all Oral History
April 27, 2015

Marilyn Golman

Marilyn was born in Dallas in 1932 and spent her earliest years in the Oak Lawn area, then near the northern edge of the city. Her father worked in the ladies millinery and piece goods business and was known for being handy, even building a doll house in the backyard. Her mother was a charming southern belle from Shreveport, Louisiana, whose family had arrived there in the 1800s and opened a specialty department store. Her paternal grandfather, Jacob, came from Tilsit, Germany, boarded a train in New York with no idea of his destination, and stepped off in Farmersville, Texas, where he became the town's first Jewish citizen and started a store with a pushcart.

When Marilyn's father was transferred to open a department in Cincinnati, the family moved there for about six months before returning to Dallas. On their return they settled on Normandy in the Park Cities, chosen for its good school system. Marilyn attended Bradfield Elementary on Mockingbird Lane and went all the way through the Highland Park school system, graduating from Highland Park High School in 1949. As a teenager she loved big band music and the jitterbug, favoring bands like Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw. She entered the University of Texas, following her father, and later graduated from SMU.

Marilyn did her practice teaching at Bradfield, the same school she had attended as a child, and was then hired in January 1954 as the first teacher at Lamplighter School, the first Montessori school in Dallas, located out on Churchill Way when it was still country road. She married Joey Golman on August 16, 1961; the two had known each other for years through shared friends and card-playing families before finally dating. She recalled the shock of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas and other momentous events of her lifetime. Marilyn and Joey raised a daughter, a son, and a granddaughter, for whom she wished lasting happiness and contentment.