2014

June Sachs

June Sachs was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915 to parents who had both graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. Her father, a gifted mathematician, had studied at the Sorbonne in France before coming to Pittsburgh to learn the oil business, having grown up in a wealthy, highly educated family from Dorohoi, Romania. When he married her mother, whose family also traced roots to Romania and, further back, to Spain and Holland, he never returned home, and his father did not forgive him until the Second World War. When June was three, the family moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, where her father worked in the booming oil industry.

June grew up in Wichita Falls during the Depression, remembering both hard times and a good life. Her father was a prominent and active figure who served as potentate of the local Shrine, befriended actor Harold Lloyd, and once greeted President Roosevelt when he passed through the city. Any Jewish visitor to town was welcomed into their home, and her father helped form an organization for Jewish students at the University of Texas. June was popular and active, even joining a Gentile sorority, but she disliked the social segregation she experienced at the University of Texas and transferred, ultimately graduating from Ohio State University.

June met her husband Jack on a blind date in Dallas the summer before college, and they married near the end of World War II while he served as a Navy PT boat commander. After stints in Boston and New Orleans, they settled in Dallas, where Jack worked briefly at Sears before going into real estate, becoming known as a generous landlord to tenants in what became the Cedar Springs gay community. June stayed home to raise their three children and volunteered widely, serving as secretary of the Temple Emanu-El sisterhood, teaching Sunday school, working with the Council, and participating in the Jewish Historical Society. She and Jack had three children, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

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