Minna Wolfe Calhoun
Minna's family came to Dallas through waves of immigration from Eastern Europe. Her father's family included his mother, born in Kentucky to Polish parents who later moved to Dallas, and his father Maxwell Pearlstein, from Romania, who ran a small grocery store after losing much in the Depression. Her father Israel was born in Dallas. Her mother's family, the Levys, was larger and better known to her because she lived with them as a child during World War II while her father served. Her grandfather Milton Levy came from a village that was sometimes Russian and sometimes Polish, apprenticed to blacksmiths in New York before joining his brothers in Dallas, and built a plumbing company. Her grandmother's family, the Blochs, traced roots to physicians attached to the court in Saint Petersburg.
Minna grew up in South Dallas, where nearly all the Jewish families lived and businesses stood close together. She and her family walked to Shearith Israel at City Park, near the old Jewish Community Center, and she attended United Hebrew Schools of Dallas four days a week at her grandfather's insistence. Her grandmother and mother shopped on Forest Avenue at the kosher meat market and Glenn's Bakery for Shabbos. When she was about thirteen, the family moved north near Walnut Hill, and she attended Hillcrest High School, recalling a time when cows still wandered onto school grounds. Active in BBG as a teen, she graduated early and went on to attend the University of Texas, UTA, and TWU, earning a PhD in psychology.
Minna married Larry Wolfe and worked first at Parkland as a social worker, then on the medical school faculty, and later spent about thirty-five years in private practice, including at Medical City. She raised two sons, Damon and Darren. She later remarried and lived in Palestine, Texas, then on the island of Saint Kitts, the Bahamas, and the Republic of Georgia, traveling extensively for her husband's business. In the Bahamas she served as vice president of a small synagogue. After her husband's death she returned to the Dallas area, settling in Prosper with her mother, who lived to ninety-seven and a half. She counts her family and the gift of knowing her grandparents and large extended family as her greatest source of pride.
Full Transcript
today is my flashing huh okay okay today is Monday what is today August 29th 2022 I'm Joe reingold and I'm interviewing uh Minna Calhoun and here we are hi Mina good morning good morning to you tell us a little bit about whatever you know about your grandparents and your parents where they lived where they grew up what they did for a living and how they got here okay I will start with my father's family because I know the least about them and it won't take as long my father's parents his mother was uh named jarvik and came from Poland but she was born here in
Kentucky her parents apparently have moved here ran a boarding house for a while there and then moved to Dallas she married a man named Maxwell pearlstein who was from Romania now short of that I know a little about him lost a lot in the depression ran a small grocery store after that but like most of the Jews lived in South Dallas at the time they have my father Israel a brother Halal carlstein and then Eve pearlstein Siegel who was married to Dr Joe Siegel that's pretty much it my father and mother were both born in Dallas and lived here essentially most all their lives my
mother's family pardon me I know a lot more about because we live with them as a child it was during the war my father was in World War II so we lived with my grandparents Milton Levy was my grandfather and his plumbing company was across the street so he came home for a lunch every day I was awake at breakfast so he always talked to me more than any of the others and my grandmother was named but then Hebrew fried Amira Levy her parents actually had come through Galveston at one time she and several other of the younger kids were actually born in Houston where
they lived in her young adolescence and early adulthood until she married my grandfather and their name was block b-l-o-c-h uh her mother was essentially Russian because her father and grandfather had been Physicians and were attached to the court in Saint Petersburg which was unusual for Jews but when he went there he would come home to whatever ever place they were but Grandma thought she was an aristocrat and they they certainly left before the Revolution and apparently she had several siblings the only ones I heard about that I didn't know were two brothers that escaped to France and were knighted okay family Lord however one of
them was killed in a polo match in France and my mother remembers the telegram they got and that is the only way that I could have found them at all and I can't even remember their name now before hers was blocked it was a very polish name if I think about it do you know if there's anybody left to need in Europe at all of your family oh we have cousins in Israel for a while one of them lived in South Africa for a few years but I have cousins and my grandfather's brother in Israel so okay but other than that from them I don't
know she had a number of children those I'm far more familiar with because most of them were alive so again we're talking about my grandmother's mother who lived with my grandparents when they were elderly too so my mother remembers her some of my grandfather who was blind by that time from cataracts but they lived in Dallas and there was a small duplex and I do mean small like two bedrooms one bath would on Sanger Avenue right behind his shop and for a while they they lived there with the grandparents Plus two of the older siblings of my grandmother on the other side and she had
five children so it was the big household you know houses burned very frequently in Dallas and they did and they eventually moved across the street but my mother you know remembers my grandmother talking mostly Yiddish at home several of them slept in a feather bed with her when they were children and she was alive even when my uncle Bernard was born so they had a long time my grandmother as I said her she had maybe six siblings or seven but they were all older she was the youngest child and they moved to Dallas when she was married but before lived in Houston she kept good
friends there had gone to school there hurled your siblings the brothers continued to live in Houston but I think died much earlier because I didn't know them at all growing up I really thought she only had a sister or two sisters and in fact she had more than that the oldest sister had a number of children the oldest of whom was named cleminda and their last name was Lyft but they changed it to light when they came to this country and flaminda was the oldest and went to medical school actually in Houston and my mother and her cousins were little girls but by the time
they were 10 they were sent out on house calls with her so to be chaperoned so she wouldn't enter a house by herself the others were younger she had again two other children and so my grandmother's sisters and this older sister children two of them were in the Dallas Symphony at the time one of them played cello until after she was married and there was a big newspaper article on Helen light playing the other one was L light became a concert pianist and she traveled a lot while she stopped playing for the symphony married a man and they moved to Mexico City and used to
travel the circuits for a while for a long time by right after World War one they traveled a lot to the Orion in China and they also were involved with the oss the Forerunner of the CIA and they did that and then they traveled stopped there did the South American circuit and they lived out of Mexico City so she spoke probably three language very fluently she spoke very fluent French she also is both of course flew out Spanish she spoke some Chinese so they lived in Mexico City I guess until he passed away they had one son who by the time he was College age
moved to France and taught at the subong for a while has a couple of children but he died and we've never found their children those some cousins in New York have all right right so where are my grandmother again had another sister she had the only sister I knew of here who was still alive was Rose whose name was block but married uh okay my uncle is door and aikida okay uncle lisdor was president of sheriff congregation for a number of years Hun he had daughter who married Jaime news the last news so they were there but I only saw Aunt Rose and Uncle his
door and my cousin her cousin Leona who was only several days older than my mother so uh continuing they had another sister who was in their age range much younger Annie that I didn't know about until I got married when they decided they asked whether they should send an invitation to Aunt Anne and I had never heard of her and this it turned out and Anna married a gentile man who was an engineer who is a partner of Herbert Hoover and they had had a Dallas office she was his secretary he was divorced with a child and it was just not what Jews did them
so Scandal yeah her father because I didn't know of course my mother's grandfather declared her dead and said you know said Kadesh sachiva and never spoke with again on the other hand grandma secretly decided to keep in touch went out to California where they had moved and the only thing she had was a P.O box number and sat in the P.O box and a little Annex post office for days waiting for her to come in saw that she was all right gave her some money got on the train came back home and never spoke again but my grandmother's little older sister kept in touch with
her over the years and my mother kept in touch with her and went out to see her and indeed became a caretaker of the adult child that was not hers that was her husband's by former marriage who live with her all of his life so and he did because he used to be a merchant semen and went through China and Hong Kong a lot became addicted to cocaine and smoking and was in one of the parlors that they had for that in Hong Kong and said boy my life was about over but mama who he called her my mother came I looked up and she
had two big Burly guys with her they picked me up she cleaned me up in a hotel took me home and he said I have never left her side again so he lived with her I mean my mother was an adult when she died and then that son herb was she managed him for years in his estate until he died My Grandmother Had A much simpler life she she married my grandfather Milton they lived in Dallas and we all lived in South Dallas very few Jews lived anywhere else and their businesses were often very close so my they got up very early in the morning
my grandmother shaved him did things he managed his own breakfast and he went to work came back came back for lunch and went back and forth all day uh Milton was very active actually in cherith Israel he was part of a heavy condition for years you know as a child he would come in and call for one of us to bring water to pour over his hands coming from the funeral home or the cemetery but he didn't want to be involved in the show but we were at show all the time and much of his time until later years oh mid late 50s they closed
on Saturday as most Jewish businesses did only then as they started growing and branching out did they indeed open on Saturday for anything at one point before he did that he decided that because they had grown their own Foods in in Russia and Poland in their Village that he could be a farmer because he understood how to grow now never mind they had no more than an acre or to a land so he and my grandmother's sister Rose and her husband is a doer and another sister who was older and had five children she left her older children who were pretty much adults and took
her three younger children and they all moved to Colorado so my mother was actually born in Golden Colorado on the farm and her birth certificate says she's the daughter of a farmer not a club that was not a successful thing they all true back up so other than that my grandfather was born in a village that was sometime Russian sometime polish so he spoke both languages and he was the baby of the family his all brothers and sisters were older but his village was called stavisk when it was Russian stavisky when it was published as he said his father was a blacksmith so they lived
on the edge of the village still in the Jewish section but when the Gentiles or the Russian army would come through they all needed shoes for their horses and things so they had to have a place to stop that was accessible so they were allowed to move about more freely and my grandfather said because of this he also had a little more money than many people in the village he could bake bread which he did for the village in whatever they use to do the Horseshoes he had an oven and a fire they had a cow a big deal he had a cow which they
could sell milk for a penny he said but my mother gave the milk free to the women with orphaned children okay and they had new clothes twice a year before Young Thug and Rosh Hashanah and before Pace life so they did he said I went to hater as did my younger brothers who were only a little older in the next Village that was the only place where I could learn Hebrew he said so we spoke Polish Russian and Yiddish and he said and my mother when we left to go to school in the village we walked and she gave us two potatoes and an apple
and we put those in our pockets and that was our our take out food for lunch for the day till we got home that night he says but we were so much better off than so many people but as things got a little worth with the tsar's Army and people wanted to get out and they left one by one the oldest brother left and went to New York by himself and probably 1900 very early he went to New York University and then he put himself through medical school and only after that and he had been working as a doctor in New York for a while
that he moved to Dallas the next brother Morris Levy was he came over it took him a while to find his brother Harry too and he got involved the closest thing to blacksmith was Plumbing which is why they got into that he did that he worked for a while in New York when my grandfather came over he was just past bar mitzvahage and again they all came by themselves so came over he said it took him almost three years to find his brothers in New York during that time he apprenticed himself to a couple of blacksmiths who then converted to doing other kinds of things
and he said it was awful they treated me terrible I had to sleep on the floor they didn't give me food so I changed from one man I was apprenticed to to another and he said I did that until I found my brothers and then my brothers one was moving to Dallas the doctor so we followed him and that's what we did later they brought over the oldest brother that was there from who had stayed in Poland because he already had grandchildren he was that much older and had grandchildren there and he wouldn't leave so those stayed one of them was lost during the Holocaust
the others migrated through Europe as did his two sisters for a while and that the grandson of the oldest brother really had a tail he hit out in Poland during World War II he did not get to leave before then he finally left on one of the ships that were for children that Israel sent to bring them back and he lives in Israel now and so do his daughter and grandchildren and a niece whose parents had died then he acted like a father to her in Israel they went back actually that to this little village that my grandfather thought was totally destroyed after World War
One and they found the oldest brother's house there and the Polish people who had taken it over of course were very nice though invited them in and said come out and see our shed in the backyard there were still tools from the brother with his initials carved into the wooden handles that they still had there was an older brother yet who was still there for a long time and they brought him over after the war and his family uncle Abe who I forget what his wife's name was but I will remember in time but anyway Uncle Abe came over later his son they also named
Harry from oh this another brother and Perry became a dentist and then his son is also a dentist Harry Jr Levy who died recently and his son Uncle Abe's other children he had a daughter who died in her late 40s early 50s Meyer just died maybe 10 years ago Meyer Levy and his brother Harry also it's very confusing had another Libby plumbing company and Harry's son Michael actually started Texas monthly so and we used to joke on my grandfather Milton used to go see his brother Abe who was the one still alive who had a farm and we used to call it Uncle Abe's Folly
okay because it was so far out and my grandfather would Gear Up pack of lunch go to the farmer's market get fruit and vegetables to take every Sunday get my mother to pick him up and they would drive to Uncle Abe's Farm Uncle Abe's Farm is on the Con Air Preston Road and park all of that property okay it's still there isn't it is it still marked off oh it's not marked up but not for a long time they only sold it about 15 years ago okay when the shopping centers and homes went in they held on to it for a very long time and
they had other farmers who wanted to work it or use it for crops so they did they did very well and Uncle Abe was quite old when he died and he would entertain my grandfather for hours sitting in the bathtub with his hat on therefore he was perfectly dressed my grandfather Milton died at the age of 98. uh living by himself thank you taking care of his own meals except what I'd cook or send over he went to work every day until a few weeks before he decided it was time to die he had a driver pick him up at 5 30 in the morning go to work his only way of saying I'm getting too old is he allowed his driver to pick him up at three so he could miss traffic but he took night call for the plumbing shop so any emergencies were still routed through him all through his 90s that's amazing my mother Ruth Levy is his oldest and her
the only daughter and then her brother Bernard was six and a half years younger than she is so it's different at home Bernard was called Sunny because my grandfather called him sunny boy so we have different names the family all called him Sonny and uncle Sonny to the rest of the world he's Bernard um what can I tell you about that they were born in Dallas and by the way none of my grandparents spoke with any kind of accent at all they sounded like they were born in Dallas all of their lives even the ones who came over a little later they never had a
foreign accent it's kind of amazing for people like this so tell us a little bit about your childhood growing up in this you know when you're schooling and everything until after the war when my dad came home and then apartments and housing was very difficult because of the war and they had put controls on everything but my grandfather happened to own the building where we live and it actually was a fourplex it was like a duplex with upstairs and we lived next door to them for years until I was about 13 when we moved out and moved North by then most of the Jews had
were already leaving but it was still you know for a long time we even walked to show to sheriff which was at city park at the time the old synagogue where I was confirmed and still there and the Jewish Community Center was next door to that old synagogue at city park it was an old rickety kind of wooden building but nonetheless growing up then everyone was close people walked in the neighborhood you know every Friday morning my grandmother and my mother walked up to Forest Avenue went to the amp shopping came back to the Kosher meat market and it went to Glenn's Bakery to get
bread for Shabbos I went to Hebrew school only because my grandfather insisted may I tell you what was United Hebrew schools of Dallas at the time and there were two girls in there me and a friend Pearl Utah Friedman now and we were the only two for the same reason her father and grandfather had insisted chica we had to sit in the back of the room and the teachers would still use a ruler to slap your hands if you mispronounce things by the time I could get out of that I could manipulate if my grandmother was really sick and my mother couldn't deal with it
I went I'm not going anymore by then I had bribed her she had to bribe me to go to Hebrew school there was an ice cream store across the way and I had to get an ice cream and I'd agree to go but we went four days a week every day after school Hebrew school started 30 minutes after regular school some had to ride the bus or in the summer but every afternoon and it was two hours so we didn't get through and for a long time every day and then you had to go to services on Saturday morning and Sunday school on Sunday so
other than Fridays it was all the time at Hebrews go yeah and you managed to do your regular homework also grandparents you just it would have never entered your mind to do that did you have any other affiliations besides Hebrew school that you were involved in in high school BBG was very active where were you living at that time you were already moving North we were already north um and very North Dallas off of Walnut Hill I went to Hillcrest High School until I guess I was right before I was a senior and they had built Jefferson and I was supposed to go there and
I was Furious about it just so angry I'd gone to Hillcrest since you know the eighth grade I was so upset I decided I would just leave and graduate early which I did I just shaved off some time there having enough credits but other than that Dallas was still fairly small at that time growing up as a kid before that you knew most of the Jewish people or you knew a cousin and Aunt a friend who knew somebody it was not like you didn't know of somebody and there were still only three synagogues so in Downtown Dallas was still the place to be for much
of high school was a girl when we went downtown with my mother and my grandmother we had to dress up you know you wore nice shoes you had to put on gloves a cotton white cotton ones in the summer and little calf ones in the winter and you had to have a hat on your head you could not go downtown without those things a proper lady you know by high school one time I was going very late with a boyfriend to a movie and my mother was horrified that I had on some version of shorts but she I just could not go like that it
was just she made me go back in the house and changed it was just too appalling you know the movies were still segregated and things still were that was all just beginning to change but going to Hillcrest the first few years Hillcrest Road at Walnut Hill Hillcrest was a tart over two-lane road that was it and before that as a kid uh Hillcrest and everything else it pretty much ended at Walnut Hill I mean SMU was terribly terribly far out I can't tell you how far it was for people to go and even Hillcrest was so far out they still had a Hitching Post on
the side where the student parking lot was and cows roamed the back field and because they left the doors open to get a breeze and warmer weather cows would often come through the school ha because I haven't even built I went to Hillcrest I can't imagine such a thing I cannot imagine that wow literally wow we have three or four times a year when cows would come in and you would see them Franklin would build and there were so many kids there so many maybe 22 2300 packed into a school that was meant to hold Maybe 600. so you couldn't walk in the Halls it was a mess one time I was started a semester at TWU they had fewer students at the college than they did in Hillcrest High School did you finish college there what did you do I did I went to University of Texas and then UTA and then to TW I have a PhD in Psychology oh okay so I've been back and forth but that was after I married so but nonetheless it was it was a lovely time growing up tell us a little bit about your married life how did you meet your husband what happened you know and then your professional life also Larry Wolfe had when he was maybe 19 years old and I was out with a bunch of kids and I was like 14.
we just wave and then he started coming over and hanging out when my mother got a little more comfortable with him she would let us go out but he was he just really wanted to hang around if he was in town and not in college and I have a younger brother Mark carlstein who is 10 years younger than I am he would always take Mark with us so I could go swimming I could go out to get a hot dog or do something like that but I have Mark in the summertime my mother had started working for the first time so I I was his
caretaker all of the time so I I knew and we kind of hung out and went out for a long time then as he got toward the end of college you know we would start dating I was still dating other people and we were allowed to date early because it was within a very small Jewish community and everybody knew their parents or grandparents so there was not many surprised us people were gentlemen because they knew you knew their family intimately and they would call you up so at any rate BBG it was just it was a nice way then to entertain there were always little
parties dances a variety of things going on baseball tournaments so there wasn't surprised the first time I was asked to go stay in Fort Worth there was a big BBG ACA weekend planned and I'm really hesitatingly asked my mother if I could go stay at a girl's house in Fort Worth with a couple of other friends from BBG and she said what's her name who are these people I told her their name and she went oh I used to stay at her mother's house in Fort Worth with we did the same thing I know her she's also a past president of Sisterhood so yeah it
was that small where your parents grew up and knew everybody too and then I married Larry Wolfe when I was finished with college and went to work first at Parkland as a social worker and then at the Medical School faculty with some graduate work uh for several years until I have had children and I have two a son Damon Wolfe and another son Darren wolf who's two years younger so and then I went back to school and got my doctorate and my younger son at the time because I he was still fairly young at kindergarten school and working around them and everything you had to
do which meant soccer practice band practice and Hebrew school yeah all right of course so doing that when I got a degree and he was there he I have a question about what what to call you Doctor Mommy now for you that's always mine that they're good kids they each uh my older son Damon has three daughters and my younger son Darren has a daughter and a son they are do they live in the area they do the Australia my older son lives in Frisco his oldest daughter is now in her second year of college in Iowa uh for voice and then she decided she
would teach boys so she is there and my younger younger grandson is 17. he's a senior in high school here in Prosper now that's right Damon's kids he still has two one who's a senior in Frisco and the next one is a junior in Frisco Darren's kids Ava is also going into her second year in college at Syracuse and 17 year old goes to prosper and will be off somewhere heaven knows with him you don't know what he will get what things are you involved in or have you been involved in lately not much I I did private practice for a great many years maybe 35 years but I after the medical school I stopped for a little bit
and then I went in part time and then full time into practice at Medical City I remarried and moved to East Texas for a while in a small town of Palestine and I practiced there for another eight or ten years and then my husband sold his business prior to that and wanted to move to an island he loves sailing and sailboats and scuba dive I loved so we moved to an island in the Caribbean he hated retirement he absolutely hated it so we lived on the island of Saint Kitts but we kept an apartment in things in Dallas we were back and forth a lot
and then later we also have a place in the Bahamas for another half year and interestingly the Bahamas has a small synagogue of which they are used to be more members but it got very small so I I was Indeed vice president of that synagogue where my duties consisted of co-signing checks that needed for about bills paid and on Friday night cleaning the bathrooms to be sure they were suitable which was easy and taking the trash home with us because we didn't get trash pickup concept it was a lovely show that really was very small but very personable everyone knew everyone and it was important
enough that you show up on Friday evenings if you did not then we had to use the Torah to be a person in the chair to have a minion yeah sent kids there were a variety surprisingly of Jewish people there not a whole lot but there was a vet school who had some people there was the owner of a lovely Boutique Hotel his partner was Jewish another couple and their their adult children came down and opened another hotel in an old oh gosh these are all the sugar cane Estates and it had an old house on it a sugar cane house that they converted to
a hotel and gosh the first few years we had seder with maybe 30 or 40 people at their place and sometime there were Sailors on Merchant ships who came students from vet schools who came you know Israelis there was a Motley Crew when you when you live in small places like Islands right you get to know each other very quick and whomever would want to be there would hear word of mouth and come so how long did it take you to decide to come back here how did that happen uh my mother came down and lived with us for a while she would stay three
months at a Time come back for a few months and my father had died and we traveled a great deal in Europe and actually lived in another countries he did a lot for merchant Banks and European Bank of reconstruction looking he'd have a meat packing plant in East Texas so he did a lot with Mead and food processing plants and looking at their plans for things when they wanted loan so they would send him over so we might be in London probably three to five months out of the year at different times we would be in a variety countries Vietnam for three months uh Hong
Kong for maybe several times a year for a couple of months at a time we New Zealand we lived in the old Russian country of Georgia that was independent and we lived there for two and a half years or as I like to say three Winters Which is far more descriptive so it was interesting it was like living during World War II or before all of the buildings were of that type built before that and an old stalinist country water was spotty you have water sometimes during the day other times you don't so you keep a lot of plastic bottles with water in them because
water will shut off and you need to bathe or wash your hair or wash your dishes or flush your indoor toilet which are seldom ever hooked up most country people still have outdoor toilet second year 2000. so lighting is the same way the Russians were just really not very nice if they weren't in the mood and mad at people politically they shut off your gas they determine when gas comes on and when the gas goes off they determine the same with electricity people never had to pay their utility bills because they were given an apartment all those things were paid and they never thought they had to pay them so they hook up to anybody else's utilities or do anything they can because having to pay for things was really unheard of in those countries and I would say didn't you have problems
with giving things and they'd go maybe Russia and Georgia we never have problems they like what we produce and they like our wine so we have plentiful things here so it was an interesting kind of place a different culture to live and by the way the Republic of Georgia was also a Jewish country for 300 years during several Kings so without realizing it they have absorbed many Jewish Customs for instance they wait to bury people for three days they are not embalmed they wait again for 11 months to put up a headstone they do many of those things that they don't even know why they
do them but they do and they are very proud of the fact that even though they have a mosque there were synagogues small ones all over in two major synagogues but the Georgians were proud that they are one of the only countries in the world where Jews were never expelled during their entire history so the Jews were very welcome there now who knows what they are but there were great many there so we came back when my husband developed cancer we went back and forth a lot got a bigger apartment so my mother would be comfortable and then when he died three or so years
later I still have mother and she goes honey can we get a house we looked at apartments for a while I just need to see birds have grass under my feet so we look for a house I look for a few weeks and my older son said I've looked on the computer I found a place in Prosper that's close to me so what do you think and I came out and I went this is fine and we moved in a few weeks later it's gorgeous your home is beautiful well slowly we have a lot of things we had to pull from living everywhere when my
mother and I moved in I thought the first thing we need are some beds just mattresses and a washer dryer I mean literally we couldn't find it we couldn't find anything and she lived another two and a half years my mother died at 97 and a half wow she was her father's daughter and my mother at that time was cognitively brilliant she not only kept up with her own pills her on scheduled her own bank accounts she read both the morning news and the Wall Street Journal every day she did the crossword puzzles daily she read three books a week she still knitted and played
Solitaire when she was tired of everything wow amazing so other than that after that my younger son who works from home doing day trading saying how about I just come out and work from your house rather than my house and I no no not necessary Anika yeah it kind of is he came out and did that for about I don't know two three four years he brought the dog after he'd take him home every night and then he went you know the dog's really don't like going home with me anymore can I leave him here over the weekend we're not home come on so the
dog started staying and got used to it and last year when they decided after covid they said we're gonna we got a really thing on our house that was very nice if we sell our house we really want to move out there so while they were looking for a house in the meantime I said don't hurry they moved in my grandson was staying here because doing online you cannot trust a 16 year old to stay by themselves in a house alone all day and just do their schoolwork he would go out for lunch he'd take walks he'd bicycle ride to his buddies so he indeed
came out here during the day and go home so in the meantime I decided it was such a good idea that I said move in I don't need to be by myself at 80 years old anymore I really don't so this has worked very well so grandson is still here okay son wife and this house has worked very well for it how beautiful that's good so what else can I tell you now I don't do a great deal I do all the shopping much of the cooking at night and mornings get them up and get them started do the two dogs and have lunch sometimes
with friends but pretty much the day gets short if you get up at 6 30 or 7 and you do breakfast you do your shopping or Aaron's phone calls banking all the things you need to do I still see a few patients yeah okay there's always pro bono work always yeah so here's the question if you can think of a good thing what are you the most proud of my children my family even broader than children you know was a great gift to be able to live with both sets of grandparents to know them for as long as they did particularly my grandfather you know
if I hadn't had my grandmother being there every day reading stories a very gentle person and know a very large family of uncles aunts and cousins who were a variety of people it was an enormous gift you know stories of Russia and the czar's Army and where you live and not just grandfathers but uncles and people who came to the U.S not knowing any English not knowing people here and managed to not just live but Thrive develop their own businesses you know Morris Levy did very well but you know they did remarkably well here and it really was the Mahaya to have but to have
that kind of family and not to mention most of those people you named were probably very strong role models for you for the rest of your life you know the female just the females in the family were amazing to do and they always play if you had Milton Levy as your grandfather oh my you get on if I called him from work in early days and say I just called to say hello Papa he'd go are you over and I'd go sure and he'd go you're on their diamonds hang up on me you know it strong work ethic right it really absolutely runs into the
family what are you doing right you're sitting there what do you mean you're taking a nap it was just not something to do so yeah those were all Role Models right you know my mother's cousin lizelle when she was much over she was teaching on The Graduate piano faculty at SMU she have a little bitty frame house on Lover's Lane with a giant piano in her living room that was it a piano and two chairs and books everywhere French Spanish German all of which she could read she was terrified to get in her car and go down Central Expressway but every summer she went to
Mexico she hired Her Own Canoe people and went down different Rivers looking at the artwork in various Villages now that didn't frighten her at all to go all by herself with people she didn't know and she would just shake or she would call and say mini Cheryl I am going to Houston to see an art show I think you need to go with me now you leave those two children behind and you we're going to leave on a plane tomorrow and we're just going to go down for the day we'll be back that night but how many people have that kind of people around you
all of the time and it's wonderful well I appreciate the terrific stories you've told and we'll share them with others I'm sure and thank you so much for your beautiful family and for yourself and for your history I'm not very organized so it's very very good it was thank you so much