Karen Stern
Karen was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1942, the younger of two sisters. Her early memories of Cleveland were faint, drawn mostly from family photographs, and she never really knew her grandparents. After World War II, her father, a skilled handyman who had kept war-industry machines running, took a job with an auto parts company that sent him to Dallas to open the western territory. The move was difficult for her mother, who left behind her sisters and her life, arriving in a new city with no friends and no way to get around while her husband traveled for work all week. In time, both parents fell in love with Dallas.
Karen grew up in Dallas, where her parents opened a hardware store in Preston Center in 1950. Much of her childhood was spent reading books from the bookmobile in the back of that store. She attended Thomas Jefferson High School, where she was chosen for a special program that gave her an outstanding education, and she was active in Temple youth, rising to leadership in the Texas Oklahoma Federation of Temple Youth. She graduated from the University of Texas in Austin in three years, married her high school sweetheart, and lived in Oklahoma, Philadelphia, and elsewhere before returning to Dallas in 1969. She raised three children, two daughters and a son.
A committed volunteer with the Federation and sisterhood, Karen taught school in Dallas, including at Spence Junior High during the year the schools integrated, an experience that shaped her lifelong dedication to social justice. From 1979 to 1989 she served as regional director of the American Jewish Congress for Texas, then became executive vice president of the Dallas Jewish Community Center in 1989. There she expanded programs, growing the camps from three to fifteen, integrated special-needs children into the preschool, and helped resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union, envisioning the center as a welcoming Jewish neighborhood. She left in 2001, later leading a community center in Palo Alto, California, and then the Arthritis Foundation's south-central region before returning to Dallas to be near her family.
Full Transcript
here the day you became the exact jewish community center what were you thinking proud moment for you I was thinking that this was the culmination of my professional dream the ders community center had always been a very important part of my adult life actually as a kid too and when I had the opportunity to become the executive vice president and really make a difference in the life of this Jewish community I was absolutely thrilled I I believed at that point in time that it was possible to build a Jewish neighborhood to have a community in cooperation that's what I talked about all the time we're
all of the synagogues and temples and of course there's a lot more now but that were that we're here then we'll be working together on projects on programs on activities that would impact the lives of everyone in Dallas I wanted the center to be the place that smelled like Shabbat on Fridays I wanted every holiday to be recognized so that when you walked in the building and you have no idea what you know what porrim was UN oh oh there must be something happening Jewish Lee you know I wanted the halls to be full of judaica full mementos of Jewish life in dallas texas now
what year is this when you came the director and 1989 ended the Jewish community embrace your ideas no having those struggles well there were many different kinds of struggles it what what and life got in the way as well so I felt fortunate I mean there were a lot of the lot of my goals that I did accomplish in terms of we had when I came to the center there were three camps for kids and when I left there were 15 so my goal of reaching out to all different kinds of kids and providing programming for them to bring them into this Jewish neighborhood I
was successful in that so every year you must have been feeling better and better about everything I felt wonderful about my time here at the center I felt that we integrated special needs kids into the preschool and so that every Jewish child could have a Jewish preschool education next to the child who who didn't have any special needs and what you saw was four year olds taking care of that special needs kid where the parents might have not been so open and welcome to that child but the children were open and welcome to the child when we began resettling jews from the former Soviet Union
in Dallas I believed I wanted to see the center full of mixtures of people from different backgrounds I wanted to to see exchange of languages I when you walked into the locker with the women's locker room I'm gonna men's button to the women's locker room and you heard Hebrew and Yiddish and Russian and Spanish and English that made my day and that was often that was every day what do you see for the future of the community center when I haven't been involved in the center in about 10 years and so when did you leave I left in 2001 okay so how do you see
the future for it well my son is on the board of the community center and we have Shabbat dinners together on a regular basis and we talked about this the center and the future my grandchildren go to participate in activities here and I see a lot of the things that were important to me important to them and I'm hopeful that the center will continue down that path of being the Jewish neighborhood I think that was my unique interest I don't know if it's the interest of the current leadership of the center so I really can't answer the question about the future how do you see
the Jewish community as a whole in Dallas from say the 60s through today how does it change the Jewish community grew but i think the the data said something like fifty percent of the Jewish community arrived after nineteen seventy and at least that the number we were tossing around when I was working here and when I grew up there were the temple kids and the sheriff his real kids and we didn't know each other which is so shocking to think that but it's true and then as the community grew and changed more congregations were added people came from all over the country the south they
thought that Africans came and in it we had this enormous change in in the fabric of Jewish life here and so from the time I was a child until now there it's a totally different community and every in every way lots more opportunities for people now when you took over at the JCC did you think it was going to grow the population in the community to grow the size that it has and it's still growing in the Dallas area yes I I have always believed that Dell tractive place to have a business and a welcoming place for for individuals who are committed to working hard
and so I felt that the Jewish community would definitely benefit let's go back and out for a moment okay 1942 Cleveland what can you remember from Cleveland the only thing I remember from Cleveland is probably based on pictures I've seen from my childhood I remember being afraid of the dog and sitting in a high chair and I remember being bundled up in the snow suit and it being really cold but my family moved when I was very young you know Dallas my memories are Dallas okay that you remember your grandparents at all my mother's parents were dead before i was born and I had one
living grandmother but I never had when we moved from Cleveland I never saw them so my cousins remember them and they talked about them all the time I was the youngest of the cousins but no I don't really remember my grandparents now before we started you told me you moved to Dallas for you about four years old did you have siblings I have an older sister okay what do you remember about that move do you remember it all at four is this happy enough I remember my mother crying for about a year I don't know really how long did she cry but it seemed to
me like it was for about a year before the mover after you got here before the move on the way and after we got here it was truck it was quite traumatic what happened was the war was over my father was your dead in the war my father was the kind of a guy who could fix anything right in Cleveland they had a lot of the war industries and his job was to keep the machines working so he had a tenant remember not what they call that during World War two but he was he kept the that part of the world working headache he had
another child so anyway that's that's how they lived out the war but after the war he went to work for a company that sold auto parts and they told him if he would come to dallas and open the West okay so he's from Cleveland to Dallas is the West anyway if they would come to dallas and open the West that as soon as something popped up back east where you know real people lived that they would offer him that job so they you know it was like they were missionaries is how they felt you know they that came to Dallas he was a traveling salesman
you know he was on the road all week long they had one car you're no wonder she could she left her sisters her life and no way of getting anywhere didn't know a soul right now his life so that was quite an adjustment for your errand for my for my mother particularly my father has always been the kind of was always the kind of a work who worked seven days a week it's a hard worker he threw himself into his work of course he was incredibly successful and did a fabulous job and the company wasn't really so anxious to have him leave this territory that
he had developed but what happened was that eventually my parents fell in love with Dallas both of them even even my mother is solved I don't know how you know when I think back on that I don't know how she did it she had no friends and no transportation how'd she meet people you know it was and he was gone all week long so anyway tell me about you as a little girl now in Dallas what do you remember when you're a little well I have bits and pieces of variate well first of all my father my parents opened a hardware store in 1950 in
preston center the year that they pave preston road so much of my memory is reading books in the back of the hardware store so the bookmobile used to come to present center in that would be what I would do that every summer now explain what a bookmobile is because young viewers have no idea what a bookmobile of course well in those days the public library had buses that they would load with books and they had a bus route and so every other week they would come to your neighborhood and be there for two days and you would go because you couldn't access the public library
that's before they had branches so there was only one library downtown and that was inconvenient to get to four people so they that's how they brought books out to the community where'd you high school I went to Thomas Jefferson High School that's an interesting story good the we were living in in north dallas and the kids in our neighborhood all went to hillcrest and this was in the late 50s and they were building high school they were building schools in Dallas like crazy the e to the school the city was trying to keep up with the population surge after them so they opened Thomas Jefferson
and I learned subsequently that the goal of those who open Thomas Jefferson was that it was going to compete with Holland Park High School the Dallas Park Cities thing was the competition was pretty keen at that time and so I benefited from the fact that the administration was committed to making Thomas Jefferson the finest high school in Dallas they Richard stroke Stroud became the principal they brought the finest teachers from all over the district it was during you know the Russian Cold War and the Sputnik competition and they took a couple of handfuls of kids probably about 50 kids and that this was before the
the kind of academic programs that they have now for talented and gifted kids etc they just identified about 50 children and put us in special classes and I was one of the lucky ones and we got I often say that I'm a product of a proud product of the Dallas Independent School District and God among the finest education of any person that I met when I went on to college so I was very lucky what you guys do for fun in high school I was very involved in Temple youth and was a big muckety-muck at the in the Texas Oklahoma Federation of Temple youth I
was very lucky I was selected by then ray Israel I mean that many people who knew temple he just loved me he was the head of the the youth the religious school at temple in those days and he picked me to go to national meetings and represent our community so one of the stories i have from that I was about 15 and I was at a National Federation of Temple youth cut summer camp when they had hand-picked a bunch of kids and we were taking a test they wanted no opinions of the kids on a list of Jewish questions and one of the sections had
to do was I anism and I turned to the person sitting next to me and said what is I anism so that was dallas texas in the 50 now upon graduation from high school what are your plans college or work oh no college always getting very where'd you go to school I went to University of Texas in Austin okay I finished in three years because I was terrified I would fail so I kept poking summer classes and it also kept me out of the hardware store working there so that you know another little motivation to to work really hard and get through school quickly and
then I I got married so I had to hurry up and do that or I would be an old maid so so you got you met your husband in I knew my husband some temple youth okay so we were highschool sweethearts and you got married after college yes after my college tour he was a sophomore in college I had finished because i was in big her in school at oh you we moved to oklahoma lived there for a while okay where were your children boy my oldest child was born when we lived in Philadelphia but she was born here in Dallas and my both of
my daughters are adopted so they were born when we move back to Dallas and then my son was born here in dallas in philadelphia was for business for your husband haha he was doing a postdoctoral or pre-doctoral internship at the deborah foundation philadelphia okay when did you move back to dallas in 1969 okay and then what did you get into i was the world's best volunteer so I I was very involved in the Federation and in sisterhood I was at the time we were members of Temple Shalom so now in the late 60s it was very turbulent time in this country did you notice anything
in Dallas I mean you know race relations would be it not more of course going on how do you think Dallas handled all of that well at the time I was pretty unconscious to what was going on around me and but in retrospect you know as as I grew older and saw the way the way the rest of the country responded to what was going on in the country I had it gave me a lot of respect for the leadership in the city of Dallas adult citizens council the churches synagogues who really stood up and said we're not going to behave like the rest of
the country is behaving now I was teaching school in dallas in not i said i came back in nineteen sixty-nine but there was a period of time when my ex-husband was in graduate school that we lived here and i thought it Spence junior high school I taught it Spence junior high school the year that they integrated the schools and I remember my principal saying to the teachers I was so excited this was to me such a milestone and such an opportunity and you know wow what a difference we were going to be able to make and the very first faculty meeting he said none of
us like this none of us want this but it's the law and so we're going to do it and I can remember looking around and going what did he just say and that was his attitude but that year we spent I I spent most of my time trying to do group work so that the kids will learn to work together and and I would walk down the aisle and not get elbowed and now when you were teaching do you feel you made a difference in some lives I know I did good feeling isn't it it's a wonderful feeling I'm I yes for sure now when
did you remarry um i remarried in 1987 what's your husband is Mike Mike start before you came to the Jewish Center where were you working I was working for the American Jewish Congress and what yours is this was nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty nine okay what you do for them I was the director and for the the state of Texas the regional director was that a fulfilling that date for you oh my goodness yes it was a fabulous job fabulous people wonderful volunteers we you know it was the American Jewish Congress in those days and they were they became victim to the Bernie Madoff
crisis so there are no longer around but they were on the cutting edge of all the the Jewish stuff they used the law to fight for social justice and for you know the First Amendment issues were all the legal stuff then there was a cultural component they were really committed to women's issues and very much committed to a strong secure Israel so those ten years were just fabulous years for me and after the Jewish Community Center in Dallas did you retire or did you continue your career no I moved to Palo Alto California where I was on hired to solve a major crisis they were
having with their community center so I became the executive director of their community center as they they've been evicted from a site that they'd been in for about 18 years and they needed a plan for a new building they needed someone to relocate them to an interim spot their board had all been fired to staff and you know was the executive director had been fired that trying to decide what to do with the rest of the staff so I was recruited to come in and fix things and get it going in the right direction so that they could build the new center and I stayed
there a couple of years and then came back to Dallas and I went to work for the earth Reuters foundation as the president and CEO first of the North Texas Chapter and then we formed we merged the chapters in Texas informe de Texas chapter and then we merged with Oklahoma and with New Mexico and fur and formed south central region so I worked for the arthritis foundation for about eight and a half years what was the happiest time in your life the last few years when when we came back to Dallas and I've been able to spend time with my children and grandchildren and and
build south-central region of the Arthritis Foundation I think that was probably that was the most fulfilling for me personally and professionally now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasion since I I mean you look through the Vietnam War a president's assassination here in Dallas something good a moon landing in 69 porsche 911 is there something from the national level that really affected you were you set up and took notice the civil rights movement of all of the things overcoming that injustice has had the most profound effect on me personally and professionally you have six children with your extended family you have nine grandkids
hopefully soon some great grandkids what advice does Graham I have for the next generation you know the advice that I have is find work that you love you know when when my husband and I married the comment he kept repeating was that he envied me because I so loved my work the other big advice I have find a partner to share your life who shares your values who respects you who cares a great deal for you love is something that we talked about but until you find true love just an idea and so finding someone who cares about you as much as you care about
them someone that you can share your life with and finding work that you love are probably two of the the most important lessons I hope my children and my grandchildren will learn great job thanks for doing this