Jane Ray

Full Transcript

okay okay thank you thank you so much oh jay you were talking about as a little girl going to the temple office correct i'd love to go in the summertime especially help mother with her very uh children especially because it was their condition and back in those days came the early morning like 30 there was only a few places you can get air conditioning going to a restaurant or to removing so this was a little added attraction and we always spend the day with mother and of course we would always send out to freeman's drug store for a pomegranate sheen sandwiching and uh treatment mall

and so that part of my life has been so very part of temple manuel you know and now there is a a prayer book fund in her yes i want to be sure and conclude when my mother passed away in 1959 the board of trustees wanted to memorialize her name for all the years of her devotion and service to the temple and they came upon the thought of a prayer book fund to continue her name as they need new prayer book people would donate from very donations uh to um from time to time they're writing choosing prayer book funds so her name inventory lies in

the temple archives and uh that's a wonderful way of remembering for her tell them tell us about your father my father came from uh liverpool england he was the kind of a cancer uh in a synagogue in liverpool i never knew the grandparents because my father had come to america and became a american and his name was my father's name with julius joseph rutland our youngest son jordan is named for my father julius and he's our oldest son alan is named for my mother they took the first name and the letter to me um my father did various things in his life uh he would

give world war one and the very funny story a guy would say how we won world war one my father would go get the piano teach uh player and would entertain the family for hours and hours and hours and the day before television and computers it was real family oriented and singing and all the wonderful times that i remember and people in our lives but in world war one the story goes my father played the piano for mary pittford of the silent moving aboard a troop ship so thank y'all and you until we won world war one and um my parents moved a temple move

over building out here northwood highway and hillcrest to until it was opened we moved from my grandfather's big house across the street and my mother um was killed you know with the kimbo my mother never drove she got tangled up with the streetcar and what was in that time of forest avenue and the story goes and my husband's mother also got tangled up with the streetcar they said the streetcar had to back up and get untangled from her trying to drive and she never drove again and like my mother would walk to the boulevard temple which was just a couple of blocks away on monday

morning she always took a uh the uh genuine fun paper to came to my grandmother's chauffeur then in the service and in a row cardboard thing i can still see you're walking down south boulevard with the container she would often stop by right by left we can count maybe we can drop off and go german she had typed up she did the cemetery building all the billing the temple bulletin everything that had to be done with him by one person tell tell us about how you grew up i was very fortunate child very loved and voted upon foil if you want to stay cuddled i

lived i grew up in a house of extremely old people back in those days a lot of families lived together my mother father and myself lived with my grandparents they always got the great big house at 25 27 south boulevard which years ago of today 101 years old and still standing it has a designation from dallas tell us about this it is it's part of the south boulevard history oh well paulie is referring to uh at the corner of atlanta and south boulevard there is a stone marker which describes who had lived there long ago and about 99 percent jewish families and maybe that's what

you are referring to it was an amazing house and it's still in existence everyone oh my friend can call makes me love to come over to my house because they thought it was a magical place if you were really right tall a book has been written about a shown picture called um the architecture of the southwest has been shown in a book too it had four fireplaces four stories parquet floor in the front room imported cracks off on the walls in the dining room three emits gorgeous stained glass window at the top of the landing four bedrooms upstairs to the front with more fireplaces added

with all the big trunks and all kind of mysterious things up there and the dreaded cellar which the monstrous furnace that supplied the hinge to the steam radiators at that time and gave me a furnace scare me to death i would never go down in the basement and one of the wrenching trips that our youngest kind and myself took he made me come down the basement and have a picture of myself and my arm around and further so very often when we had a great big ring storm all anything basement with blood and we always had to get the fire department out to tell them

about the coach house in the back oh in the back working two story of house for the help which was luella and eamon her trusted chauffeur the willow lived upstairs and you could love to go up there and visit with her in the other world and amos lived downstairs with a room in the back and they get started by the buick my grandparents go and get a black buick i remember so wonderfully well i mean i still see him getting outside the serving quarter cranking out delicious pink ice cream a long ago day which i've never tasted any pizza ice cream to equal by my

grandmother was a very gay and proper grandmother everything had to be a a ritual that never could vary the taking down of the drugs in the summer the putting down the rag rug flip cover covering all the immense pieces nothing ever changed there is a scene very similar to that in the movie driving this gaming where their converting from winter to summer and every sunday dinner was a dessert with chocolate cake once in a while wonderful terrible ice yellow cake which i've never tasted in caramel like it at all may lovingly buy the well in a big flat pan with the brown sugar and whatever

and to my uncle john who was the drama critic for the gallery too and his wife claire came to stay at the house one summer when my grandparents took what they call the motor trip my uncle was a great teen and the story goes to me and claire said my grandparents gave me my grandmother and fire on their trip whatever that cover and the wire had the telegram we ate the gun gun cake on saturday night my poor grandmother was never the same i mean you didn't you didn't change anything nothing they would give them a you know trip to them and you know families

live together they came like they enclosed me up their reports from my brother when he came back from antioch college but i had often felt that uh i don't think he ever lived in there but um family probably lived together grandparent parent children that would kind of your aunt lived with you also yeah yeah they had to live with uh we had a wonderful well and we got a sort of carbon copy of manny from god with the wind quite heavy and uh fabulous cooked or one of her favorites we can get chocolate roll cake the chocolate cake made in the launching pan with the

whipped cream and chocolate over it and of course they didn't know about towering in those games and i don't think it would have made any difference either because that's just the way they ate rich cream gothic and uh rich sugar and that's the way it was my grandmother got her egg and real butter every saturday from mr drum who had a farm outside of dallas because this was real butter great big lump blocks of real butter and uh it had to strange a funny story about one side of the house i had a hole cut in the brick for the delivery of the ice back

in the early days of refrigeration my grandfather would not let the iceman come in the house until there was a little door cut from the outside to the inside where and just had to put the ice through the house into the interior and so that i do have a picture of where they did finally put the brick you know back together and uh a little lighter brick than the rest of the house i never had a real cat those things were just not allowed in the roping build online now i did have a duck and a rabbit and that was about a thing of my

pet and your auntie what was she called i thought it was charming my great aunt was also a paulie and we had to differentiate between my aunt paulie and she became calling darling she would go away with my grandmother she would go away every summer to europe or band for late the week or up to new york she would go to get away from the terrible texas heat and um she often stayed at the plaza hotel and all of her trip to europe she would bring me a different doll uh from the different countries at one time i had eighteen a.o doll and every year

at christmas time which we did always observe and i always got introverted too this was the time of assimilation of the jewish people i think into the mainstream of american life and then associating with all matters of people and faith and with the kind of accumulation and but most of my uh friends that i all grew up with were orthodox and so that really maintained most of neighbors on south boulevard myron goldberg and i were the only young orthodox family orthodox or conservatives yeah or orthodox cartoon carpenter i don't want to think they all kept culture and uh when you're not so but every christmas

morning i would wake everybody up at the crack of dawn and amy would come bouncing upstairs and then my father would you would be came downstairs and you could hear a boyfriend being a good girl this year and then said yes and then they took me over to one of the windows and you were here clinking up like clay bell and a ho ho ho ho merry christmas to all and they were taken to the other window and can there go off again 10 o'clock until this day i'll tell you i never thought 10 o'clock or anybody but i went along with the game one

christmas i got a huffy bicycle christmas present uh they kept it a surprise for me so we were downstairs for breakfast and dad asked if i would get a cigar for him which he spoke quite a lot from the library there went the bicycle it was always too big for me and cleared uh you could see the cat the handlebars and uh i was very wild with everything and had a wonderful childhood friends that are still my friends today we're all very close and it's just a wonderful time uh when world war ii broke out of the bombing of pearl harbor i had never even

heard of pearl harbor my parents and myself were down at one of the movie houses downtown there were no neighborhood veterans at that time and we went to our favorite rockefeller hamburger stand for burger and that's where we heard the news i still had kept all of our ration books for every member of the family over gasoline shoes and things that we had to go along with sugar and things and i gave them all to our oldest young ally and for his boy all that i ever really knew of the war was collecting tin cans and newspapers and a little red wagon and uh my

uh father when he had the uh drill you know the airaid drill and my father went to airaid warden for our block and he i think we had to close the drone very tightly like they did in england and he would go out with the uh flashlight and the flashlight was completely covered in a black uh paper with just a little tiny hole to help him walk along he did not want much light to be shown and i've often said we did not know any of the hard and deprivation that when he [Music] let's see you were born in 1933 correct and so the war

broke out in 41 correct only eight years old told me eight years ago i had never heard of pearl harbor when they mentioned it i thought maybe we could harbor full of pearls yes i had no recollection of the knowledge of anything about nature later years uh when and my aunt keller who was my mother's dear friend took me to my first trip to europe i went to the uh anne frank house in amsterdam and of course being jewish it really does something to you i remember coming out and saying i want to go home and pay my income tax you were so touched and

really get to you when you know what they went through and the eventual capture of them so tell us where did you go to high school and college and i went to our neighboring forest avenue high school and um at that time forest avenue it is now called james madison in african-american high school when the whole neighborhood changed to african-americans after world war ii everyone i had ever grown up with we all graduated together most of my friends went on to the university of texas myron goldberg and i went to smu com just coming back and forth every day and i think in that respect

i look back now you don't have the same uh college rah-rah feeling that you do when you uh were living at a college away from home and making the new friends and so yeah making new friends or maybe uh uh drawing a sorority it was we had one serious girard together in you and them just a few jewish girls that i think we would meet from time to time by giving mcdigma and got a portion called international sorority but it got gone so you finished college i finished college and uh i went to work for a harrison company primarily i love retailing uh primarily and

a kitchen buyer for very lovely ladies who gave me my uh two wildcats for an engagement kid she had several departments and what at that time they had a basement in a hurricane company she always brought non good quality names i did a lot of ordering for her we got along beautifully she asked especially for me and i also worked in uh getting buyers cosmetic department which was a lot of fun getting samples of all the beautiful things and um but i never got to go to new york to buy but being in the meantime um most wonderful man in the world who was also

a native dallas yeah and my husband yeah it was gail louis ray the first name is for his grandfather gabriel lewis richardson r-a-t-h-o-f-s-k-y some of the family gig changed and shortened the name incumbent but that's the original name uh he grew up in um originally they lived on foreign avenue and gail's father built a house in university park on hangover in factory all the cousins always lived next door to each other and followed each other from place to place and uh he had a cousin cheryl's rose he was also named for the grandfather and uh so daily i went to different high schools it became

the norm or whatever you want to call it but when we became 16 a lot of the girls would get between 15 days and every usually every saturday night and each party had a different theme and it was a melting pot for all the high school kids from forest and weaver wilson highland park maybe and come back me on a long time until we all throughout being picked too and uh the ritual was after the dance we all go to canning um greenville for another hamburger and a real coke coca-cola and the later years we got through standings and we got a little more sophisticated

grown-up playing on old lawn which i have now forgotten again i have a menu from one uh new york team bank we were growing up at town and country which was a very lovely restaurant here in dallas of the very few there were the kind and this was new year's eve probably in the in the 50s and the menus came for new year's year new york team dinner was five dollars and then it doesn't stop you couldn't even walk into a plane for five dollars anymore i remember the sweet 16 dances you would get an invitation and it would say your date is correct we

were always paired with and i remember one came to your day when ralph rosenbaum and you said i remember that and i'm gonna have a good time and i thought that pauline and very positive and forward thinking and i always thought my first date was larry goldman somebody else remember and when you that's how everybody got to know everybody and i don't know how it is but gail and i became very close kenya gone with uh amy lieberman for a long time and i had gone with uh david stillman who was valedictorian of our class and foreign now gail was a twin yes gail was

a twin uh who had a twin sister in san antonio married to a doctor in san antonio gloria milton road force when gail got the height and she got with a set of the timer left over she was uh gail's mother thought she died before they could bring her into seizure and her skin was so thin drinking the veins run through her skin she also contracted later years alzheimer's which my husband also contracted they had older sisters who just passed away they cast october 10 years their seniors who was orleans ray and she married my brother-in-law george ross and it was so strong that we

started going together and uh when my mother was quite ill and actually dying at baylor hospital he was with me all night long we were not even engaged and then i went to a vegan friend in california when i came back he was there in the airport to meet me at what then was on the left field and i said i guess i just had to marry him i couldn't get rid of him and so we became very very close and we had the understanding that we would get married but in those days we felt that we should wait until a year after my mother

passed away and what was so funny my sister-in-law the other sister-in-law claire of rosenberg just knew i was going to get an engagement ring on valentine's day before when we really got engaged um and so she was all excited and she knew it was gonna happen and to me and but in reality i got fold up house shoes i don't know who was more trust player myself so we got engaged on my birthday december 19 1959 well by this time i started giving up all hope and after the photo passion event so um gail came over in the evening and we were gay come true

going out for dinner and we went out in the back step with my mother father couch on green dryer they bought when the temple moved to the new location 1957. and gail said uh did you get your birthday present no i'm not even expecting after all this time stressing disappointment that we would get engaged ever and uh he said well here it is that's it and put it the ring on my finger and that was it and we had 47 wonderful years together two darling wonderful sons especially alan who in the landscale to achieve i've had some cousins refer to him as gail jr he can show his father in every way and jordan is just the other way around fun loving funny having good lucky alex very serious and you know the older thing and

usually the more serious type i've had people ask me how are your wonderful sons and how are your wonderful guns and well my dad they're fine and that's giving them an impression they have made upcoming people they are extremely attentive tell them about tell us about how you keep up your cemetery plus we are big cemetery goers uh mostly gail's family we are there for every occasion mother's day father's day birthdays anniversary with containers of fresh flowers all the time alan and we also go over to the rosenfield plot alec um took it upon himself and his three guns to redo the cemetery rosenfield plot

with new soil new flowers new bushes and so i think maybe he had gained a reputation of cemetery work going down the cemetery committee in sheriff israel would you finish up by just telling us a little bit about your uncle john my uncle charles rosenfield was the drama critic of the dallas morning news for many many years he was called the gaur of the southwest he uh my grandfather already sent him to columbia university then my grant but my uncle went to the opera instead stand up in the peanut gallery to make every opera he was married to claire berger of new york getting the

story goes uh they invoked my colleague and uh from to mary and the story goes she only left with 28 pairs and still stalking he was you know they knew all the moving stars the people in the music and theater world and i have been told that today we are blessed with opera uh valentine simply neuter because of my uncle very deliberate push for culture in dallas originally dallas which is like a white horse town with a standing sidewalk and it was kind of really pushy he had entree of course to the muddy people in dallas with r.l thornton from which we have a freeway

game for him fred florence president of the republic bank my great uncle arthur kramer could bankroll i think when you have the metropolitan offer came in the spring every year we now have our own dallas opera gail and i would love to get dressed up and go to the opera uh one well for everything we were given free passion to everything i never had to pay for anything in my life because i could go now but everything turned into a different world and um well i thought we all and captain lean back for like the first actively offered to write up his review which was

then published the next day they don't do that anymore we always knew where uncle child and a clear cat they would leave after the first date and we moved over to their it's a little closer down books have been written about him his roots book called john rosenfield dallas written by former professor xmu uh did i give you a book or did you invite us i haven't you gotta have it and uh we worked several times with the author trying to give him an insight to my uncle his wife and their life was not a nine to five tied wife they were going to something

every night virtually and he would go down for the news and get about 10 and about noon time to go to lunch and gather up a big crowd and then go to some sky cafe there well it was a wonderful life that they led it was a wonderful life that they lived and she they had an unusual house in later years on university boulevard and sat back like where a garage would get they had tall shrubs at the street level you couldn't see the house and they entertained the who and the people in theatrical and musical he had a clog filled with valuable records which

my mother my aunt gave to fmu and climate controlled for these records they had many real carousels and and oh yeah the real thing and he was listening to a configure something maybe before a performance to kind of gauge the two my uncle died in his sleep taking a nap and 1966 to my aunt claire god two years and later they had a gun john rosenfield iii who became a professor of asian art at harvard university for many years it's a very strange uh story about him how he started his career he was in the oss in world war ii that was before the cia

he was changing all aspects of the trafficking culture the language everything's happening at university of berkeley and he was then dropped from airplanes into burma and china an indian girl to spy on the japanese from that he acquired his career and with a long string of degrees mile long 5 80 kappa and became a ph.d and finally his parents and john quit going to school and start supporting your wife so we can give for many years and in turn as the world turns the empire of japan uh honored him with many different medals things that and the other notably the youngest one with a personal

gift of 25 thousand dollars for his contribution to asian art the last honor with john charles lane freer award uh for a contribution to ancient arts and had to go back to japan to get the medaller award and he sent me a copy of his acceptance speech for always starting off and something and he started by saying uh as a only recipient from the state of texas all he could ever draw were track rabbits and cowboys and so that's how he started him and he ended up as head of the oriental art department we can't everything a certain chair that was giving uh that he

headed and uh at harvard was at harvard yesterday harvard and he died for a long time and belongs to me of a stroke um two years ago in december had a stroke and i think they didn't go i was alive and i kept calling him and calling him and then i called and go the place where they lived and then they transferred me in the hospital and told me dr rosenfeld died of a drug well you have had the most amazing life and a wonderful wonderful record of what early jewish reform life was like good work and truly um involved in temple emmanuel thank you

so much is only the tip of the iceberg but thank you okay okay tell who that is who is this that's my uncle john rosenfield of the galaxy morning news okay thank came back a little better picture show the next one making a caricature of something about which i told pauline really looked more like and then he was quite the whole family work and this was my grandmother at the time with her then four grandsons they're all males mostly in the rosenfeld family i'm the only green child in my granddaughter my generation my mother and family daughter and her generation this uh it's associated with

my uncle this was anchored and uh conductor dallas symphony my uncle nixon gordon group i think he started they had something with either the theater or the opera uh i'm not sure one of the awful and i don't know who that is that looks like lbj yeah it's not not tall enough yeah okay they keep calling by to bring them guestbook of my parent grandparents 50th wedding anniversary at their home oh wow on south boulevard in 1935. okay and it had changed in that or rosenfield things were pioneer galaxy uh people who came to the house uh their own dallas name paulie's parents are listed here to regina pierce and lee pierce they're getting charged right there show the picture of the table of course we got very elaborate uh you know they used to write up all these things in the paper they think my grandparents on their honeymoon and here they are at the uh wedding anniversary uh evidently they're working opera company and performing here in gallows and then came back to my grand um my uncle john brought a lot of the

opera stars over to the house afterwards i was only two at the time and i could not come down to the evening foray and i remember looking over the banister i should have had the pictures of the too and my first words were more paint i'm still saying more because there's a picture of the elaborate how beautiful and this is described in the write-up and what the women had on and then we get the dining room of their home on south boulevard the house is still standing at 101 years old wow wonderful thank you so much thank you so much that's fabulous that went on

something i don't know why probably on the uh the cake or the decoration