Irwin Grossman
Irwin Grossman was born in Paris, Texas, in 1931, one of only three Jewish families in that small town. His father came from Russia, leaving in an ox cart, and often marveled that he later flew in a jet. His mother came from Lithuania through Galveston with her sisters, helped by a man named Harry Harris from her hometown who met them at the port. Irwin's parents met in Dallas, where his father, a traveling salesman, later opened a dry goods store. After his father's health suffered, doctors advised a change, and the family moved to Dallas in 1937, partly so Irwin could receive a proper Jewish education.
In Dallas the family first lived in South Dallas, where Irwin attended John Henry Brown School and Mr. Lavine's Hebrew school. His father checked out the congregations, and Irwin ended up being bar mitzvah at Congregation Shearith Israel and confirmed at Temple Emanu-El. The family migrated north with much of the Jewish community, and Irwin attended Highland Park High School, remembering a warm and largely welcoming place to grow up. Interested in building because his father had become a real estate investor, he chose MIT over Rice, studying building engineering and construction. He described his four years in Boston as an awakening that made a lasting difference in his life.
After working on government atomic energy projects with a firm and thereby missing the Korean War, Irwin returned to Dallas in the early 1950s. Following his father's advice to build for himself, he entered general contracting, working on projects including Brookhaven Country Club, the Dallas Garden Center, and buildings at Golden Acres and Temple Emanu-El. He served as vice president of the Federation and of the Temple, later becoming president of both the Temple and Golden Acres, and helped bring Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman to Dallas. He chaired building committees at Greenhill School, public broadcasting, and the Dallas Museum of Art, and oversaw hospital expansions. He and his wife Irma, whom he married in 1961, raised two children and four granddaughters, and supported diabetes research at UT Southwestern.
Full Transcript
herwin 1931 Paris but Paris Texas not France as you told me before we started let's go back talk to me about life when you're just a little boy well the first thing uh in a small town uh my mother told me I was born on June 25th but when I got my social security card it turned out to be June 26 so the rest of my career I've had to deal with either 25th or 2 whichever you like it works okay yeah my father came from Russia my mother came from Lithuania they met my father was a traveling salesman they met in Dallas and they
moved to Paris and as usual my father started a dry good store and he had a store in Oklahoma and a couple of towns in Texas and uh after number of years he sort of worked himself into bad health and uh he went to males and they said you need to get in another business so they moved to Dallas in 1937 now did your grandparents come too or just your parents individually my parents so you never did you ever know your grandparents no I did not okay now did your parents they didn't come together they came separately they met in Dallas they met in Dallas
did your Dad or Mom ever tell you about their travels coming here alone my father's favorite story was he left Russia in a ox cart and he actually flew in a jet so that's quite a history and my mother came through galon with a number of people and a man here Harry Harris came from the same town and he drove to galeston and met my mother and her sisters and her and bought him to they came to Dallas and uh and lived here and then my mother and father met no other family came with them no what was the their decisions you know to come
to the United States well my father came first to New York had some brothers and then I guess went West to uh pursue his uh career and my mother came with her sisters and there were cousins in a small town somewhere also in Dallas and so they had some relationships when they came here so they came because of the opportunities America presented abely no question yeah there were number of prrams in uh Russia that my father talked about and so that had a lot to do with it well let's go back now it it it's the 30s it's around depression time did that affect your
family when you were born with the the Great Depression well my father said living in a small town was the best place to be in a in a depression so uh we lived in Paris and there were only three Jewish families there and uh actually the seagull U one of the girls uh they both live here the older sister was married to uh Andy zilberman and the younger sister I can't remember but anyway we got here and of course uh one of the reasons we came my dad said uh you going to get a better Jewish Education in a Big Town cuz there was no
Jewish Community there in Paris so I went to John Henry Brown School when we lived in South Dallas I'm alumni Mr lavine's Hebrew school which a number of local people we lived in South Dallas and Harold kinman was a friend of mine then one of the reasons we moved to Dallas my dad talked about a Jewish Education so he checked out all the congregations and so I ended up being B Mitzvah at sherith Israel and confirmed at Temple so I had a little bit of he thought the Sunday school was better at uh at Temple but we belonged to sherith Israel so so I had
a double dip and we migrated North like uh the rest of the Jewish community and I went to Highland Park High School and uh my friends were uh David Frankfurt and Danny toas leis Le a buddy and Dick Rosenthal and Max toin and what did you guys do for fun when you were in high school well on Sundays we used to go to Sunday school and we went to Fair Park to we used to go ice skating and that's how I learned ice skate and we went to a lot of movies in those days downtown Elm Street had all the movie theaters and uh and
of course they were Athletics at high school and all there was a small Jewish uh group at the H Park and uh there was very little uh anti-Semitism or discrimination very nice place to grow up now before high school when you were younger um around 10 years old World War II broke my dad used to drive out on Sundays we used to go for rides and we drove into a gas station and of course they told us that the Japanese had uh B Pearl Harbor so you you remember what you did in those time was there any fear to you when that happened cuz you
were just about 10 years old you remember what your folks were saying about it not particularly uh we were you know the Jewish Community South Dallas was a homogeneous group and uh so I was very comfortable growing up remember getting your first car yeah I actually when I was in high school no nobody had cars there were a few few people that had them and and uh I actually didn't get a car till my sophomore year in college actually but some of my friends had them when I went to Boston to MIT they used to say you make good friends if you don't have a
car because then you have to depend on everyone else Boston was an interesting experience coming from Texas uh actually I had was interested my father uh uh became a real estate investor and I was always interested in building and so at that time there were two schools that had a instead of civil engineering they had a course directed toward building engineering and construction one was rice which I was accepted at and then MIT and I decided that I'd go for up East whole new experience and I was very lucky I uh joined the Jewish fraternity that had the highest uh uh great average and there
were a lot of boys there from the West which was good my closest friends were from California and St Louis and of course there was all the Eastern group too you know and uh but it was a it was a terrific four years and it made a big difference in my life now it had to be culture shot six months or chair and then everyone hits their stride that's what I tell my children and my grand grandchildren some people hit their stride in high schools some in college some in a career and then some never so I was very fortunate and uh the second half
of the year I sort of got my wings and uh and from then on it was very pleasurable and and it was demanding but I wasn't worried about coming back to Dallas so so the plan after MIT was to come back to Dallas yeah and I I because of my eyes I uh I was supposed to go to officer candidate School in Newport and uh I kept busting out because of my eyes so uh I decided to come back and I was hanging around waiting for the draft and I decided I'm not going to hang around anymore so I interviewed with a baat and company
and they were doing all this government work and so that's how I missed Korea so uh I was it's a very interesting couple of years working on some atomic energy projects and I had a a good classification and then I came back to Dallas in 52 or 53 and my father very wisely said why are you building for everybody else you should build for yourself and decided to go in the general contracting business well I was very lucky I had a number of uh jobs Brook Haven Country Club and the Dallas Garden Center built the first plant for ly brothers and then through my friend
Robert Glazer I got involved in Golden Acres and I built several buildings there and then went on to become president later on same thing happened at the temple I built I was a member of the temple and uh I built some of the buildings there and uh uh it one point I was the vice president of the uh Federation and vice president of the temple and uh had the opportunity to pick and I decided that I could do more for the temple they were at a point where Rabbi Olen had retired and uh so I was very fortunate to become involved and become president and
we brought Shel Zimmerman to Dallas which I think really rejuvenated the temple and uh got friendly with harl kimman and some of the other people and we had some wonderful uh times the search committee for Shel Zimmerman was a terrific experience for all of us you know we went visited the different congregations around the country and it became a very cohesive group of a a nice cross-section of the congregation so that was a very very rewarding experience uh so herb Shore was one of my original mentors and also I was fortunate enough to uh work for Julia ships and built some of his buildings and
uh he was a great Menor he sponsored me to Dallas Citizens Council and the salesmanship club and a lot of things that uh and of course as far as a recommendation if I said that I'd uh work for the glaz and and Julius that's about all it took to go so I then went into business for myself followed my father's advice and started to build uh and uh we were very fortunate to build some of the early buildings in uh Trinity industrial district in brollow and uh uh I had a very very rewarding career in real estate the development business do you remember when you
went off on your own and you had to go put in your first bid well it's interesting story I been on the Dallas Garden Center so we went to the opening that that was in mayor Thornton and uh of course the first bids come in and uh uh somewhat lower and then they start to hit the mle you know and then uh luckily we didn't leave too much on the table so but but you're right that's a very shocking uh experience to go through you wonder you know if you're high what difference is like you're not going to get it but if you're too low
then you start to do some soul searching but I was very fortunate and uh but after a while I was fortunate enough to negotiate most of my work I didn't have to be so it was very rewarding uh and uh through the years I always got involved at the Green Hill School same thing building committee then the Board of Trustees and then chairman and then I got involved later on at same thing at the North Texas Public Broadcasting channel 13 and then lately the last a couple of years ago I had a very rewarding experience I was chairman of the building Committee of the Dallas
Museum of Art and we built a large addition and it turned out very successfully over the years what project was the one that gave you the most Joy well I had some very interesting experience with Architects I met Howard Meyer early on who did work at the temple and in Golden Acres and then I was fortunate enough to meet O'Neal Ford who did our house he's a very renowned also did some buildings at Greenhill and uh and then the uh dma was Edward Barn uh but we taught all those uh fancy guys how the Dallas way of doing things particularly Mr Barnes from New York
you're also involved with some of the buildings at some of the local hospitals yes I through Donnie Zale and my friend Vin Prothro who had been chairman of the dma asked me to oversee the expansion of Z lipi and uh we had everything done ready to go we had the crens ordered and then Donnie calls me one day and says I'm firing you I said what do you mean he said we're buying St Paul and he said we're going to shut down the Z lii expansion and I want you to move up to St Paul and we want to refurbish the whole thing so I
got hired and ref fired one day which was pretty nice and that's been that was a very rewarding experience and now uh I'm on the building that we're building a new University Hospital which uh will be terrific not Parkland but the southwestern uh uh now one one of the hospitals uh you they now call the University Hospitals they have Z lipi St Paul in the New University Hospital and there's a Irma and Irwin diabetic Center well we've I am a diabetic and have been for a number of years and we have supported research in diabetic research at UT Southwest right and and your name is
on their diabetic Center I suppose we're not much about names in fact it's interesting philanthropy thing the last few uh Capital campaigns at both Green Hill and the temple we directed our uh support to the upkeep and maintenance mhm uh of course a lot of donors like to have brick and mortar but we're past that stage and we think it's very important and uh most of the Charities are very smart now about 10% of the fundraising is dedicated to an endowment fund to maintain which is very important where did you meet herma Irma's older sister Artis is a friend of mine and we met uh
we were I was sort of the last of the M weans I didn't get married till I was 31 and they used a kid we dated for a couple of years but I told everyone you know I'm not a plunger we were married in' 61 we have wonderful children and terrific grandchildren what was the happiest time in your life of course the family experiences are the most but uh growing up I think the four years in Boston were a really high Awakening time for me now in your lifetime was there something that came along in invention that you really said wow how did we ever
get along without this perhaps something in in your industry when I was at school uh I did a worked for a research program where we uh translated the uh numbers into the uh zeros and one which is the the language of all the computers by hand and I got a dollar a page for every page so I was really in on the uh and of course we had some of the early computers there and uh so but what's interesting is uh uh today I don't have anything to do with them I enjoy reading the New York Times and working AC crossb puzzles but but I'm
computer I'm computer literate but not computer functioning and your your industry is the been a tremendous difference in how things are done oh yeah nothing's done by hands anymore the drawings are all done on Cad and every uh contractor and subcontractor has a computer link up you can't work on a certain job unless you have that capability and so instead of waiting for blueprints you end up getting uh almost simultaneously documents uh and uh it's it's changed tremendously and uh uh early in the year in the years we I used to do by hand and we used to do a critical path of the item
now that's all done on the computer words if you have to pour concrete tomorrow and you don't do that then it stops every it's a critical item so there are certain things in the progress of a building that if they're not done sequentially it it blows the whole schedule how proud were your parents to know that you were going to MIT they my dad was uh very pleased yeah they were pleased of course it was a different world I mean you know senior's kid away you know but I was very fortunate one of my roommates mothers used to call and tell my folks that they
were taking us to New York or somewhere and it was very you know it a very nice uh relationship and then one of my friends in California used to who drove early used to drive to Dallas and pick me up and then we'd go to St Louis and then to Louisville and you know and then head on to Boston so it was a really wonderful experience for me now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions of course World War II when you were a young boy President Kennedy assassination uh something good the first moon landing in ' 69 of course interesting story
about President Kennedy Bob Strauss had a bunch of Banks and he wanted me to build him a he called me uh and my friend Harwood Smith the architect we were all friends and he said I've got to open a bank in 60 days or 90 days and I need a bank on Lemon Avenue so we got the idea we bought two of those large uh trailers M and wrapped them in Brick and 60 days later he opened for business bu and at that time Irma and I lived in a small apartment on hood street so he landed at Love Field and I said I'm going
to walk over to the parking lot of the bank and watch them go by and so I walked over there and they passed and you know she looked gorgeous in her Pink Suit and he was smiling and and then I came back home for lunch and by the time I got home for lunch I heard that he had been in fact I was supposed to go to that lunch Lon at the trade center but I decided not to go that morning so that was quite an experience a personal experience and I remember we had a job in Memphis and I called over there that afternoon
and when I to talk to someone and when I said I was from Dallas Texas the operator hung up on these recently they've redone Rabbi olan's sermons and I was privileged to get to know him when I was president and he did a sermon on the uh anniversary of Kennedy's death well that evening everybody went to Temple I remember that uh uh everybody felt I guess that was a place we could you know uh recuperate uh with this sermon that he gave emphasized the bad things that had gone on in Dallas and uh and the fact that we were too busy uh about Big D
and not enough about education and the homeless and so forth he was a terrific uh inspiration I used to have lunch with him once a month and I would take Henry schlinger with me because I was nervous about what I could talk about he was such a wise guy and a couple of funny stories one well the other funny one was that on Sunday morning they had a wonderful radio program and they used to say that all the baptist ministers listen to radio program on the way to church so they get ideas for their for their sermons and when we were looking for Rabbi Zimmerman
he he said to me one time he said irn when you go to these towns he said uh don't just talk to the temple leaders he said talk to your real estate friends they'll tell you who the best Rabbi is so he was a wonderful man great great inspiration I was fortunate to for a point of reference so he married her I also which was interesting okay what Temple was he with for a point of reference okay just we want to get that and he was a region of the University of Texas he was quite a yeah quite an influential leader now you and Irma
have you know a son and a daughter right and four granddaughters right they're terrific what advice does Granddad have for the Next Generation Well I have a few things that I try to tell one is to surround yourself with the very best people you can and in your when you get on into your career don't worry about the money if you and of course the thing that everybody talks about you have to try if you're lucky enough to find something that you not only like but have a passion for I think You' be 50% successful already in our generation a lot of my friends were
compelled either to go in family business whatever and some of them were very unhappy and so it's uh it's nice to be able to go out on your own and and do your own thing and I feel my son uh enjoys medicine and my daughter has had a wonderful career in the art business she went to the University of Texas and uh um took an art history course so one Summer she decides that she and a friend will go to New York to NYU they had a art course and so at the end of the summer she said I think I'm going I'd like to
stay in New York and I said fine get a job so she had done some work on a book for one of her professors and sure enough she got a wonderful job with the art gallery and uh of course came back to Dallas and Stanley Marcus was a partner and good friend of mine and she was looking around what to do and she went to see him and uh he said you know uh neans has bought all my art and you said they don't know what they have I said I think they should hire you to inventory and curate the art and uh that started
21 years ago as a part-time job and now she does all the art in the stores and has a very has success uccessful career and my son decided to go into medicine which was interesting uh I think a lot it we were very uh friendly with Jean Frankle who is a professor at Southwestern and he had Doug worked in a lab One Summer and then he worked one summer at uh Brigham in Women's Hospital in Boston through jeans introducing him and so of course then he went to Duke and uh Bor medical school and Gale and so he's had a very successful career I never
thought or we never thought anybody would live in Salt Lake but uh they enjoy it there and the girls love it and they ski and mountain bike and do all those things yeah so I've been very it's it's it's very rewarding that both my children and my grandchildren we've had very good luck and how have you seen the Jewish community in Dallas grow over the years well it's interesting for instance in the Federation years ago all the the temple leadership was very involved and then through the years it it moved to sherith Israel and then recently some of the temple so it's it's changed a
lot and of course juliia ships was a fabulous mentor to me and and the Glazer family I mean there are a lot of people that I've been very fortunate to and privileged to you know both work for and know and be involved and I mean we had a small group at Golden Acres for years with Dr Shore that was very rewarding the same at the temple well thanks for doing this today I'm really doing this because of Irma and I hope uh that uh Rebecca and Rachel and Isabelle and Anna that you enjoy some of these stories thank you for