Joan Genender
Joan was born in 1937 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, about 400 miles north of Toronto, where she described a wholesome and happy childhood in a small, tightly-knit Jewish community. Her father was an insurance agent with Sun Life, and her mother ran a store called the Joan Dress Shop, which made young Joan something of a local celebrity. The family kept kosher, with meat shipped from Toronto by train packed in dry ice, and Joan recalled salting and preparing it as a girl. Her maternal grandfather, a religious man from Russia who spoke little English, lived with the family after arriving in Canada as a peddler. Her father's parents had come from London, England, to Toronto. When Joan was nearly 16, the family moved to Toronto so the children could attend school, and she graduated high school there before entering nursing school.
Joan trained at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, calling those three years the best of her life, and earned scholarships that led her into public health nursing. She took a position as a head nurse in surgery in Detroit in 1961, joining siblings already living there. On a weekend visit to New York she met Larry Genender, who proposed within a day; they married in July 1962. The couple lived in Brooklyn while Larry finished his residency, then moved to Montreal, where they spent eleven happy years and Larry built a busy surgical practice that Joan helped run. Changes to Canadian healthcare funding and a difficult political and language climate, along with rising anti-Semitism, led hundreds of physicians to leave Montreal, and the Genenders decided to go as well.
After touring eleven cities, the Genenders fell in love with Dallas, where Larry soon received a job offer at Medical City. They joined Temple Shalom immediately, celebrating three bar mitzvahs there as their sons grew, and Joan taught Sunday school and served on the Sisterhood and temple boards. The family later moved to Temple Emanu-El, where Joan served as Sisterhood president from 2003 to 2005, chaired numerous fundraisers, and created the congregation's directories. She was inducted into the Temple Emanu-El Hall of Fame, an event she called magical, with her son Paul introducing her before three generations of family. Joan and Larry raised three sons, two attorneys in Dallas and one in private equity, and she counts family, values, and love of life as the lessons she hopes to pass to her grandchildren.
Full Transcript
Joe 1937 Kirkland Lake Ontario let's go back what do you remember when you were a little girl in Canada I had a wonderful upbringing this was a very small town maybe 15,000 people small closely knit Jewish community my mother and father were the pillars of the Town my mother was Sisterhood my father was Brotherhood we had a synagogue and a rabbi with a long long beard Rabbi rabinovich and we would go to synagogue after school every day wintertime 52 below and we walked tons of snow Kirkland lake is just below Hudson's Bay it's 400 miles north of Toronto it was a unique upbringing and I
lived there till I was almost 16 my father was an insurance agent with Sun Life my mother had a a store that she called the Joan dress shop so I was famous in Kirkland lake and we had young Juda we had parties in our homes was a really wholesome wonderful way to be a to be a kid now your grandparents do you remember them at all my grandfather on my mother's side my mother's father lived with us he was from Russia spoke virtually no English he doed all day very religious Friday would come and he would go out on the street and ask my friends
to come in to turn the light switches on and off and we were we were um kosher that's interesting food had to come from Toronto 400 mil Away by train packed in dry ice and as a little girl I would unpack pack the meat and spread it all over the kitchen counters and kosher it with salt come back wash it off pack it in a tiny little refrigerator it was um different different but wonderful what did your grandfather do for a living my grandfather was a peddler when they came from Russia they had the some kind of Canada um act where they took all the
immigrants and put them in small towns in northern Canada and he was a push cart they lived in a huge huge Barn it was so primitive it was hard to believe and then they eventually moved to the little towns out of these farmhouses he was uh very religious now do you remember your grandmother at all no she wasn't when I was born my father's parents lived in Toronto and I went down there I think for the first time when I was 9 years old and I knew my grandmother she lived in a tall thin house and four of her children lived with her as adults
and I visited with them I didn't really know that family though yeah yeah you know what your grandfather did on that side of the family yes he was a taor in London England and they moved to Toronto OH I don't know exactly when I didn't know him he had passed away also so one set of grandparents started in London and your other set in Russia that's correct and they both wound up in Canada correct did you ever hear why your mom's was it your mom's folks that went to Kirkland yes did you ever find out from them why Kirkland I don't know the details of
that they my father this is interesting lived in Toronto and as a young man he worked for the CNR Canadian National Railway in Toronto and they shipped him up to capus casing Ontario small little town and he was the agent for the CNR up in campus casing mhm my mother lived there with her parents in capis casing and they met that's where they met that's where they met and then they were married in Barry Ontario cuz my father I think was transferred there also then they eventually moved to Kirkland Lake it was a gold mining town sir Harry Oaks found gold in the lake up
there and it was booming at the time they moved yeah now when you were a small child uh World War II broke out mhm did you know I know you're in Canada but that affect your family at all not at all not at all we were hear the news we were big movie goers for 5 cents you can go to the theater all day and of course the international news would come on and we would see the bombing and all but it was another world to us yeah we were truly in insulated Communications weren't what they are today we had a radio we would sit
on the floor and look at the radio and it was very different none of my friends parents went to war that I ever knew of the biggest threat in Kirkland lake that I remember as a young girl we had gold mines multiple M multiple gold mines there and they would have Air Blast which was like an earthquake and that was a panic situation for us at school because many of my classmates parents were in the mindes and that happened fairly regularly we have some fatalities but not often now you said you guys moved when you were 16 where did you go and how come we
moved from Kirkland Lake to Toronto mainly for school my brother was 2 years old older than myself and he was admitted to medical school in Toronto and I was just behind him my sister who is 5 years older than I was already in Toronto at University of Toronto it was all for schooling so my parents bought a home I think it was 1952 in Toronto and we were a family together again and I graduated high school in Toronto which High School BS tights High School in Toronto walking distance I never knew what a bus was I walked everywhere and I graduated from high school in
Canada we have grade 13 in high school and then I entered nursing school at Women's College Hospital in Toronto and I moved into the residence those are the best three years of my life growing up I had a wonderful time being a student nurse loved it uh did extremely well and I was fortunate to be awarded all the scholarships after graduation and uh one of the scholarships was to University for one year and I went into public health nursing okay a few years later okay and then where did you meet Larry I was a head nurse on surgery monsana Hospital in Detroit Michigan okay so
you took a job in the United States correct what year was that that was 19 um 61 and what did your family think about you leaving Canada for the United States they were thrilled because my sister and her husband another physician and her four children and my brother who was interning in Detroit were all there so the three of us were in the same city but I was single until I took a weekend trip from Detroit to visit my closest girlfriend in New York my very good friend from growing up was a resident at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn so of course I called him
and he immediately said come right over we have to visit and it's kind of a fun story but I did and his roommate was Larry janer and we were very attracted on the first visit and the next day I had been given tickets for three sets of Broadway shows by a a patient who was like my father figure he'd been in the hospital for 6 months and we were buddies so I phoned and invited Larry the next day to go to a Broadway play irmaa and when I phoned him he had the telephone book open looking for my number literally so he agreed to go
to the theater and we had our first date we stayed St up all night after the theater talking about life and Etc and about a quarter to 5: in the morning he proposed marriage oh my gosh and I accepted that was 52 years ago now let me ask you a question okay let's just hypothetically say that your daughter went out on a date for the first time and and called you and said Mom I'm getting married I would have died okay I just wanted to check so what did your mom and dad say oh this is I phoned my mother from New York the day
after I met Larry but I had spoken to her 48 hours prior just to tell her I'd landed and I was safe remember this was 1961 right when I called her and said hi Mom it's me she said said what's wrong what's wrong I just spoke to you I said I've turned the corner she said turn the corner what corner I said mom since I was born you told me one day I'm going to turn the corner and he's going to be standing there well I just found him and she of course recalled that so I get on an airplane in New York and I
fly back to to Detroit I've been away 3 days and I'm a grownup I'm 24 years old my sister is there my brother-in-law is there my brother his wife and all the kids and I said what's with this I know how to get home they said mom called and said something terrible has happened to you and that we should check it out oh gosh true story oh gosh and um so I went back to work the next day and Friday of that week Larry arrived in Detroit to see me and meet the family and that was the beginning and then when did you guys get
married we got married I met him on November 27th 61 and we got married July 1st 62 6 months later and where did you guys settle down we eventually when he finished his residency we settled in Montreal Larry had been in the States on a student visa and he had to return his Visa was up so we returned to Canada um which was good because at the time it was the Vietnam War right he would have been drafted immediately so we snuggled into Montreal for 11 years and is that where your children were born then our oldest son Mark was born in Brooklyn while he
was a resident so he had dual CI citizenship a big Advantage for him right and your other two so they they were Canadian are they American citizens now too they had to become they were forced to become American because the two boys graduated law school in the United States and they could not take the bar unless they were American ah so I became an American with them it was kind of fun and your other son now you have three sons and two are attorneys and what is your other son do Mark graduated Princeton uh in international business the Woodrow Wilson school and eventually went on
to a business school in France incad an international business and he's been in Canada he worked in nisco for many years then he worked for Fenway investments in New York and he eventually moved to Los Angeles and he's in private Equity now working for Guggenheim and your two sons your two sons that are attorneys are they in this area they're both in Dallas they're both in Dallas what brought you guys back to the United States we were settled in Montreal and very happy Larry had a booming surgical practice and I ran his office and Medicare entered Canada I I think it was 1973 and hit
the doctors so negatively funds were not available the hospitals had no Kleenex no clean Linens it was a devastating occurrence for Quebec for Montreal particularly and the payment for surgeons was so low that we couldn't put our kids through school I mean they offered I think it it started with $7 to $9 an office visit a surgery $90 for an appendectomy that took Larry 3 to 4 weeks if it was complicated it was terrible we were the to leave Montreal of all our friends 700 Physicians left Montreal that year and most of them ended up either Houston or Dallas we we kind of migrated here
the second major major problem was the language um the separatist who were the French group removed all English signs in the province and English was considered a second language which was not a bad thing in fact we had put Mark into French immersion to blend with the society so to speak and he did really well but we were considered second class citizens and being Jewish it was like a double whammy there was a lot of anti-Semitism that developed and it wasn't a happy environment to bring children up nor to live ourselves so that was the the reason now was Dallas a culture shock for you
it was a wonderful shock we it was an interesting exercise because being a surgeon Larry had to find a job certainly before we moved and he had 11 cities to visit so we toured the southwest east 11 cities we fell in love with Dallas there was no job here we had just visited we flew back to Montreal in 3 days after arriving back in Montreal he received a phone call from one surgeon he had met at Medical City and they' really bonded and he offered him a job oh great so we took it and moved to Dallas yeah and we've blessed every day that we've
been here and tell me about your involvement in the Jewish Community Center I know you just were inducted into the temple Emanuel Hall of Fame that's correct um we joined Temple Shalom immediately when we came here because our three boys are four years apart and we had three Bar Mitzvah starting in immediately so we had um three of our MIT Vis at Temple Shalom in a row and I taught Sunday school there immediately Rabbi besser greeted us at the door the day we had applied to be a member and he took me by the shoulders and he said you're going to teach Sunday school and
I said okay so I got involved immediately at Shalom and I was um on the board of The Sisterhood and eventually I sat on the board at Temple Shalom and it was a wonderful experience we were there for I guess 11 years and then we decided to change to Temple Emmanuel and that's been a wonderful match for us uh I've been very active in Sisterhood um I was president of Sisterhood 2003 to 200 5 and I chaired multiple fundraisers that were great fun and creative and in 2004 I decided Temple Emanuel needed a directory they did not have one so I chaired a directory in
2004 it was republished in 2008 here we are in 2014 everything is a obsolete so I am currently chairing a new directory for temple Emanuel at this point and what was it like at your induction it was had to be a proud moment it was magical it really really was I'm very rooted in the Manuel and I love it there our rabbis are phenomenal our caners are just just terrific and I think the highlight of my event which was March the 19th I asked my youngest son Paul to introduce me and he had three minutes and I had my grandson there also there were three
generations and Paul got up and spoke and I had 49 of my friends there from my book clubs from maang from just out non-members of Emmanuel and I turned around everybody was teary eyed while he spoke and at one point I wondered who is he talking about but it was it was absolutely beautiful and then I had to get up and speak and I looked at him and I said you promis not to make me cry but he did um it culminated my Texas experience I think it all came together now what's your other son's name we have Mark Paul and David David David is
our middle son okay okay the um uh President Kennedy assassination did that affect you at all it was the instant response of not wanting to move to Dallas it was very very real to me and I'll I'll share it with you when I was in New York oh we lived in in Brooklyn for 5 years when we were first married and I was teaching Psychiatry to student nurses I was clinically on staff at Kings County Hospital and 22nd 10 to 1 I I believe it was we were all five nurses we were all in the office together and I was teaching psychiatry in GB building
of Kings County Hospital which is the psychiatric unit this came over the radio and we were prepared for total acting out and bedum in the hospital with security and it was an earthshaking experience I was a young girl but with a heavy heavy responsibility for that day one of the one of my um colleagues also teaching Psychiatry her husband was a very noted reporter for the New York Post I believe it was and he covered Washington he was the White House man so we had extra information immediately and it was terrifying yeah yeah fast forward Larry gets a job offer in Dallas and I had
to hurdle that fear I will tell you but once we visited Dallas we both loved it yeah it was relatively small town at that time right it's changed a little bit it changed a great deal now you and Larry have the three sons seven grand kids and one more on the way congratulations thank you what advice does Grandma have for the Next Generation I want them all to remember from where they came I'm I want them all to have the values of family because that's something that sustained me with every decision I ever made my husband and my kids were primary and my first thought
and I want them to love life I want them to be happy in their decision and successful you did a great job today thanks for doing this my pleasure