Lois Finkelman
Lois Finkelman grew up in an apartment in the city of Chicago, not far from Wrigley Field, surrounded by grandparents on both sides and a family culture of community involvement. Her father was an accountant with an office in downtown Chicago, and her mother and grandmother were active volunteers in the Jewish community, belonging to organizations such as the National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah. The family belonged to a large Reform congregation. She especially admired her maternal grandmother, a Romanian-born seamstress who had worked in Paris before immigrating to Chicago, and who became a suffragette and a progressive, open-minded influence on Lois's life. She has a younger brother who is a psychiatrist in Chicago.
Lois was a die-hard University of Michigan fan and had early acceptance to Michigan, but when her father became very ill during her senior year of high school, her mother asked her to stay closer to home. She enrolled at Northwestern University, where she met her husband Ross, a year ahead of her. They married the day after she graduated college and moved to Columbus for his medical school at Ohio State, then to Chicago for his internship and to Little Rock Air Force Base for two years of Air Force service. When Ross chose to pursue pediatrics, they came to Dallas for his residency at Children's, intending only a temporary stay, but they put down roots and never seriously considered leaving.
As a young mother, Lois joined the League of Women Voters and the National Council of Jewish Women, remaining involved with Council for decades. Her interest in the environment led her to lead a local group called Save Open Space and to chair the Dallas County park and open space board before serving nearly eight years on the Dallas Park Board, including as president. Encouraged to run for office, she served four terms on the Dallas City Council under mayors including Ron Kirk and Laura Miller. Her civic and nonprofit work has included the Associated with Children's Medical Center, the State Fair of Texas board, and the Dallas Zoo, where she began as a docent in 1980 and later chaired the zoo's management board through its privatization. She also contributed her papers to the Women of the Southwest archive at SMU.
Full Transcript
this is an oral history of louis beckerman on march 17th 2015 the interviews being conducted by many Segal good morning Louis good morning Nate thank you for welcoming us into your home we're very interested in your background for our archives we're thrilled that you're going to be honored at the answer core event but most importantly we will have this oral history for our archives tell me about your childhood growing up or from your family I grew up in Chicago in the city not in a suburb in an apartment I never lived in a house till long after I was married and it was interesting I
my grandparents were around on both sides and both my grandmother and my mother were amazing examples of community volunteers they were very active in the Jewish community my grandmother was doing volunteer work and a home for the agent when she was well into her 80s and she would talk about those old people so I grew up with kind of being part of the community as part of my culture I never thought differently about it having younger brother who's a psychiatrist in Chicago with all of his children and all of his family around whereas we moved here for my husband to do a pediatric residency many
years ago with no intention of West Allis was a waste stop along walk along the road to summer we weren't exactly sure where the road was going back at summer and lo and behold after being here for three years we never seriously thought about leaving well Dallas is very lucky there's no silence a study returning to your childhood tell me about your your family's involvement in the Jewish community in Chicago my father was an accountant had an office in downtown Chicago my mother and my grandmother who were members of breath and my mother was a member and an active member of council I think my
grandmother was active in Hadassah over the years and for the most part their circle of friends turned out to be a group of women in men that they had gone through high school with and they state's lifelong friends lifelong friends the last remaining one of those women passed away a couple of months ago so we were very much a Jewish family although like many Jewish families in Chicago in those days we didn't spend a lot of time in Temple we belong to a large Reform congregation and we were all confirmed to my brotherís permits but there weren't a whole lot of bat mitzvahs in those
days so that wasn't part of my background but I think being Jewish was always part of how we would have to find ourselves and I think that from generation to generation was kind of what we what got passed on to me hopefully passed on to some of my children growing up in Chicago was a phenomenal experience because in those days while we lived in the city not far from Wrigley Field we could get on our bikes and ride south to the Lincoln Park Zoo which my friends and I often did or get on our bikes and ride north to Evanston which is where I ended
up for college interestingly enough and I had a tremendous amount of freedom just a tremendous amount of freedom I loved growing up in a big city where there was lots going on and lots to do but I think what I didn't realize was what I really really loved was the freedom to kind of come and go and she pleased my mother never drove me anyplace very much unlike life here with our kids growing up where someone was always driving them somewhere and we were on our bikes it was it was really a wonderful place to grow up and in some respects I kind of miss
not being able to have given our kids that kind of life but I don't know that that kind of life exists anymore in the same way it did when I was growing up that's interesting to hear that's very true tell me about your college experience well I was a die-hard University of Michigan fan and had applied to Michigan as a junior and received early acceptance and had my housing for year-and-a-half following and then my father became very ill and it was my senior year and my mother said to me will you please not go away to college even though Ann Arbor wasn't very far from
Chicago that was far enough that she kind of felt she wanted me closer so I marched myself up to Northwestern and I said you know here my grades will you take me I don't need housing I can live at home as a freshman and fortunately you know the fates played their role and I did end up at Northwestern eventually on campus of course and that's where I met my husband who was a year ahead of me at Northwestern and he had a wonderful three years together it was a wonderful place to go to school in those days all the advantages of being in Chicago and
the advantages of being in a somewhat smaller community so small by comparison in those days it probably still is I don't know what the population is and our Western had a very tight Jewish community for those who lived on campus lots of activities lots of socialites and academically stretched one's mind enough so that at the end of the day when you walked out you felt like you had a good education and what ultimately brought you to know the Europe essence pediatric residency right we have we had gone from Chicago I keep graduated and went to Ohio State Medical School which is where he was from
I graduated the following year and my mother in just a classic example of mothers of those days said you can't go to Columbus unless you're married now did any of us think to say that to any of our kids of course not but she did yeah like a good girl I called Ross and I said Ross I can't come unless we get married and his parents have been saying why don't you wait till you finish medical school which was another three years and and that was not acceptable to either one of us so indeed we got married the day after I graduated college and headed
off to call Miss Warren Columbus for the following three years of his medical school went back to Chicago for an internship during which Ross decided that he wanted no part of living in Chicago long term that he was commuting as an intern and it was not a pleasant situation we were living in a fourth floor walk-up that had no hot water and sometimes said no he but I was close to home and all of my old friends and family so I was but then we left after his internship and were sent to Little Rock Air Force Base for his two years in the Air Force
spent two years at Little Rock which turned out to be a wonderful experience except for the specter of being sent of it Vietnam kind of being held over fortunately didn't happen by the time he finished he decided he wanted to be a pediatrician and the program in Dallas at Children's was the one he wanted to be in and we were lucky enough to for him to be accepted and as they say the rest is history we're here our roots are here now how did you get started in community life here in Dallas on your volunteer work and that's a really good question and I guess
there are a couple of answers to that as a very young mother I became involved in the League of Women Voters and National Council of Jewish women and continued my membership in those organizations to this day probably from a volunteer aspect occasionally I'm still doing things with with Council when someone calls me and says will you do this but somewhere along the way I got involved in more civic oriented things I had been interested in the environment and ended up being president of a local environmental group called save open space whose goal it was to preserve flood plains and protect open space and lobby for
parks at City Hall and a spot had become available on the park board for the city and Jerry Bartos who was then the council member representing much of his part of North Dallas called me and asked me if I wanted to serve and I jumped at the chance because typically in those days those spots were coveted and they typically went to someone who had either played a major role in someone's political campaign or had written as significant check and that turned out to be part of what was what led me to where I was at City Hall I guess I forgotten prior to that I'd
chaired the park and open space board for Dallas County I've gotten involved in in Dallas County parks and open space for it and sat on that board for many many years and was the second chair and then I guess transitioned to the city of Dallas and the park board there and then served for almost eight years and when you serve in a board like that you really get to know the community and you get to know neighbors and neighborhoods because you become the point person for anything the neighborhood is concerned about with respect to a park and and because I was there so long I
really had built up I think a number of relationships and when I was in my last term the park board I began to get calls from people who wanted me to consider running for City Council thing I'd never considered I had no ambitions to be a an elected official I was perfectly happy being out of heart point but that was going to end regardless of how I felt about it and after giving it much thought after Russ and I talking about it our kids were at a point where my being involved in something that was as demanding is that was time wise I wasn't going
to be an issue they were capable of putting peanut butter and jelly sandwich together quite quite effectively so I said yes and was successful and then spent my four terms on the City Council which I think was both fascinating and frustrating and energizing yeah all of the possible various terms one could think of yeah I'm went on council at a point in time with the city budget was in very bad shape so every year we were cutting of things rather than looking to see what we could improve and then before I whirled off things got better and and we were in good shape and we
were looking to do some new things exciting things so it was an exciting time to be around I served council under two different mayor's Ron Kirk and Laura Miller and had been appointed to the park board as president initially by Steve Bartlett when he was mayor and then buying right occurred when he was mayor so I had lots of different political backgrounds from the standpoint of of those kind of relationships and I think that I think that helped me think about what's going on in different parts of the city how different neighborhoods are affected differently by different kinds of things and are interested in different
kinds of things you know what's important to someone who lives on my block may not be important to somebody who lives in East Dallas or West Dallas or South Dallas and as a councilmember it's important to make sure that everybody's happy city needs to to prosper and be be considered as a whole I think as much as possible there's probably a little bit too much divisive nough snowing on for me you have served on so many boards and advisory boards how have you managed to balance you know I I don't know that I have done any more than anybody else but I seem to have
a relatively high energy level I've still managed to keep up my tennis which I think kind of keeps me stable you know it keeps me out of I shouldn't say North Park but it keeps me out of the shopping malls or other places where I might be spending my time and and then I just have always felt that you know the nonprofit world is a critical part of what makes a city special to be able to have been a part of some of those organizations who either were social service kinds of organizations providing services or financial support in the social service area or like today
serving on the Dallas super board because I think the zoo is such a critical part of what makes our city special you just do what is your favorite thing which well it is favorite thing or that you've served on that's almost an unfair question because I think it kind of depends on what I'm thinking about it I serve on the Associated supported children's which is one of those sports where you really feel good about the fact that a Children's Medical Center exists in Dallas you don't ever want to have to take your children or grandchildren there for medical services but if you do you realize
how lucky we are to have children's in the Dallas community I sit on the State Fair Board and what could be more fun than than you know having kind of backstage access to the State Fair of Texas every year and then the zoo which interestingly enough was my first volunteer role in 1980 when we first kind of moved here and I was getting situated in my kids work and a point that I can actually get away to do some volunteer work I was a zoo docent I had a partner and we took animals to schools and we would talk to the primarily lower kid lower
lower school gives about what it means to have a pet and what kind of good pen said how you have to be responsible and we had a snake in he had sometimes pig and we had an Amazon green parrot and my partner at one point lived in a house off of straight Lane and had sheep and we would load up one of her sheep and put it in the back of a trailer and take it to an elementary school in Dallas so that was my very very first day and it was the first year that the Junior League had given up the school docent program
at the zoo and opened it up to non Junior League members and it was great fun I did that for for a number of years and and then at this point to have been lucky enough to have chaired the Dallas Zoo management board which was the operational board when we privatized the zoo six years ago and and to see the zoo just blossom I mean I don't know whether you've been there lately but if you haven't as an adult it's going down there on a beautiful day probably not when it's a hundred degrees up and walking around and it's not the same zoo we took
our children to and it's not the same zoo we all remember it's a it's a new and different places it's recognized by suit people all over the world and all over the country so it's exciting now to be a part of of that still and see you know even though my role has changed again we collapse the board I had chaired and I stood on the Zoological Society board now but that's great fun you know and there's always something I mean there's always something new I recently got involved in the archives of the women of the Southwest and SMU a part of the SMU library
system and they're collecting papers from women like you like me in archiving them for future students and educators to go through in order to have a record of what it was like to be a woman during a certain period of time we're doing a certain thing somewhere in the southwest is not limited to Dallas or Texas and that's been fun an interesting field that I probably do very little about have they got many materials from Jewish yeah oh yes absolutely absolutely in fact I I think and Margolin papers went there last year and and mine will go there no absolutely absolutely and they are always
looking for papers so if if you know some of someone who would be interested in you know for the most part our kids don't want those papers they're gonna sit in a box in the garage or the Attic and get moly and mildewed and ma feed and at least they will be in a place where at some point someone will go through them and they will be maintained and cherished and ultimately I'm sure digitized and research and researchable for someone so ya know that absolutely there are Jewish women who have donated their papers there and Jewish women who have served on the board and are
currently serving of importance so it's it's very broadly reaching out anything else you would like to have you've had a very exciting interesting life to date oh well you know I I don't know what the future holds I'm glad that we're here right now I feel very fortunate and very blessed that of all the places where we might have ended up we did end up in balance because I found the community here one that was easy to find a niche and fit into it was easy to get involved in the Jewish community easy to get involved in in Temple and in then for me because
I ended up spending probably less time being involved in the Jewish community than I would have otherwise you know I kind of took a little detour and got more involved on a set of bases which as I said it was not something I saw at nuts something I thought would ever happen but I thoroughly enjoyed it I hope that you know in retrospect when somebody who looks at my paper is fifty years from now they may say what she did a nice job wonderful thank you so much for sharing their story let's hear about your grandparents well I I think I think that probably the
most interesting one of my grandparents was my mother's grandmother who grew up in Romania married as a young woman she and her husband moved to Paris and he was a couturier designer and and she was a couturier seamstress and they had a brief career in Paris and his family by then had all immigrated to Chicago and so they pulled up stakes when before my mother was born her sister was was already born moved to Chicago where my grandfather had seven or eight siblings and his parents all living kind of closely together as they did in those days and I can remember when I was growing
up my grandmother was always really independent and she used to tell me stories about when she was a young woman and one of her favorite stories was after they'd been in Chicago awhile and my grandfather was working it I think Carson Pirie Scott or one of the downtown department stores my grandmother by then had two babies probably two or three and her sister was a couple years older and my grandmother went and got herself a job because she was bored staying at home taking care of the children there were enough family around it someone else could do that while she worked and she had a
skill that she wanted to use and she used to delight in telling me the story that her mother-in-law who I gathered was rather curious said to her that you cannot work you must quit your job because everyone will think that your husband can't take care of you and as the years rolled on my grandmother became a suffragette and when it when I was growing up if I wanted to push the envelope at all it was always my grandmother that I went to for approval before I had a conversation with either one of my parents because she was much more willing to be open-minded and progressive
what kind of work did she do she was a seamstress she was a seamstress and and as I grew up she would sew clothes for both my mother and I and in my my grandfather died when I was little she later remarried and she remarried a man who was in the cat business used to make men's caps the men's hats I guess they weren't camps they were hats and she would come home with men's suiting fabric and would make my mother and I a skirt or a vest or a jacket and I can remember one day I went off to school and I had see
their Navy or brain was a dark color and there was following these white threads and I was convinced that that skirt have just been basted yeah if I were to pull the thread the whole thing would fall apart and I would be standing there in my underwear and I can remember calling my grandmother from school I must have been in 7th or 8th grade yet insane you know this is what happened what should I do and she reassured me that they skirt had indeed been so and she just had forgotten to take out the white basting tape and I could pull the thread out so
I I did that but she she continued to to sew till she was quite elderly she had one of those old singer sewing machines that the pedal machines that that we had and unfortunately my mother let it go my mother was never very sent about when they broke up my grandmother's apartment and she moved to Florida a lot of those things that in my mother's eyes were just old and no longer needed kind of got sold off we're getting away I would have liked to it maintain them it was a sense it's like you really got your genes from your grandmother I there's no question
I probably in many respects much while like my grandmother lose them then my mother although in fairness to my mother she she she she did okay but she was much more I think you know she was much more concerned about being the parent and you know grandmother told her deliver us and my grandmother is very progressive my grandmother was a deep very progressive and what about your father in your father's parents my father's parents were immigrants for Russia now I'm Carly and and neither one of them worked once they moved here he took he kind of continued well I guess they didn't work when he
was a young man but by the time I really remember them they were older and not working and living in a small apartment my grandfather used to come every Friday night for dinner my grandmother died when I was about 12 my grandfather was around up until I when I was in college but it was interesting we we didn't have the same kind of relationship you know I think they were very much of a different generation and different culture and never totally adapted to living in the United States speaking English well thanks for sharing thank you you