Leslie Schultz
Leslie Schultz was born in Kansas City, the youngest of four children in what she calls an ideal family life. Her paternal grandfather emigrated from Russia, and her father was born in Russia and came to the United States in 1905; her mother was born in Kansas City. Her father worked as a printer and was the major printer for Hallmark cards when the company was starting out, having begun by selling newspapers on street corners as a boy. Deeply devoted to the Jewish community, he was president of countless organizations and synagogues, coached YMCA basketball teams, and taught confirmation classes. When he died in 1984, some 1,300 people signed the guestbook. Leslie's mother insisted the family gather every Christmas Day, a tradition the extended family continues to this day.
Leslie attended school in Kansas, including Southwest High School and the private Barstow School, then Colorado Woman's College in Denver. As a teenager she was active in BBYO and USY and attended Jewish camp, including Camp Ramah, every summer. Back in Kansas City she met Howard Schultz on a blind date arranged after Howard's mother met Leslie's sister at a fine men's store. They married quickly and lived briefly in Teaneck, New Jersey, and Minneapolis before a job opportunity brought them to Dallas in 1964, where Howard worked for Skillern's and later Sanger Harris. Startled by a John Birch Society billboard on arrival, Leslie resolved to give her children a strong Jewish grounding, enrolling them at Akiba Academy and joining Congregation Shearith Israel.
Akiba Academy became a lifelong passion. Leslie and Howard remained committed to the school through difficult years and, wanting a proper campus, purchased land and offered it free and clear to Akiba on the condition that it follow modern orthodoxy and share the campus with Yavneh Academy. Eight of their nine grandchildren attended Akiba. Leslie also supported adult Jewish education, praising the Florence Melton program and the DeLeT teacher-training initiative, and helped fund Solomon Schechter as well. She and Howard built a business together before she founded Garrett Creek Ranch, a fifty-room conference center. Inspired by a JDC trip to Argentina where she witnessed the power of one, Leslie takes greatest pride in her three children, Jamie, Danny, and Andy, and her nine grandchildren carrying forward the family's commitment to giving back.
Full Transcript
today is October 4th 2006 my name is Rosalyn Ben jet and we are here today with Leslie Schultz and in present are sherry roost who is taking notes and Debbie saya is our videographer Leslie tell me about your family you're from Kansas City I have two sisters my sister one of my sisters recently and a brother I was the youngest of four and we had an ID league life in Kansas City my parents were my father was very very involved and active and we just enjoyed life enjoy Confirmation and all of us at one time or another went to work in his classes along with all my cousins how did your family get to st.
to Kansas City my grandfather came from Russia and [Music] a neighbor somebody else who's in Kansas City Missouri and he wanted to and that was exactly how much money he had to get to Canada and when he got there he was from I moved in with this guy and then started his own stuff and to be honest with you I don't know how my father's parents got to Kansas City probably the same way they died before I was born so probably they got there the same way approximately when do you think it was that your grandfather did get there well depends how much grandfather well
what um my father was born in Russia and they came to the United States in 1905 and my mother's was born in Kansas City who actually won in the United States and I don't know exactly when her parents came to the United States I just don't know it's a late 18-hundreds I'm sure and then Kansas City the early nineteen hundred's and what did your parents do for a living my father was a printer he was the major printer for Hallmark cards when Homer started in business and that was his business for years he started out selling newspaper come street corners as a young boy and
then he and his best friend Sam that they could buy a rundown falling apart printing company little tiny place with all hand presses of course that's all they had in those days and that's what he did he would say printer and did your family attend a synagogue very much involved in the conservative synagogue best shut up in Kansas City and that's where I grew up mm-hmm and what was the extent of your family's participation what did they do oh my goodness my father was president of everything in Kansas City every Jewish organization every synagogue the old folks home Banega there wasn't anything in the Jewish
life that he was not involved with as a youngster he was a tremendous basketball player and as he got older he was the coach for all the YMCA basketball teams did that for years and years and years and then started teaching as I mentioned confirmation class and then not to know even more people there wasn't he I don't think there was anybody in Kansas City didn't know him when my father died in 1984 there were 1,300 people signed the guestbook it was overwhelming to ask all these people we didn't even know and whose lives he had touched how did your family celebrate Jewish holidays we
were very much involved with Passover of course and Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur we broke the fast act and uncles every year would that fail my mother was a great believer that we spend time together as a family she always had this saying that everybody says today also you commit your friends with traffic family and since you can't pick your family you have to be responsible to and for them so from the time I was born every year on Christmas Day our family got together and she chose Christmas Day because it's the only day nobody was in school and none of the men were working and
everybody had an excuse and had no excuse rather not to come and be together with the family we do that to this day to this day everybody in our family goes to Kansas City and we are together this is on my mother's side of family and we are together on Christmas Day that's me tell me about your education where did you start school I went to school I had a little schooling in Kansas prairie village then I went to Southwest High School and then my parents transferred me to Barstow High School which was a private girls school in Kansas City and from there I went
to Colorado Woman's College in Denver and after that I came back to Dallas where I met how a blind date in Dallas or you know I'm sorry in Kansas City Kansas City back to Kansas I went back to Kansas City after college yes I met Howard on a blind date uh-huh in Kansas in Kansas City um what was he doing there he was working in the retail industry he was with text department store and actually his mother was very concerned that he wasn't dating any nice to its girls and she heard about this lovely Jewish girl who worked at a very fine men store Jack
Henry's on the plaza and she went to meet her and it was my sister and my sister started chatting with Howard's mother and discovered that Howard was a little too young for her so she suggested that he called me and Howard and I went out on a blind date and that was that we met on February 9th and we married July 1st I want to do yeah very short move to Teaneck New Jersey the interesting thing is in April he left to go back he got a transfer to work at allied stores in New York City and so most of our courtship was by mail
and by telephone and I really think would that to know each other pretty well by mail you can say a lot more in a letter sometimes they will say face-to-face let's go back a minute to being a teenager in Kansas City where you active in Jewish youth groups or Aryan body school groups very involved with bBYO very involved in us why and from the time I was 11 until I was 18 I went to Jewish camps Camp Ramah every summer until I was a junior counselor the last year before I went away to college and after college I didn't go back to camp anymore but
very involved in Jewish youth groups what's fun it's fun in Kansas City there aren't that many Jewish people so if you want to have a Jewish life you have to put yourself out there and do something and where did you live after we were married the first place we lived was in Teaneck New Jersey and we were there for a year and we moved to Minneapolis Minnesota when Howard got a transfer and we were there for a year and then we moved here in 1964 and what brought you to Dallas another job opportunity Howard had an opportunity to go to work as controller of skilar
instruct store which is long gone sales bought skill earns and after that he went to work for Sanger Harris what were your impressions of the city when you arrived Dallas yes scared the life out of me we drove down highway 35 and as we approached the city the first thing we saw was this huge billboard the John Birch Society Wilson welcomes you to Dallas Texas it frightened man we had Cheney at that point in time and the first thing I did was start looking for because there was no question in my mind our kids were gonna know that some kind of Jewish school that John
Birch Society really frightens me when we had been here I think it was about eight or nine months and Howard was still working at scale and I went in one day and I bought these really cute little coffee cups and inside each one of them was a little note that said Zionism is racism and it only solidified my feeling that if we were going to bring up a family here we would have to do something on our own to make sure that they knew who they were and what their roots were and what we expected of them as Jews in Dallas Texas and that's what
we did what was the Jewish community like at that time in Dallas in Dallas well it was very small the interesting thing is I think maybe for the first 10 or 15 years that we were here I put up counted on the fingers of one hand the number of people I knew who were from Dallas nobody was from Dallas which was really quite nice because everybody welcomes you you didn't feel like a an outsider because everybody was an outsider and of course as the years have gone by we met many many more people who are from here but at that point in time almost everybody
we met was from someplace else and it was a nice community it was easy to get to know people we were members of sheriff Israel it was a nice family-oriented synagogue not really really big we put our children as each one came along into a Kiva Academy because as I mentioned it was going to a state school at the time here that this was very important to us for their future it would the reform community we didn't even know and we didn't even say they lived in a different world than we did if you belong to sheriff or if you've had a child in the
day school and of course that's where our friends came from your children make your friends for you actually and that's why and what year wasn't when he came to Dallas gave me Dallas in 1964 64 um you were involved with Akiba for a very long time I still like to pretend I still have yes I think it's been part of the love of my life Howard was never really happy with this idea and they basically coming from New Jersey schools closed on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur you know everybody was Jewish no matter where you went everybody was Jewish and he agreed that we could
keep the kids in a cave until they were third or fourth grade until they could really learn to read and write and then they'd go to public school well at that by that time he was so in love with the school and became very involved himself that there was no question that we were not going to take and that we were going to take our children out the community of akeeba was very small also it was a battle in those days Federation was not a major supporter of the school when they became a major supporter of the school there were even comments made that people
would not give money to Federation because Federation was subsidizing a ghetto quote get out of school it was a very difficult to hard road to hoe sometimes being and I keep it there it but the schooling was so good and our children were thriving and so that was what we were going to stick with that was the best thing for them and a good thing for us and of course it's the years of gods I the school has grown and changed and don't move on through all kinds of metamorphosis as schools always do we weren't thrilled with what we did eight of our nine grandchildren
the a to live in Dallas now go to Cuba and their parents all had choices we never put any pressure on them but they're all there because they remember the education and the caring and the loving that they got from the school how did the how has the school evolved well there were changes in the beginning it was always considered an orthodox school then we and influx of I don't want to be rude but ultra-orthodox who wanted to change the school and move it much further in one direction than the majority of the parents were willing to do and fortunately they decided to start their
own school and we lost a good hundred students plus and then we went back to our roots back to what it was now it's called modern orthodoxy it's it's that time the changes came about in the school because of the needs of the parent body and so when when the altar I left and started their own school we had enough left to keep this core group growing and of course now the school's just going crazy just like crazy when the new school and the new campus came into being you were tremendously instrumental and funding it and nurturing it can you tell us a little bit
about that one of the things I learned from my father right at his knee is sometimes you have to step in front of the process to get things to happen and Howard I talked about this the school needed a new building it needed a lot of work it needed a physical plant that befit the education they were trying to give the students but the Board of Directors was having a very difficult time trying to decide how to do that and whether to take the risk this is very expensive and would they have enough commitment from enough clearance to be able to fund it not just
to build it but to maintain it and the discussions were going on and on and on and on and on so how I decided to do just what we had learned step in front process and we bought the land where all of the Drita was and we offered it free and clear cleared of the old building of the old Pedrito building to Akiba Academy on the condition that they may the rules of modern orthodoxy that they had started with and that yaadon Academy could also be on the same campus because they were in the same position they had moved around from place to place for
several years never having really a basic home they were in portable buildings at this point and done they needed a site also so we really just jumped right out in and said if you want it these are only requirements Torah Mota Torah and science yesterday and today follow those kinds of rules and most schools think on the same campus and it's yours and they accepted and that's how this new campus came about now let's go back in time a little bit and what you were in Dallas with your young children your husband started to some business yes he did it was a very scary time
he will tell you more in his interview but from my point of view it was petrified we had a lovely home over on Meyer would I like this going along just beautifully and he lost his shop and we had major decisions to make first where was he going to find another job and we needed to be prepared to move quickly if he did find another job out of the city so we sold our home and the majority of our furniture and moved into a little three bedroom duplex just a couple of blocks from here and Howard was having a very difficult time finding a job
it was not easy he was a little older and those were the days where nobody was gonna hire anybody who was older than 40 it was just very difficult and so he decided to try something that he had done in his own department at Sanger Harris I don't know if you want me to describe it or you want it from our looks let him do that I think will be a great baby he does it better than I could hmm but it's nice to hear from the woman's point of view yeah it was a frightening time and when the business started to take off it
became incredibly exciting for me different than Howard maybe it's typical of most men but they judge their success on the amount of money they make for me it was more and more men in their 50s and 60s getting a new lease on life and you would see them these regional managers across the country and then across the world who would start out kind of hangdog and in the first meetings you know there's a bunch of guys sitting around with their shoulders down I'm not very happy by the second year so no sir back head was that there was a lot more laughter you just saw
the change in an opportunity because they were given an opportunity and they succeeded and it was just a joy to watch was just marvelous for me I loved it and did you help in the business of the begin well in the beginning I did I wrote a lot of the claims for Howard he checked everything I did it used to drive him crazy but I did that but with the kids and his travel it was getting to be too difficult for me so they hired more and more and more healthy that God he fired me and I quit on the name and let's go back
to the kids because we stopped with Janie right after day after Janie we were told that we could not have children and so we adopted a beautiful boy Danny who's the light of my life at the time maybe it's typical of most men but they judge their success on the amount of money they make for me it was more and more men in their 50s and 60s getting a new lease on life and you would see them these regional managers across the country and then across the world who would start out kind of dog and in the first meetings you know there's a bunch of
guys sitting around with their shoulders down I'm not very happy by the second year so no sir back head was up there was a lot more laughter you just saw the change in an opportunity because they were given an opportunity and they succeeded and it was just a joy to watch which is marvelous for me I loved it and did you help in the business of the begin well in the beginning I did I wrote a lot of the claims for Howard he checked everything I did it used to drive him crazy but I did that but with the kids and his travel it was
getting to be too difficult for me so they hired more and more and more helping that God he fired me and I quit on the name and let's go back to the kids because we stopped with Jamie right after Jamie after Janey we were told that we could not have children and so we adopted a beautiful boy Danny who's the light of my life at this point in time Danny is a pilot with Continental Express I got nella I'm sorry just moved up to God no please Continental and he's just moving from Burlington Vermont to Houston so we will have all three of our children
in Texas our youngest is Andy Andy worked with our for many many years until he sold the company and that was fun danny has one little girl Abigail Ida and Andy has four children and Cheney has four so we have nine grandchildren russellton I had no control over the number sexes or anything enjoy until overall but you became interested in the idea of a conference center - I had been planning Howard's meetings nationally for 16 years my youngest left for college I was born all those years besides working with Howard on his meetings I had volunteered and volunteer and volunteer and volunteered and I decided
I needed to do something for me and what did I know intimately was the small meeting business and I had had many difficulties over the years planning meetings for 25 to 50 people so I decided to build a conference at her my own image of what I felt that size group needed so I spent a year and a half proving it to the powers that be that means power and investment people and hotel people anybody who might be working with me on this proving that it could be successful when they agreed then I spent another year and a half fighting a piece of land which
I did an hour from the airport and we built a western-themed conference center Garrett Creek Ranch and we named it Gary cuz it's on your brief besides we couldn't figure out any names and Schultz sounded good as a conference so Garrett Creek sounded better and now it is my my fourth child yet we have 50 rooms we take under people in double occupancy and we are doing very very well and of course it's a pleasure for me now because Janie is taking over my position and it's fun to train her and work with her and what might we expect if we went to the conference
center for a historical conference say what you should and in fact I'd be delighted to make a meeting for your board whether you want a day or overnight let me know what you will find is individual personalized service that is incredibly flexible so that if for example your morning meeting is going so well that you don't want to break for lunch at your scheduled 12 o'clock done it's no problem we'll change it to the time that works for you you will find that your if you want to eat meat or Greek you must go outside you must walk from your room outside into the main
building where the meeting rooms are where the dining room is and what ouches you will find windows in all the meeting rooms it's a very casual laid-back professional atmosphere and when we have all the top anything you would need in a way they'd be equipment and they were wireless and we've got it all out there to support your meeting but we have the unusual that you wouldn't expect for example being able to go outside we have night lights in every bathroom I don't know how many times you've traveled that you if you travel a lot you can't find the bathroom in the middle of the
night so we put night lights in every bathroom things of that nature we try to eliminate the problems that I had our meeting rooms are all separate there's no coming walls so you never have to worry about noise bleeding in from one to the other we also have a lot of meetings outside I don't know when the last time you sat in the Pecan Grove and added me but it's a lot of fun it's very nice broadens your horizon makes you think a little differently and what vision do you have for the conference center in the future oh I just want it to get better
and better and better and more and more full we've just finished remodeling 26 of our rooms because it had been 18 years and was time to redo them there are exactly the same as they were before just fresh coats of paint a few more new pictures on the wall and things like that but we're just really doing well just on the cutting edge of everything what are other costs are you passionate about Joy's education no that's not fair yeah I'm too much education in all aspects in all aspects whether its adult Jewish education I'm passionate about mountain I think it's one of the best things
that's come along in the last 50 years I applaud Florence Melton for her vision and and her desire to open this up a whole range of knowledge and information to a whole group of people that would never have taken advantage of it we've been very involved in a program called delit which is training people who want to change and go into the education you know change from whatever they've been doing before and we train them to be not science teachers or math teachers or English teachers although that's what they may want to be we train them to teach from a Jewish point of view so
for example I was watching one of the training sessions and they were talking about numbers and counting for little children and so what was the example they used let's talk about Noah she moved by two by two by two let's add up the twos and then they went into a science lesson and started talking about the animals that went on the ark and so they try to give a Jewish perspective to every facet of Education are the people who go through the program Jewish necessarily oh yeah they're always there altars and and they look they're going to be placed around they are being played since
it's been going on for four years ago they're been placed around the country we don't have anybody yet here in Dallas but we will we will have a Dell Excel is what they're both either AB Solomon chapter or Akiba in the near future I'm sure of it where did they receive the training now there's two places one at Brandeis University and the other an agency in Los Angeles University of California page hqc Center that's exciting that's us and of course between Akiba and jana were major supporters of Solomon chapter we just believe in in education in all of its forms and formats I think a
lot of that came from my father being a conformation teacher and I've never ever at any time saw my father without a book in his hands and it rubs off it just carries through what suggestions might you make to other parents regarding their children's Jewish education don't let it go one of the most exciting things to can do whether it's a synagogue school a day school I guess that's the only kind of schools I can think of at the moment preschool whatever it may be learn from your kids and let your kids teach you what it is that they're learning in school but you've got
to stay up with them so you've got to keep up your Jewish education at the same time that's the best advice I can give to any parent of a Jewish child today keep up with your kids education and try to be a step or two ahead of them can you tell us about your family today and about two grandchildren oh my goodness the light of my life the light of my life as I said they're all at Akiba the oldest then is 13 he's flummox but will be in a month he just had his first over yet and Akiba just very very excited about that
as we were we were all there to see him his next is his sister but do you want me to give you their names or their agent next is daya these are Jenni's children next is daya with age 10 and in the fifth grade next is Adina Dahlia by the way as a gymnast next is Adina Adina is a nine or almost knowing and she is in second grade second grade and she's an artist then their youngest is mica who is six and Mike it's just an all-around little boy its cutest thing ever since then Danny my son danny has Abigail Ida who just turned
five and she is a chatterbox who is the most inventive creative child I've ever seen who can make up the most wonderful stories I hope she'll be an authoress when she grows up Andy has for his oldest is Zachary who is 10 Zachary is an athlete all of his children are athletes actually next is at Gabriella Gabriella is 9 and she's also an athlete she could be a marble soul cheerleader she said got a little girl then we have Sam Sam is seven and Sam will take on any sport any kind you should see him play golf you cannot believe how this kid can hit
a golf ball at that age and then their youngest is max Jordan who is just 2 and they're just of course the best grandchildren on earth hmm and who are your role models my father my husband my daughter woody what are you most proud of I'm most proud that my children have followed pretty much the same that that Howard and I have in giving back to the community in being as actively involved besides giving of their own resources without us having to say anything when they were very little from the beginning I required all my children to give 10% of everything they got whether it
was a bat mitzvah Bar Mitzvah birthday gift whatever money they had they had to be 10% away and thanks don't do that to this day not because I tell them to because now they're adults but because it's ingrained and they follow through and that makes us very proud very proud to see what they do I don't always agree with the things they support but they're active and they're involved and they participate not just with their money but with their hands and their marks in their arm something interesting Howard's very involved in JDC the Joint Distribution Committee and we went to Argentina several years ago during
the height of the collapse of the Jewish community there and I saw what I call the power of one I saw one woman see a need there were no facilities for children from birth to three years of age she had no money she had no back end and she had no support and she started a program for these children I met a woman in the town of Moises Ville little tiny Moises Ville who saw a need that their community needed a hospital in order to go to the hospital you had to drive four or five hours if you needed any testing done who had to
drive four or five hours then wait a week to ten days and then drive back to get your results she prevailed upon the governor of that region and she got a hospital built now this wasn't just for Jews this is for the whole area I saw a man @ll a young man at villa one who said to us I'm going to change this world that I live in I'm gonna make it better for my parents I'm gonna make it better for my friends so I'm gonna make it better for me so it just hit me the impact that one person can make sometimes in big
ways sometimes in very small ways but that power one can change the world and I hope that each of my children will become those kinds of powers of one is there anything that you would like to add and thrilled with the Jewish Historical Society I think if you don't know your roots and where you came from you have no idea where you're going I worry sometimes that people forget about or will forget about World War 2 and the Holocaust just like we don't even talk about World War one or the Civil War back to the Revolutionary War unless you're studying history so if we in
Dallas don't have a good record of what we were like in the beginning and what got us to where we are today and did that impact on where we're heading in the future we would be in trouble so the Historical Society really has a major all to buy in this community or yesterday for today and for tomorrow for all of us we're trying Debbie you're cleaning can we could we walk around Sam and I too vile he was a shoemaker and up here is my mother's parents Sarah and Sam when Grover on their anniversary their 60th wedding anniversary with all their children and grandchildren we're
very fortunate to have five generations in our family my grandmother my mother my sister her daughter and my aunt her twins that we get together every year on business day these are pictures that we take a picture every year here's 1968 I mean they're all over the world and they've been such fun and this is our family my mother and father and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren and we have such a good time with it how was your maiden name vile hard name to grow up with okay was it spent back spell VI L a very difficult to grow up with but
we were also proud of what my father did that we walked around like this you know our shoulders back I'll show you how Earth's mother okay and then after his father passed away his mother married Bernard Webster here's how it is a little boy and this is his mother on her wedding day but what I love is the first time I wore it see the blue flower oh yeah it's all handbag the first time I wore it somebody burned a hole in it with a cigarette and my grandmother was so upset so that always reminds me but when there was nobody left to wear it
it was packed away in blue tissue I send the head with that I framed it I couldn't let my grandson where it's too way too fragile yeah it'll fall apart there's anything I don't what here I'll show you some collections