December 4, 2008

Jacque Prager

Jackie was born in 1926 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, sent there because her father, a traveling salesman, had family in Cleveland and none in Texas. Her father was raised in Oklahoma, where his family owned a business near Lexington, and her mother was born in Hungary, coming to the United States at age nine. Her father was persuaded to come to Dallas by his friend Nathan Levine, and the family settled in North Dallas. As an only child whose father had wanted a boy, Jackie grew up a self-described tomboy who rode horses, played cowboys with neighborhood boys, and received her first sewing machine at age eight. She lived on Kings Road, Throckmorton Street, and later on property her father and uncles bought on Midway Road in the Bluffview area.

Because the family lived in North Dallas rather than South Dallas where most Jewish families lived, Jackie described herself as looking in on the Jewish community from the outside. She attended Sunday school at Temple Emanu-El, often spending weekends in South Dallas with the Levine family, and enjoyed holidays such as Purim, Hanukkah, and Passover. She attended Sam Houston and Stephen J. Hay schools and then Highland Park schools. She attended the University of Texas, where she was active in student government, her sorority Delta Phi Epsilon, orange jackets, and was repeatedly named among the university's most beautiful girls. She married Barney in 1948 at the Baker Hotel, in a ceremony performed by Rabbi Lefkowitz.

Jackie spent her life in the garment industry, learning design, pattern-making, and cutting in her father's factory and beginning modeling at age four. After Barney's military service during Korea, they opened their own company in 1953, the Dahl Manufacturing Company, with the label Jackie of Dallas. Later she became a celebrated designer of coordinated maternity sportswear and a top saleswoman. She helped found and grow a fashion museum, working with Stanley Marcus and later housed at the University of North Texas. A licensed pilot, dancer, and later manager of the Temple Shalom gift shop, she remained active in Fashion Group and in Jewish community life. Widowed in 1989, she later reconnected with and dated Mort Prager.

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