Lauren Saraviego
Lauren Saraviego's family roots reach back to Russia and Poland. Her paternal grandparents, Morris and Ruth Umansky, both traced their ancestry to Russia; Morris, a chemical engineer who served in the army as a chemist, was from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and Ruth, whose maiden name was Levine, was from Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. They later settled in Summit, New Jersey, where they ran a drapery and window covering store and raised Lauren's father, Ken Umansky, and his sister, Linda. Her mother's family came from Poland and settled in Pennsylvania, growing up in Lancaster. Her maternal grandfather, Manuel Jassick, died young of diabetes, leaving her grandmother to raise four daughters and support the family by running a small luncheonette.
Lauren describes her family as nomads because of her father's career in marketing and advertising. Born in Summit, New Jersey, she lived in Armonk, New York, then Pittsburgh, and later Knoxville, Tennessee, before moving to Dallas for her junior and senior years of high school. She graduated from J. J. Pearce High School, earned a bachelor's degree in speech communications at the University of Florida, and completed a master's in communication sciences at George Washington University. It was at a Dallas wedding that she met her future husband, Joe. After a period of long distance, she moved back to Dallas, married, and worked as a speech pathologist for about five years before becoming a realtor.
In Dallas, Lauren became a top-producing realtor, earning rookie of the year in her first year and taking pride in helping clients, especially Jewish families, find their place in the community. She and her husband are members of Temple Emanu-El, where their sons Jacob and Cooper have connections, and she has served on the board there as well as on the board of trustees at the Jewish Community Center. Reflecting on her life, she named her grandmother, who raised four daughters alone, as her greatest role model and the matriarch of a large, close family, and she counts her marriage and her two sons as her proudest achievements.
Full Transcript
okay good morning i'm joe reingold i'm the interviewer and i'm here with lauren sobriego and today is thursday august 27th 2020. hi lauren how are you i'm doing well joe thank you how are you doing good i'm glad you had agreed to do this with us and tell us um what do you know about for example your grandparents and your parents background where they came from where they live where they settled etc sure so my dad's side of the family um ancestors go back to russia i know that's what my grandfather used to always tell me is that his his ancestors and grandmother both used to say that their ancestors are from russia exactly when i don't know but their families both ended up in pennsylvania my
grandmother my maiden name is umansky so it's it's morris and ruth umansky and um ruth's made the name of ruth levine and she was from mahoney city pennsylvania and my grandfather morris umansky was from mckeesport pennsylvania okay so how long tell me did any other relatives or anybody that you know have come across to the united states and do they live near each other so on my from that side of the family um i don't know the answer to that from that side of the family i don't know i know my mom's side um also was from pennsylvania so but came from poland do you
know about when i guess i have no idea no idea when but um they weren't sponsored by anybody or why did they pick pennsylvania do you know i think they actually were sponsored from what i remember they started in new york and were either sponsored or put in you know in place because it's it's kind of interesting that both my mom and dad's parents were from pennsylvania all different cities in pennsylvania my my mom's parents were from lancaster they grew up in lancaster pennsylvania and i remember my grandmother saying to me that that her parents were started in new york um came over you know
in um and and went through new york and then were sponsored to go to a family in um or or go to lancaster pennsylvania okay what did your whatever you know of your grandparents and your parents do for a living so my grandparents um my paternal grandfather was a chemical engineer um he was in the army um as a chemist and um that's morris umansky um ruth did not work she raised the children and um ultimately they ended up in new jersey where my father and his sister my father is ken umansky and his sister is linda umansky and they were raised in summit new
jersey and that's where they so that ultimately from pennsylvania they were they ended up in jersey um and had from when i remember actually they had a um a drapery and window covering store they had a storefront and summit and then my mom's side lillian and maury unfortunately um excuse me lily and manuel jassick um they were both from pennsylvania and um moved to wheaton maryland right outside a suburb of washington dc they had four daughters and um they were in the grocery store business but my grandfather meant manny manuel um he he passed away from diabetes very young my mom was 15 and left
my grandmother with you know four girls and no money and so it was it was a harder life what did she do at that point so she didn't even know how to drive i mean she had to learn how to drive so she kind of she helped with the grocery store business ended up losing that and she opened up a um a little dinette in an office building so she was like the lunch store at the bottom of an office building she she owned she she opened up a little um a little luncheonette grandmother did the same oh really interesting yeah so where did you
grow up as a child and tell us a little bit about your childhood what was your neighborhood like what kind of things did you do for fun etc okay so we are we're nomads so we we were nomads i should say we um my dad is in it is in marketing and advertising so he was in new jersey he and my mom met and on a blind date my mom was living in washington dc where she grew up and he was living in new jersey and they were introduced by my aunt's um college roommate they introduced my mom and dad on a blind date they
my mom and dad ended up moving to new york city living there for many years and um i was born in summit new jersey uh i we only lived there for a few months my parents were building a house in armonk new york in westchester county so started there um was there until kindergarten and in kindergarten we moved to pittsburgh i was in pittsburgh from fourth grade so i guess oh excuse me kindergarten so i was about five six years old until i was about 10. we were in pittsburgh and then from 10 through uh 17 we moved to knoxville tennessee which was a very interesting time you know there was only one synagogue and not a lot of jews and that was a much different childhood than certainly being in new york and and then we moved to dallas for my junior and senior year of high school so basically 17 and 18 i graduated from j.j pierce high school and went off to university of florida for college and then ended up in at george washington university for my master's degree so interesting when you say what was my neighborhood like and my
upbringing i was all over i wasn't in one particular place but i can definitely say that the jewish community in um all the places that we lived including knoxville because it was so small the jews stuck together now it was much smaller and it wasn't um it was a little bit harder for me because there wasn't as many kids i had you know just a few kids in my hebrew school class and in my sunday school class and i didn't totally relate to all of them and my gentile friends were all going to um and non-jewish friends i should say as a whole we're going
to young life and going to other organizations and i didn't understand why i couldn't do that but it was very important to my parents that we had a very strong jewish identity i was going to ask you about that since you have a different perspective of different cities can you recount for us a little bit about uh different jewish affiliations depending on what city you were living in like what were your parents what did they belong to what did you belong to what did you get involved in in the cities that you were you know when you were growing up sure so i don't remember
new york as much so so it's interesting because my dad grew up conservadox he was definitely conservative more on the orthodox side his home and then my mom you know obviously with her father passing away i don't know that judaism was necessarily the top priority in that home i think it was getting food on the table was more important than anything um you know my grandmother was trying to feed four children so so i think that was a little bit harder so she um had always had a harder um time identifying with with the jewish lifestyle although obviously raised my brother and i to be
um to follow the traditions and and all of that and it was important to my dad so it was important to my mom as well so in pittsburgh i can't remember we did belong to tree of life for a period of time but we moved to another synagogue and i can't remember the name of it but we were always conservative um and affiliated with the conservative synagogue and always went to the jcc and and things like that my mom worked for jewish family services i remember in pittsburgh she volunteered and didn't work but volunteered often and um so she was definitely affiliated with with jewish
family services in in pittsburgh when we moved to knoxville um it was a conservative it was called heska amuna and it was a conservative synagogue smaller but a very nice synagogue and i also did bbyo my parents really tried to get me involved in everything that we could um there was no jcc so it was really just the conservative synagogue and and bbyo and then when we moved to dallas we were members of sheriff so tell me about those early days in dallas what was your opinion what was your impression of what the city was like either you don't have to compare to other cities
but you can or just what was it like here period and what did you get involved in when you first came here that's a great question and i will tell you it's a little bit hard because i moved when i was my junior and senior year of high school and it was difficult those are difficult years to ask a teenager to move and leave their their peers and so there may have been a little bit of resentment so i didn't uh fully open my heart to being in dallas i was also in knoxville tennessee where you know we had just gotten a mall with a
gap in it and people here were shopping at nordstrom's and neiman's and it was just a much different um experience you know socially socially economically like the whole experience here in dallas felt much different than where i had been for my formative years which was really knoxville tennessee now i mean thank goodness my parents were so able to get us out and we traveled so much and um were able to go to florida and atlanta and all these different places from knoxville but there was still a little bit of a shelter shock for me when i moved to dallas so um i didn't really get
involved in anything within the jewish community here besides um you know going to the high holidays at sheriff and things like that and then i um for the first time in my life had jewish friends um i had never really had any knoxville none of my friends were jewish it's funny all my parents friends were jewish but i didn't necessarily relate to their my parents friends children so when i moved to dallas and my parents brought a house in prestonwood and there was a lot of our our neighbors were jewish and they had children my age and and they helped me meet new people to
go into jj pierce so that day one i didn't know anybody and um that definitely helped but it was my first time in my life that i really had jewish friends that i remember so tell us a little bit about your experiences when you went away to college how did you pick your college first of all and what did you do there what did you major in and what were your experiences right after college okay so i um being in dallas and truly not loving it i knew i didn't want to go to texas because i felt like everybody was going to texas i applied
to maryland because i thought i wanted to possibly be um near my entire family i have a huge family in the dc area so i applied to maryland and florida and you know like seven schools but i narrowed it down to i wanted something warm weather and went off i did not know a single person going there i went the summer session before school started to meet some people and again gravitated to the jewish other students there i rushed a sorority i knew i did not want a um all jewish sorority because i had you know had a experience with um such a mixed group
that i just knew i wanted to not be in an all jewish sorority so i rushed and ended up at uh kappa alpha theta and which ended up the year that i rushed ended up being my rush class was 30 jewish which was really like the perfect mix for me and um my best friend in the sorority ended up being a jewish girl and we are still very close and uh today so um had all my boyfriends and everything through college were all jewish and it was the really the first time that i felt that i belonged to a tribe of people that were going
to stick together and that made this huge university feel small again and i did um we went to the high holidays at the hillel house um didn't really get involved in much anything really um in the jewish world in college but definitely grad you know gravitated the jewish um the jewish population and then i majored in speech communications and i was a um i wanted to be a speech pathologist and so i graduated with my ba in speech communications and knew i had to get my master's so after college i applied and got into george washington university and received my master's in communication sciences from
from george washington university okay where did you go from there did you stay in that area so from there i so that that program is a two-year program and my second semester of my uh of my second year in december we were invite my family was invited to a wedding here in dallas um for hillary hillary and josh stern's wedded wedding hillary chrysler and josh stern were getting married and my family was invited to a wedding and that is where i met joe um my now husband of almost 16 years and we did long distance for the last semester of my um of my master's
program and when i graduated in may we decided i decided that i would look for jobs in dallas never really thinking i'd end up in dallas again i didn't have the best taste in my mouth for dallas which is interesting and never really thought i'd end up back here but i met the man that i love and so things change and um ended up back here at that point which was 2018 and um and got my first job as a speech pathologist and did that for about five years and um now i'm a realtor but but yeah but that's where how i ended up here
is i met joe at a wedding okay stranger things have happened right i know and i have to say i absolutely love it here i mean it's just different time of life different people different everything and you know i had it like i said before i hadn't opened my heart to dallas i think because it was just a hard hard time of life to move you know in the middle of high school so now it's i can't imagine myself anyplace else can you think of something at work or some project that you've done that has been very memorable to you um it depends on in
what form like memorable in what way um something you've achieved that you're very proud of let's say either i would say in your work in your work environment okay so i did um speech pathology for five years after i graduated my master's and then um i kind of switched courses i had a hard time getting pregnant with our first child and and had to take a lot of time off so i decided that i would resign for my position and um and i got my real estate license and um and so now i've been selling real estate for the last uh 14 almost 15 years
now and with it has been one of the most rewarding i think professions um out there i have loved it um my very first year out i got rookie of the year and have been a top producer um pretty much ever since that's fantastic yeah congratulations um speaking of that in real estate are you involved in any particular civic organizations and or any jewish organizations you and your husband or just you yourself so um i serve on the board of trustees at the the jewish community center i um had been on the board at temple emanuel but um rolled off the board and now i'm
just helping with the annual fund um the 40s cohort they've asked uh me and one other um woman to chair that that and i've done that for the last couple of years um and find that to be really rewarding um and then i get involved in my kids schools that's really where i kind of spend my my time is is between work jcc temple and the kids the kids schools i was going to ask you next uh how has your family increased so tell us about your family so our firstborn is jacob savriego and he was born in 2000 oh gosh let's see 2007 august
of 2007 and um so he was just born bar mitzvahed and um so he is 13 and he is at he's actually been at a the dallas isd public school um since kindergarten and he's gone he's now entering into seventh grade so um you know being in a public school system i try and get my feet in the that door as much as i can and see what's going on there and volunteer very good and then cooper came along a couple years later in 2009 so he's yeah cooper's uh 10 and um yeah he's 10 years old and he is entering into fifth grade this
year and he is at preston hollow presbyterian he um has dyslexia so he's in a program there at preston hollow presbyterian and so again try and be really involved in that school as well very good now you've been to dallas if you've lived here twice early on when you were a teenager and then later on when you got married so not comparing the first time you were here but comparing when you first got to dallas the second time around as a married woman getting married here till now how do you think the city has changed the city itself the jewish community or anything else that
you can tell us about sure city itself i think has grown and you're asking from a realtor perspective so of course i see the people the influx of people moving in here every day and one of the things that i try and um i have a business partner and what she and i try and pride ourselves on is making sure that especially our jewish clients come in and find their way so whether it is through the jewish day schools it is through the different synagogues it is in neighborhoods that we feel like they will be um find people that are um of like mind so
um it has i mean infrastructure has changed culturally it has changed i mean the fact that we have um so many different performing arts centers and we have different magnet schools and we have um you know now the human rights center and the holocaust museum i mean that is just huge for our city um i've always said that dallas is landlocked but it has so much to offer and you can get to the east coast and you can get to the west coast in two to three hours on an airplane right it's just so easy versus having to live on the east coast and trying
to get to the west coast which takes six hours you could go to europe for that so um you know it's just being in the center of the country lends itself to be um very attractive for i think people moving in here um i also and maybe it's my own um building within the jewish community but when i first got here and joe and i got engaged and then we got married and was like okay so what synagogue are we going to join joe's family's been a member of temple emanuel and his parents were met were were born there and he was bar mitzvahed there
as he will tell you but um you know so it was just kind of natural that we joined temple emanuel and i got more and more involved really as my kids when my kids were born they started at the ecec there and i got very involved and i was pta president and i loved being in that building and being with them and i just see the jewish community and maybe it's that i got more involved in it but i see it being so tight-knit welcoming and um people are just nice here they want to help they want to to meet people they want to be
involved so it's a i just find it to be a really nice community i'm glad you changed your mind from when you were a teenager didn't i so on a personal note two things i want to end with almost who do you feel would you would you consider a role model in your life and also what are you the most proud of so a role model in my wh my life would definitely be my bubby who lost her husband very young and was able to pick herself up and raise her four daughters who are all still married have wonderful children have a sense of family
um i have 10 first cousins and we get together every thanksgiving and now of course our immediate family has grown to our thanksgivings are now 40 people because you know we've multiplied um but a strong woman like that is someone to really look up to she was the matriarch for sure [Music] and um and tell me the second question what did you what would you consider something you were the most proud of i mean my boys my marriage with my husband we have a wonderful we have a wonderful marriage we have wonderful family we um have a lot of open communication and i think that's
something to be proud that's beautiful before we conclude is there anything lauren that you would like to add that we have not touched on or anything else you would just like to make sure is in this video no i think we've hit the highlights for sure there's probably so much more i could add but but i think we definitely hit hit the highlights okay if you think of more you want to add we can always do another taping that would be fine we've done that before so thank you so much for your time and we look forward talking with your husband soon thank you appreciate
it okay okay take care thanks joe okay you