Marvin Greenberg
Marvin Greenberg grew up in Waco, Texas, where his mother and grandmother operated a large restaurant. His parents were divorced, and he lived with his grandparents as well, all in one household, with food and family close at hand. When Marvin was around the time of his bar mitzvah, his mother married his stepfather, who owned a business in Hearne, Texas, a railroad town north of Bryan. There Marvin was one of only two Jewish children in school and faced considerable hostility, spending much of his time fighting. Seeing him unhappy, his family sold the business and moved to Dallas when he was about 14 or 15. He was an only child.
In Dallas, Marvin attended Forest Avenue High School in old South Dallas, where he became deeply involved in athletics, playing basketball and tennis, and was part of a small group of Jewish students active in sports. His family belonged to Shearith Israel and lived near both a synagogue and Temple Emanu-El, and he socialized with the North Dallas Jewish community. He intended to become a journalist but changed his major to pharmacy when his family, who had bought a drugstore, struggled to hire pharmacists. He graduated from the University of Texas and married in 1954.
Marvin worked for the Stovall family pharmacy on Preston Road and later for Mustang Pharmacy before buying out his former employer to open his own store in Preston Center. His business thrived, especially after moving across the street near University Park, and he ran it for roughly 35 to 40 years before retiring in 1998. He led BBYO for several years, coached youth athletics, and was proud of bringing BBYO into the Jewish Community Center, where he served on both the regular and senior boards. A devoted family man, he and his wife had three children, several grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, and enjoyed bridge, theater, and the symphony.
Full Transcript
yes today is february 20th 2017. my name is joe reingold and i will be interviewing marvin greenberg so tell us a little bit about your family background where they used to live and how they got here okay well i grew up in waco born and raised in waco texas my mother and grandmother ran a big restaurant in waco and i grew up living and working and eating in a restaurant so i was pretty well spoiled as far as food i can have anything i want we lived in waco my my mother and father were divorced my mother worked in the restaurant ran the restaurant and did the bookkeeping and i lived
my go live with my grandparents also we all lived in one house so they were part of my growing up and my mother met my stepfather when i was just bar mitzvah in waco and he had a business in hearne texas i don't know so we moved to hearn texas which was quite an experience i was only the second jewish kid in school there and her in texas is a big railroad town and where is it near just 20 miles north of bryan texas okay is that three that describes where it is but there was only one other jewish family there with one child and
the railroad people were not too friendly to jews as a result i spent a lot of my time fighting and we stayed we were living there for about a year and a half and my folks knew that i was miserable there that's how they decided he sold a very profitable business and moved us to wait to moved us to dallas when i was 14 14 14 or 15 i can't remember and uh were you an only child yes uh and that's how we got to dallas of course i went to forest avenue high school which is uh old south dallas and supposedly the jewish high
school but uh upon research there's only about 15 to 20 of the school was jewish so it really wasn't a jewish high school but but for dallas back then that's considerable you know i mean yeah well i was very you know i i had a good good hired i was very involved with athletics since in high school so i was in with the in crowd even though i was jewish uh i recall very much there were three of us that got involved in paul black morty rafkin and myself were the three jewish kids that were in the school that were in the athletics so we
got along we you know really had a nice high extended experience what what sports did you do basketball and tennis and uh that was my two major sports and had a nice high school great high school experience and when i graduated uh i was gonna go become a journalist meantime my folks had bought a drugstore and they were having a terrible time hiring pharmacists so at the last minute i changed my major from journalism to pharmacy and became a pharmacist back up just a minute let me ask you uh besides sports did you do any type of jewish affiliation any organization when you were in
high school okay and spent a lot of you know went to conventions and grew up even though i lived in south a lot of the jewish families been started moving north about those years so but there were a small group of us that were in the south dallas fortunately a couple of them had access to cars so we socialized pretty much with the north dallas jewish kids and i have had a nice jewish folks belong to actually sheriff but we lived two or three blocks from to ferret history when we spent half most of our high holy day time to ferret my jewish education was
very limited uh where was to where were they where were the two synagogues located at that time it was on grand avenue we lived on park road which was one block off of and temple emmanuel was on south boulevard right so we had both the temple and the ferret close so i grew up and had a lot of jewish friends even though i ran a lot with the non-jewish kids from high and when i graduated my folks were having such a hard time with pharmacists i went to pharmacy and that's where i graduated from ut from youtube that's when i got out uh just about
when i was ready to uh graduate my folks had an offer to sell their store and i got out of this pharmacy business before i graduate so i came out as a pharmacist but i had to work for somebody out there and actually i worked for a family named stovall on preston road northwest highway so i was very familiar with the north dallas community especially the jewish family and i stayed there then i went to work for mustang pharmacy through a misunderstanding with my old employee i quit and was offered this job with mustang pharmacy which i spent many years with until i had an
opportunity to buy my old boss out of the stovall family on preston road right that's how i got into my own drunk store very good how many years did this work what years was this taking place let's see 54 53. we got married in 54 so this i was working for stovall in 50 not working for mustang last night so and that was we stayed there until i had the opportunity to buy out my old boss died and i had stayed friends with them and mrs stovall called me up and asked me if i would like to buy the drugstore and that's how i got into the drugstore i had my own store and i was impressed in the center and you know and then i finally moved across the street at the university park which was a blessing in the scribes because it was a gold
mine area and the people loved the service so we had a very successful business how many years were you there well pharmacy was i was there till we graduate uh we retired in 98 98 so we were there for 30 reasons 35 or 40 years yeah before you had my old boss from preston died she offered me the opportunity to buy the store so i expanded to two drug stores and finally just consolidated on preston center that's where i spent the rest of my years in pharmacy wow and trade had a very successful business tried to become a chain for a long time several times
but it found out i was better off with one good drugstore than two or three so my chain store ambitions disappeared besides your career what else would you say you were involved in either civically or jewishly well jewishly i was in byo bbyo like as my kids grew up i became very involved with bbyo and eventually i was head of bbyo for about two two or three years oh it was uncle martin and all the kids yeah and uh actually i got involved because of jack robbins dr robbins was there ahead of me and he lured me into working with him and i became head
of bbyo for several years and got got the bbyos into this jewish community center because i was involved with that and before that they were not involved so i really sort of felt very proud of my accomplishments getting bbyo and the jcc together right and they're still there they're still there yeah international convention this week yeah well we last one that was here a number of years ago we were very involved this year we're not involved no that wasn't a convention that was a maccabee macaulay yeah so i was very involved with bbyo for a number of years and at jcc we you know always
been i've been almost been on the senior board and the regular board of the jcc uh so you've really seen it grow yeah yeah from its infancy on up yeah the baby yo group is really you know been gotten a lot of kids well even the jccc itself you've seen it growing to expand well we had these that was some of our fun years to having all those kids around they all spent you can all spent mince time in my home uh on the way to north park this was the orange juice station so that was pretty much what about synagogue life how were you
involved in that well i belonged okay uh i was on the board one one year and then i dropped out or didn't get real nominated or something but i've always been a member but i pretty much went out of the governor i just became a member okay all right but we've been a member of sheriff israel for since mars since marla was six or seven five years old and still are yeah have you found yourself getting involved in anything else in the community at large no i played a lot of well i played a lot of sports i played uh temple shalom leagues and things
like that but basically that my involvement was basically the jcc although we've always belonged to sheriff israel since more than five years since you're a native texan and from this area particularly how have you seen the area grow what have you what changes have you seen in well it's got to be a big city it was a little you know because we lived in uh park row in south dallas where the big jewish community was always with and that has grown to be a pretty good large community but it's all moved to the north uh dallas is just blossom it's just a big city and
we've enjoyed it our whole livelihood has been in the north dallas area how has your family changed and grown well of course it's uh we have the three children and uh each of them have had children so we have uh what seven six six six plus average three yeah six or seven grandchildren we have two great grandchildren now marla's family has two little she has two grandchildren and of course they're our great-grandchildren and we enjoy our family we're very much family oriented our major events are family events that's wonderful since things have shifted for you and you're not doing as many sports activities what else
do you find that you'd like to get involved in or that you have been involved in well i was on the senior board at the center for many years and we played bridge and basically that's probably our main outlet socially is a bridge and we have of course old friends that we go to dinner with periodically and uh just like art it's pretty much yeah our life style is a synagogue and the center and our bridge plane friends and uh that's basically our entertainment yeah that's a full that's pretty full life we're very it seems like we stay busy is there anything at this point
that you'd like to be doing that you're not doing it or want to get involved in no i'm hurry i'm very happy okay don't know what else can't think of anything else that uh interests me particularly but as i said just this last year i retired from the senior board at the jcc so i didn't want to go to meetings anymore i was tired of going to meetings and i'm blaming and i resigned with and with honors they were very nice to me and we're still very involved with the people and always volunteered for anything that goes on with the seniors at the jcc i'm
not too involved at the synagogue other than going to services besides bbyo which you mentioned is there anything else you can think of that you're particularly proud of or accomplished that you've done you got the bbyo into the chat yeah bby oh very proud of him yes my service there because i'm going one responsible for bringing the bbyos into the center which was quite a fight because the man in charge there was trying to say that the kids couldn't come to the center unless their parents were members i had a quite a sent to convincing the board there that those kids are future members and
they should be meeting at the jcc not feel responsible for that could you help it out with their athletic program oh coached for many many years enjoyed that thoroughly of course i always liked the kids and bbyo was right down my alley because working with the youth has always been one of my pleasures do you have any regrets at this point in your life well i think i've had a nice full life a happy life made a lot of good friends and we've been blessed with good health we're in our 80s and we're still very active we're both still driving [Music] coast guard plan bridge
what else that's good feeder a lot and sam's a lot huh you go to the theater to symphony theater we have like we have a membership membership with the the symphony so we enjoy theater we enjoy music we lead a very full happy love do you have any relatives around that you've kept in touch with that are still alive oh yes we have uh of course we i have uh cousins i didn't have i was an only child but i have cousins i'm close with but really except for my kids they all live different places i have very close family in phoenix we have some
family and california you have larry here you have larry einstein here and we have cousins here and in town i have two two of my friends uncles two kids lives here so we have cousins so most of our life is wrapped around our family we have a few friends that we go to dinner regularly and party with but we're we stay we seem to stay busy that's good and we're very i think happy with what our life is doing what's happening with our lives anything else you'd like to conclude with i just feel like we've been very fortunate my business career was successful and my
involvement with the jewish community center has been very satisfying and we we have friends that we keep in touch with and run with regularly i think we live a very nice life and very contented very good well thank you very much for this appreciate it thank you