Ken Goldberg
Kenneth Edward Goldberg was born in Dallas on January 23, 1953, to Robert Lawrence (Bob) Goldberg and Lois Jean (Kaitlin) Goldberg. His father was a Dallas native, while his mother was born in Corsicana with roots in Kiev and Belarus. Ken grew up between an older sister, Jerry, and a younger brother, Neil, in a close, all-American household where his father worked hard and his mother drove carpools, and both parents attended every game. Childhood revolved around sports and the Jewish institutions of Dallas, including Shearith Israel's Hebrew school and Sunday school and the JCC, which he described as the hub of family life.
Ken attended William L. Campbell (formerly named for a Confederate general and since renamed) and Arthur Kramer elementary schools, then Franklin and Hillcrest High School, growing up among many Jewish friends. He was active in BBYO, joining the Reuben Kaplan AZA chapter, and formed lifelong friendships that continue through regular reunions, including a 50th anniversary gathering. He went on to the University of Texas at Austin, where he joined the Sammy fraternity and the Texas Cowboys service organization and earned a finance degree. After graduation he trained at Commercial Metals Company, working in South Dallas and later Lubbock, where he experienced a painful antisemitic assault that shaped him deeply.
In December 1976 Ken and his father started Gold Metal, a scrap metal business begun with modest means, and brother Neil soon joined as a partner; the family ran it for 35 years before selling in 2011. Ken met Sherry Josen at a bowling alley and married her on October 9, 1977, the anniversary of their first date. Together they raised three children, Richard, Lindsay, and Jenny, and have ten grandchildren. Sherry's parents were Holocaust survivors from Omaha. Ken and Sherry have been active in the Federation, the JCC, AIPAC, Israel Bonds, and other causes, and helped fund and name the JCC preschool. He credits his parents for instilling values of family, community, and Jewish heritage.
Full Transcript
well good afternoon it is my honor and privilege to interview for oral history for the dallas jewish historical society kenny goldberg my name is mitch myers and it's april 28 2022. hello kenny hello mitch good to see you good to see you great so tell us your full name first of all when you were born kenneth edward goldberg january 23rd 1953 very nice and do you know why your parents selected those names for you so kenneth almost was kailyn k-a-l-i-n my mother's maiden name her family from sioux city iowa but dad said he wouldn't let his son be named kalyn so that's where the kenneth came from and edward was from someone in dad's family and so the nickname is kenny or is just everybody calling katie and kenny g i tried ken for a while went
back to how i grew up as kenny and where were you born dallas and uh where's your family from so dad was born in dallas and his parents were born in the states and i think from new orleans and chicago and probably the heritage because his grandfather was irish was lithuania and uh mom was born in corsicana her mother was from kiev i'm still going to call it kiev and her father was from belarus so russian descent so tell us your parents names so uh robert lawrence goldberg bob goldberg um reuben eliezer and uh mama's lois jean kaitlyn goldberg nice and your grandparents and their
names so dad's parents were lewis and esther and mom's parents her father who i never knew he passed away right about when they got married in the 40s herman caitlin and his wife my maternal grandmother becky kayla can you describe the personalities of your parents while you were growing up and what your family life was about sure so it was uh you know father knows best uh leave it to beaver it was all the all-american family older sister younger brother uh the dynamic dad was always working my mom was driving car pools and they were both coming to games and and uh it was just
uh the memories were just uh are just wonderful thinking of them and the relationship and how everything about them uh was about jerry and neil and myself and well tell us about your siblings so jerry's a little bit older than i am i won't tell you how much older or how old she is but jerry was born in 19 i won't say so [Music] she was three years ahead of me and four years ahead of me in school three years in life neil's about 20 months younger than i am born in 1954 and uh he was just a year behind me in school there's actually
a funny story about that neil was born on september 2nd and uh dad tried to the deadline for getting into first grade or any grade when you started school was september 1st so dad i think was before whiteout changed his birthday for september 2nd to september 1st so he could move neal ahead i think it was so he wouldn't have to pay taxes or pay for babysitting for another year uh he got caught and they called and said mr goldberg you know he's really just five years old not six and and uh i think dad had to pay a ten dollar fine or something to
get neal to move ahead that's why he's only one year behind me it was in school that's a great story uh where did you go to elementary school arthur kramer actually i went to william l campbell before that in farmer's branch and that's not called william cappell anymore he was a confederate general so they changed him tonight and what activities did you like to do sports tell us a little bit about that during that period elementary school it was mostly sports yeah i mean we had to go to hebrew school and do all those things and i think that played out pretty well over time
but it's really about sports playing games going to games where did you go to schuel growing up sure at this room and uh so you bar mitzvahed yes and so tell us about that period of time you're 13 12 13 years old tell us a little bit about you know going to sunday school in hebrew school so at that point i was going to uh kramer right by the jcc so our childhood was really about growing up with the jewish institutions in dallas so with sheriff israel's hebrew school sunday school and going to my friend's bar mitzvahs and they weren't always at sheriff israel so
knowing the same kids my age at temple emanuel and a few at the fair at israel and the jcc was really the hub of our life so playing here i think mom worked here for a little bit dad was always coaching jerry was uh modeling or swimming or doing something up here and while we're always playing ball that's great so you grew up with a jewish identity in your family it was more social or it was actually religious not real observant mitch we uh knew who we were um between mom and dad's friends were basically all jewish our friends were jewish grew up in a
little bit of a bubble at kramer and franklin and hillcrest high school with a lot of jewish kids but we identified with everybody and it didn't matter if someone was jewish or not jewish it just all kind of ran together and and uh the jewish identity i think was kind of more subliminal than anything it was nothing that was ever uh pounded into us it's just we knew who we were we knew our heritage and i think that led to us being kids who just mostly did the right thing were you barmestered with anybody do you remember childhood heroes uh growing up who they were
uh coaches at the jcc were mainly uh dad and his friends and the guys that were uh at the jccc and uh athletic director hank bodner and other people that we kind of looked up to in kind of a funny unique kind of way but uh those people and then um the people the other people i looked up to uh were always my teachers and coaches and those people who uh impacted and kind of got in my life yes and what was going on what was it do you remember the fads excuse me the songs kind of music what was going on in that that
era that was fun for you um i like music i never could sing worth a lick i was in the choir at kramer and i remember the music teacher looked over in my direction and somebody was off key and i was looking around to see who it was too and she finally focused and said it was me and pulled me out and i think she gave me a triangle with the sticks or something to play and that's about all i was capable of doing so i love music always did so whether uh it was uh the beatles or dave clark five or herman's herman's or
buddy holly before that and elvis presley i just i love music um i just couldn't play anything or sing so uh from there you you go into aza or the bbyo or in those chapters yes and one chapter reuben capital and aca and tell us a little bit about that so now you're 14 15 16 getting ready to drive and uh well not quite ready to drive i might have thought it was but again i i joined ruben kaplan with most of my friends and really i'm i'm blessed because a lot of those friends that i grew up with uh at sheriff israel or the
jcc or in kaplan aca are still friends lifelong friends quite a few of them in fact we still get together the kaplan aca group gets together three or four times a year and has launched so 12 or 15 of us from our year and the year after us get together and we just had our 50th anniversary last year fabulous name who are some of those friends so mike hurst allen feldman i'm going to leave somebody out and get in trouble david wrap jerry naked neil and his friends stanley rothschild mike riceman ricky goldman jeff siegel said landy mark dominus i mean it's just a great
group and these are the guys i'm kind of going around the table as we sit over and have lunch these days to think of who they were but those guys are still my best friends that's unique that's very unique so tell us about some of your oldest relatives that you remember when you were growing up in this period and a little bit about them not not your mom or dad but some of your oldest relatives so uh i barely remember uh my game mother's mom's mother she passed away when i was about five or six years old and she lived in fort worth and we
used to go over to her apartment and swim in the pool of blue bonnet circle in fort worth all of that side of the family which was mostly her family because mom's father and that whole family was in sioux city so we went to sioux city a couple of times but mainly was fort worth on mom's side and then dad's side was all dallas a few of them had moved to white but my grandparents and dad was an only child mom had one sister who had no kids so we had no first cousins but mom and dad's parents both had came from large families with
a lot of siblings so we had extended family we had uh my dad's mom and dad uh were always around and um my nana dad's mother had a sister aunt pearl who lost her husband i think before i was born and i never knew him so she was always she was like another grandmother and she had a brother uncle leonard who never got married and he was always there like a grandfather so those are the ones that i have the fondest memories of so um during this period again what world events if any shaped your life or made an impact on you when you were
grown up so i can actually place the year 1960 as a defining year in my life so i was seven years old and that was the year that i remember i could name all of the seven original mercury astronauts i used to run around the house as many times they would do orbits around the earth jungle and i think was the first one to actually go around and all the sports so that was the year the dallas cowboys started the dallas texans of the old american football league started the same year i remember watching the world series so i'd walk across the street to school
not be able to get away for lunch or get out early and come home and watch the world series between the yankees and the pittsburgh pirates and in 1960 we had cousins in california and in the even number of years we would load up the car mom and dad with jerry and neil and i jerry more than someone reluctantly rode out there with us so we drove across country to l.a and we'd get to la 1960s the first year we did it and we'd get to la to visit our cousins and we would go to disneyland and knottsbury farm we'd go to a dodger game
in those days they were playing in the la coliseum before they built dodgers stadium then in the eve in the odd number of years uh the singers our cousins in california would come to dallas and we'd go to the jcc swimming pool i think we enjoyed the trips probably more than they did so 1960 was a big year and that's when i first remember things i actually started following politics not falling to politics but i remember the election between kennedy and nixon i kind of remember the debates as a kid and uh it was just kind of a little bit of a growing up coming
out year for me well 1963 was probably a big year when kennedy was assassinated here in dallas do you remember anything about that yeah i remember where i was i was at recess out of the water fountain one playground at kramer and i remember uh hearing about it and didn't have the full impact when it happened that it might have although i knew president kennedy wasn't everybody admired and loved him then we went inside and mrs allen the principal came on and and made the announcement and she was crying and that that had a little impact maybe this is bigger than i realized it was
at 10 years old and of course living through the weekend and watching the procession at his funeral at arlington national cemetery and of course watching live i think i was he either didn't go to sunday school or just gotten home but i remember watching when jack ruby uh walked in and killed oswald so uh very impactful crazy times knowing what you know now how is the world different today than when you were growing up and then what changes in the jewish community have you seen i want to tell them a story about the kennedy i think first before i get into that so dallas had
this terrible stigma because of kennedy's assassination and the way it was viewed across the country and around the world so i remember i think it was nine months after kennedy was assassinated we took a trip instead of going to see our cousins in california we went up to the world's fair in 1964 to new york and with those texas license plate i'll never forget some of the comments that we had as we drove through kentucky and west virginia and new jersey up to new york and and it was like we had the play or something it was not a good place to be from and
i remember mitch it was in the early 70s and uh when the stigma kind of ended and i think it took the show dallas the dallas cowboys and big oil to kind of redefine dallas as a metropolitan cosmopolitan city came out of the stigma that we'd suffered that's a great story remind me what you asked me after that sure so uh what you know now when you were growing up how do you think you know the world's a little bit different or a lot different and and what changes in the jewish community have you seen so you know having such a the memories that we
had of always being outside playing ball you give us a ball in the bat and neil and i and the kids neighborhood and make up a game and be able to do anything we wanted to so it was a simple time and black and white tv and and watching uh the silly sitcoms that we did and and uh riding our bikes collecting baseball cards and things were just simple and uh we hardly even use telephones so i remember jerry had a princess telephone in a room and that was a big deal which he led us in there to use her telephone but uh it was
just simpler and you know it's been a long time but what i see today is kind of sad i don't worry about my kids because because sherry's raised great kids and and they're all grounded and they're all married and having kids and i worry about my grandkids so whether it's uh social media uh and information is just way too accessible for these kids at young ages too many things that that they learn they just don't need to know at the ages our grandkids are all from zero to almost 10 years old and i just hate some of the things that they're exposed to that they
they have to deal with and in the jewish community it was just smaller and tighter you know everybody lived around the jcc and sheriff israel temple manual so it was all near north dallas in those days and um i just missed out on the jcc when it was on pocahontas in south dallas and all the synagogues and temples were down there but i do remember sure at the israel and temple and the jcc were all new in the late 50s and early 60s and uh everything was you know big bright lights but the jewish community was a different perspective looking at it 60 years later
but but it was it was tighter now we know some of the numbers of how many jews we think are in the metroplex or in greater dallas and they're big numbers and and i think the thing we have to work hardest at is to get get more jews to become affiliated so whether that's in shul's temples jccs whatever organization there's just so many unaffiliated jews and i think that's the real risk for our people that's great perspective so now you're getting ready to leave high school thinking about college where are you thinking about going so my personal i actually applied to a college that's still
around i heard their name last year and forgot their their nickname because i think they were in ncaa baseball or lacrosse tournament or something northern arizona and i don't know why we think northern arizona but the truth is we always knew we were going to go to ut that we were going to hit i-35 and drive 200 miles south and then we'd be there and that's where we ended up so and in those days it was pretty easy to get in most everybody uh just drove down 35 and went to ut it was kind of automatic so you went to ut you're thinking about what
you're going to major in which was uh i you know i took a couple of accounting classes i knew that that wasn't for me i didn't think i had the aptitude for it and i couldn't stay awake but i was in the business school and i got a finance degree and i think i actually probably have applied some things that i learned in banking or finance or the value of money over time in my business career so tell us about your years at university of texas did you join a fraternity yeah i was a sammy and uh proud and i partied with the sammy's had
leadership role with the sammy's hung out with uh they flies or sdts when they would have me and and uh was in a service organization called texas cowboys and went to all the games and they even traveled up to fayetteville one time in a winnebago with some friends to a game at the university of arkansas but college was was fun it's too bad school kind of got in the way but it was it was just a blast for four years that's good was it a uh arkansas game in 1969 by any chance no i watched that one on on tv so uh i think i
went up there in 1973 or four yeah it was a great atmosphere it was great but in my years oklahoma was kicking our ass it wasn't as much fun as those years of years before i got there so any events uh while you're at the university of texas that shaped your life or kind of helped you move in the direction you were moving in i found college is more of an opportunity to to grow socially and and mature and uh um gosh that sounds like an oxymoron because we weren't very mature in college but just the opportunity to go with friends and meet new people
and experience different things not the things my kids and grandkids are watching this probably think of because i was pretty straight and i like to drink a little bit but didn't do much else so it was a fun time but it was also a time looking back on it that i think gave me the opportunity to grow into the man that i became and what's going on in the world when you're in college what what's going on outside did anything affect you from you know not just within the college area but outside well the vietnam war was going on so that was the big thing
and uh that was in the days of the lottery so uh the reality of maybe getting drafted and having to serve was right there in front of us obviously not a popular war nobody in my circles wanted to go to vietnam so i remember sitting around the radio with my friends and they were calling up the draft numbers fortunately i had a very i think it was a high number like 250 or something out of 365 and i forgot what which of the numbers were actually called and a lot of those people would uh my friends would join the reserves or do other things i
might have had a couple friends who went to canada who actually took often and didn't want to serve so that that was probably the biggest thing that was going on and of course the the violence the civil rights mainly from the 60s that he carried over to the 70s a lot of unrest on college campuses because of the vietnam war and racial issues and other things that that pretty burned into my memory and on ut campus uh there's there was protest as well there were protests it was probably a lot milder in the south and in texas the deep south was different but i think
uh in texas uh it probably wasn't as heightened as it was in other places in the country so uh it was a lot of things that you would see when you're walking through campus protests and things like that but not riots and and a lot of things we just saw on tv with walter cronkite told us what was going on in the world so four years goes by pretty quick right you're thinking about what's what's the next step and you're ready to graduate and what are you thinking about doing after college so i really didn't have anything in mind i was offered two jobs my
senior year i never interviewed didn't go through any formal process through university of texas and i didn't really know what i wanted to do i thought about maybe going to graduate school killed some time and the two jobs were uh the offers that i had were both for six hundred dollars a month and one was to work in retail for a friend of the families a guy named henry luskin who started henry's gene scene and the other one was to go to warfare commercial metals company who dated work for since 1951 just as a trainee and i decided to stay home in dallas and go
in the scrap metal business commercial metals commercial levels so tell us a little bit about commercial metals and what you did for them and what you thought about it i trained at the yard in south dallas my dad was a manager up for six months i lived at home then they sent me out to lubbock i got transferred to west texas to work for commercial medals for a smaller yard there most people in lubbock seemed like they were from spur or muleshoe or snyder texas and they were coming to lubbock as the hub of west texas and i was going in the other direction so
socially was an awakening it was there were a couple other things that happened one very serious and one that was kind of funny a serious one was the first bout actually ever had with anti-semitism and i was talking to a truck driver one day and i've been kind of recruiting this company to come and sell the scrap metal in lubbock and and was kind of butting up with this truck driver and all of a sudden he starts in with judas and jew that i said excuse me you know i'm jewish and the next thing i know pop and the big redneck guy knocks me down
i get up he pops me again i'm down on the ground fortunately louise from the warehouse came over with a lead pipe and took care of the truck driver but it was not the physical pain mitch it was just the uh the fact that i was attacked from my religion and my heritage i felt more ashamed and i carried that with me for many years so i didn't run into lj tell jake feldman who was the one of the founders of commercial medals company i didn't tell my father either of my parents for some time i had some friends at texas tech i ran over
there when i you know with broken glasses and bloody face and talked to them but i really kept it to myself i think that incident in the long run helped me a lot once i opened up and talked about it and learned the things that i did later about anti-semitism i think we grew up in a little bit of a bubble in north dallas going to kramer franklin the oppressed minister of israel having mostly jewish but non-jewish friends too but it would i think we were somewhat protected from anti-semitism and until we worked in uh south dallas and we were around all types of people
and some went at commercial levels because we were around whites and blacks and hispanics and everybody were just people so that was a very serious incident that happened when i was in lubbock that had a profound impact on me the other one that was it was kind of funny not at the time but i've been working there for a couple of years and i hadn't had a race i'm still making 600 a month which honestly covered whatever expenses i had i was living by myself in an apartment that i probably paid 125 but uh the regional manager was coming to lubbock and i knew i
needed a race because i was working 50 hours a week maybe more and i put it on my calculator calculator one day and i figured i was making about two dollars and 25 cents an hour and looked up at my diploma and i said something's messed up about this so mr goldberg no relation who was an old texas aggie and u.s marine was in charge of all the plants and he was coming to love it so i arranged an interview with mr my voice is kind of shaken i said mr goldberg i love this company and i hope i have a bright future here but
i really think i deserve a hundred dollar month raise and he looks me right in the eye and says ken it is a great company we hope and think you have a bright future but we just don't think is the time for you to have a raise so uh kind of drawing a line in the sand and the next day i think i rented a u-haul i think mom flew out to lubbock and drove back with me with my stuff moved back in with mom and dad and a few months after that is when i started gold medal and uh every time i saw mr
goldberg he lived a long life and it mellowed later in life and every time i saw him the rest of his life we just had a good laugh i would basically do the old thank you all noteworthy thing and he kind of set me on my way thank you mr gilbert and that's a great story so you started gold medal south dallas you learned enough from commercial medals and your dad soon to start this business right december of 1976 i was living at home and it was really mom and dad's inspiration dad in particular because he always wanted for neil and me to have our
own business at one time he was going to buy some property off meadow and central expressway and open a driving range but whatever it was so i went to the scrap business neal was a year behind me he worked for commercial medals for six months and after i started in december of 1976 neal came in with me pretty quickly early in 1977 so we were partners for 35 years but it was it was we started with five thousand dollars i always said it was my bar mitzvah and confirmation and graduation money dad said it was his money and to show you what a good businessman
i was i sold neil fifty percent of the business for one thousand dollars so the math never really worked out we had a good run for 35 years that's great those are great stories and what happened to the business uh so we started this business we rented an 8x12 portable building for our office we had a window unit electric heater our warehouses were the back ends of two old metzgers milk trucks couldn't afford a forklift we had a couple of small trucks and trailers and uh we did everything ourselves mom was actually the first employee before neal started so she was there to pay the
customers i'd be outside weighing customers and and it was just making friends from all walks of life from the beginning on and we built the business up and our kids came into we had nieces and nephews and uncles and aunts everybody worked a gold medal and uh dad worked five more years after we started the business at commercial medals and retired at about 55 and came to work with us and he swallowed his ego and came in and and uh was a huge piece to our success at gold medal mom and dad both were um and uh in 2011 we found somebody who liked our
company more than we did and they come in they came in and bought the company well that's a great story 35 years later that's fabulous and it's going to be uh exciting for you to have all your family there and uh brother and dad and mom absolutely two of my kids worked there and and uh neil's son chad worked there and sherry worked there and like i said everybody was there but all of that and everything all the success that we had growing up and getting to this point in life where we started the business was really mom and dad they they showed us the
way they taught us they weren't the real hands-on leaders in the community but they were always present they were always there whether it was coaching or watching games or driving carpool they were active in our lives so you know you got your business started you're having fun you're with your brother and your dad your mom any girlfriends any thoughts about getting married at this point i was lucky to get dates in college in high school i was too uh nervous and shy to have dates so i'd hang out with my friends and there were girls around and and then when i moved back from lubbock
i was living at home i was in a bowling league at the preston forest bowling alley that's now about a block from our house someone introduced me to this new girl in town from omaha who'd been to the university of texas named sherry josen but i didn't know sherry we had common friends but i didn't know her so we were introduced at a bowling alley she loves when i tell that story of how we met so we went out on our first date on october 9 1976 and we were married on october 9th 1977 on the anniversary of our first date so at least on
my side it was love at first sight i was the luckiest day of my life and it was just a special time so we dated for a few months we were engaged memorial weekend of 77 and got married four months later in omaha nebraska where she's from so you actually met your wife before you started your business so uh yeah i think i didn't open the business until december it was all it all kind of ran together so alan feldman who uh was one of my childhood best lifelong friends but uh alan always had kind of a strange dry sense of humor and it was
known to rub people the wrong way occasionally told sherry so i i found this property in south dallas that i leased about a quarter of an acre and it was just bare and so i was building a fence to go around it and open up the scrap yard and i was going to the city and getting certificates of occupancy and doing all this stuff and one day sherry said to alan what does can he do for a living and alan said he doesn't do anything he sits home and watches soap operas and stuff and i have to show her the calluses on my hands to
to convince her that i was really down in south dallas working to build a business so tell us a little bit about cherry and what she means to you obviously so uh sherry's background is being from omaha nebraska sherry had an older brother and her parents and that was really all her family her parents were holocaust survivors they actually met in a camp they were both in several work camps after the war they were reunited and they lived in a displaced person's camp and were married i think by a friend and there was a group of 10 people to have a minion at the wedding
and that was about it so they they were married and came over here and they wouldn't have kids until they got to the states so sherry had a life i think growing up kind of like i did in omaha it was a very vibrant jewish community i think they had more aca and bbg chapters than dallas did and you know she only expresses the fondest memories like i had here and uh i think some of the things with their parents growing up uh the difficult things that not having family grandparents are wondering why other people did and where parents talked differently and funny sherry was
able to express later in life about how that impacted her but we were right from the beginning together that's fabulous and you all have children yeah so richard's 42. lindsay's 39 and jenny's 35 i think i've got all that right and they're all married uh we have a great market to them um they're all having kids we have 10 grandkids we're just the most blessed people in the world uh and they're all here so they're all intelligent fabulous that's fantastic so growing up with sherry in your marriage or having children well how did you name richard first i mean how'd that name come about so richard is named for uh um i've got to stop and think it was uh his hebrew name was ranan and he was named after sherry's father's mother rose who
he adored because sherry's dad ben joseon father had run out on the family in poland when he was young so his mother was everything and uh when how how did you find out you were going to be a parent for the first time like how did it come about did cherry tell you did you you know that's a good question it might have stopped me because i don't remember how i found out other than uh we planned on having kids pretty quickly so october 9th 1976 first date october 9th 1977 we got married pretty close to october 9th 1978 richard was probably conceived and so
all your children were they named after grandparents or parents yes yeah lindsay lieber rockwell was named after my paternal grandfather louis and jenny yonah penina her middle name paige was after my great aunt who i mentioned at pearl and i'm drawing a little blank right now so i think jenny was named after joseph who was sherry's uncle sherry's mother's brother okay and tell me uh now you've had kids they're growing up do you go on family vacations anything stand out where you guys go and do and like year after year that was fun that you can explain everybody tell everybody it's a little harder now
it's a little more challenging with ten grandkids but we kind of have a rule we've got a place in southern california so for the same week every summer everybody's got to come out there so i told sherry for my uh 70th birthday i think i just wanted to do a disney cruise next january so we'll see if that works out but just just to get everybody together is more challenging but more meaningful so um the passover ciders of thanksgiving the times that we all get together and the times we're still able to get with lisa neal's family and jerry and bill's family we're 18 now
with all of them we're talking 30s or 40s and and the last year and a half has been more challenging it takes a little harder work since mom and dad have been gone mom and dad passed away 30 days apart toward the end of 2020 they had great long lives and and we're so instrumental in the success that we've all had so tell us a little bit about what you admire about sharing and with all the kids and now grandkids well i was always working probably worked too much went to work really early i was always home for dinner but i even worked on weekends
so sherry basically raised the kids i mean i was at games and recitals and and those things but she was the one that was driving the carpools and doing most of the disciplining and she was the tougher one i would tend to give in easier so she made the rules and enforced the rules and uh has always been there and been the guiding light for all of us it's great so um you've sold your business you're with sherry you got great kids doing their things now right and uh so some other things have come up that you're able to do can you explain some of
those things uh that are whether they're social things or just giving back to the community can you explain a little bit about that yeah so after we sold the business i worked three years for the guys that bought the business and in the first year year and a half i worked really hard like i did before and then i kind of saw the handwriting on the wall and i said it was kind of mutual that i was ready to move on and they were probably ready for me to move on so a rabbi friend asked me what i'm going to do now that i retired
i sold the business in 11 for these guys till 2014 retired and i was asked what i'm going to do with my life and i i said rabbi i kind of divided my life into three thirds and he said what are those and i said well the first one of course is family and health and taking care of myself and being able to enjoy get return on my investment for all the years i put into the family and take care of myself the second one is continue to work on my portfolio and make investments and continue to kind of stay in the financial game and
the third one was to work more in philanthropy and be able to give back more time so sharon and i both been very active mainly in the jewish community for a long time whether it's the federation or the jcc or apec or israel bonds and or or share this we've both been very active so um i wanted to be able to do more and give more financially and the rabbi looks me in the eye and he says what about study i'm thinking oh my gosh do you really just ask me that i said can i put study in the first group with you know my
health and my family he said no you now have four thirds to your plan figure it out so i did i started to study more actually with his father a lot more than i did with him but not as much as i should but i i have uh i have done more that's great that's an interesting way of looking at it from the rabbi's perspective so um i noticed walking in you had y'all's name is on the preschool can you tell them to tell everybody how that came about as well uh so having grown up at the jccc was always an important part of my
life and my family's life and dad was man of the year and i think all of us including sherry have been leaders of the year here the jcc was always a central role in our in our hearts our kids went to the jcc preschool and sherry always had a dream of not just being involved in the school but being able to give back someday so when we had a community capital campaign a little over 20 years ago i actually had the responsibility of finding somebody to name the jcc preschool i never was successful in getting that naming opportunity done right before right after we sold
the business i'm not sure when it was we were finally able to do it and we made a commitment financial commitment to the jcc and put our name up there and this was always really important to sherry not to have our name up there but to be able to say that this has been uh so important in our family's life to the goldbergs and to her and her and uh so sharon i made a contribution but we just didn't make the contribution we raised uh more money for this project than we gave and the jcc pitched in some money that they had and that's what
it took so the preschool was i think the only part of the building since uh the phase in 1977 or 78 was done so from then until however many years ago was it was the only part of the building that hadn't been remodeled at all so it was really important that it be done and now we've been blessed with nine of our ten grandkids have gone through the jcc preschool and next year will be 10 out of 10 when kate's old enough to go to mommy and me well i speak for everybody at the jewish community i'm proud to see that name on the building
every time i come here so thank you yeah so i've got a few more questions for you if you still look for it so all of the things that you've learned from your parents your mom and dad which do you feel is the most valuable i think the uh obligation to family and community so we were always around not just mom and dad but their extended families and we saw the respect that they had for their family and the things that they did in the community uh even with their friends hal whether it was just going to to show for the high holidays whatever it
was so i think some of that just kind of some of them was direct some of it just kind of rubbed off on us so it was uh always family and community and uh just learning i think at a young age just enough about our heritage to instill the values the jewish values and us that we carried on to our adult lives and and permitted us to give so many things back that we have and that goes for my whole family my sisters and brothers and sherry and me and you can see it still working yeah our kids are and got engaged and involved and
that's really meaningful and watching the grandkids at hebrew school or starting to get involved and learn about jewish life even with the jcc preschool which has a wonderful jewish curriculum and uh tell us what accomplishments you're most proud of that you've you've gone through so the biggest accomplishment i i think is uh being able to honor mom and dad with the success that i and we've had as a family the things that i'm most proud of and biggest accomplishments or raising good solid kids sharing raising good solid kids and being around to participate in that are the biggest things and of course uh uh the
business uh was a big accomplishment over a long time but it was a success and and it didn't happen with just neil and me and in our family that worked in it there were hundreds or thousands of of uh employees and customers that that helped us along the way for 35 years that helped create our success and we have so many people at dead of gratitude for that and and the accomplishments that uh i've been able to do in giving back to the community and leadership roles in the non-jewish and jewish community i'm very proud of but proud because i learned things as a child
from when our conversation started half an hour ago that i think carried me through this journey to where i was able to accomplish things i was so scared of my own shadow as a kid i was the kid at cramer that never had checks in the boxes for detentions or acting up in class and stuff and being able to gain the confidence that that my family gave to me including my kids all those accomplishments are none of her mine alone what is one thing you most want people to remember about you i think that uh i've always tried to treat people respectfully no matter who
they are what their background is i haven't always been successful in that but i i would like for people to remember me as a fair person who was non-judgmental and tried to accept people and recognize their strengths and and who created a lot of jobs and and helped create pathways for success for a lot of other people someone who just uh really cared about his family and community last thing as what advice would you like to leave for the next generation including your grandkids or just the next generation in the jewish community i think to just try to be yourselves not be distracted this is
advice i'll leave i didn't always do it but but be yourself and not be influenced by what other people think of you which i always was it was a fault of mine that i've tried to overcome over but honor your parents honor your family do good work in the community your name is really all that you have so protect that name because you didn't you're not the first one in your family with that name your parents and grandparents and generations before that instilled everything that made you the person that you are so my advice is to live up to that well that's great advice thank
you very much kenny is there anything you want to add before we wrap it up well so uh when you play basketball at hillcrest what'd you know about the legend of kenny and neil goldberg man you guys were my heroes from uh hillcrest not as much as from the jcc i've just always wanted to you know play with you guys and just be around you and which i did finally you know when i got old enough so uh i didn't really mean to turn it on you but uh one of those great times yes thank you kenny uh for doing this thank you you