June 21, 2018

Meyer Denn

Meyer Denn came from families that immigrated to America around the turn of the 20th century. His mother, Gertrude Estelle Rosenzweig, was born in Houston in 1923, and her family traced back to Lublin, Poland, with relatives who settled in Richmond, Rosenberg, and Houston, Texas. His father, Sidney Denn, was born in Bay City in 1924; that side of the family came from Galicia and Slovakia in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, arriving through Galveston and settling largely in Wharton, Texas, in November 1920. The extended family was very large and closely tied, working chiefly in dry goods and grocery businesses. His father and uncles later built a successful sporting goods business in Bay City that grew from army-navy surplus into a leading store along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Denn grew up in Bay City, one of the last of a generation in a small but vibrant Jewish community whose center was the Sheerith Israel congregation in Wharton. He recalled Sunday school, youth activities, potluck Shabbat gatherings at the Beth David Center, and proudly sharing Jewish holidays through show-and-tell at school. Active in leadership from a young age, he was elected to the Bay City City Council in 1981 at age 18, believed to be among the youngest elected officials of his time. He briefly attended Carnegie Mellon University to study acting before returning to Texas, earning a degree in history with a minor in Jewish studies from the University of Texas, including a semester and a half at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A fascination with family genealogy, sparked by an old photograph and a recording of his namesake grandfather, deepened his connection to Jewish continuity.

After college, Denn moved to Los Angeles, where he spent about twenty years with a five-year period in Israel. He became executive director of the Pacific Jewish Center, whose synagogue was the Bay City Synagogue on the Venice Boardwalk, working alongside figures such as Rabbi Daniel Lapin and Michael Medved, and connecting with the Emanuel Streisand School community. In Israel he worked for the Jewish Agency's budget and finance department and became a licensed tour guide. He married Marnie, a preschool teacher, in 2003, and later earned graduate degrees in education, nonprofit management, and Hebrew literature. In July 2008 he came to Dallas as director of the Center for Jewish Education, serving for ten years and helping reshape the community's educational landscape around his motto of learn Jewish, think Jewish, do Jewish. At the time of the interview, he and his family were preparing to explore living in Israel.

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