Lynn Behrendt
Lynn Behrendt's roots trace back to Shreveport, Louisiana, where both her mother's and father's families had lived for generations and where her parents and grandparents were born and raised. She descended from a prominent Hungarian family, and a strong artistic gene ran through the generations, including relatives who were painters, illustrators, and designers. Her uncle, born Phelps Kirsch, studied in Paris under the artist Erte and became known as Jean Pierre Pique, working as a muralist in New York City for clients such as Greta Garbo and the French ambassador. Lynn's parents ran a bookstore and were deeply involved in the artistic, educational, and cultural life of Shreveport, welcoming clergy, professors, students, and visiting authors into their home. She lost her older sister in an automobile accident when Lynn was nearly nine, a grief her parents shielded her from as they raised her in a loving environment.
Lynn recalls early Passover dinners at her grandmother's home, blended with Southern touches like Delmonico pudding, and Sunday fried chicken gatherings with extended family. Her family was notably ecumenical; her grandmother was educated at a convent, and priests, sisters, and clergy of many faiths were close family friends. Her mother, a Latin and Greek scholar who later returned to college and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in her forties, translated ancient parchment manuscripts by magnifying glass. Lynn studied theater and music and once dreamed of Broadway. She met Bob Behrendt on a blind date in Shreveport, and after a night spent talking and listening to music, she knew she would marry him. They wed in the temple in Shreveport, with Rabbi Lefkowitz officiating, about six months and just 14 days of time together after meeting.
The newlyweds moved to New York City, where Bob joined a Merrill Lynch training program and Lynn worked in the design department at Steuben Glass, learning about scale and design. Living in Brooklyn Heights above a pizza parlor, she became grocery-store friends with Truman Capote. After about two years they left New York, eventually building their life together over 58 years of marriage. Lynn pursued interior design for roughly 50 years, working closely with clients who became friends and whose art collections she loved incorporating. She and Bob raised a family whose members inherited the artistic gene, including a daughter who is an interior designer in New York and grandsons pursuing creative and compassionate paths. Lynn cherishes the legacy of love, compassion, and appreciation for all people that her parents left her, and hopes to pass the same spirit on to her grandchildren.
Full Transcript
ready this is the oral history with land baron on January 10th 2019 good afternoon land good well thank you what do you know about your early family history as far back as you can go Oh golly that's a difficult question I was just doing some research as bob was down here I know about my grandmother's grandparents who were from Niagara Falls and my grandmother's grandfather was from Hungary and was a very prominent was from a very prominent family in Hungary and part of his family Leigh shows logis Brooks was a painter and an artist with quite a following and it's interesting because that particular strain
of genes did pass down through the family with all the designers graduates of some prominent design schools and in New York and it's a crazy artistic gene I believe that is really transferred through the family and this particular uncle loggias Brooks has done many illustrations that I've seen in Bibles through the years and he was was really good and in fact he's got some paintings in Hungary in the museum in Budapest and some of the family men there and had seen his paintings and it's just it just didn't it's very interesting because I have an uncle who passed away a few years ago that was
a muralist in New York City and did work for Greta Garbo and the French ambassador and did a beautiful panoramic in the B Altman's dining room that may still be there I need to do some research on that but that gene really came through Glavine was was he your mother's brother that was my mother's brother Jean Pierre became who used that name although he was born Phelps Kirsch in Shreveport Louisiana but he studied he and granny had some family in Paris and piqué was allowed to be sent to Paris when he was 15 or 16 and didn't study with Erte in Paris and Erte gave
him the idea of changing his name which he did as Erte had changed his name and it became Jean Pierre pique and anyway he was a character and a wonderful wonderful talented human being although he really was Phelps Kirsch was his name and I think it's so interesting because our son and his wife Robert and Amanda have named their baby Phelps after my uncle pique in the family name which i think is a lovely tribute and this was all done without Bob and I having any indication that they were going to do this it was a total surprise and delight for for all of us
but so tell me about your family life and Shreveport did you ever make family no unfortunately not my parents and my grandparents and family from both sides were born and raised in Shreveport which was lovely mother and daddys parents knew one another and it was it was a quite a congenial group aunts and uncles and cousins and I said no as far as the family but the my family was just my sister and myself and I lost my sister when I was going on nine she was killed in an automobile accident which of course devastated my parents and as I've become a parent I only
love and appreciate the fact that they were able to raise me in a fairly normal very happy environment so that I wouldn't see their their pain which there was quite a bit of but as an adult I look back and I realize that the muffled sobs I heard through the doors were mother and daddy grieving all those years for my sister but basically I was still able to be a normal teenager and enjoying and having a wonderful type of social and intellectual experience in Louisiana and sri srimad so did this big family with your aunts and uncles you've all get together we did now I
can remember early Passover dinners at my grandmother's house and that was always something that I look forward to because Bob grandparents had been in Shreveport for so many years it was not necessarily a Jewish Passover it was a little bit of this and a little bit of that and granny would make Delmonico pudding which was definitely not a Jewish dish but we loved it because it was colorful and had brandy in it and I thought that was absolutely the best it was fun it was great and then unfortunately after my sister's death mom and daddy didn't quite feel up to that type of celebration so
the latter years we did not have that particular Passover celebration but on the other side of the family my dad we would go to my aunt Lena's home for fried chicken on Sunday a very typical southern experience with with all of the family it was it was fun and Angelina was quite a cook our Jewish German cook and that's where we learned our matzo balls that are not the typical type of matzo balls most of our friends have but the hard dumpling matzo balls which we love and our daughter-in-law and I have made those together and that that's fun were her parents active at the
temple they were mom and daddy had a book store a rather they were very involved in the art and the education the cultural aspects of the city extremely involved not as much of the temple mother was confirmed she was quite a scholar and in fact we have a pin that that mother won for being a excellent student as well as not missing a day in Sunday school so I proudly have that historical pin which I love it's very campy but that was really the main extent I think of their involvement they were with their bookstore anyone who was academic and a reader for their friends
and all of the clergy were close friends in fact it was interesting because when Grady my grandmother who was born in tree fort was educated in confident and she was of course the only Jewish child at the convent but that was the best means of education and that's where granny went before she was sent off to New York for finishing school so it was a most it was an unusual family the priests and the sisters at the convent wall close friends of my parents and everyone was running in and out of the household but there was always an appreciation for other people in their religions
and that's what I pride mostly in my background having grown up with this being from to Jewish parents but still my feeling that there is so much more out there and the ability to be able to appreciate each and every one's ideas and their their their religions I find very very comforting I love that sounds like your family was quite a queue medical very very ecumenical extremely so yes and if that mother was a Latin scholar Latin and Greek scholar and in our home we had some parchment manuscripts that Daddy had found from mother in New York City years years and years ago that mother
translated all these manuscripts with a magnifying glass because the monks didn't do this for the common person to be reading and I can remember watching mother for hours there with her magnifying glass and she would say come here land come here this is so interesting I can actually see into their the months would would make little notations over the manuscripts and she said I can actually get into their personalities by their notations I mean it was it was that was just mother's way of of having a little just just a little exercise she loved that crazy family very doesn't sound crazy no so don't you
talk about this Jean this design Jean is creative jeans so let's go to your profession tell us what you have done professionally well it's it can't compare to what my uncle did I've done the interior design for about 50 years and I've been very fortunate that I have wonderful clients that have become close friends of mine and I've not promoted myself because that's just not my nature and if they had seen a home that I had worked on and they wanted to call me that would be wonderful and so I won't say I have a humongous business but it's been enough to make me happy
and Bob supported me which is very wonderful and I've had clients that have had incredible art collections and I love art and have a little bit of a background in art history and being able to work with their pieces and their things and not to upstage you to me has been really probably the most exciting element of my business or did you have formal not really I was a theater and music major and thought I was going to actually be on Broadway but things turned a little differently for me and I do a moat when I try to present something to someone as far as
what furniture and fabrics they shoot so I guess I just I'm still using a little bit of my training and in that regard but I have studied composition and and color and and scale and I've done enough yes to get back how did you mean well it's interesting because I'm just I'm not sure if you asked him the same question if we will have the same answers but but that's esoteric we had a blind date in Shreveport and Bob was coming through after having attended wedding in Alexandria Louisiana one of his fraternity brothers and he had met a nurse and his wedding and decided he
would follow her back to Shreveport well he got back to Shreveport staying with one of his fraternity brothers and the nurse turned him down and so I was the second one on the list to be called his fraternity brother and I were very close buddies and he said why don't you call Lynn so Bob called Lynn and when he first called I turned him down because I had I was madly in love with the cellist that was coming in from LSU who I thought was going to be my morning only and I went in the kitchen and said to mother a friend of Bobby red
stones just called and I told him I was waiting for Millard to come in town and mother said oh my gosh why don't you go out it'll be so late before Millard comes in town and you in Bobby and his friend I'm sure we'll have a nice evening so I being a dutiful daughter like we all were in those days I called Bob redstone back and said I'll speak to Bob and I spoke to Bob and said yes I'd be delighted to go out so we went out and that first night we actually stayed up until about 6:00 a.m. the next morning doing nothing but talking in the living room and playing on the high five sherizaan and some wonderful Beethoven and it was a funny evening when I look back and think about it but we fell in love and I actually went into the bedroom where my parents were half asleep and said mother I'm going to marry this boy and she said honey that's fine she turned over and went back to sleep because that was sort of my typical the way I've operated anyway 14 days later I did marry Bob and it's amazing we've grown up together and he's been incredible and has put
up with my craziness all these years and in March it'll be 58 years which is amazing did you ever see the cellist again as a friend Millard was so talented and of course I was a drama music major and we would go into the some of these rehearsal rooms and I can remember Millard playing moonlight sonata on the cello and I would cry but we were still we were good friends I mean when you think about these crazy how innocent everyone was in those days it's just amazing utterly amazing but yes we remained friends and Bob and I did get married if it was a
period of six months but we had 14 days over the six-month period and where did you get married we got married in Shreveport in the temple and it was a beautiful service rabbi Lefkowitz who was a very close friend of my parents performed the service and my roommate from LSU Poli Heinberg was my only maid of honor or actually she was the only maid of honor and then my cousin was matron also in the wedding though I didn't really care for but I had to have which is true but anyways Bob and I were married in March and Bob had just graduated from from Tulane
and he had taken a job with Merrill Lynch in New York in this exciting training program that they had in New York City so we left Shreveport when flew to New York had our honeymoon in New York at the Astor hotel for a week which is now torn down and with that Bob said ok I'm going to work and you had to get a job so that next few days I got a job at Steuben glass in New York City and ended up in the design department not designing Steuben glass but working with the designers who I loved and who taught me so very much
about scale and design and they were just wonderful group to work with so that's where we were in New York City and Bob was with Merrill in this training program and we lived in Brooklyn Heights which was really fairly colorful it wasn't the Brooklyn Heights that it is today we lived above a pizza parlor that was always catching fire and the fuse from the business I'm surprised I can still eat pizzas but I can but it was it was an interesting experience to say the least I used to shop at bohack's which was a grocery store down the street and Truman Capote was there and
I would bump into true and you know it both accent hey true how are you what are you up to and he knew this little girl from the south and we were we were we were buddies we were a good buddy it we knew your parents no no Truman did not but it's interesting I have since read that his father was born in Shreveport which I did not know at the time except I knew that we gravitated to one another because he liked my southern accent and you know friendly face in New York City I guess it's hard to find but we we were buddy
we were grocery buddies and that was and that was fun how long were you in New York two years and we loved it and we were of course starving and mother and daddy would send us money so we could go to the theater and that was one of those wonderful experiences and we would take the subway and go and see whatever we could find that that we could afford we would sometimes do standing-room-only but we were still at the theater and that's what of course I have always loved and I think past that particular love down to one of our grandsons who has written a
book and I'll plug the book because it's coming out next November and it's about the Broadway musical divas of the past and it's written in verse and it's going to be it is illustrated with a very talented illustrator from DreamWorks in California and Random House snacked of the book and John was getting his MBA he wrote this book and we are all so excited we don't know what I mean it's really going to be fun and there's a possibility that he may do a series of books very similar to this the next one will be filmed he's he's quite a character and a wonderful wonderful
grandson that calls to tell me what he's doing and what he's saying and he lives in New York with his family his daddy is a Trinity of headmaster and Trinity and our daughter is a very talented interior designer who lives in New York City and that gene definitely came down because Michelle can she she's also a drunk that she she can hell a straight she's she scales she's renderings I mean it's just it's amazing to see the talent that your own child is and then for her child to inherit this also he went to Northwestern and the same talent the same gene has really passed
on to this kid that he's the eldest of her three children and of course you know I adore each and every one of them and they're all so different I mean it's really a most unusual family to say the least what what legacy do you believe your parents left for you so living life I think the the feeling that everybody has something very special and very good in their personality and their in their makeup and to be able to look for that in different people I really feel is what I inherited from my parents daddy was I was just reading in some of the different
papers from Shreveport when Daddy died there were editorials about my daddy who was a very simple man owned a bookstore but everybody loved him because his ability to be at the same table with the president of the bank and I mean table not literally but to commit to have a conversation with the shoeshine boy and that was my father he was the salt of the earth type of a very bright man but also he had this incredible ability to love humanity as my mother did in a very different way mother was a real Greek enlightened scholar mother was brilliant and after sister died mother to
pull herself together went back to college she had gone only two years before she and daddy were married and mother went back to sin theory and ended up graduating Phi Beta Kappa in in her 40s but that was that was a side of mother that that had everyone gravitated to her we used to have all the kids from centenary in the house as their friends and and the fact that these were friends that were 20 years 30 years younger and also the professors that were friend there's has made me appreciate my mom that Gretchen and might had my parents and the fact that they were
in the book business and all of these interesting people that would spend time in our home as friends just just made you realize what an interesting fun world that is I remember in those days before we had people coming in and out on airplanes Richard Llewellyn who's an author came down and he was quite an alcoholic and stayed in the house for about five days drunk as a skunk sleeping on the couch in the living room and we all had thought and I would his child had I mean it was never anything that I wasn't threatened to my parents explained you know well he likes
to drink and my parents enjoyed a drink or two also it was just a different atmosphere a very intellectual bohemian atmosphere but one with such love and compassion for each and every person that that's what I feel they gave me and what legacy would you like to leave under Lord huh that's a tough one too I think probably the same feeling that they're to know that there are people that that even though they may come across with a different attitude and an outlook but you still have to look for the good in that person and try to have a little more compassion and love for
them and not be so rigid I think that being a little looser in life helps a lot too and I think that that now we have four grandsons and of course the we're still looking at what three and a half year old is going to end up doing besides working on trucks and things of that type but he's I'm sure hopefully you know they'll be he'll be a good kid because our son is such a wonderful compassionate intellectual and and his wife also I think I think they'll be okay I think I think you'll be okay I see the handwriting now for the other three
boys which I think they have their most unusual most unusual family daddy being the headmaster and an educator and Michelle being an interior designer and it's a big son who has written this book is with home HBO and it has just gone with them godness masters and it's government it's here they're doing something that we'll all hear about I'm sure and grandson number two who we adore is an outdoorsman and a free free spirit and when people ask where does he live well he and his girlfriend live in his car so that's a rather unusual thing to say to but he takes these he works
for Knowles and he takes kids and young young adults out for three or four weeks at a time in Utah and Wyoming and he's got this kid has got a heart that you would not believe anyone this young he's 25 could have the love and compassion that he has for everyone and everything when Michelle and John left Houston Brooks was a Jew in high school which was a pretty difficult time for a kid to be taken out of school and they moved to New York City and within a number of months Brooks was well accepted he ended up being the captain of the lacrosse team
and he has got friends like my parents had from A to Z from what ever color persuasion every time we go to New York it's India Brooks is up there it's a ball because these kids drift in and out sometimes they sleep in the house and you step over bodies going down the hall it's it's amazing and I'm so proud of our kids of our daughter and son-in-law who have this kind of home that all of their friends are comfortable and stroked and love for what they are well you've definitely left them a wonderful legacy well I hope but we're proud of all the children
and their spouses their spouses may not be what you know it's not a typical Jewish household show I'd say our son-in-law is Episcopalian our daughter-in-law is Baptists and yet honey there they had Jewish hearts that's all you know I keep telling them that that you do have a Jewish heart so we feel very blessed very breath thank you so much Lynn this has been greatly appreciate your well honey I appreciate you and Anu and thank y'all for doing this because I really didn't know what you know you