Lois Wolf
Lois Wolf was born at Dallas Baptist hospital on Live Oak on May 29, 1924, one of two daughters. She grew up in South Dallas, living on Park Row and other streets, attended John Henry Brown School, and graduated from Forest Avenue High School in 1941 before her family moved to Highland Park. Her mother came to Dallas at age four with her grandmother, whose family was from Russia near Chernobyl, while her father came from Chicago and worked for Milton Levy. She recalled a close-knit South Dallas neighborhood where everyone knew everyone.
The defining moment of her life came the summer after high school, when a friend persuaded her to go on a blind date with a young man visiting on business from St. Louis. That man was Howard Wolf, and the two fell in love immediately. Lois briefly attended the University of Illinois, where she pledged SDT, and was there the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. She and Howard married on May 31, 1942. Drawn to the city's brightness and openness, Howard, who had been declined from wartime military service for health reasons, made Dallas their home. The couple raised a family, including daughter Andrea and sons Howard Jr. and Robert. Their first son, Michael, drowned at age six, a profound loss. Lois had five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Lois became a driving force in the Howard Wolf clothing company, working in its design department for about 40 years. Though not the lead designer, she contributed her strong sense of color, fabric, and style to the collections. She and Howard traveled to New York, Europe, and the Far East for inspiration, attending Paris couture shows and sourcing fabrics in Italy. At Neiman Marcus's request, they created upscale designs for the Italian Fortnight, and Stanley Marcus opened doors for them on their first trip to the Far East. Confirmed at Shearith Israel, she later affiliated with Temple Emanu-El. In retirement she enjoyed bridge, mahjong, theater, and lectures, remaining devoted to the city she loved.
Full Transcript
and the video videotographer here is ruth andrus and we'll be interviewing lois wolf hello hi nancy um well you've led an exciting life but let's start from the beginning here where were you born at dallas paul hospital when it was on live oak may 29 1924 tell me a little bit about where you lived how many brothers and sisters you had okay i have one sister marilyn ronnick tonkin and we they're just two of us and i we lived in south dallas what street well we lived on park road a couple of times and and on wendelkin and then moved to highland park in 19 i think it was 39 and i went to john henry brown school in south dallas graduated from forest avenue high in 1941.
and you went there from highland park no no no no no no i was just giving you the places that we lived oh i see and i was going back yeah i see did you go to college here for one semester i went to the university of illinois and i met howard the summer right after i graduated from high school we had a blind date and we really fell in love that was it yeah that was that that was the defining moment in my life and was this in dallas in dallas yes i had a she became a cousin but she wasn't a cousin at the time howard was from st louis and uh tony said to me please come come out with me i've got a a date with a fella from st louis and he's got a friend that's here on business from st louis please double date with me and i said tony i don't double date i'm not going out i'm going with somebody and i'm really not interested in going she said please do you were 18.
i was just 17. 17. and so with her persuasion i went on the date and that that was it uh really it was it was kind of interesting we lived in uh island park at that time and i was i remember howard coming to the door and ringing the bell and my father answered the door and i was upstairs getting dressed and as i was walking down the stairs howard had daddy had led howard in the door and i think both of us were totally shocked at each other and we both and i said to myself at the time this he is the most knocked out guy i have ever
seen what did daddy think daddy thought he was pretty good because he didn't really want me to be going with the guy i was going with oh so that was that was the beginning of our our life really so did he i saw him here no no no no he was from st louis and i went to school in at illinois because he was in st louis and at that time you didn't take entrance exams to get into college you didn't do anything to get into school it was right after the depression and so i decided i wanted to go to illinois and i remember
howard coming up to my i pledged sdt and i remember him coming up to my formal and i remember the next day we went to a movie with dinah shore and we came back and sat in front of our sorority house and we had the radio on and the radio said jack pearl harbor has been bombed and we looked at each other and we said where's pearl harbor nobody knew where for a harbor was at that time 42 40 wise yeah 42 that was 41. it was 41. 41. wow i'm just curious on your blind date where'd you go we went to a place called the plantation i don't know that you would remember it but it was an open-air dance place on greenville avenue and howard wasn't particularly a great dancer but it was really fun um what did your parents were they born and raised here no what did they do for living your father my father came here from chicago and you know i really don't know where he started i don't know where he was born mother came to dallas when she was four years old with my grandmother uh and she was from
russia from near chernobyl oh so and and the family history i think you can find out from that family tree all the particulars but it really doesn't go it starts with my grandmother and i really have no information about my father's family except i did his mother was named doris barkin and she came to dallas she had a uh a delicatessen on cummer street right across from neiman's but that's and my father had one sister her name was phyllis and really that's all the history did phyllis move to dallas when you're she did she was here but then she got married and moved away and
i really lost track of her after that what thought your father here to dallas yeah i don't know i really don't know at all his occupation well he was actually uh i know it's down uh nch but he did work for milton levy yeah you got to realize that those were such different times there were such totally different times at that time yeah do you still are you still in touch with some people that you grew up with and give me some names you know i i really got married so young and that the ones that graduated from high school you know the only contact
that i really remember and still see on occasion are francis coleman and julius coleman but so many of the people that i grew up with are gone yeah i'm not here anymore i've got i've gone to a younger group what was your neighborhood like where in south dallas it was everybody knew everybody i mean on park road i remember the aaron off slid there the the levees lived there the stones lived there the davids i had an aunt and uncle freda and jay green that lived there the steinberg so many edwin ornish all these people are gone yeah i know the names because of their
children right you know right dean and my son robert uh grew up together uh i i saw dean when he came back here when his father died and he certainly has a huge enormous success remarkable yes yeah um did you have any um jewish uh connections or organizations at that temple oh yeah well you know i was confirmed from sheriff israel which is and i really lost all connection after that because i was involved in school and then actually when i when hair and i got married we affiliated ourselves with temple emanuel so oh i did go to hebrew school i think when i was
a kid very young then there was a hebrew school on let me see it was park row it wasn't attached to it no there was an it's just a house and i'm trying to think of the cross street but i can't remember um what got you well so let me i'm going to backtrack so you you got married howard your husband moved here because yes you know he moved he loved dallas he came to dallas when and after we decided to be married and he said it was so clean it was it was so open it had such a feel about it that it was
just a phenomenal place to be because coming from st louis at that it was cold heated and dark and and dirty and he came to dallas and it was bright and bright and shiny and loved being here yeah yeah and um actually those were exciting things oh yeah oh absolutely particularly in the fashion industry well not in fact not at that time no no no no no this was really before because this was was during the war see we were married we were married may 31st oh wait a minute 19 isn't that awful it was 72 72 years ago so 72 years ago so that
in that darrell i can't remember um 10 um 1940. now we were married 1942. of course 1942 may 31st 1942 because now it's 2013. right and that was the beginning that the beginning of the war and howard had had pneumonia when he was 16 and had some lymph nodes on his lungs and before we were married for our wedding he tried to enlist into the naval air corps and they declined then the army air corps and declined he he tried to be part of the the force the armed forces because there weren't there weren't any men at home and if you go out if you went out in civilian clothes he felt very self-conscious self-conscious very uncomfortable so that's what it was like it was terrible it really was terrible
i was happy that he didn't go but i understood how he felt because there there were there was if you would go to any restaurant if you would go out anywhere all you would see are soldiers dressed in armed gear because that was a yeah that was it i never realized that of course he would stick out oh it was it was it was a stigma but then fortunately and thank god the war ended we lost a lot of people and it was a horrendous period to live through but then the united states started coming back it will actually late 40s like late 40s what
um what got your howard into a transition he was working in st louis for his uncle who was in the and at that time st louis a manufacturing hub and he was working for him and he was traveling farm that's how he really met because he was here on business with to sell clothes and he thought that he was going to be part of the his uncle's firm and be an executive there and what have you and it didn't work out that way so he then there was another firm in st louis called mary muffet and he went to them and they implored him and
he they gave him the whole southern part of the united states and it's very interesting and that at that time and during the war because he did travel and i think this is interesting we had it was a chevrolet and it was a two-door but there was a back seat and you know that you couldn't get gasoline you couldn't get tires you couldn't get anything during the war because it was all uh allotted you had to have books stamp books to get shoes sugar tires uh gasoline so with that howard converted and actually didn't convert it but put signs on the back windows of his
firm and it it was a truck so he could gas good gasoline to travel that little stinker about that it's one of the little tidbits that that happened during the war and also people were so hungry for goods for merchandise that whatever was made was bought and the clothes he had the clothes were adorable and he had he sold to these different cities all over the south and they were allotted their quota because they could they wanted to buy much much more but the manufacturers couldn't get the fabric they couldn't get the uh all the all the things that went into manufacturing the garment they
couldn't they couldn't get it because it was all alive because of the war yeah and of course in those days there was no importing you know oh my god we were at war with them we were at war with everybody and the countries we weren't at war with were our allies and they were fighting um when did you start having children and how many children and where are they well we had a son that was born in 1943 his name was michael and when he was six years old he drowned he was in university park by the fire station over there and and i was
with my daughter andrea and he got away from me and i wasn't aware of it and we lost him but then we had we had our daughter andrea and then we had two more sons howard jr and robert and that's the that's the crew are they around oh yes well i just had lunch with robert and and a grant two granddaughters uh yes and robert lives north of denton he's a a rural guy and my son howard lives in tulsa and andrea lives about a mile away from me so they're pretty close and i have five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren and one on the way
lucky you are any of the uh are any of the ones that live here in dallas oh yes matter of fact to the uh one is stacy blank and the the that i had lunch with today and the other one is lauren trahan and robert is lauren's uh father and gabriella lives between denton and mckinney and and my two other grandchildren live in tulsa and one his name is trey and rachel wolfe do you get to tell so much because that's another beautiful oh it is a beautiful city no i don't i get there i go there my my grandson became a an eagle scout
so i went up for that and then my granddaughter was about mitzvah and and of course trey was back mitzvah before the bar mitzvah before that so get up there on occasion so you had your children and it sounds like you were a devoted mother when did you go connect and for the camera tell us about your husband and when you became a a force i said i suppose it was in the i i was with howard wolf the company i believe i started about 40 we were in business for about 50 years and i was here for about 40 years and i really learned
from the ground up because i had no no formal training but i did i did go i did learn how to sketch and i guess it was just an in a thing that i could relate to color that i could relate to fabrics and i could relate to style so you were the designer no no i wasn't the designer yeah i could put things together but we had a design force and i really was part of it because i was in order to design you got to have fabrics in order to design you've got to have the color and put it together and put the
collection together and that was that was really my job so i'm just trying to piece this so that you they did the design they came up and i worked with no i were i was in the design department and part of while they were designing my input would go into design i see i see um well howard wolf is such a beloved and famous name but i always hear howard and lois wolf so you must have been almost well it was a twi it really was i think that our relationship was a unique one in many ways because it was like a 24 7 situation
howard wouldn't try well of course and i we went on business but he really didn't like to be away from me and i really didn't like him to be away either but i mean i could have handled he just didn't want to be away and and i i don't know if that's why i became so involved but i was drawn to it anyway because i love it it's a it's challenging very challenging to put things together and make it come out right is that with this experience is there anything that you touch on now that has a background in your fashion any kind of thing
whatever i well i think that it has to do with whenever you're looking at anything that has design whether it's clothes whether it's furniture or whether it's automobiles that it has a it there's a relationship because it i it the design part is so important to what to whatever we do how about the architecture how about the the yeah everything yeah it's the creative and i still love going and looking and doing i can tell uh what may um where did you travel i mean where were your biggest influences or the um biggest influences yeah yeah for me personally yeah and howard's well actually well
new york and europe and the far east the far east fabrics yes the design cut and styling was europe primarily europe because it at that time it really started in europe and we first started going to europe in 19 [Music] gosh i think it was 19 68. i'm not no we were in europe 1960 was the first time we went to europe and then graduate we didn't go we went once a year and at the at first we went to the couture showings to see what was happening at the very beginning of design was it paris or paris italy it was paris but we went to italy as well and then after a few years the influence from the couture wasn't as great as seeing the styling that was around because we went to paris we went to london munich milan south of france south france had wonderful clothes really yes they had by
designers we have heard of them not not that you'd have heard of but the the clothes were terrific what do you think of the fashions these days they're getting better yeah people are getting exhausted well they're getting better because it was so bad for salt in my eyes it was so bad for a while and and it i don't know if i i feel that there should be a dress code and i'm not talking about laying down the law i'm not really saying that no i'm saying that i think it would be better for our society frankly because i think it gives you something to
to strive for when when you're when you're dressed you feel better and you think better of yourself and you're a pleasure to look at you know well yeah so i think it's it's a good thing to to have a style about yourself and know that you you're presentable and look well when you go out and it has such an influence you know when i walk into a bank i think gosh i wish she wasn't wearing those ill-fitting pants exactly exactly that that and i i think that the businesses and i have a feeling it may not be tomorrow but in the future they're going to
get back to a dress code why do you think that because it's very interesting i had lunch yesterday and i had lunch with sandy donsky and and i'm bringing her into it because her firm and they were talking about how possibly forming a committee to determine what the dress should be in the office so that's why i feel if if they're thinking it there are other people that are thinking it as well good because i think it i think it's important i think it's important to our society i think it tells you where you where you are that's an interesting take what would your husband
would he agree oh definitely howard was beautifully dressed always always he didn't always wear a tie in his later years but he always wore a jacket with a handkerchief in his pocket so he was beautifully dressed what connections did you have with neiman marcus oh we were asked by neimans to go to when we were on our because we were going to europe anyway and we were going to italy uh because we that's what we did when we went on our trip then we and we go to different fabric houses and they specifically wanted more upscale clothes neiman said so we went to fabric houses
that were very special and we bought fabrics imported them and made our designs into these fabrics from italy and that that's how we were part of the the fortnight the italian fortnight um there was another fortnight you were involved in no just just the italian florida it really came to a close i think the two most the two prime events were where the french fortnight and the italian fortnight and after that it kind of it was there but it really was it didn't have the impact well didn't um stanley marcus sell the business oh yeah but that was some after that it was sometimes well
done i mean yeah he was the mover and shaker oh i think he was he i think he he he was one of the forces that made dallas that's what they say oh there's a question about it i want to tell you we went when we went to the far east for the first time stanley marcus wrote a head for us and introduced us to people that were just phenomenal and made our trip phenomenal because of his uh introducing us and it was just a it was a fabulous time we we met the uh princess of thailand and it was a it was a curious
thing she takes a picture of everybody that comes to her house so that she has a record whoever comes to visit her and they were and there was a it was just a phenomenal trip because of the doors that were opened yeah yeah by stanley marcus were you able to um have you kept in touch with those that are alive oh well no because it's been a lot you've got to realize this was in the 70s and we're in 2013. 40 years ago 40 years ago um what was there much manufacturing taking place in dallas yes at that time at that time dallas did have a good manufacturing base and one of one of the outstanding uh firms here uh it was right when we were getting started it was an artist an artist with bengal and and there were there are other you know there were many uh that i mean there was a lot of manufacturing but not all of it i mean they were small manufacturers and i think that we we truly were the manufacturer in dallas well what do you think of dallas now
now yeah i think it's phenomenal me too i think it is absolutely spectacular it's a big city but i've loved it i've seen i i kind of felt this all the all along and i felt like we were all right in the middle and and our airport was our ocean and there was no question that this was a major place to be and it had a good beginning it had a good good base i think this has been fascinating talking to you and you have these huge portfolios which i'm we're not going to rest until we've taken photos and copies and because you've really added
to the history of this i mean it's people like you that's made this city what it is fascinating exciting stupendous city it's awesome and it's just going to keep going what are your favorite things to do now we have an art scene you know oh gosh i don't know what i now i love being in business i really did i love the challenge of it and when we sold and we got out really i was with howard and he wasn't the best the last few years of his life so i really didn't do much and today i'm just playing i'm playing bridge and i'm playing
mahjong and i'm and i'm going to theater and i'm going to lectures and i'm doing things that i didn't do because i really didn't have i didn't have the time so you're catching up i'm catching up yeah are there any role models that and you know i'm wrapping it up yeah were there any role models that inspired you that had you going i mean there weren't that many women working at that time no there weren't that many there were i was the the rare one actually i i loved i just i just loved design i loved some of the the role models were the the
designers of the time really um i'm trying to think of some of their names and they escaped me but yes they were there because i could see what they would do with color i could see what they would do with fabric i could see all the different things that went into making that that finished garment oh i forgot to ask you something um i saw some great advertising in there was your influence on that too those were our how many employees did you have oh golly in the gee i don't remember at one time i'm sure there were a couple of hundred 250 300 at
one time but and uh as they it got more difficult to manufacture here we uh we just got rid of our manufacturing spaces and then went down to business offices and design uh but did you have any influence on i love advertising you know um did you have anything on the heads did i have yes because my input that was part of part of what i did oh my input was there i see yeah yeah um was howard very involved oh my god he micromanaged that oh yes oh yes he was quite a guy he was he really had he really knew what to do
when to do it and where to do it at the touch yes he had the touch is there anything that i might have left out that um you'd like to touch it on for our i don't know we covered a lot didn't we covered a lot we have real life um but is there any particular story or person yes thank you uh let me think let me think and there were so many and there was so much over those years probably tonight when i'm in bed i'll think of it call it was kind of interesting going back over the things that that i did and
i hope i hope it's what you want oh it is and thank you very very much it was my pleasure