Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936, but moved to Pennsylvania when he was only five months old after his father entered the garment business in the Pittston area. He grew up in the small town of Exeter, Pennsylvania, where he was one of very few Jewish residents and played football and basketball in high school. His mother came from the Czechoslovakia region as one of eight siblings, most of whom followed one uncle into the garment trade after escaping persecution in Europe, while his father was born on the East Side of New York. His father, a former bookkeeper, witnessed the hardships of the Great Depression firsthand in New York.
Larry attended Penn State University, following his older sister who had gone a year ahead of him. There he joined the Phi Epsilon Pi fraternity and met Florence Kushner of Pittsburgh, whom he married in June 1959. After ROTC and service in the Air National Guard, he began his career with a large industrial cleaning and uniform rental company, then worked for Reuben H. Donnelly and a bank building and equipment corporation. Seeking a warmer setting and drawn by friends already there, he and Florence visited Dallas, bought a house on the spot, and made the city their permanent home. Their two children were born in Pittsburgh, and the couple later had four grandchildren.
In Dallas, Larry worked for National Chemsearch before going into business for himself, purchasing local stores once known as Texas Radio and transforming them into a successful restyling and aftermarket company called Texas Auto Tops. Deeply involved in Jewish community life, he was active at Temple Shalom, serving in the Brotherhood as treasurer and singing in the choir for 25 years, and later joined Congregation Ohr HaTorah, where he sang in its choir. He and Florence supported the Jewish Federation for many years, and he volunteered with the Jewish Family Service pantry. Now retired, he enjoys golf, volunteering, and time with his family.
Full Transcript
Larry 1936 Brooklyn New York but you didn't stay long how come you guys moved as soon as you were born well it was Mike wasn't my choice I was five months old my father went into a business in books / it's really Pittston Pennsylvania it was in the you know the garment industry so he was a garment manufacturer made dresses and stuff and we had connections in New York where the stuff came in from New York and then they made it they shipped it back to New York what do you remember when you were just a little boy growing up little why I remember yeah
I remember being in a very small town town that I grew up in was called Exeter Pennsylvania and it was total population with 5,000 people and when I left there was 4999 there was a it was a small town went to a small high school small grade school and I remember that you know growing up with a in a very small community where you know we knew everybody and everybody that lives in the town and it was it was it was very interesting and was their spec they went to all through grade school and high school there and then ended up leavin there to go
to Penn State University where I've met my lovely wife okay when you were young it was the depression going on it's your family did it affect them they ever talk about it to you when you got older well you know my my father was in the depression period of time when he was there in fact he was a bookkeeper in New York before he moved to Pennsylvania to go in this business and he was there right in the midst of the big depression in the you know in the 20s and he he was really told stories about you know he watched people that were going
crazy jumping out of windows from Wall Street and things like that and so that did happen oh yeah yeah he was he was witness to it your grandparents you remember the middle yeah yeah I remember my grandmother on my mother's side my grandfather was probably gone when I was really young but my grandma my grandmother on my mother's side she was you know they lived in a same place in Brooklyn New York for a long long time 18th Avenue in 66 street I remember that and they might my grandmother was you know she had four brothers and four sisters so my mother was a part
of a eight children family and most of them all went into the similar business when they all were there were all in the garment business because one of my uncle's that was the oldest one started the whole thing and spread it out through the whole family well now your grandfather I know he was gone when you were young but what did he do I don't remember he was a religious man I know that but could have been a butcher or one of those type of industries what about your grandparents on the other side what do you know well my grandparents the other side you know
they died when I was young too but I remember my father's mother who lived in Coney Island and we used to go and visit her there and have famous Coney Island and my grandfather he died young also when I was young because I remember my father taking me there to see him when he was sick and whatnot we saw him and name was Joseph and he just didn't make it to look too late in life but my grandmother lived a long time and she was she was a pistol she was definitely a woman about town she was in all kind of things and selling things
and doing things she was a very interesting him they do they come they're all early Earth right my mother was from Europe my mother came in from from Czechoslovakia area and my father was born in the East Side of New York now your mother what how was her trip did she ever talk about what why they left checklist oh yeah yeah yeah they think talked about a lot there were four brothers and four sisters the oldest brother got out of the of that area you know there were part of Russia at the time he got out and he was the main guy to get the
rest of them into the United States it was a long process a couple of them were in the in the Army in Russia and they eventually got out miele came out came over but they didn't have some PG x was there a specific reason why they came well i think it was because they were you know persecution and everything else that was going on and they just knew that they had to get out of there and my one uncle his name's leo he got out first and it was able to get everybody out of there and it was amazing that they all got all eight
of them got out and all eight of them got to the United States the last one my mother's youngest sister was was born in the United States well as high school life like it's great I was a small school I was one of probably three or four Jewish people in the whole school in fact in the little town of Exeter there was a little synagogue that didn't last very long but there were no very few Jewish people there were some years of where you know people knew that I was Jewish and it was not an easy life because they didn't know what Jewish was and
they made a lot of fun of it in fact that he was long before they had the the color thing because we had no black people in in our whole area even though you know I played football and I played basketball in high school and I was really you know I was intense on it I was a good athlete and I was good and it was uh is amazing that we weigh played 11 school in the whole division that we played in that there was a black kid honor and the black kid was a son of the guy who drove the car for the you
person who owned a newspaper so that was the only black piece of me until I went to college and state mental life yeah now tell me about going to penn state like a dreamer well you know my sister was 18 months older than me she I have an older sister but my older sister never went to college she got married when she was 17 so she was married or radiant I was like 10 or 11 years old she was married already but my clothes sister which was 8 is 18 months older she went to Penn State the year before she was one year ahead of
me in the same school fact while I was a football player she was a cheerleader over there for the thief and she she went there first and it was a natural thing for us to try to get into penn state it was a very good school very well-known school we had no problem in getting in at that time it was so you know was like a little easier to get in there even though you know we were all above it into ten percent of heist of the classes so we were able to get into it and Penn State was a very interesting I was uh
I was very impressed with I had never been right that far away except for going to LA you know to New York back and forth which was pretty much the same distance but never been and it was a very great school and anum big school the first guy that you introduced me to was a guy named a Roosevelt Greer he was a monster she went out to a great career with the LA Rams I believe it was and he was the fearsome foursome I went up there with it with a scholarship type thing saying that if you want to play football you know we'll give
you a scholarship you could make the team when I made when I met him I made my decision in football but he was a very interesting guy that ended my career football we were all very enthusiastic about the the team and the Penn State and I met Florence there at she was from pittsburgh on the other side of the state which I had never been to Pittsburgh I was a sophomore when she was a freshman what was that first meeting we were in a class together because her name was Kushner and I was Kramer so she was behind me she says I was cheating from
her but she was behind me I'd say she was cheating for me but that's a long old story when did you finally get the nerve to ask her out ah well I think I went out with her when I was a sophomore first and you know she had a lot of other ones we had we had the Sun squabble I went into a fraternity there Phi Epsilon Pi which was a Jewish fraternity there they had about five Jewish fraternities on that campus and she was dating some other guys from another fraternity which they were trying to set up a fight for me to fight this
guy but he was much bigger than me yeah but so you finally won her over what did you guys get married we got engaged after I graduated and we her parents insisted that there would be no wedding until after she graduated so we got married pretty soon the following year nineteen fifty-nine when you were in college Korea was going on and you went into the service well we were I was in the ROTC there and then you had to go into rotc for two years and then when we got finished with school back in and it was nineteen fifty-eight the draft was on and there
were a bunch of us there were friends that look we're in Pittsburgh and we didn't know what to do because we were going to get drafted so we all decided to go ahead and go to the reserves or in this case we went to the Air National Guard which was a big big international guard out in Pittsburgh and we ended up going and going in we all it was a funny story that all four of us went in there because we said we wanted to go in we were going to be pilots we were going to go because we were all graduates of college and
we were going to go in there so one of them was was too heavy so he didn't qualify I had a tough time seeing the board so I didn't qualify one of them they found a sugar in his urine he didn't qualify that's it we might as well just go with it a regular National Guard which we did after your service what did you get into well I was uh you're already married though not this time we got married in June of 1959 graduated with a management degree and I went into a very large industrial cleaning company the owner of the company was you know
a friend of even Florence's father and it was a big company had 300 employees and I went in the treating program there to uh in a management I stayed there for about seven years it was a good experience time and motion study stuff I did it was all industrialized it was a big industrial cleaning company with all mechanized machinery at that time it was a long time ago but they had you know they didn't press anything by hand anymore was all done by machines so was it was it was in it was a rental company they rented uniforms to large industrial companies they had about
you know 25 or 30 routes they went out HD on where did you guys settle down where we live in we were living in Pittsburgh okay we lived we went into an apartment we first got married and we ended up buying a house there after we were there about three or four years and that's you know that was our you know with progression we went to we were in two different apartments i believe and then we ended up with the with a house and the rest is history yeah what eventually brought you to Dallas I had decided about the seven years after I'd been with
the company that it was time for me to move on to something it was a family owned company and I wasn't going to be part of the family to be the owner of this company so I decided to look around we went with reuben age donnelly company they did the telephone books I was sewing in sales and then I became a manager in them and I was there with them maybe about three or four years three years and they wanted to meet it progress in the company and asked me if I'd move to Philadelphia and I said I wouldn't move into philadelphia so we into
it so that I left that company company came along called bank building and equipment corporation was on the stock market American exchange and I their headquarters were in New York and I was in Pittsburgh I thought I went to work for them and they were they did nothing but build design and equip financial institutions so it was more or less than the engineering type thing that I went into calling on banks and savings and loans for expansion purposes and I was there for a couple years and they at one point after I win there for a couple years and I did very nicely with them
they wanted me to move to because the guy that I was hired for in New York became a vice president or a big deal with city Corp and he said come with me a pic any place you want in the country so we picked Florida because Florence's parents were moving to Florida was that way wale to go to Florida kagura in Pittsburgh and he said well one of the guys had already picked lives in Florida so he said where do you want to go i saw i don't know we had a friends that we lived in Pittsburgh that had moved to Dallas so we talked
to them they said it's a nice place so they said what do you think I said well maybe I'll go to Dallas and they said okay take a week or two and go down and take a look at it so they sent us to Dallas and we got to dallas first time had ever been to dallas and when we got off the plane was so hot that you could say what am I crazy and because it was so humid there but we ended up in Dallas we looked around here we liked what we saw do we discuss it it was so we're going to take
this thing while we're here we looked at houses and we believe it or not we put a deposit on a house in Dallas and we haven't even we haven't even accepted the job yet but it ended up ok floors his father so dumb you bought a house down there and I said we said yeah we bought a house hunting so how much you pay for the house who said was sixty thousand dollars he says sixty thousand dollars who ever heard of a house being cost sixty thousand dollars he said he built his house for eight thousand dollars so he was he was had a heart
attack we say we bought a house for sixty thousand dollars we went back we accepted it and they moved us lock stock and barrel to Dallas and then shortly thereafter you started your own business yeah yeah there was a time that they wanted me to move to everyone time to go with a big corporation they always say the only way you advances by moving so they gave me some options they wanted me to move back to New York and I said no so I left that company and went with another company called national chem search corporation it's big corporation that's here in Dallas and became
a manager with them and they want to meet us to move they sent us to Chicago they sent us to New Jersey but we ended up saying we're not moving we're staying here we like the city and that's when I went into business what because this was that it was a automotive aftermarket business but it was I had met a guy who he had about eight stores here and and he wanted to get out of Dallas because he had stores here in Dallas and he had stores in atlanta so i ended up making a deal and got the bought the stores here in dallas it
was called Texas radio at that time they were doing you know CB radios and things like that and I got the business I closed up most of the stores and ended up changing the whole business around to what it was when I I built it up to a restyling and aftermarket business and we were doing upwards to four million dollars a year before I was all over which was not a bad business for small business and what was the name of the business was called texas auto tops what did you get your first car i bought my first car when I was like 16 years
old it was a jeepster are red jeepster most of the question five hundred dollars and I used to work in the Catskill Mountains one during the summer as a waiter and I spent a lot of time waiting on the you know what and the various big hotels you know the pitchers and all those big hotels up in the Catskills and I saved money and I was bought I bought it myself and we fixed it up it was it was a Jeep it had plastic windows and I ended up taking that the college I had it in college for three or four years while I was
there what's your dad think of you spending five hundred dollars in the car yeah he was he was all for it he he thought it was good idea was good you know it was it was a really weird look acarya when i took it depends later we thought it was like you know a sports car nobody ever seen a car like that was you know and then when the wind is when we were traveled in it and it was cold because it was cold in pennsylvania he couldn't replace the windows because they didn't make it any more so when you scotch tape yeah scotch tape
the windows together what was the happiest time in your life the years that I was at Penn State and the years when we first you know got married and struggled a little bit i think it was it was happy times you know we've had a lot of happy time by our kids and been very good and very successful so we've had a lot of happy times now where your kids born here in texas no both were born in pittsburgh now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions you know of course the Vietnam War era President Kennedy assassination the first moon landing in
69 good the tragedy of course of 911 was there something on the national scene that came along that just struck you and you know exactly where you were when it happened well I was sure I remember where I was during the 911 which was a very momentous time I was you know I was at a car dealership talking to people when I saw it on it on that on the television so I still remember that very well of course we all remember the Kennedy assassination we were in Pittsburgh at that time in fact my sister who is lived in Harrisburg Pennsylvania was visiting us at
the time and my brother-in-law who is a very big sports enthusiast and he he had tickets to see the Steelers play in one of the things disagreement they called off the game that bothered him a little bit but he what lado was the kin of the assassination that did it then we were sitting watching television and we saw the we actually saw when they killed Oswald we watched it live on TV so it was soon as a momentous occasion now are you involved at all with the Jewish community here and down most of my involvement was because I supported my wife who is very active
more so than I was because I was working and I had a business to run but you know I was very active in the synagogue when I was kid the temple shalom I was at the Brotherhood I was treasurer was sang in the choir for 25 years and happy you know I've been supporting up the Federation for all those years we've always supported it and I've done some work for the jewish family service with the pantry we went to on Shay Torah which is a new synagogue that where were members of my cuz our kids went there or my daughter India and we became part
of the choir there and I've been i still am part of the choir there at a lunch a tour it's a karina choir which is a very and leave you know we supported everything in the Jewish community but florence has done more than I have because I was you know I mr. recently I've been retired now for about four years and spends a lot of time well you know doing some of the volunteer work I Ted with the Jewish Family Service and you know I play golf so I'm still playing golf and you know further lexan well you know Florence have two kids and four grandkids right what advice does grandpa have for the next generation kids have it a little bit harder now my opinion than we had it I think it's very competitive my son has done very well he moved to New York the minute he got out of college he went to the University of
Texas and became a in the finance business he's done very well he was with goldman sachs for last eight years and now he's with another company that's even doing bigger things my door is a wonder she is a hard-working woman that has been working for a long time she's got a nice position at the legacies of independent living and seniors seniors and she's she's got a big position in there and they love her and she she's just a hard-working girl she's raised three boys the oldest one just graduated a year ago from University of Georgia the second one is a sophomore at University of Georgia
and the third one is a freshman in high school here in richardson I think they're having a little tougher time with getting into colleges now my grandchildren lucky heaven is easy is either my children our children had it but it's the advice is that you know they better be careful what how they study and whatnot so they can have future because it's not easy anymore on my opinion well thanks for doing the stealing man you know you did a great job thank you you