Malcolm Shwarts
Malcolm Shwarts was born in Dallas in 1931 into a large family. His mother was the first in her family born in Dallas, one of nine children, and his father was in the ladies ready-to-wear business. Malcolm had an older brother who died at birth and a younger sister. The family lived in South Dallas until after Malcolm was shot as a child, when concern over the neighborhood prompted a move to the Lakewood area of East Dallas. He attended William Lipscomb grade school, junior high, and Woodrow Wilson High School, graduating in 1948, and later began college at SMU.
Active in BBYO as a young man, Malcolm attended a convention in Tyler, Texas, where he met Joan, who was visiting from Minneapolis. Their long-distance courtship continued while the Korean War broke out during his third year at SMU. Rather than be drafted into the Army, Malcolm joined the Air Force with his friend Myron, trained in radio, navigation, and communications, and was stationed at Bergstrom Field in Austin. He and Joan married in 1952. He was soon sent overseas, flying reconnaissance missions over Korea taking photographs for the Army and Marines in 1953, and later served at bases in Maine, including near Presque Isle and Bangor.
After his discharge, Malcolm returned to Dallas and briefly worked in his father's business and in family furniture ventures before finding his calling in sales. He built a successful career selling mattresses and then dining furniture, representing manufacturers nationally and traveling to all 50 states. He and Joan raised two sons and a daughter, who gave them eight grandchildren, later expanded to ten. Malcolm grew up at Temple Emanu-El, where he was bar mitzvah around 1944 and confirmed, and he served for several years as a BBYO advisor for the Kaplan chapter. He credited Aaron Clauser as an important mentor and celebrated 70 years of marriage in 2022.
Full Transcript
today is august 3rd 2022 my name is joe reingold and i am interviewing malcolm schwartz here in dallas croatia actually she didn't because she was the first one born here she was born in dallas and then after she was born in dallas she had three brothers uh they were born after her in dallas she had like five five uh older brothers and sisters there was nine in the family and they wound up in um actually they were in right sorry alpha downtown until they moved to south dallas and then that's and then um my dad i guess he met her and then they got married
and it took them a few years before they had i had an older brother but he died at birth and then i was born and then i had one sister so we grew up in south dallas we lived on home street until i was going to grade school at cornell when i got shot i think my dad was worried about the neighborhood and so right after i got shot a few years a couple of whatever it was we moved to east dallas and we moved into the lakewood area and i wound up going from i was at colonial when i got shot i went to
william lipscomb's grade school and then jail long junior high and then woodrow wilson high school and i graduated woodrow wilson high school in 1948 and um after that college i was um i started i started at smu and it was about that time the summer of 1948 and i was active in bbyl then i went to a convention in tyler texas in metro met germany let's see i was 18 years old and i came home told my mother i just met my future wife i did yeah yeah and so she was in from minneapolis and it was not an easy situation and i had to
lie to my dad to get to minneapolis i told him i told him oh yeah this is very true she knows i totally i was going to see a baseball game i lied to him i got on a bus and went to chicago and i had a cousin there and i said if my dad calls i'm here but you'll know where i'm at and i got on the next bus with to minneapolis jason jones what was she doing in tyler in the first place she had met a girl that i was dating at the time blanche catsuit in um blanche joan had a sister i
had an aunt that she was staying with was living near where blanche's sister was living so um is the one that talked joan into going to tyler to the convention where and i was older i was in the uh i was at like one of the counselors and uh so that's where i met her i was i'm part of the baseball game and she was she was playing baseball and i was trying to kill her yeah it's a pretty good deal so anyway that's uh how we met on a base in tyler texas and then it was a long distance a long distance kind of
carrying on with us until until um let's see i started in my third year at smu that's when the korean war was broken out and all of us were they were drafted us right out of school as you probably talked to a lot of guys back in 1950 and this was 1950 so i was a very apparent one of my close friends myron schwiff who was now deceased we we discussed uh what are we going to do they're going to take us right out of school and um so i told him i said well they want us to either join the navy or the air
force or whatever you want to do he said well the navy's out because i can't swim you don't have to swim so i said okay let's go join the air force which we did because we didn't want to go in the army i went in the air force and then took the basic training and we had two years in college so we could apply for pilot training which is what i wanted to do and when we got accepted i was i was delayed it took a while because it was so crowded and it took almost two years and in that time i had gone through
a couple of their tech schools and i was stationed in austin texas at merchant fields which was terrific and uh when i got called to go into the into pilot training with byron i called john and we had just talked about getting married this was 1952 early 52 she said well if you're going to do that forgive me yeah so so i turned down going to the to pilot training but i went into a couple of their tech skills i got into their radio and navigation and communications all kinds of stuff like that and i thought i'd just stay in austin so we got married
[Music] but one of my training i was in a single engines i was moved into multi-agents they called me because they were putting a new bomber group together to go to korea at that time and lo and behold i got called to go into this new division and the next thing i know after we got married and we were married about a month or two months three months whatever it was anyway bang they pulled me into we went to japan and we were flying over a career taking pictures for the army and the marines and boy they were and those those guys were shooting at
you but we got lucky because it was this was 1953 yeah 1953 and we were only there for about four five six months and it ended right and then they called us and said it's over so we're all going back home so i thought i would go back to austin i would call joan and we would go back to austin they were creating a actually they i guess the world was but there was a general lemay that uh created this base up in limestone maine and they put me in these b-36s and this is a horrible plume it was a huge he'd go up and
you'd be up in the air for two days without landing and at the limestone there was no place so there's a little town way north main north of presque isle and there was no place i could get shown so every week i'd go and ask for a first one they started laughing at me and said finally he told me you could give me a transfer it could be south i said well there can't be north there's nothing north of the fresco maine that was a little tip for me so it was all the way down to bangor bangor maine so i called john and i
said i got it down to bangor and i can get you up here i want to get a place to live and i had a friend of mine who was a colonel who was leaving at a beautiful little house in old town was right outside and so i called john and she came up my folks drove her up and um so we lived in bangor for about seven eight months until i got hurt until we got i took my discharge and we came back to the house now that was my early life i've survived japan korea and somebody having a wound and now three heart
attacks and i'm still here and whatever it is whatever going strong so where did you and joan live when you were newlyweds well we lived in austin i mean we lived in a bank well yeah but when you got yeah until i got and discharged came back to dallas i went back to smu to try to finish my school but i was married and she got pregnant we had a baby and going to school i had to work she was working part-time at sanger harris he had to make a living and uh and my dad was laughing at me because what i was thinking in
smu was i was in music in art my dad used to say you know musicians don't make any money and artists don't make any money until they die so you're wasting their time so he said why don't you just come in with me and my dad was in the ladies ready to wear business and so i came in with him but i hated it i just didn't like it at all i got out of that and then um a friend of mine oh my sister married joe fridge who they had a they were in a furniture business so they joe had asked me if i'd
come in with them and help them there was uh they were three brothers and a brother-in-law but i it was just so much family i i did that for a while and then i got a chance a friend of mine that i met through bene breath they had a mattress factory he asked me if i'd join them and help them sell mattresses i'd say yeah so i'll never forget my brother-in-law's and i tell you what you won't last six weeks we'll we won't even clean out your desk you'll be back and every time i go out to knock on somebody's door i think about my
brother i said i'd be back in six weeks so i created that business pretty good and then elevated that until i found well i went with another mattress company that had recruited me i was doing a pretty good job and one of my competitors hired me away from the company and i went with this other company selling mattresses and then i uh one of my coaches i had a very good account in oklahoma city i was in there one day and he said told me he's malcolm he says you know he says i was in los angeles and there is a dynamic factory there and
i they're terrific and they're they're only selling on the west coast they don't even have anybody in texas you'd be a natural for me he gave me the guy's name and he called them and he said i've got a guy for you lives in dallas but he would be a tremendous rep for you they called me and i i met the owner i mean well they sent me a ticket to fly to los angeles they were in california and i made a deal with them to come with them but i said i'm still going to say well man he said well you can do whatever
you want just sell our product you can sell whatever you want you're independent and i said okay well it started growing when i was selling mattresses and i was selling dinettes tables and chairs the owner of the mattress company said call me and he said look either or you're not gonna do both and i said don't don't don't make me make a decision because you won't like what i'm going to tell you he said listen i said i'm going with the dining and so i did did pretty we did that pretty good and it grew and grew and grew the owner died and left it
to a son who couldn't who messed up the business that was that and at that time then another guy called me he said i understand you're on the street and he said i just bought this factory i don't know what to do with it and i was recommended to call you so i go to him and we built that one up and i built that one up until i was 65 and after 65 he called me and he said it's time for you to retire then i got another call from a friend of mine a competitor in los angeles and i helped him for he
was in trouble and we moved into the bonaventure we sold our house well i totally we built a house in richardson we lived there for 20 18 20 years and then we sold that we built house in northwood and after northwood and that's when another retired said 1995 and and she picked she lost the monumental so we came here and we bought this little place that we've been here since 95. while we were here i got another call another guy was imported from china and he says could you help me i need some help so i was flying and helping him in north carolina and then i had a friend that had a store in richardson a dining store he asked me to help him i was helping him when i was i was doing three and four jobs i after you retired that's very tired see joe the thing is living here was nothing to do and i was bored sick and i was 65 years old so why not go back down and try to get busy
so let me ask you besides your work and your career what else were you or were you and joan involved in anything else jewish or civic or anything like that well i one of my one of my loves was bbyl i became an advisor uh at that time the the my kids my kids were getting up the age of above but they were at age 14 15 years old they needed somebody in kaplan so i go and i interviewed whoever i talked to anyway so i became the advisor for kaplan well of course i got in there and those kids were boy were they rotten
i tell you they were they hated me because i came in with a little discipline and they didn't like that at all well i'll tell you the first meeting i mean opening ceremonies was horrible man i i went to the front of the build of the room we were in we were at at uh chef's community center and i went up to the front of that desk and they were all talking everything and i just slammed my fist down and i said just a goddamn minute that's not the way we're going to open up so anyway they didn't like me at all but uh they
all became pretty good guys after that yeah so i did that for like three or four years and i loved that and i had given up because i was playing golf a lot of golf you know i couldn't do that on the weekends with pbyl but i gave up the golf to do bbyl when i did that now back in the old days my parents were members of sheriffs israel and temple emanuel so they they were deciding whether they were going to be orthodox circumcision or reform they didn't know what they were they were making their decisions i really grew up at temple emanuel so
i grew up in the reform uh system so i was confirmed in bar mitzvah that tiffany manual my bar mitzvah was in let's see if i was born in 31 31 so it's 1944 during the war years anyway that's what i was missing and then confirmed from temple and then my dad remained members of charitable and both sheriffs of until all those years so uh that was mostly my church and of course joan was active my wife was active and many women and all those all the women's organizations but and growing up in dallas was easy i think because we we had good weather the
children wanted to get away from minnesota anywhere she and that's our life so uh we've been in the last we moved into the bottom issue in 95. so we've been here 27 years how has your family grown tell us about your kids grandchildren etc oh this is my life when we got married and so we had three kids we had two boys and a girl and uh the three of them all went practical school and got their education one smu and two north dallas north north texas then they got married what they've done is they've had kids so between the three kids they gave us eight grandkids and those eight grandkids now out of the eight seven are married oh boy right six of them that were eight so we are we got
um actually my oldest son when his second marriage married a girl he unfortunately got divorced and married a girl he had two boys and he married a girl with two girls so he wind up with bringing two girls more into the into our family so we wound up with our eight naturals and two extras so we went up with ten grandchildren wonderful and uh and now those two girls are married and they have babies i tease all the time and saying that joan and i had two mules we had racehorse for kids you know we were lucky yeah yeah it was pretty good so now
we're getting we just um we just celebrated our 70th wedding anniversary 17th we married 52 and 2022 was 70 years wow our daughter who's the youngest of the three kids she's our baby she's now 62. she wants to have a party i said well we don't need a vanilla she said dad 70 years is a milestone so so we're having a little party and to celebrate but we had to wait because one of our granddaughters was said europe we didn't want to have it while she was out of town with her her two kids so um anyway we're having a little party and that's my so i've had uh shot japan korea and three heart attacks okay still walking around still look pretty good what do you see as the the biggest or one of the biggest or a few of the
changes that dallas has gone through through the years joe i tell you what when i go downtown when i take a ride downtown that's i'm like a stranger in in my hometown it's just unbelievable the changes of the city the old the old uh tallest building that we had then i mean it's it just dwarfed now i mean downtown is unbelievable i can't believe that the growth of the city of dallas how it's grown and naturally uh you know that happens all the time somebody's calling me i don't answer it okay if i don't recognize that i know it's probably fake anyway i i think
i think dallas dallas is because of the growing of everything moving north and the city planners they've tried to move south but you can't move south it just doesn't work and so everything is going north naturally and i can remember when we first moved to richardson that was just uh way out in the country and now you know look what's happening between richardson plano frisco and oklahoma all the way up yeah oh yeah pretty soon we'll be at the we might annex oklahoma it's true yeah you're right yeah we take oklahoma in if they need help what about the jewish community the what the jewish
community in general how has it changed in all the years you've been here well joan and i we've always been active in temple and i i was active at first in the brotherhood but then i i was out of town so much because my job you know i lived i lived on american airlines i mean i just i was gone my daughter used to say she says all right yeah she thought i was just the guy that came on weekends because i was gone a lot but my job took me to all 50 states so i worked my way up to national sales you know
i would i would when i was with whatever company i was with i'd take them to the next step to to get into a bigger store i used to challenge that i could go into a strange city go in go to the biggest best store in town knock on the door and try to try to settle well i devised a system of how to do it it worked i used it i used it to get into accounts like such as jcpenney or marshall fields james hudson's in detroit most of those companies are all owned by target a lot of people don't know that target's a
parent company to a lot of so this is what i this i just watched it grow but i think dallas because it's so central and you could get to anywhere in the city in the states within a couple hours by being from dallas and and that that made it really good and that centralized on on the airport dfw grew and then and i think that um through the airlines and uh being so centrally located you were two hours from anywhere in the united states you wanted to go to orless and that's what made it good for me and the growth i think is uh through
that of course i i watched that little airline called southwest airlines when it first came in i was flying down to houston for ten dollars and uh then they had two planes it was fun and um i watched dallas grow to what it is today to a world metropolis is what it is i'm if i'd had any if i'd have had some money or been smart enough i'd have bought a lot of real estate but i didn't do it but i think dallas has just grown way out there throughout your years is there anybody whether business or private or personal that you looked up to
as a role model one of the one of the guys that's helped me when i was getting started to call was aaron clauser aaron was aaron was married to my brother-in-law's sister i think he was instrumental when he came into the furniture business and then i was with him and he was he was instrumental in helping me a lot aaron was i always called him a frustrated rabbi he he loved he loved the jewish religion as a matter of fact he used to do services on the side he would go into a small town and do a service so i i looked up to aaron
a lot i i used to and he's being his store and i'd go there and he helped me a lot in my growth in what i did and when i got on the when i got into the territories and started selling yeah he was probably one of my big hey i looked up to him a lot wonderful is there anything else you want to add anything i want to say no i tell you i'm i'm a lucky guy you know i like i say i've been um shot you know a war and three heart attacks and i'm still barely walking around and then i've gotten
away from 70 years so um that's a blessing yeah it's a blessing but the thing is now we we we both be one of us drive anymore and we uh we don't go to service as much we were up to about two years ago it was about two three years ago we were still driving to services and we would go to their their movies they would have and we went to different things but now it's his heart so we do it on a computer right we're just stuck here and that's one of our kids calls us and our grandkids well actually our grandkids that's right
but luckily our daughter and our two sons are taking care of us only we're taking every day for whatever it's worth it's wonderful what else you need to know that's good i'm good thank you so much sir you're wonderful your family is wonderful and keep up keep on trucking