Jarrell Antweil
Jarrell Antweil's family history stretches from New York to North and East Texas. His father, the youngest of seven children, was born in New York, where his own father died when he was only six; the family later moved to Fort Worth, possibly following an older brother who became a doctor there. Jarrell's grandparents on both sides emigrated from Eastern Europe, with the family name believed to have originally been something like Antovilsky, shortened upon arrival at Ellis Island. His mother's family also settled in Fort Worth, and Jarrell treasured early memories of his grandparents' home there, filled with the smells of baked goods, pickles, and fig preserves.
Jarrell's father opened a men's clothing store in Gladewater during the oil boom, later following opportunities to New Mexico and back to East Texas. When World War II began, the family moved to Texarkana, where his father and his mother's brothers opened a nicer clothing store, drawn by the munition factories built in nearby New Boston. Jarrell grew up in Texarkana, attending grade school and high school there before heading to the University of Texas at Austin. The family observed the Jewish holidays and considered themselves conservative but not orthodox, attending temple in Longview and later in Texarkana.
After the University of Texas and Army service during the Korean War, Jarrell joined the Zale jewelry company after meeting M.B. Zale and Leo Fields at a Dallas gathering. He spent about a decade with Zales before moving to Gordon's Jewelry, which sent him to St. Louis to open stores. There he met his wife, Joni, and their son, B.J., was born. In 1987, after the market crash, Jarrell earned his Series 7 and became a financial consultant with Merrill Lynch, later going independent. He and Joni moved back to Dallas about four years before the interview to be near their son and granddaughter, Olivia. Jarrell credited his parents with teaching him honesty, hard work, and understanding, and hoped to be remembered as friendly, funny, and hardworking.
Full Transcript
this is the oral history of gerald antwile being conducted by may siebel on tuesday july 21st 2020 good morning gerald how are you i'm great thank you i'm fine thanks so tell me about the earliest memory that you have of your family and something about the history of your family well i was born in longview texas and my family at the time were living in gladewater but they were in longview playing cards and i was born prematurely in a little hospital in longview uh which doesn't of course exist anymore but it was right across the street from the courthouse in longview and what brought my
father to gladewater was he opened up a men's clothing store uh at that time it was the beginning of the oil boom and of course they sold primarily khakis and khaki shirts and work boots and work shoes and the stories that were told to me that i remember and i thought were rather funny is that on a saturday on a sunday after the store was closed of course saturday night my dad would drive to dallas and buy khaki pants and khaki shirts for 75 cents each and he would drive back to gladewater and stacked them all up and monday morning open the store again and
sell them for a dollar and a quarter interesting enough oil leases we're going for a dollar and a quarter at the same time and i've many many times joked with my dad instead of buying khakis for 75 cents and selling them for a dollar and a quarter why didn't you buy some oil leases for a dollar to order and of course he said he didn't know anything about that at the time um a brother of his my dad was the youngest of seven children and where was he born born in fort my dad was born in new york okay um all of his siblings were
born in new york and my father's father my grandfather died when my father who was the youngest of seven was only age six and uh eventually my grandmother of the sholum picked them all up and they moved to fort worth what brought them to fort worth did they have relatives there no no they did not and i'm not sure exactly why they moved to fort worth except it could have been that my dad's older brother had finished medical school and was a doctor and they might have all moved to fort worth because that's where he was able to set up a practice as opposed to
new york okay i'm not sure why they moved to fort worth but they did go ahead next question no it's been saying uh what is your earliest childhood memory my earliest childhood memories would be my grandparents home in fort worth uh and smelling the wonderful baked goods i can still visualize the house um and also the neighbors two doors down and i would sort of run back and forth from the two houses um i i know that uh my grandmother i was scholar put up pickles and everything and she stored all those bottles down in the cellar we had a great big fig tree in
the backyard and i would help her pick figs and she would make fig preserves um and i guess my earliest recollection is just the beautiful wonderful smells in the house sounds like you had had a lot of fun and also i would get up early in the morning because i love to watch my grandfather avasholam uh late to fill in and he would have his glass of tea and a sugar cube and he would bite off the cube and drink the tea while he was dominant don't forget is that a new uh jewish ritual no that's actually the way they drank tea in russia uh
my grandmother and my grandfather it was a arranged marriage they didn't know each other until the day of the wedding and they were given a honeymoon to the united states so that my grandfather would not have to serve in the czar's army and they landed of course in new york new york okay and what did your grandfather do my grandfather was a peddler he had a cart a horse-drawn cart in fort worth what he did in um oh i'm i'm sorry i'm i'm okay confused a little bit with my gran with my mother's parents and not my father's parents at the moment okay let's go
back to my father's parents remember my grandfather died when my dad was six so i had no recollection of my father's parents home or anything okay and where was your mom from uh my mother uh family also lived in fort worth but they again came to this country um and landed in new york my mother was born in providence rhode island or fall river rhode island it's a little confusing as to whether her brother was born in fall river or my mother okay what was your religious life growing up what was what your religious life um we were in of course a small town but
we had a temple uh this is in gladewater right oh well the temple was in the movie view in longview okay yes i i we were living in gladewater but longview is 12 miles away and the temple was in longview and then when um world war ii started well i'm getting way ahead of the getting way ahead of myself um my dad also with his one-year-older brother named mars apple uh they went out to uh new mexico and uh my dad was with his brother uh in uh midland or in that area out there and they sort of followed the oil boom and then eventually
my we came back to east texas and when world war ii started we moved to texarkana and my dad along with my mother's brothers opened up a nicer men's clothing store in texarkana which is actually where i grew up and went to grade school and high school before going off to the university of texas in austin how did your family celebrate holidays um religiously um again in texarkana there was a temple but it was more conservative um my parents were more conservative than orthodox and certainly more conservative than were farm we celebrated all the holidays my mother avisholum prepared meals or whatever we observed passover
to this day i still do to a degree [Music] we were religious but not orthodox okay uh what world events had the most impact on you when you were growing up and did any of them personally affect your family i'm not sure understand the question would you repeal okay what world events had the most impact on you when you were growing up and did any of them personally affect your family well i remember sitting in my mother's home my mother's mother's home my grandparents in fort worth uh when the japanese bombed pearl harbor and uh i remember that the next day all of my mother's
brothers went to enlist those that uh were able to get into the service did uh phillip the youngest brother uh served in india sydney the older boys uh sam and jaime and my father were not drafted and could not were too old to enlist at the time that's when the three of them decided that they would open up a store in texarkana because a few miles outside of texarkana is a small town i don't know how what size it is now i haven't been back called new boston and in the beginning of world war ii new boston uh they built two munition factories in new
boston so that seemed to be an opportunity for my dad to go there and open up a men's clothing store so i guess the world affairs that uh affected me were world war ii i know that every uh sunday my father would go down to the store i would go with him and we would straighten up or do things or whatever and he would always write a letter to his brother-in-law's to sydney and to philip and those were the ones that actually were in the military gary okay um any stories about famous or infamous relatives in your family [Laughter] no i i i don't think
so oh let me think for a moment infamous relatives oh i really don't think so okay i um dad's brother as i mentioned was a doctor in fort worth uh he practiced there virtually all his life until he passed away when we moved back when my wife and i moved back to dallas for me she not a native texan uh when we moved back to dallas and she started playing bridge and bajan and everything and we were trying to meet people and develop friends here in dallas she ran into many many ladies that said oh are you related to doc antwell in fort worth oh
he delivered our son or he delivered my grandchild or something so maybe you consider him infamous i don't know where were you and joanie living before you moved to dallas uh as i said i went to the university of um after school i went into business uh with my dad and my uncles in men's clothing um i lived in longview at the tonight but i came to dallas for a wedding or something i'm not sure what it was but anyway at the reception um i ran into or i met for the first time donnie zale and leo fields and uh we chatted they of course
knew my parents because the zayle family was originally from fort worth also before they moved to dallas and set up corporate office here and uh sunday morning at brunch they offered me a job and wanted to know if i wanted to move to san francisco so i had been in san francisco in the service when i went into the military um i did my basic at fort ord and then i was transferred up to san francisco and i was uh was that during the korean the korean war yes yes okay i was a clerk in g2 and so um after that i again came back
to dallas and um i stayed with zales went up the ranks and uh worked in the corporate office for a while ran leased apartments for them so on and so forth then i was i moved to houston and ran one of their stores there in houston corrigans with leon davis and um gordon jewelry company uh wooed me away uh by telling me that they were negotiating two stores one murmur jacker king in st louis and the other shrieving company in san francisco well i love san francisco i have lived there for a while after the military uh with zales and i thought you know what
they said if join us now you could have either one if we get them both or if we only get one that's where you're going to move and you're going to be a general manager and open up stores for us for them so i left sales after 10 years or 9 years went with gordon's and they did not get san they got st louis so i moved to st louis and that's where i met my wife joni and uh that's where our son was born and that's where we lived until we just now moved back four years ago to dallas to be with our son
and granddaughter okay so you're you're newly back in dallas in this area after 50 years okay so you were tired when you moved here my wife said we are moving to dallas four years ago and i said i don't want to retire and she said well we're moving to dallas so um yes i am retired okay what uh what keeps you busy in your retirement and i'm not talking about covid the the days of coven before covet what what uh kind of activities uh keep you busy have kept you busy let's forget covet yes yes right well um hello what kind of dog oh i'm
sorry a scottish chicken and i can't help it you know they have they have photobombed or bombed a lot of zoom meetings people's pants got a little black and white cavalier oh they're adorable they're adorable um i skipped over many years while living in saint louis i better backtrack a minute to answer okay about what i think busy um in 1987 after the market crash decided i wanted to go in the brokerage business so i uh applied to with merrill lynch and i was accepted and uh went to work for them and uh took me it usually takes about six months or so to get
your series seven um i got my series seven in about four four and a half months in february of 88 i became a financial consultant and i did that until i retired i left merrell about eight years ago and went independent and i was an independent uh consultant for four years before i retired so what do i do now to keep myself busy i'm on the computer in the morning and i still play the market i day trade or whatever uh and i handle uh uh joni's trust in my trust account and that's what i do to stay busy well that's wonderful you've had a
very interesting uh career uh to go from uh retailing um retail management to becoming a stock broker well to go from clothing to clothing the stock broker is even more unbelievable but you know it was interesting because when mb and leo and donnie offered me a job with them i said i don't know anything about jewelry and they said you're a salesman a salesman can sell anything all you have to do is develop a different vocabulary and we'll send you to san francisco we just acquired granite brothers there we'll send you to san francisco they have a manufacturing operation and you'll spend uh four days
downtown in the retail store and you'll spend one day in the manufacturing and you'll learn jewelry from the ground up and uh you'll be a jewelry per uh you'll be able to sell jewelry and that's what i so it sounds like you could sell anything uh tell me about your your uh the name antwell what what is the origin of that because it's an interesting name i think and i'm not positive um unfortunately one of my cousins uh jason fox which i'm sure you know or knew yes yes she was my first cousin she knew more about the family history and i could you know
we never could get her to sit down and really bring us current from way back when i i'm i'm i heard somewhere at one time that the name was antovilsky and that my dad's parents were from poland uh and of course they came to this country from poland and when they land landed in ellis island or whatever uh they couldn't put down the name antovilsky so they put down the name antoine at that time you had to have a sponsor and um i have an old picture somewhere of um my dad amishalam and his brothers and sisters and mother sitting on the porch with their
sponsor who was called mr smith interesting that's all i know about mr smith was that he sponsored them to come to this country very interesting um of all the things you've learned from your parents which do you feel has been the most valuable that i've learned from my parents from your parents the most valuable thing that you think you've learned from your parents well they both worked hard they both were um sympathetic and maybe to a fault they were both honest and they both taught me that religion and honesty and understanding and hard work were the best traits i could ever have and i tried
to live by it that's wonderful uh tell me about your children we have one son b.j benjamin named after my dad uh jamison's the middle name and he that name comes from my wife's father uh his name was jameson last name and um he lives here in dallas he um like his dad i guess followed or climbed the corporate ladder for many years until he got fed up and tired of it and he's now in residential real estate doing very well and loves it he has a seven-year-old granddaughter uh named olivia um bj is remarried he was divorced about a year or six months or
so after olivia was born there were problems that went on for several years i might have even gone on before bj was conceived or born i don't know i don't get that personal uh but divorced and um was dating a a young lady uh three four years ago uh when we were coming back and forth uh to visit our granddaughter because he had her part-time you know custody and um joint custody not full custody um and um about two two and a half years ago i guess he married the uh woman that he had been dating for a few years uh but he was climbing
the corporate ladder and he needed help he was divorced he wasn't married four years ago so we decided we would come down here and uh uh be close to him and help him when he had olivia and was working well that's nice that's great that you have that grandchild to keep you busy and to enjoy um what is the one thing you most want people to remember about what kind of a legacy are you looking to leave i don't know that i'm looking to leave a legacy but um look my dad i will show him had a wonderful jovial personality he was lighthearted um he
took life seriously but with a grain of salt he added a little spice to it along with his brother that was one year older mars i've tried to live my life that way i've tried to um be able to laugh about situations uh i would like to be remembered as friendly as funny and um as a hard worker well those are wonderful traits to have for sure let's say i'm still working on something oh well aren't we all uh is there anything else you'd like to add any other memories of your family that you'd like to include well let's see um i think we've covered
it all unless you can have some other questions or something that will guide me in a direction sort of thought i buried my life with maybe a few skips from birth to i will tell you a funny story i'll tell you okay uh my freshman year i came home from college at the university of texas and um i said oh by the way uh when i was into university of course the war was over and everything and my folks had moved back to east texas from texarkana after about 12 years or 14 years i think uh they sold off the store and they moved back
to um east texas longview and uh so i came home and uh we were sitting around after dinner or whatever and i said come on i've got a great new card game that i learned in school and we'll play cards tonight i won't teach you the game and both my mother and dad's said what what is it i said let me deal the cards and i'll explain it to you i said you you wouldn't know it because i said you know i just learned it in college so i'm dealing out all the cards and my dad's sort of looks at me and he says what
is this game we're playing and i said well it's called hearts but i know you don't know it well i don't know who laughed the hardest my mother or my father they both started cracking up and they couldn't stop laughing and finally when they did i said what the hell are you all laughing about they said well remember we were playing cards and you were born prematurely and we and we had to rush to the hospital in longview guess what game we were playing how the hell would i we were playing hearts so i was born in the middle of a a card game of
hearts okay well that's a very funny story and a great way to end i think thank you so much for your time i've enjoyed hearing about your your life and so happy that uh you have done this oral history for us yeah i'm glad to have shared it and i'm glad that it will be in the archives of uh you know uh dallas uh jewry or texas history dallas jewish dallas jewish historical society all right well thank you very much appreciate it you're very welcome i have one last question yes when all this gets compiled or anything uh is there a way that i can
access it yes first of all you'll be sent a cd but you also um will be able to access it on the dallas jewish historical society website and you might want to djhs.org and you might want to go on it and look at some of the other oral histories that have been done you might you might see people you know possibly will and again the website is what djhs.org.org okay and you'll be able to see other oral histories and i'll just give a little hi little pitch i hope maybe you'll consider joining the historical society here we have wonderful programs oh are you already a
member i i i'm sure we're already a member oh okay good last year we went on your bus trip oh wonderful and uh you know if we let it expire we'll certainly review no no no i did i didn't know i didn't know that you were a member that's great i'm glad you've taken advantage of some of the programs of course we've been shut down because of covid but we're doing the best we can to provide some content from from people so again thank you very much gerald i've enjoyed getting to know about your history and um it's been terrific and just to let you
know i have my background in east texas my mother was born in palestine oh sure okay so i have a long family history from palestine texas yeah yeah so um anyway thank you again appreciate it very good you're very welcome