maryland all these years both of had very successful careers had two boys next time lives here fortunately and he's now rheumatologist and he's doing great that need to spend a lot of years in school to get worried god he was a VA first and married late to someone those two children and they're doing great and lucky to have one here daughter's baby it's not much of a baby and she finished school at American University her senior year
she found out she had a talent for photography so then she went and did another four years at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California studied photography went to New York to make it which they all did at that time only she never came back go back a little bit some of the fun things for you do you remember the ends that you used to like when you were a kid I do remember song sheets good that we would you know take the bus my friends and I would take the bus downtown you know go to a movie maybe and then there were
song sheets you that had the printed words to the songs and so we would buy a song she sort of sing each other and I do remember that was different and then I learned to drive a car on northwest highway when it was a two-lane road and you thought like Christopher Columbus if you move went north of northwest highway you would fall off they are now do you remember what kind of car your head first we didn't have a car when we got married because Arthur put his name n and we did get a Pontiac finally so we managed about a year almost a year
without a car you remember when you were a kid the difference is like you remember the x-men would come I not remember after we were married in our first house I remember the manor bakery guy he would tell him which day you wanted certain things that they had certain kind of cinnamon rolls or the milkman you just left the back door open and they came and left them and I guess we paid them once a month or once a week but every member oh yes talk to me now about your involvement with the Jewish Community Center well I really after we got married we did
have a wonderful group of friends and I think first early on starting in the late 50s I volunteered a lot and the sisterhood a temple emanuel and I remember my I did the yearbook that was my first job to deuce sisterhood yearbook and I was lucky to do it under a person who kept every step she did out of pattern and here I've never done a yearbook and of course we didn't have computers and this so it was all you know you farmed out different pages the different people and they typed it up you went to the printer and I did that and I was
treasurer sisterhood and I guess the interesting thing was Pauline Chris and I did right by olin at temple emanuel did the significant book series which was I guess one of the first literary things and dollars used the book as a format to a message he wanted to give and it was very unique and amazing you know how many people came from all around he retired became rabbi emeritus and we had to fill in the slots he did one and the rabbi Klein did one so I did that and that worked to temple did tours when a new building temple opened their northwest high when Hill
Chris and then I sort of moved to council of jewish women and did a lot of projects there and enjoyed that your happiest time in your life oh I think I was happier than I had my kids and I said some one of the I did that so well but only did it three cars it was my great talent but I joined raising my kids and and then it was the empty nest years were good too because ours and I started to travel more we took family trims and Arthur sold not only all kinds any kind of insurance he said he sold it but he
sold for a life insurance company that had wonderful meetings and you know in resort areas now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasions of course you were born around the Great Depression there's World War two is there something that really affected you or your family I do remember what what I was doing when I had the radio or the television on and heard about the Kennedy assassination really well I had had a party the weekend before and had borrowed table and chairs for some friends so I was walking across the dan where the television was to return some of these items that I
had borrowed and was a terrible shock and then more shocking to see the Ruby shoot Oswald right in front of your eyes on television what do you think was the greatest invention in your lifetime well I guess all the computer things you have five grandkids three biological to our staff grandkids knowing how you were raised in knowing how kids today are raised what advice does grandma have each generation is so entirely different I know you know our generation the guys come back from service I'm had to finish school they wanted to get a job go to work get married and raise a family and I
remember being at a brunch and one of the guys said what's all this being happy and fulfilled we just wanted to get a job make a living so there's a lot of difference and I think about our parents that came over a lot of them for Europe couldn't speak English had to make their own way and how our kids are raised today even I sent my kids to college and I didn't take them and they found their own places to live but now it's even more protective now when kids go to school I'd like by I'm a true so and get them there and set
up the ring I don't know it's just different and times are different so I don't think you can I think my groups years I think between World War two those years were peaceful years the world was simpler most of us that work hard saved her money we didn't need you know three cars and all these gadgets and we had a good life thanks for doing this today did a great job