all Oral History
March 25, 1996

Mendel Melasky

Mendel Melasky's roots in Texas ran deep. His grandfather Jack Melasky, whose given name was likely Jacob, came from Poland and landed at Galveston during the Civil War, around 1862 or 1864. Robbed of his money on arrival, he received help from a Galveston family named Bloom and made his way to his uncle, known as Uncle B, who had settled in Austin about a decade earlier. Jack peddled goods on the streets of Austin and across the surrounding ranches and farms before helping found the town of Taylor, where he built the only stone building in town and ran a general store. He prospered as a merchant, dealt in cotton, and lived there until his death in January 1914. He married Sarah Pearlstone, who was born in Rochester, New York, in 1864 and grew up in Waco.

Mendel's father, Hyman Melasky, was born in Taylor in 1881 and became a pharmacist around 1902, running a drug store his grandfather gave him before later managing the J. Melasky estate. Mendel himself was born in Taylor on January 11, 1909, and grew up at 416 Porter Street in a town of roughly 6,000 to 8,000 people with a small but close-knit Jewish community that included the Goldstein, Alexander, Summers, and other Melasky families. Because Taylor had no synagogue, the family traveled to Waco, where his mother's people lived, for the High Holidays, though his grandmother recalled the earlier days when an itinerant rabbi held services in the family home.

After graduating from the University of Texas in 1929, Mendel worked in El Paso for three years before settling in Dallas in 1932 during the Depression. He worked for the Home Owners Loan Corporation, then spent thirteen years with A. Harris and Company as a credit manager, and later worked in oil merchandising with firms connected to Alfred Bromberg, Rudolph Sonneborn, and eventually Witco Chemical Company. He served four years in the Army infantry during World War II. He was closely connected to Irving Goldberg, whom he first met at the University of Texas and who became his brother-in-law, and he remained active with the Dallas Jewish Historical Society, warmly recalling his Taylor origins throughout his life.