Joanie Weinstein
Joanie Weinstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Squirrel Hill on Beechwood Boulevard. She and her husband, Shelley, both only children, met in high school and were childhood sweethearts. Joanie accelerated her schooling, finishing high school and college quickly so the couple could marry, and she supported Shelley through the University of Pittsburgh Medical School while working as a first grade teacher. Her mother was born in Chicago and her father came from Poland to Chicago as a young child. Her mother was an especially influential role model, serving as president of numerous Jewish organizations in Pittsburgh.
After Shelley completed his training and served two years in the army in Washington, D.C., the family moved to Dallas in June of 1969, joining two other doctors with whom Shelley practiced at Presbyterian Hospital. Coming from a heavily Jewish community, Joanie found Dallas quite different, noting that the local Jewish population, then around 20,000, has since grown dramatically. Shelley's father moved with them and later married Anna Goldman Weinstein, a woman adored in the community; Joanie's parents also eventually relocated to Dallas. The couple's children and seven grandchildren all live in the Dallas area.
Joanie began her Dallas career teaching preschool at the Jewish Community Center and later became preschool director, at one point job sharing the role, an unusual arrangement at the time. She went on to serve as children's and youth director, membership director, and ultimately assistant director before her retirement, also serving briefly as acting director. She was active in the Jewish Federation, BBYO, Hadassah, and Congregation Shearith Israel, and helped welcome Soviet new Americans to Dallas. As a woman working full time in the late 1970s, she drew inspiration from mentors and hoped her example influenced her children, who remain involved in the Jewish community. Above all, she counts her marriage and family as her greatest sources of pride.
Full Transcript
good morning Joanie it is May twentieth 2014 I am Janine Pullman and I am interviewing Joanie Weinstein this morning and Joanie I just hope you know that we're very excited that you agreed to do this oral interview so that we can have all of your memories and your information about your life and your experiences in Dallas not just for your family but for the Jewish community the archives for the Dallas Jewish Historical Society so to begin why don't you start by telling us about your family your parents your grandparents where you were brought up tell me all about it okay well i was born in
pittsburgh pennsylvania and i lived in Pittsburgh until we never stopped so just just keep going okay I lived in Pittsburgh until my husband and I went to Washington DC for two years while he was in the army then we moved to dallas texas in 1969 and we have lived in dallas since then and love Dallas Dallas has always been our home since we moved here I am very blessed we are very blessed because my husband Shelley and I had three children who are married and seven grandchildren in they also live in Dallas so we're very very lucky going back to my birth in Pittsburgh shelling
are both from Pittsburgh and I'm an only child he's an only child so that's quite interesting and we both grew up on a street called beechwood Boulevard in Pittsburgh and we grew up in a section of Pittsburgh called squirrel hill watch was definitely predominantly Jewish it was very interesting to go to a an elementary school where there was only one person in your whole class that was not Jewish so not quite what life is like in in dallas texas and ago but Shelley and I met in high school and we definitely were childhood sweethearts and I knew it at the age of 17 believe it
or not we were going to get married and Shelley was in college then and it was going to go to medical school so I went through high school and three and a half years in college in three years so that we could get married and I could support him while he was in medical school and he's an obstetrician gynecologist and semi-retired right now and we have been very fortunate to have moved to Dallas and had a wonderful life here my parents who are deceased my mother was born and raised in Chicago and my dad was born and raised he was born in excuse me in
Poland and moved to the United States to Chicago when he was three years old and as I said before I'm an only child so I'm thrilled to death to have three children with seven grandchildren and and they're all here so what did you do after you graduated he said you were you had told me earlier you went into teaching where were you teaching and where were you scared where were you where with Shelley at school I taught in Pittsburgh I was a first grade teacher and until I had our daughter Ellen and Shelley went to the went to Washington Jefferson College which is outside of
Pittsburgh and then went to the University of Pittsburgh Medical School and the University Pittsburgh's Women's Hospital which is called magee-womens hospital and that's where did all of his training his residency and after that two years in the army and then we came to Dallas and he's been in practice in Dallas since then also has been very active in teaching which is a really love of his he enjoys teaching gynecology very much so what year did you move to Dallas he moved in 1969 and what was Dallas like when you got here oh that's a great question you know when we moved to Dallas we hardly
knew assault we just knew the two other doctors and their families that Shalee wanted to practice with and we were told not to look at anything past LBJ freeway because that would be you know no one lives past LBJ freeway in 1969 very few people and you know that would be a major commute for him because he practiced at Presbyterian Hospital in lauderhill vein and central expressway so think about that and think about what Dallas Texas is like now we're you know my goodness if you live in plano you're still close in the the other thing that was was so interesting about moving to dallas
is that as i mentioned earlier i grew up in an area where everyone was Jewish and if you weren't Jewish your kind of the exception and Pittsburgh still is pretty much the same way scroll Hill is still in the area in Pittsburgh where most Jewish people live and to come to dallas where it's not quite like that and it which is not to say that it's good or bad it's just it was totally different the thing that I really remember the most is we moved 2069 and i believe it was nineteen seventy that they the Federation has a study the demographic study of how many
Jewish people were living in taos of that time and they determined it was around 20,000 Jewish people and I believe now it's like 70,000 Jewish people from the rust recent study so you can see the difference not only in the number of Jewish people Intel's but also the population of Dallas has grown tremendously so did you immediately get involved with the Federation or did you join a synagogue what what steps did you take great great questions um we moved to dallas in june and i wanted i was very familiar with the Jewish Community Center in Pittsburgh and even worked there part time when I was
in college and in high school and so one of the first things we did when we came to Dallas was located the Jewish Community Center in doubts which was not that far from where we bought a house and I my first year in Dallas I taught preschool at the JCC three days a week three year old children which was terrific and then shortly after that I had our third child Michael who is the native Texan and but I came I became involved as a layperson with the center and became very familiar with the staff and it was a wonderful entree into meeting people I think
when you move to a new city and you have young children that's wonderful because then you meet the parents of the children and getting involved in a community and whether it's the center of the Federation or Jewish Family Service it's a it's a wonderful way to meet other people and also become part of the commune me so anyhow that's that happened and I as i said i was involved in the JCC as a layperson and the woman who had been the director of the preschool at the JCC Jeanette Israel for many many years retired and they offered me the position of preschool director and at
that time I really do not want to work full time but I like the idea of working part-time so I ended up doing something this is 1974 so you realize how advanced this was we job shared Hilda Lynn and I were work together as preschool directors and did that and to a point where she really wanted to work part-time and I then left that position as preschool director and became the children's youth director and from that I also became the Membership Director and eventually the assistant director of the giant I was the assistant director when I retired the first time do you remember the names
of all your director yes there were only a few early Siegel was the director of the JCC when i first began to work at the j and he left the center to mccauley out in israel and then harry rosen became the director of the center and after that bob-whites became the director for a short period of time and then Karen Stern and after Karen left I was the acting director after my retirement for about eight months then JJ was became director and right now already Allen is the director and already was the assistant director under jay he was the maccabi director and he's the current
director and he's he's done an incredible job he's great so how did working at the j impact your family oh that's a wonderful question my my whole family was very involved in the center and what a wonderful place to work a place where you want to be anyhow and my children were very involved in all the activities at the j from cams to to athletics it was just part it's part of our lives and it was just a wonderful place or my children to grow up and you know be part be part of my life as well at the center in terms of your parents
and your current family were there any since you left Pittsburgh were there any traditions or anything special that you had as a family that you then brought to Dallas or did you begin your new new traditions for your family we had a very interesting experience my life i should say my husband i had mentioned before both only children and when we moved to dallas in 1969 Shelly's father moved with us his mother had passed away shortly before that and my father was important for my father-in-law to come and be with us and he did live with us for four years and then he met a
wonderful woman do we just adored her name was Anna Goldman Weinstein and they married for over 25 years before she passed away so we had my father on living with us my parents were still in Pittsburgh then eventually they moved to Dallas as well so we you know Pittsburgh became our home and became their home as well my mother was quite an incredible woman she I think a lot of my feelings about Jewish organizations and and doing what you can for the community came from her she was very involved in Pittsburgh as president of many organizations and pittsburgh they had something a little different than
dallas they have a presidents organization where everyone male or female was president of a jewish organization is involved in that and she was the president of the president so that she was pretty special and my dad was also involved in the community she sounds like she was a wonderful role model she was a wonderful role model she certainly was and and my mother-in-law who was involved here in the at the center here she was president of the yes club the young energetic seniors and she was just a woman who was adored in this community if you knew Anna Anna I mean you just loved her
because she was that kind of kind of a person and my children to this day still talk about how credible she was and how fortunately were to have in our lives so do you think that the experiences that you had from the beginning and in Dallas do you think that it impacted your kids in a way to get them involved or do you think they always had it in them well you know you don't really know but I won't take one story then this is really interesting we had just moved to dallas and and we moved in early june and i wanted my children to
have swimming lessons and so a woman that I met by the name of Janice sweet said to me you know there is this man who teaches at his pool and his name is Robbie Campbell and so that would be a good choice for you so I'll never forget taking the kids to Robbie Campbell and sitting extra Janice and she's telling me about the Federation and and I think jen has made it and I've told this to her she made him real impact in my life then later on as well because of Janice I did become involved in Federation and worked at kia pains yung Lee
in the younger set group and then later on and I'm still have a a commitment involvement as took Federation as well did you have any other organizations in the community that you were involved in well besides be involved in Federation in the JCC I when the children were in bbyo was also involved in bbyo as well any other specific memories you have of Dallas over the years that then were important to you or that guided you in any way well we're members of congregations your of Israel and that's been important part of our lives my children also all belong to share with Israel and and
we have watched my husband I watched our children grow in the Dallas area and they all went away to college and came back our youngest son Michael moved to New York after collagen we thought this is probably it we're not going to get three out of three really going to get two out of three but he did come back and so living in Dallas has just been a very fortunate thing for all of us and what makes it even better of courses that are whole fam normal families here we have seven grandchildren and repent ages from six to seventeen and they are all involved at
the j and my son's son-in-law and my daughter the daughter laws are all active in the Jewish community and i can't speak for my daughter-in-laws but i'd like to think that for my daughter and two sons that the environment that they were raised in had an impact on them and that's one of the reasons why they are involved in in the community as well are there any special stories that you would like the kids to know or to remember or the community to know that maybe most of us wouldn't know well this is a this is a I'm not sure this is the question that
you're asking that I'm going to tell you this story and he kept them at the time that that I was working and I was working full time we're talking about in the late 70s on and at that time there weren't very many women who worked full-time and and I had actually had a woman who happened to be in pittsburgh and i had no connection with my growing up there just happened to be who's she where she worked and who she was and her name i still remember her name and needle O'Bannon and Anita lo patent was the first woman to become an assistant director of
a JCC and it was the one in Pittsburgh and at that time a women do not work full-time as professionally very it was very rare and B of positions like that were always filled with men so I will always remember Anita not only because she was you know the first to become an assistant director because of the warmth and the way she treated other people she was an outstanding role model for anyone and then the other thing I remember is being on a panel here at the JCC and I don't remember what the topic was but I was invited to be on this panel and
it wasn't for a center organization it was Hadassah Orban a breath and and I'm not always been a member of hadassah been a breath and council as well in a volunteer there too but and I remember being on this panel and and there were three women on the panel who were stay at home moms and then there was me and and they kept asking me well a lot of questions like how do you feel that you're not you know you're you're working full time and I anyone was really an interesting event for me because it gave me pause to think even more about the meaning
that it had for not just me and my husband for my children and I've spoken with my children since then about what was it like to have a mom who worked full-time and of course maybe they didn't want to hurt my feelings but that you know they all felt that having a especially having a mother worked in the Jewish community was very very positive for them and you know when your children see you help others which work in the JCC is it's what you do I mean it's you are helping others and one way or another and for me it was everything from doing all
the scholarships for camp and preschool and membership and doing fundraising to help to help people who can't afford to be members or you know need need help with other kinds of assistance one of the things that I always remember is and janina know you do too is when we had the influx of Soviets our new Americans and what an impact that was and to be involved with that with my children as well and to welcome them and to help them to this day there are still people I will see who will remember remember the center and everyone so someone will remember me you're the person
no I wasn't the person was the center what would you say that you're most proud of in your in your family life in your career however it's okay it's okay she'll she'll get rid of it promise Deborah she wants this deleted Deborah if you leave this on I'll never forgive you and she knows it was um would you would you just want to skip it and just do oh yes heard of it we bought some time right we have plenty of that I feel like Barbara Walters actually that's one of the things that is she said you can make me look right so Janine now
that you may cry okay my most proud of course my children not gonna get through this with that crime that's okay I am most proud of my children there they've growed up to be wonderful people and as i said earlier they're all involved in the community and the Jewish community in the general community they they're wonderful parents they're all of so much and their children's activities and they're raising seven absolutely adorable delicious wonderful people and that's so that's you know my pride is is my family without it is there anything you would like to add that we haven't covered now I've just been a very
unfortunate person very fortunate to have the career in the community that I've had to move to down was the beginning and I should even back up this is a most fortunate thing is that I married my husband and you know and how lucky we are in June we will be married 54 years into and it's wonderful and you know it's wonderful to have a partner and I as I said earlier you know I was someone who worked full-time and I had a husband who understood and not only was a partner with me but understood you know why I wanted to work in the community and
and there were certainly times when I had 19 ESN meetings and he was always there for me so I've been very lucky lucky like monkey personally and very lucky with my family the one obtained one little story because anyone who was involved at the JCC during this time will remember this we had my husband arrived and our kids had both grandparents living with us at one time and there were there both Sam's unfortunately both deceased but they're both Sam's and they were buddies they they were incredible they were like they was almost like first of all we were so fortunate to have them and to
have them with us and for children to see the joy of having your grandparents living with you and and sharing with you and they were just they were great and they both loved the center and every day they would come to the center and and we were very important to have that as part of our lives and for our children to see that as well Thank You Joanie I know that the community is better from the years that you were involved it would good we'll go try it was great and I appreciate you taking the time to do this thank you thank you and you
will edit my tears yes yeah Deborah if you don't I'll never forget you know come get you you