Lorraine Schein
Lorraine Levy Sulkin Schein was born August 7, 1918, in St. Louis, the daughter of Ellis Levy, concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony for some 25 years, and Lucille Conn, who had come to St. Louis for her education. Her mother's family had deep Missouri roots: her great-grandfather Bernard Lobenstein emigrated from Germany before the Civil War and settled in Warrensburg, running a clothing store, while her grandparents built a mercantile business in Sedalia. After her parents divorced when she was very young, Lorraine was raised by her grandparents in Sedalia, where a small group of Reform Jewish families held High Holiday services in living rooms and eventually joined with the Orthodox community to establish a shared building.
She graduated high school at 15 and attended Washington University in St. Louis, where her father still lived, earning a master's degree in economics and personnel administration in 1939. That August she married Edward Sulkin, who received his PhD in microbiology at the same ceremony and worked as a virologist for the St. Louis Health Department. In the middle of World War II, Edward traveled to Dallas to give a keynote address and was invited to chair the new department of microbiology at Southwestern Medical School, then housed in Quonset huts behind the old Parkland Hospital. The family settled in University Park, adapting to wartime shortages, attic fans, and a single car.
In Dallas, Lorraine and her husband affiliated immediately with Temple Emanu-El, where Rabbi Lefkowitz welcomed them, and she joined the faculty wives club, later serving as its president. Following a family tradition begun by her grandmother, she became active in the National Council of Jewish Women, serving as Dallas section president from 1950 to 1952 and later as Southwest region president and a national board member. She helped broaden council's public affairs work, supported education for exceptional children and school desegregation, and launched an early after-school recreation program at City Park School. As a professional field representative, she served council sections across ten Southern states for nearly 25 years and was especially proud of establishing the Family Outreach Centers, which began in Richardson. Her two children, Sandra Winneker of Lexington, Kentucky, and a son in Dallas, both married Jewish spouses and raised Jewish families.
Full Transcript
This is Bernice Waldman on July 18, 1988. I am taping an interview with Lorraine Shine in her home at 7147 Brookshire Circle, Dallas, Texas. This interview is part of the Oral History Project of the National Council of Jewish Women and the Dallas Jewish Historical Society. Lorraine, I appreciate your letting me come see you today to talk about your life, your early life in Missouri, your life as a very prominent community worker here in Dallas, both as a volunteer and as a professional. Let's start by your telling me your full name and where and when you were born. I'm Lorraine Levy Sulkin Shine and I was born August 7th 1918 in St.
Louis Missouri How long had you been in St. Louis? Was your family from there originally? My father was born in Indianapolis, and after spending his childhood training as a concert violinist in the United States and in Europe, concertized throughout the Middle West from about age eight, eventually settling in St Louis and held the post of Concert Master of the St Louis Symphony for some 25 years And what was his name Ellis Levy. Ellis Levy, okay. My mother was born in Sedalia, Missouri, came to St. Louis for her higher education, and at the time she met my father was a student at Washington University in St.
Louis. And her name was? Lucille Conn. Lucille Conn, okay. They met, they married, and I was born about a year after they were married. My mother came home from the hospital with me on her 19th birthday. Early marriages were more commonplace in those days. Okay, so you were born in St. Louis because your mother had come to school there, met your father, and then they settled. And of course my father was working there. Yes. And so naturally they settled in St. Louis. Now were your grandparents from St. Louis also? No. My grandparents lived in Sedalia. Missouri. Sedalia, Missouri. My grandmother, interestingly, had been born only 30 miles from today in a small community called Warrensburg Missouri where her father had settled when he came to this country from Germany somewhere in the some sometime during the 1850s I'm not sure exactly the date but he came as a very young man and settled in Warrensburg had a clothing store there and lived there all of his life his wife the family story goes also came from the same small town in Germany from which he emigrated And she came over from Germany and they were married and settled in Warrensburg.
lived there for the rest of their lives. Okay, do you have any idea about when they came to this country? Well, my great-grandfather came prior to the Civil War, I know. That far back? It was sometime in the 1850s. It could have been the 1840s. I'm not sure about how old he was. This is information that could be secured from the records. He's buried in, as is my great-grandmother, as are both my grandparents and my mother in Sedalia. So these records are extant in Missouri. unfortunately as a child I was not sufficiently interested to pin these things down and so I operate mostly from the stories that I remember hearing my grandmother tell I think about her parents yeah but what were their names Do you know that?
Yes, my great-grandfather's name was Bernard Lobenstein, and his wife's name was Sarah Aaron Lobenstein. Just an interesting sidelight. At the time my great-grandfather came he was accompanied by other members of the family and not not siblings but cousins and so on half the family anglicized the name oh so I am related to people named Livingston throughout the United States that I do not know Okay, and he was... The other half kept the German. Lobenstein. And they were called Lobenstein. Oh, Labenstein. Yes. Oh, okay. So, uh, Living... The translation of Lobenstein is the translation. Is Livingston. Right, that's interesting. uh okay and they settled in they settled in warrensburg uh and i know very little about them except that my great-grandfather was involved in the civil war not as a fighting man but he was involved in procurement i gather he perhaps sold uniforms or perhaps dealt with the purchase of farm products and so on for the army again these details are vague but since he was in the clothing business it seems logical that he might have been involved in in dressing the troops were any of his brothers involved in the war i don't know that he had any room oh i know that uh i i never heard about his family uh except the fact that there were lots of people around that he was related to and as far as I know he didn't keep contact with them.
Do you have any idea why he came to the United States? Oh, I think for the same reason that so many of the Jews from Germany came at that time. The political situation was very bad. boys were being drafted into the German army Jewish families didn't like the idea of having their sons drafted when you were drafted into the German army it wasn't a prayer a hitch such as we but you could be there for 10 or 15 years. Of course, being Jewish, there was probably We have very little opportunity for any sort of advancement or career ambitions in the German army. Antisemitism existed very much, and I think Jewish families probably made great efforts and probably great sacrifices to get their teenage boys out of the country before the army got them.
That's why I imagine he came probably in his early teens. So then your grandparents, did they stay in Warrensburg or did they settle somewhere else? Well, my great-grandparents had four children of whom my grandmother was one. she grew up there she went to college there taught for a while I think and then married my grandfather who was in the had had come from houses Lorraine by very much the same sort of route and was established in the mercantile and clothing business in Sedalia. In Sedalia, okay. And they had a child. It was my mother. Who's your mother? And her name was Lucille. Lucille. Con. Con, okay.
So then did you just grow up in Sedalia? Well, of course I was born in St. Louis. My parents were divorced when I was a very small child. And my grandparents, who were living in Sudavia, took me as really a daughter and brought me back to Sudavia. And there I grew up under the care of my grandparents and lived until I finished high school and went away to college. Now do you remember were there any other Jews in Sedalia when you were growing up there There was a sizable well sizable probably 10 or 15 reformed Jewish families a much more numerous Orthodox community The two communities were quite separate in their social lives.
Of course, in a community that size, today it was about 20,000 at that period. Everybody knew everybody. There was one high school. But of the Reformed Jews, of which my grandparents were two and had been all of their lives, there were 10 or 15 families. we had minimal Jewish education. We had high holiday services always in our living room. I remember these days very well. There was no congregation. There was no reformed congregation. However, there were efforts at Sunday school. They rented a hall downtown, and I guess it was the teenage girls who kept a chapter ahead, and we had Sunday school every Sunday morning.
But there were no organized religious services except for the high holidays. Now, was the Sunday school also in your grandmother's living room? No, the Sunday school was for all the Jewish children. Oh. And where was that held? That was held, well, it was, they rented a hall downtown over one of the stores, and And it was a big room and we had a few little card tables and groups by broken down by age around the card tables. Somehow or other the books came from the Hebrew Union College Now exactly who determined that it was appropriate for the Orthodox children to be taught from books from the Reformed congregation I do not know but I rather suspect that my grandparents and those who thought like they did may have mandated this and somehow or other the others went along.
About the time that I was in junior high, the head of the Orthodox congregation came into my grandfather's store one day and he said, you know, this is really pretty silly. If we could just get together, we could get a little building and we could get a little rabbi and we could have services on a regular basis. What trade-offs went on, I do not know, but they got together and they bought a little house and they knocked out the walls downstairs and they made an auditorium and they knocked down the walls upstairs and they made a Sunday school room, which also became the Orthodox meeting room.
And throughout my teen years, every Friday night, we went to temple and upstairs at 6 o'clock the Orthodox had their services and downstairs at 8 o'clock the Reformed had their services. Completely separate. Completely separate. I can remember sitting in the auditorium and hearing the clatter of feet coming down from upstairs. But these people never came in and we never saw them because the doors were closed. Now how about the administration of this temple? i think it was probably handled no doubt on a very informal basis between my grandfather who i suppose you would say was the head of the Reformed faction and this other gentleman who was the community leader and the head of the Orthodox faction.
So there was no board or board meetings? No. Nothing like that? As I remember, all the meetings and all the decisions took place sitting in the back in the shoe department, because that's where the chairs were, at my grandfather's store. Was there a burial committee or any kind of a welfare? There was a cemetery. I had been there for many years. I don't know where the cemetery originated, but there was a Jewish cemetery. All Jewish. All Jewish. Okay. It had a fence around it. It had lots of gravestones from all the Jews, I'm sure, both Reformed and Orthodox. When there was a death, the rabbi from Kansas City was called and he came down and conducted the funeral as he also conducted weddings and came down to conduct confirmation.
How far was Kansas City? About 90 miles. From Savannah? Yes, but of course it was on the train route, and I think it probably took, I don't know, a couple of hours, maybe longer. But there were frequent trains because this was the direct route. And what rabbi was that, do you remember? The rabbi that I remember most frequently and the one I grew up with, so to speak, was Rabbi Samuel Meraberg of Kansas City. Very famous rabbi. Very well known rabbi. Very close friend of the family. He and my grandmother were really extremely close. I would come home from school and there he would be and I wouldn't know who had died or who was getting married but Rabbi Neerberg always came to our house for lunch.
Frequently unannounced. Oh, really? To my grandmother's chagrin, because she invariably had something very informal for lunch, and she was embarrassed that the rabbi had to partake of chili or soup or maybe a tuna fish sandwich. Uh-huh. Do you remember whether there was any socializing between the Jews and the Christians in Sedalia? The socializing was exclusively interrelated because other than this group of a dozen or so Reformed families, all of our social contacts were within the non-Jewish community. Now, there was some basic anti-Semitism going on. Jews were not allowed to belong to the country club. And this was a source of resentment in our family that I remember hearing as I grew up.
Now, we're talking about, what, the 30s? We're talking about the late 20s. When you were growing up. Okay. Uh-huh. And I can remember my grandmother refusing social invitations to parties at the country club because she was not eligible for membership. Other than that, I have no awareness, had no awareness as I was growing up of being any different. Of course, I went to public school and so did everyone. and frequently was the only Jewish child in the class. I can remember participating in Christmas programs and that sort of thing. As a matter of course, nobody thought of, maybe we ought to talk about Hanukkah too.
It just never came up. And did you go to your friends homes or did they come to your grandmother house I played with the children in the neighborhood none of whom were Jewish I knew the half a dozen Jewish children in my age group because I knew them at Sunday school and we were confirmed By coincidence, I think more than anything else, none of them were in the same elementary school that I was. we lived in a part of town that other people just didn't happen to live in and I was the only Jewish child in my grammar school of course in high school there were others because there was only one high school now do you remember whether or not you dated out of the faith did you get a date?
I don't think I had a date with a Jewish boy until I was in high school. I did have one Jewish boyfriend whom I dated with some regularity in high school, but never exclusively. All of the boys I went out with were not Jewish. Did your grandparents have any particular preference or made their preference known about that? Their only preference was that I should be home at a reasonable hour, which was very much mandated, not who I went out with. I was always among the youngest in my class at school, and therefore it never occurred to anybody that I might acquire a permanent relationship with any of these boys that I was dating.
Okay, so you graduated high school and you went off to college. I went to college in St. Louis. Where? I went to Washington University. My father was still living there at the time, and I was very young. I got into college just under the water because I graduated from high school at 15. Oh, my. And my grandparents were reluctant to turn me loose in the big city without somebody to keep an eye on And my father was there so rather than go to University of Missouri where I had received a scholarship, I went to Washington U. Because it was in St. Louis, and although I lived in the dormitory, my father was there to have me to dinner on Sunday.
Uh-huh. Okay. Did you have any thoughts about whether to pledge or whether or not to pledge, sorority? No, this is kind of interesting. There had been an 85 chapter on the Washington University campus for a number of years, and And the year before I came to Washington U, the A.E. Phi chapter was closed because there had been some sort of altercation with the university administration. The sorority was so exclusive in their manner of pledging. that the administration decided it wasn't fair, and they threw the chapter off the campus. So at the time I arrived, there was no Jewish sorority, and of course at that time, non-Jewish sororities didn't rush Jewish girls.
Do you remember having any particular feelings about that? No, it wasn't there. It didn't come up. Okay, and you were... Happy to live in the dorm. It's like a lot of things. If you don't know what you're missing, you don't miss it. Okay, and you were 15. Yes. Okay. Now, at college, did you date just Jewish boys? There certainly must have been a lot of them around, or did you date both? Now, in college I dated mostly Jewish boys because as a resident of the dorm, the Jewish fraternities, of which there were, I believe, four, came hunting the girls and the girls at the dorm.
and if your name was Levy it wasn hard to figure out that you were a Jewish girl and so the pledges were sent over to invite the jewish girls at the dorm to the fraternity parties and i the the other students that i met socially therefore became all jewish because they came from the jewish fraternities. And although I never missed being a sorority girl, I quickly determined that fraternity boys were the desirable boys, and I don't think I met any boys that weren't in fraternity. Okay, so you were at Washington how long? I was there five years. Four years of college and one year of graduate school.
And did you finish? Yes, I received my masters in economics and personnel administration in 1939. And where did you meet your first husband? He was an instructor at the medical school. In, at Washington? At Washington, yes. And his name? Was Edward Sulkin. Okay. And he attended the fraternity parties, and there we met. And how long did you date before you got married? Well, we met, we had met each other when I was a freshman, but we never dated until four years later when I was in graduate school. And we met again, more or less by chance, and at that time we began dating seriously, and dated for not quite a year.
Okay, so you were married about 1940? No, we were married in August of 39. 39. We both graduated. I received my masters and he received my master's. His PhD at the same graduation ceremony in June, and we were married in August. And his PhD was in... Microbiology. Microbiology. Okay, and then what did you do, just settle down to their campus? Yes, well, the medical school campus is a distance from the academic campus. at the time we were married he was also working uh in the as as the virologist of for the city of St. Louis at the St. Louis Health Department so his office he had really two offices one of the medical school and one downtown uh at the st louis health department uh and we took an apartment in more or less midtown st louis i worked briefly after we were married uh at a department store in st louis six very four and then with the arrival of our first child I retired and we stayed in St.
Louis for about five years after we were married. How did you get to Dallas? My husband... How did you get to Dallas? My husband, who by this time had become something of a well-known expert on virus diseases, was asked to come to Dallas as a keynote speaker for the regional convention of the Texas Society of Microbiologists he came down for the weekend to Dallas made his presentation and by the sheerest coincidence this was the weekend that Baylor Hospital Baylor Medical School which had been situated here in Dallas announced that they were going to move the medical school to Houston simultaneously with this the clinical doctors who had been participating in the Baylor Medical School program made their move to establish a new medical school in Dallas and that weekend the southwestern medical foundation under the guidance of dr e h carey became a reality now there was a great deal of excitement locally about this change and this move and everyone in Dallas was quite excited and concerned about it.
Approximately half of the preclinical faculty, that is the professors of biochemistry and anatomy and microbiology and pathology and so on, these men who were full-time staff people at the medical school were given their choice of moving with Baylor Medical School to Houston or staying in Dallas at the new school which was to be established bear in mind this was right in the middle of World War II and the need for training doctors was most acute so that the new school was assured from its beginnings of having a full class of students the then professor of microbiology was one of those who opted to move to Houston my husband who was in Dallas by coincidence to make this speech was invited to come to Dallas to assume the chairmanship of the new department of microbiology this was something of an unbelievable advancement for him from assistant professor in St.
Louis to full professor here in Dallas and Eddie came home and said start packing and that's how we came to how did you feel when he made this announcement somewhat nonplussed but we were both young enough to feel adventurous and had a good many assurances that this was not an iffy situation and that the backbone of the dallas medical community and the backbone of the community at large was very firmly behind the new venture and so we were very excited and very thrilled and anxious to try our wings so how were those first few years in dallas for you they were very exciting uh as
i mentioned this was right in the middle of the war there was no construction going on of a civilian nature whatever uh and prefabricated quonset huts were erected behind the old parkland hospital which is now woodlawn which no it no longer woodlawn it now a jail that right but it was it was parkland hospital and that was the medical school the quonset huts the quonset huts were erected uh of course they had no insulation they were very much slung together working under such conditions was certainly a challenge if you were doing medical research I remember that the offices were not air conditioned the only air
conditioning in the buildings was in the animal quarters because the experimental animals had to be kept comfortable the people were very secondary you probably didn't have air conditioning at home either well there wasn't very there were very few air conditioned homes we we bought a home at the time we moved here simply because it was impossible to rent apartments either and where was that it was in University Park it was a very nice house we lived there for 10 years we took we installed large attic fans we sweated in the summers and huddled over the floor furnaces in the winter but we managed and we
were no worse off than anybody else we tried to have the house air-conditioned later on when things became possible but it was not so engineered that it could be done at which point we moved to a new residence which was air-conditioned Did you have any part in the social life of the medical community since your husband was at Southwestern Medical? Yes, we met of course, all of the faculty very quickly. It was small at the beginning and kind of like a family because everyone was busy constructing and busy organizing. and busy setting up their programs, they very early, in fact almost immediately, a faculty wives club was, I guess it wasn't established, I guess it was the remnants of the Baylor faculty wives club.
but I was invited to join. I very well remember I was waiting in this new house for the moving van to arrive from St. Louis with our furniture. It was early September and about 102, and I was sitting in this empty house in a pair of shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt and the doorbell rang and there stood three ladies in their hats and their white gloves oh my and they said we're from the faculty wives club and we've come to welcome you to Dallas and I gulped a couple of times and said won't you come in and we borrowed a bridge table and four chairs from somebody so I'd have a place to sit down while I waited for the moving van and we sat down of course I couldn't offer them anything to eat or drink because we had no furniture and certainly no refrigerator.
About five minutes after we sat looking at each other, the doorbell rang again. There stood a lovely blonde football player type young man and he smiled and he said, welcome to Dallas I'm from Borden's and I will be your milkman I would like to give you something to remember Borden by and he handed me a quart carton of orange juice and a package of paper cups Oh So I thanked him profusely and I turned to the ladies and we all had oranges You know, I had forgotten that we used to get our milk delivered to the door. Well, I promised you that this milkman was our milkman for the whole time, for the 10 years that we lived in University Park.
uh-huh now where did your children go to school when you went to Bradfield well of course I my daughter was two when we moved here and my son was hadn't been born yet but they both went to Jane Stairs nursery school which was on Armstrong and then on Mockingbird and you lived where which street we lived on San Carlos okay now how far did the town extend uh there were there were there was there was empty lots behind us but there was a sprinkling of houses out as far as lovers lane no further now northwest highway was a two-lane road but beyond Northwest Highway there
was an enclave of houses called Preston Hollow this was where the rich people lived like the Loach it extended from Preston to probably to Inwood and maybe as far as walnut hill that far yeah okay that was preston hollow but between that and mockingbird which is where we lived uh there was there were many many empty lots they were really cotton fields was the uh highland park village there yes then it was head on yeah in fact this was the only shopping center center in town it was it was a comfortable walking distance which was a good idea because during the war he couldn buy
a car and we had one car in St Louis and we had one car until the war was over And I was completely without transportation, and I walked to the village to buy my groceries and to have lunch with the ladies at the S&S D room and to go to the movies. Village theater? Yes. Okay. did you did your family affiliate with any congregation immediately immediately yes yes we have been affiliated with temple Israel and but in st. Louis before we moved here and we affiliated immediately because when we came here the Jewish community who were very excited over the idea of having a jewish professor at the new medical school in great numbers extended hospitality and the warmth of friendship to us and we were pleased and delighted and flattered and thrilled about this and very quickly affiliated with temple man well you say they they were pleased to have a Jewish professional on the faculty at the medical school was that a first well the medical school was the first oh in other well and prior to that in Baylor there had been no Jewish doctors on the clinical faculty but so far as I know there had never been a Jewish full-time Oh, I see.
Because this was one of the reasons, I think, why the local clinicians were having trouble with Baylor because their approach to medical education was, in the opinion of much of the clinical faculty very narrow-minded particularly well I guess we don't want to go into this but with things like abortion and birth control and all of these so conservative viewpoints with which we so concerned today yeah well abortion was illegal until yes but a therapeutic abortion was not I mean if a lady was having a miscarriage okay and having trouble and they took her to the hospital and she was bleeding they did what was necessary and I suspect that probably there were instances though I can't quote them from my own knowledge of questions of this kind arise okay I don't know which direction to go to pursue your affiliation that temple or to pursue your husband's career at Southwest Medical.
I think I'll go finish with Southwest Medical and then we'll go back to your life as a Jewish person in Dallas. Okay, so he was a full-time faculty member. Yes, yes. Okay, were there very many Jewish medical students in that first class I imagine a sprinkling of course the draft was very much on this was a war that almost everyone approved of it is now World War two yes and all all jewish mothers want their sons to be doctors and there it was probably easier to get into medical school by way of the army though i can't speak to this specifically you mean if they went to the army then the army sent them to the army the entire class for not only the first class but throughout the war the entire student body of every medical
school in the United States was in uniform oh really they were all sent by the army and medical education was very much accelerated they graduate and went to school at 12 months a year and they graduated in three and a half years and they they went directly to the army there was no such thing as internships and residents they did their internships in the army in the army yes so yes I I I don't know it would be easy enough to check but I'm sure that there was certainly a percentage of the student body that was Jewish there was a 5d chapter at the Southwestern
Medical School very early on I'm not sure just when and that's the Jewish that's turn you wish medical fraternity okay the reason I ask is that I believe in the 40s weren't there still quotas Jewish quotas in medical school yes but I suspect well there may have been how about it what was it a day or no Washington and st. Louis oh yeah there was a Jewish quote oh sure but there were every place but somehow or other if if you were smart enough and you I guess if you knew somebody there there were always Jewish students mm-hmm okay now so you were a member of the faculty wives were you very active uh well yes i guess so it was a very loosely organized organization purely for social things we we had meetings and we had speakers come and give book reviews and musicals and and once a year we had a picnic for our husbands, and it wasn't really a very heavyweight organization, but you took your turn, and you did what they asked you to, and you took your turn as hostess, and I did serve as president of this organization.
It was one of those things where you took your turn and when your turn came around you were president It wasn a very arduous task Were you involved in any out-of-town conferences or meetings or seminars? Yes, various professional groups met in Dallas every now and then. And there was always a women's committee to take care of the ladies who came. And I accompanied my husband on occasion to meetings elsewhere. when the children got older we began taking much more interesting trips to conferences because we were then able to take advantage of some of the foreign conferences and we traveled quite extensively to countries that everybody doesn't get to because he was invited to participate in international symposiums in odd places like Buenos Aires or Tehran or Israel or Spain and we had some some wonderful trips in connection with conferences so that must have been an interesting life it was very interesting okay back to when you first came to Dallas and you were welcomed very warmly by the Jewish community and you did join you said Temple Emanuel yes who was the rabbi Rabbi Lefkowitz Rabbi Lefkowitz yes and we met him very early on and he and both he and his wife as well as other leaders of the jewish community were very gracious to us and we very quickly felt that we were part of the Jewish community as well as the community as a whole when did you start your long involvement in organizations well I had belonged to the Council of Jewish Women I had joined as a bride in St.
Louis in fact it was almost a tradition in the family you were born you went to school you after you finished high school you went to college when you finished college you got married when you got married you started having babies and joined council it was uh it followed this was the pattern that that was set and it never occurred to me at least to deviate from this. How far back did that go? Well my grandmother had been president of council in Sedalia. When was that? I guess it must have been in probably the late 20s. it was before the congregation in Sedalia became a congregation with its own rabbi and its own organization and its own sisterhood.
Council was really the only organization that was an organized entity before sisterhood. it is of course the oldest Jewish women's organization in the United States and does predate sisterhood Hadassah B'nai B'rith and the other Jewish women's organization and when was council council was founded nationally in 1896 yeah and your mother your grandmother was president 1920 it wasn't 20 it was in the 20s uh-huh in the time she was a participator within the framework of this small community in which we lived she was president of everything she was president of a literary group which was called cirrhosis and was the end cultural activity for ladies in that community As I went through my elementary and high school year, she was president of the PTA for my elementary school, for my junior high school, for my senior high school.
She was a leader in the community. she was always on the library board she was the the token jew of the jewish woman of the community then the mayor called up every two weeks to put her on one committee or another so I came by my organizational bench quite naturally so you got involved in council right away yes I what sort of jobs committees well I heard you I get involved a couple of committees in St. Louis when I came here I came one hunting council and I was taken to I guess the first fall meeting Fannie Kahn was the president I introduced myself to her and very shortly but began to be active in the study group became a board member then secretary then of course vice president and ultimately president section and what year were you president 50 to 52 do you can you think of any particular project that stands out in your mind that you were involved in not not just when you were president but you know anytime in council well at that at the time that I was in
a leadership capacity the thing that interested me and challenged me most was I think the broadening of the public affairs arm of council in those days we called it education prior to that time the council in Dallas had not been particularly active in the legislative or political field there was a certain reluctance to seek publicity the organization was primarily dedicated to community services which stemmed from the beginnings of council in Dallas and any number of worthy and innovative community services had been started and had were being carried out but don't forget women didn't vote until 1919 and at the time we came here there seemed
to be very little concern among women for active involvement in legislation or what was then called politics it was almost a dirty word Well, during my administration and at the time that I was becoming active, I can't take credit because I think that probably the war, the Second World War, when women in enormous numbers joined the labor force and moved out of their homes, so to speak, contributed very much to this increasing awareness of how things were being run. So at this period the study groups became more legislative action groups We studied bills that were introduced to Congress. We became interested in housing. We became interested in labor laws, all kinds of things that were happening in Washington, as well as things that were happening on the state level.
This was the period when there was a great deal of activity in council to create programs for blind children in the public schools. Mildred Stack, who was president of council about that time, was instrumental in the motivation to change the state education laws to include education for exceptional children, which included of course the blind, the deaf, the physically handicapped, and the mentally challenged. Prior to this time these children had been educated, if at all, in state schools which were institutions rather than in classrooms in the local community. Yeah, and didn't they have to leave their homes to go to Austin to live? Yes. This was the blind children, the deaf children.
There was a private agency for the education of the deaf in Dallas. I'm not sure whether this was a state school or whether this was a private school. but there was almost no concern at all for any sort of retarded or emotionally disturbed children whatsoever these children were hidden in haddocks all over yeah so what did you accomplish can you point out any victory well in terms of the the education of the blind children the law was passed in austin mandating that these children in these exceptional categories were to be educated in classes in in the public school system as far as other kinds of legislation which we studied in the study groups we wrote to our congressman people i started to say congressman because at that time this not only was the term in use but the reality of the situation uh we were very much in the forefront of of promoting and approving the desegregation of schools in dallas very early on our members appeared before the city council the county commission the school board in connection with issues that we were interested in Then a community service project which was established about this time, of which I'm very proud, was the first after-school recreation program in a public school in Dallas.
were not permitted in the public schools in the classrooms at that time but marginally because of the growth of like key children again because their mothers were in factories and their fathers were in the army there was a great need for care for youngsters between the time school was out and the time their parents got home from work. So council established this after school recreation program at City Park School. What year was that? Do you remember? I believe it was 52 when it actually got off the ground. Yeah, and still going, isn't it? After school recreation. The program of course expanded dramatically and is now part of the program of the school system Okay any other programs that come to mind that you were involved in launching I don't know where to start.
There's such a multiplicity of programs. well just name them you don't have to go into detail the timing is uh uh later uh after uh i finished my volunteer career with council and when was that well following my president view of section i was president of the region the southwest region served on the council national board and And about the time my children entered high school, I joined the workforce. And after a brief period as an employee of the city of Dallas in the Civil Service Department, I became the field representative for the Southern District for the National Council of Jewish Women. As a professional.
As a professional. Okay, so you went from volunteer to professional. That's true. Okay. In this role, I visited sections in the 10 states of the South and helped them with their planning, their programming, their fundraising plans, their community service projects, their public affairs programs, their membership recruitment, you name it. anything that was going on I had a finger in the pie. Yeah, and you were able to do all that traveling? Well, as I mentioned, my children were older at that time, and so I was more or less free to move about. Yeah, and in that period somewhere, didn't you lose your husband? When did he die?
No, that was later. Oh, he died later. Okay. Probably the project on a regional level that I'm the most proud of was the establishment of the Family Outreach Centers, which is a program in which volunteers are trained to give guidance and support to parents of abused children. This project started in Richardson, Texas, which was at that time an independent section in Richardson. we opened a center there with the cooperation and assistance of the Department of Human Resources who provided professional staff and council provided the volunteers. From this one center, the program has grown first under council's aegis and later as it spread through the efforts of the Department of Human Resources, I believe there are something like 25 subcenters now throughout Texas and one in Atlanta, several in Florida and throughout the South.
And was the one in Richardson the first one in the United States? Yes, this was the first time a state agency had recognized that it was possible to train volunteers on a semi-professional level to give guidance and counseling to troubled clients. Well you should be proud of that project. Yes, it grew and it was successful and it's still going strong. Since you did travel so much throughout the South I like your opinion about the Jews in these small towns about Jewish life in these little towns It's a very interesting kind of a pattern. I think it probably stems back to the classic idea of the Jewish man with the bush cart who traveled around the countryside selling pots and pans to the farm people.
When this Jewish man got tired and put down his bush cart, he frequently started a store somehow rather he found a wife usually often jewish not always and inevitably had a large family as each child grew up the patriarch set them up in their own store in a nearby community and thus these little enclave of jewish population in small towns and villages throughout the south and the middle west developed now uh there was immigration as you know not only through the east coast cities but also through New Orleans and Galveston and many of these Jewish populations in these small towns came from Jewish immigrants who
came through New Orleans and Galveston and they worked their way north or west or east and they establish themselves in small communities now these Jewish populations thrive to a great degree through the 20s the 30s and into the 40s by the 40s these children had grown up they had in turn had their own families and when the second generation children grew went off to college they didn come back home So in the past I guess 20 years more acutely the last decade the Jewish populations in small communities have withered and died and they're a group that I suspect in another 20 years will not exist
at all. You really feel that way? I really do. I've seen it happen in communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama. Well, have you seen congregations that have actually died? temples synagogues i'm not sure how big they ever were i think they were like the one i described to you before and today they got together they had a little house or they built a little building they frequently had a rabbi only on the high holidays when hebrew union sent down a student rabbi there were anywhere from 10 to 25 or 30 families who represented the total jewish population of the surrounding area of perhaps a half a dozen or more communities the council had a section in which was centered in a place called schulenberg which was known as Tri-County Section.
This represented the entire Jewish community of three counties. Okay. They all came to Schulenburg on Sunday, and they had a little meeting and a little prayer meeting, and then the women had a council meeting in one room, and the men played poker in the other room. after their cupboardish supper and this was their social activity for the week did they have any projects any council projects their council project was the sisterhood essentially the council project was to raise money to buy prayer books to well that's that's not strictly true they did things like hospital auxiliary work needs in the community i remember in this particular instance of in schulenberg one of the problems was the large number of mexican children who were arriving at public school with no english and they started a nursery school for spanish-speaking children to teach them english before they got to public school this was a very revolutionary idea at the time long before english is a second language long before bilingual education had ever been heard of okay so they did do community service yes but so while you were how long were you traveling for council almost 25 years 25 years okay now how has what are the demographics then of the council chapters These sections in small communities have gone out of existence.
A lot of them have. Yes, the communities have gone out of existence to all intents and purposes. Now what are some of the towns where you no longer have a chapter? Section. Section, I mean. Waco, Temple, Beaumont, Fort Arthur. I think Sherman is still alive, barely. Selma, Alabama is still alive. Chattanooga. I can't remember. That's a lot. But there are probably 20 or more such sections. That have folded. which have folded not the it's not council's fault it's the demographics of these communities The increasing sophistication I think of the council program nationally which almost requires the sections to implement broad range innovative creative kinds of projects.
almost mandates that the strong sections will be in major cities and major centers of Jewish population and the smaller places there just aren't enough people to produce an ongoing cadre of leadership that can carry on these kinds of programs now what about the jewish community in general uh in dallas what changes do you see since you came here in the 40s since the war primarily the enormous expansion following world war ii almost every boy that was in certainly the air force spent some time in texas and i truly believe that seven eight something came back here they settled they settled here very dallas girls exactly this of course was equally true of the dallas jewish community and yet if you can believe the statistics quoted by the federation the jala jewish community has not grown uh at the explosive rate that the general community did now this may be because those who come come and and an equal number leave i don't know i don't either now there's supposed to be a new census so we know more yes well they of course the expansion in the suburbs has been dramatic Richardson Plano I guess Carrollton.
Carrollton. I don't know if there's a large Jewish population in Irving. That's another one that we opened and closed. Oh really? Family outreach opened and closed there. Yes. Arlington has expanded. Yes. Could it be that a lot of Jewish people move in don't affiliate or have intermarried and don't identify? I'm sure that's a factor. but i don't really know about this from my own experience because i primarily identify in a council sense with those who do affiliate right uh you you find an awful lot of people who in an effort to establish a new identity in a community do come looking for counsel in the same sense that it's like belonging to a big sorority.
They belonged where they came from. I'm sure that there is a sizable population that don't affiliate, but then we don't know about them, do we? No, I guess we don't. Now, when you talked about growing up in your grandmother's home, and you talked about the community getting together finally to rent a place to have services, and the Orthodox met in one place, the Reform met in another, and there was no interaction, very little interaction between two groups. Did you find that at all to be the case when you came to Dallas in the 40s? Yes, I think that it was equally pervasive here, but on, of course, so much larger level than I was accustomed to that the Orthodox or the conservative community was just as organized as the reformed community Uh Council of course as a cross organization who welcomes and recruits members from all aspects of Jewish life, was still primarily the organization of the reformed Jewish women when I first came to Dallas.
But rather early on, strenuous efforts were made for this to go away. And very soon, leadership began to emerge from the conservative Jewish community. Probably as a result of the fact that, again, we were dealing with women who were second, now second generation, American, culture oriented. And they were interested in the same kinds of things that everybody was interested in. and they sought organizations that promulgated these programs. You say they were second generation. You mean in the first generation it was the foreignness that divided the... I'm thinking in terms of the Jewish emigrant of approximately 1920 when the waves of Jewish population came in from Eastern Europe.
These I speak of as first generation Americans. their children who were young adults in the 40s were the products of the education system of the United States whether you think it's a good one or a bad one right it certainly during this period was very patriotic and very oriented to the American ideal of freedom and equality and free speech and all those good things and this generation of jewish men and women uh were were moving out from the more circumscribed life of home and family, and more involved that many of them were college educated and were seeking greater integration not only into Jewish life but into community life.
Right. And I think the history of Dallas indicates that many of the community leaders at that period, Jewish community leaders in the early days, were the merchant princes of Main Street. by the 40s you were beginning to get Jewish community leaders, Jewish community leaders of Jewish persuasion from all phases of religious affiliation. I kind of mixed that up, but I think you get the answer. I certainly get your point. So what I'm hearing is that even though you were raised in a tiny town in Missouri, you very much were aware of your Jewish identity, your Jewish roots, there was an effort made for you to have some Jewish education, some affiliation, and when you established, you and your husband established your home here you immediately affiliated with temple and with council how is it with your children are they affiliated are they involved in Jewish life first of all have they married Jews that's a question I don't know whether I whether we did something right or whether we were just lucky both of my children married Jewish spouses, they have families of Jewish children, they've affiliated with immediately or almost immediately with temples in their community.
And who are your children and where are they now? My daughter lives in Lexington, Kentucky. And her name is? Sandra Winneker. uh-huh uh she has two children uh they both went all through Sunday school and both were confirmed uh-huh my son lives lives here in Dallas uh he's married to a lovely Jewish girl and they have three children uh all three sons have been bar mitzvahed uh and the older two have were confirmed last year at temple shalom so the the the uh so nothing has been diluted so nothing nothing has been diluted i promise you nothing from the next generation. I guess none of us know.
As I say, I don't know that we did anything right. I don't remember that we ever pushed this very much, but it just seemed to happen quite naturally. Now, when did you retire from your council job? Three years ago. Have you done any community work since then, or are you just enjoying life? Well, I'm enjoying life. I participate marginally in community things Because of my original interest and involvement with family outreach which has now expanded enormously I now back on the board of family outreach I become reactivated in the League of Women Voters. Uh-huh. That phone call a minute ago. I'm still doing a little volunteer work with council.
and as things come along that are challenging I'm kind of looking forward to getting involved in in whatever comes along I may participate in the upcoming political campaigns I don't know for sure yet okay for the benefit of those who may listen to this tape about 25 30 40 years from now who is running well I think we all know that the caucus is about to be nominated for the Democratic presidential candidacy this week and in a couple of weeks it'll be George Bush for the republic and who can't just see will you work for well I don't think we'll put this on tape oh okay is there anything I have left out and neglected to ask you anything about your life you'd like to share I don't know I think we've covered the waterfront we're about to run out of tape again yeah the lights flashing.
Yes, but it's been delightful talking with you and I've probably talked too much in too long. No, you haven't. This has been fascinating and I do thank you for all that you have shared with me. One thing that I did not mention at all.