Julius & Molly Aronofsky
Julius Aronofsky's father was born in Kovno and immigrated to the United States around 1910, arriving through Galveston after being inspired by Yiddish articles written by Rabbi Cohen. Having completed a seven-year apprenticeship as a tailor, he impressed an immigration officer with a suit he had made by hand and was directed to Dallas, where he quickly found work. He lived in a kosher boarding house and there met Leo Fife, a lifelong friend and future business partner. Julius's mother, Celia Friedman, immigrated to New York as a teenager, trained briefly as a nurse in Pittsburgh, then came to Texas by way of a kosher boarding house in Mineral Wells before settling in Dallas and working as a seamstress.
Julius's parents became part of the Dallas Jewish community around 1912 to 1914 and were active in the Arbeiter Ring, where they may have met. Julius and his brother David, later a dentist, grew up on Parkland in South Dallas and attended Forest Avenue High School, from which Julius graduated in 1938. He attended Yiddish classes at the Arbeiter Ring school for several years and later reflected on it as a good school with strong teachers and competitive students. He recalled encountering some anti-Semitism in elementary school but little in later life, and he never sought to hide that he was Jewish.
With Leo Fife, Julius's father founded Model Tailors, first located on Elm Street across from Klein and Winterman. The firm grew to about fifty employees at its height in the early 1940s, occupying a three-story building with a factory upstairs and a retail operation below. They produced custom, made-to-order suits and took orders from small tailors across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Many workers were immigrants given a start, and many machine operators lived in Little Mexico. The two partners remained close friends until death and are buried beside one another. After marrying Molly in New York in 1945 and living in several cities, Julius returned to Dallas in 1970 and became a professor at SMU.
Full Transcript
I'm at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Julius Aronofsky at 5503 Williamstown in Dallas, Texas. Do you mind if I call you Julius? Julius and Molly. And Molly. Good. Primarily I'm interested in the famous firm of model tailors, Fife and Aronofsky. So I would like to start off by asking you some questions about your family. Was your father born in this country? No, he was born in Covna. In Covna. When did he come to the United States? Do you know? Approximately. Approximately 1910. Okay. And he came through Galveston. He came through Galveston? Yes. Why did he come to Texas? Do you know? I asked him that question a number of times and discussed it with him.
He said that he was influenced by articles written in Yiddish published in Eastern Europe, written by the rabbi in Galveston. Rabbi Cohen. And he was impressed with what the Rabbi said. And he had an adventurous spirit, I thought he did, and he decided that he would immigrate to Calvarsity. The ship that he came in on stopped in New York and in Baltimore and then went to Calvarsity. So he could have gotten off in either New York or Baltimore if he wanted to. Did he come alone? He came alone. And we can check the years. I would guess that he was around 24. Was he married at that time?
No, he was not. One of the things that he, during that period, that he showed me, you see, many years later he showed me a banklet that had $50 in it. And he said, as he recalls, I recall, he needed $50 cash to show that he had wealth in order to immigrate. And he was proud of the fact that he never spent that $50. And he was asked in Galveston if he had a craft or a trade And he said yes he put in seven years apprenticeship as a tailor in Covna And the immigration officer asked her anything to show me in your quality of work He said I made the suit on my back, by hand.
And the immigration officer said then you must go to the big city, and he would suggest that you go to Dallas. And that's why I ended up in Dallas. How interesting. And he had no trouble as soon as he arrived getting a job as a tailor. So he came to Dallas knowing no one here? Correct. Do you know where he got a job? No. Okay. That I don't know. Okay, okay. And he lived in a boarding house, Kosher Meals, on Pearl Street, I think. Whose boarding house? I don't know the name. Okay. But there he met Leo Fyfe. Oh. About the same age. Uh-huh. And they shared things, like buying a newspaper and reading it.
and they became close friends and shortly thereafter decided to go into business. Open their own business? Open their own business, which was the Model Taters. In the V. Belmeria? Yes. Hmm. And the first store was on Elm Street across the street over here. Across from Clorin Winterman? Yes. Okay. As I recall, the property was owned by Home Furniture. And I think shortly, a number of years later, at least when I was old enough to look around, Home Furniture had a big building there. That was before they moved three or four blocks west. And that was the beginning of the Model Tagers. Was it a small store?
The first small building? It was a small building, small store. And I think they stayed. My father volunteered in World War I. Oh. And the Model Taylors existed during that period while he was gone. Leo Fife stayed in the business Stayed in the business I see And my mother worked in the business He was not married at that time He was married by the time he went in the Army. Your father had married before he went into the Army? Correct. Who did he marry? Celia Friedman. That's an interesting story. How is that spelled? Do you know? F-R-I-E-D-M-N. Okay. What's that story? She immigrated to New York at age 15 or 16.
Passage paid for by her two brothers in Pittsburgh. And she went to Pittsburgh and went into training as a nurse and didn't like it. and was trying to figure out what to do. And a distant relative from Mineral Wells came through Pittsburgh and urged her to at least come for a visit to Mineral Wells. This relative ran a kosher boarding house in Mineral Wells. Perhaps you recall Mineral Wells was a popular vacation spot at that time. So mother went to Merrill Wells, made friends, and the friends urged her to come to Dallas. And so she came to Dallas to see how she would like it, and was hired as a seamstress at Sanders.
Oh my goodness. She also had training in some. Uh-huh. Isn't that interesting? So they became part of the Jewish community in Dallas in the period 1912, 1914. And they were active in the Arbiter Ring and they probably met at the Arbiter Ring function. That's possible. Do you know, would you happen to know the name of the boarding house in Mineral Wells or who it was? The lady that ran it, her name was Rheingold. Okay. And her family, there were family members in Waco, which, and let's see what else do I remember. I can think of anything else Okay That all I know about the boarding house Yeah well that great I guess I went there with my parents with my mother in particular because she was so fond of the family in Menno Wells I guess she went there about four times during elementary school days and took along.
And I went in with my brother. Uh huh. So after World War I your father returned to Dallas and went back to Model Taylors. Correct. Were they the only two partners the whole time? Yes. They became friends around 1910, 1912 and were fast friends through all the years until they died. and the fives are buried next to the Aronofsky's. Oh, my. Well that's a great story. That's wonderful. Tell me, how large did the firm of Model Tailors become? How many, like how many employees? About 50 employees at one time. Fifty? Yeah, it's five zero. What would be the time period, the height of their, when they had 50 employees?
In the early 1940s. In the early 1940s. And through World War II. Is that right? They, in this building they had all three, this was a three-story building. I think there was a mezzanine. There was a mezzanine here. Uh-huh. And up there, and the factory was up here. I see. And on the mezzanine was a counting area and cutters that cut patterns, pattern cutters. Yeah. So every suit had a pattern made up. Uh huh. Where did they get the material do you know? From the east or? Leo Fife would make annual trips to buy material. Where? To New York City. New York City. Is that right?
And perhaps Chicago. My father felt that he had to compete against St. Louis and Chicago in particular. And the type of... they were competing against the store that the tailor in the store would show samples of material. The customer would select the material. The tailor would take measurements and send the measurements off someplace to have the suit made. And then send back to the tailor shop. And the tailor would make final adjustments. I see. which was popular before retail stores had so many options. The retail store. Now the model tailors decided that they would call on all the small tailors in Texas and Oklahoma and Louisiana and see if they sent off to St.
Louis and Chicago, if they would send their orders to the model tailors. Dallas and a number of them did and that justified such a large factory up on the third floor. I see, yeah. Of course downstairs was a retail business and anyone could come in and order a tailor-made suit. Okay so they made tailor-made plus made-to-order suits. Is that what you're saying? What do you mean by tailor-made? It would be a custom suit that was made one of a time. A size or was it sized or how what do you mean? I don't understand what you mean. What's the difference between made to someone's measurements?
Well I'm taking two examples. One example is to go to a department store and pick out a suit that's your size and have a tailor take a tuck in here and a tuck in there. Okay, right. And that would still be a ready-made suit made before you came in. Right, okay. Tailor-made suit, custom, that is the same as a custom suit, and this is where the tailor took measurements and someone cut out a pattern and then someone cut out a material and took adjustments and then the final sewing will take place, which is what the model tailors do. Okay, now I understand. Now I'm not in the tailoring business.
I understand. And I haven thought about this in a long time I sure But you explained it very well because I really had no idea If someone who really in the business listens to this they probably laugh at my explanation So it sounds like it was a big operation. A lot of different people and you said they have, Of course, there are office staff and so forth. I have read references to a model tailor suit, and that it seemed a model tailor suit was preferred by the black men in Deep Ellum, and if they had a model tailor suit, they were quite the dandy. Deep Ellum shoes and a model tailor suit.
and maybe they would have to pawn it on Monday at Clair and Winterman or some other pawn shop and take it out again on Saturday night. Well, my father handled the tailoring side and has told me a number of times the high quality he wanted to set. I remember he came to visit Molly and me, and a neighbor showed him a suit that she made, and she was very proud of her buttonholes. And she asked my father, what do you think of the quality of a buttonhole? And he made some statement. And after she left, he said to me, she doesn't realize that when they hired someone to make buttonholes by hand, that they imported someone from Chicago and they truly believe they hired one of the top five buttonhole makers in the country.
Oh my. Huh. Do you remember any of the employees that worked for Model Tailors? Or any of the other tailors? Well, yes, I remember some. Ed Tankus worked there for a while, and you probably heard the name Ed Tankus. And um Ed Tankus like perhaps a dozen other immigrants were hired to the model tailors partly because of their skills partly to give a new immigrant a job I've been told that a number of times by people who worked at the Model Taylors, and how grateful they were that they were able to get a job at the Model Taylors to get started. So Ed Tank is one that worked there.
Leo Pipe's brother Frank worked there for a while. Marsha Brunitsky-Porta worked there as a bookkeeper for five or six years. Sam Steelman, and I don't know if Sam's alive or not, I guess he's not. He recently passed away. worked there a long time. Is that right? And here is a very trusted employee in charge of all the bookkeeping. Of the people who ran the machines up on the third floor, three fours of them lived in Little Mexico, in Dallas. Oh really? In a little Mexico. On those near Pearl Street. I'm not exactly sure of the boundaries anymore. And I made friends with a number of them.
They were very kind to me as a boy. Can't think of anyone else. Okay, so you're saying that a lot of Hispanics or people from Mexico worked on the sewing machines. So what did for instance Mr. Tankus was he a cutter or was he a tailor? He was a very talented man and I always admired him and one of the things I remember in the model tailors is that he would volunteer to do anything and whatever the job was, he could do it. If it were required taking measurements of a customer downstairs, he would do that. If someone was sick that ran the pressing machines with hot steam in August he would go do that If he had to go upstairs on the third floor and actually sit at a machine and run the machine he would do that Very interesting For a long while they didn't have an automobile and they loved to go to the theater and to music.
And my father wouldn't give them rides and I liked to go to the theater and to go to concerts. and so I got to know the Tankerses fairly well. He later, during World War II, he opened up his own tailoring business. Mr. Tankers? Yes. Okay. And how long was model tailors in existence? Well, the exact origin, I'm not sure, I'll say 1912. Right, but when did they... When my father and Leo, I have to do some back calculating. When they were 70 years old, they decided it was time to retire. And they sold the business to four employees. And of the four employees over four or five years, it dwindled down to one employee.
And his name is Coney, C-I-R-C-O-N-I. And he, let's see, the Klein-Winneman building, including the Model Taylors, was torn down to build a high-rise building there. And Sikoni moved to Preston and Farr Shopping Center. Preston and Royal Shopping Center. Close to where the radio shack is. And when was my father? Seventy years old. died at age 82 in 1974 wasn't it? So therefore they retired about 1960. So they were in business from roughly maybe 1910 to 1960, 50 years. You were born in Dallas? Yes. And your brother? Yes. Just the two of you? Yes. And your brother's name? David. David. He is a dentist. He is still practicing.
And where did you live? Where was your home located? On Parkland. In South Dallas? In South Dallas. Okay. And you were born in, your parents lived in South Dallas? Yes. And did you attend Forest Avenue High School? Yes. And what is your occupation? I'm retired. Before retiring I was a professor at SMU. Of what? computers, statistics. And before that I worked in industry. I worked for mobile art companies in their research labs. I see. And when did you get married? In 1945 in New York City. Did you serve in World War II? No. I was involved in secret research work at Columbia University. Oh how interesting.
And I guess that's how that got me to New York. Okay that's how you met Molly. I met Molly. And Molly's from Maine. So after the war years you moved back to Dallas or not? We zigzagged in and out of Dallas a couple of times. We got married in New York, went to Pittsburgh for a few years, came to Dallas for eight years, went back up to Norwalk, Connecticut for another ten years, and Philadelphia for a couple of years, and then back to Dallas. And we returned to Dallas in 1970. Well that gave me a little overview of the happenings in your family. I'm going to ask you some questions that may be harder to answer.
Do you remember what it was like when you were growing up in Dallas? Did you just, were you just in the Jewish community or was it a mixed community? I know Forest High had a lot of Jewish students. Did the Jewish students stick together or was there a lot of interplay with everyone I think it depended on the individual I had friends who were not Jewish Then we'd go visit them and go out and do things together. But I guess my closest friends were half a dozen who were Jewish. You said that your parents were involved in the Arbeiter ring. Did you go to the school?
Yes, for four or five years I went to a Yiddish class. Can you read and translate Yiddish? Today? Poorly. Poorly. We're always looking for someone to translate Yiddish. I'm not that good. What do you remember about this school? Did you like it or do you have any recollections? Or did it matter? It was just that was what you were supposed to do. I thought about it years later. I decided years later it was quite a good school. And I was involved in education, so that raises a question in my mind. What makes a school good? Yeah. And I think there were good teachers, and I think there were students who set a competitive pace.
and I felt a need to compete in the competitive place. So I think the Jews in the high school had a lot to do with setting the competitive place. Did you encounter any anti-Semitism that you recall when you were growing up? some in elementary school going on the way back to elementary school you happen to know Edwin Jacobs well in the first or second grade was my first encounter with anti-semitism and as I as actualizations were hurled at me and I was hurling back comments. Edwin said there's no point arguing just don't talk to him. But I didn't have serious encounters with anti-Semitism in high school.
And what about in your academic life as a professor Was that a problem I don think so Okay well good My nature was that everyone knew that I was Jewish. I made no attempts at all to disguise or hide in any way. And if people didn't want to associate with me, it was alright with me. So I really can't add much on the subject of that personatism. That's fine. Can you tell me anything else about Marl Taylor's or any aspect of that whole era, the deep elm scene so to speak? When you were little, what did you think of, or did you? What was your impression of that area that we call Deep Elm?
I used to go there frequently and walk the streets and look in the stores. I was fascinated by the stores. Why? I just found it exciting. I'm not sure why. Okay, okay. Well there are a lot of people, a lot of people on the sidewalks. A lot of people on the sidewalks. What kind of people? What did they look like? Working people or? working people. As you know there are quite a few pawn shops as well as she repair places, barbers, and especially the pawn shop would have barbers talk to people in the street and try and persuade them to come to the street. Right.
That must have been fascinating. I noticed that frequently there were no customers and I wondered why. I used to look at the items for sale in the store. I thought corn shops were fascinating and would like to look at the merchandise that they had displayed. There was a Jewish restaurant in Deep Island. What was that I don know where it was but I don know the name Mrs Haberman No I know Mrs Haberman had a restaurant and Tom Miller Those are the only two I know I would guess Haberman but this is let see in Walking from the Model Taylors it would be Walking East a block and a half Okay.
About that location. And I would make a point sometimes, whenever I was downtown I would make a point of bringing up my father and ask if I could have lunch with him. Oh uh huh, uh huh. And he had regular friends, they would eat there. Uh huh. Or he would go home for lunch and I'd get a ride home. Home being on Park Road. Uh huh. How did people, what did they use? Streetcars or did people have their own cars or generally or? Well, the Fife family lived next door to the Aronofsky family. And fairly early on, each family had a family car. And the business had a car.
Oh, I see. And so the two partners would drive home, drive to work in their business car, and I'd drive home in the business car. The business car was parked in the driveway of our home. Was that unusual in those days? The business to have a car or not? Or do you know? It's the type of business that needed a car. Yeah. They would have it. And this type of business needed a car. They made deliveries. They made some pickups. So they started off. They had a panel truck. Small panel truck. And then they got a regular car. Or the other way around on that scale, yeah.
Okay, okay. I don't think it was unusual to have two cars, but it was not unusual to have a car. Okay. And what time period are we talking about? Talking about the 40s or- the 40s or even? I don't know. Let's see, whatever came after the Model T's, the Model A's. Yeah, but you're getting into the Depression time, and so I have... In the late 20s. All right, late 20s. Before the severe Depression. Okay. You feel that people had cars even during the Depression? Most of my friends in high school, and I graduated from high school in 38, so high school was 34 to 38.
And most of my friends, their family had a car. That's interesting about everyone, or people that you knew anyway had a car. I'm interested, I've read that anything that you could possibly want to buy you could find in Deep Elm, that every type of store was there, any type of merchandise, all kinds of businesses. Of course I've read a lot about the black owned businesses, black cafes and barbershops and of course the black theaters were in Deep Elm. The social life of the blacks at that time period was Deep Elm. Do you have any recollections of the black population in Deep Elm? Not of the population Maybe I tried to stay away from the population from the black population I knew some individual black individuals Some I thought I hired.
A carpenter, they would do work in the house. Okay. Servants that cleaned the house. But actually in deep in the black areas, you don't recall any interaction with the people who lived or worked in that area? No. No. Okay. Okay. On Elm Street, looking at your picture, that must have been 1300 block, I guess. No. This picture is 23. I'm mixing that up with Park Row, the 2300 block. Well, the black businesses existed three or four blocks further east. I don't think there were very many in the 2300. Okay, okay. Closer to, more towards Oakland? Yes. Okay okay Now I rarely walked east of Oakland Sure I was uncomfortable because it was dangerous Yeah Probably was.
So I didn't walk in that direction. Right, right. I usually walked in the western direction. Okay, uh-huh. Yeah, that's a good point. That's right. So for that reason, I didn't have much interaction with the black community. They earned their businesses. That's a good point because I think the impression is that it was mixed, you know, black businesses mixed in with whites, but it really wasn't. I don't think it was mixed that much. Okay. I recall going to a black restaurant where they served a barbecue. Oh, really? had a very good reputation. But I don't recall going into black business in that period. Okay. Is there any aspect that maybe I didn't think about that you would have a memory of?
I brought a couple of things to show you. Good, good. One are papers, naturalization paper Where is it My father was naturalized in Washington D I was going to show you the naturalization document. And I don't think that many of the Jews in Dallas were actually in World War I. and he was not a citizen. He didn't have to volunteer or go because he was not a citizen, but he decided to do that anyways. And it took a long time to get discharged, at least a year after armistice. Why was that? I'm not sure why, but my mother went to see one of the prominent Jewish lawyers in town to get his help.
And he arranged for my father to become a naturalized citizen at the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Oh my goodness. Who was that prominent Dallas lawyer? Was it Mr. Hexter? I would bet he didn't charge it for it either, because she went to see him to get his help, to get my father discharged from the Army. That's very interesting. This is it.