Mitchell Rasansky
Mitchell Rasansky was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1936, the youngest child and only son in his family, with two older sisters, Cecilia and Dolores. His father was born in Russia and was the third of several brothers to immigrate to the United States, one by one as each earned enough to bring over the next; the family eventually lost contact with relatives who remained in Russia after World War II. His father began by trapping animals in northern Wisconsin, then sold fruit and vegetables from a truck in Milwaukee, where he met Mitchell's mother. The family moved to Dallas when Mitchell was about three years old, where his father opened a fruit stand on Jefferson Boulevard.
The family settled in South Dallas, a close-knit and largely Jewish neighborhood divided by a train track, living on South Boulevard near Temple Emanu-El. Mitchell attended Colonial Hill and John Henry Brown schools and recalled both the warmth of the community and the fights he got into for being Jewish. With both parents working long hours in the grocery business, he learned to make his own way, carrying groceries, scalping football tickets, running a fireworks stand, and selling novelties near the Baker Hotel. He met his future wife, Rita Black, who lived across the street, in the first grade. He graduated from Hillcrest High School after his family moved to North Dallas around 1950, then served in the Army as a medic, training at Fort Sam Houston.
After leaving the used car business, Mitchell built a successful career in Dallas real estate, starting with a single lot on Ross Avenue and going door to door buying property, later building homes and apartments across the city. He and Rita, who graduated from the University of Texas, raised three sons, including twin attorneys and an older son who attended the University of Pennsylvania. He was deeply involved in Jewish community life as president of Jewish Family Service, national vice chairman of the United Jewish Appeal young leadership cabinet, and president of his congregation, Shearith Israel. He traveled to Israel numerous times and was once briefly detained by the Jordanian army. Encouraged by Donna Blumer, he served eight years on the Dallas City Council representing District 13, and was noted for returning leftover campaign funds to donors.
Full Transcript
nancy ungerman it's april 23rd and i'm talking to him in his office and the videographer is ruth andres and hello hello tell me where were you born i was born in milwaukee wisconsin and uh came to dallas when i was about three years old two to two and a half years old so you're practically a native what uh what brought you what made your parents come to dallas i'm i'm not sure i guess my father came here and opened up a fruit stand on jefferson boulevard i don't know why he moved never asked him why they moved unfortunately we don't ask our parents enough questions
until we realize unfortunately when they're gone just didn't ask enough questions yeah um were your parents my father was born in russia uh just like you read about the oldest son came first and then the next uh made enough money sent for the next son and then the next son and my father was the third to come over and then they had enough money to bring one of the sisters over and then it kind of faded and uh he kept up with him in russia until the war started and then after war he lost contact with all so we don't know what happened to um
world war ii yes my father um came was the third son to come over here and um he went to northern wisconsin and started what i understand he told me started trapping animals and it just didn't work out he moved to milwaukee in which he was selling fruit and vegetables out of a pickup truck in the back you know on a street like a street vendor and that's where he met my mother my mother walked walked by there every day she worked at a place in milwaukee called chase bag you ever hear of chase bag ruth hey huh okay what are you laughing for because
i was born in milwaukee but we're not going there okay afterwards i understand and um that's how he met my mother and uh lived a little time in milwaukee and then we moved to uh we moved to dallas what year all that i know is before i went to high school uh we moved eight times so i lived in eight different places before i went to high school in dallas in dallas and you were three years old about three years old yes about three what would the date have been i don't know uh probably i was born in 36 so we moved here before the
war so probably before starting at 41 december so um we were here then i know that uh the sister too no i have two older sisters i have one sister who's 80 and the other sister who's 70. 77 and a half my two sisters married two brothers here what are their names mopsick mlpsik one's divorced and the other one they're the other ones married that's okay they have children lovely family moxick what's the first name of your body uh you mean my sisters the oldest sister is cecilia c-c-l-i-a and the second one is dolores and i'm the baby and um so you're the one that's carrying on the name well uh yes plus uh our grandchildren you know how many of them we have nine grandchildren seven boys and two girls lots of people from uh we have seven boys uh seven boys and uh and um the of our grandchildren the youngest is six and the oldest will be 22.
tell me your children's names our oldest son is richard the three boys went to saint mark's for 12 years and the oldest son then went to the university of pennsylvania and our twin boys went to the university of texas and they're both attorneys practicing attorneys in dallas so and you're an attorney no i am not an attorney i'm not an attorney at all not an attorney i um got into real estate business by building uh my wife and i built a home for ourselves on north haven the lot in the house cost nineteen thousand dollars uh bought a lot for like six thousand five or
six thousand dollars built a house for like fourteen fifteen thousand right off of st jews you know when you could buy a lot and building costs was like six dollars a foot so we built a 1900 foot home and um then i sold the home we sold the home somebody came along and offered us a big big profit at the time and uh we then built a home then we bought a lot across the street because with that profit we could add another bedroom that was only a three bedroom home so we bought the lot across the street and um we built a home that
had four bedrooms and halfway through uh here comes do you remember a doctor by the name of david fader okay david fader bought the home with his wife and made a little money on that and then down the street they had the last walk left on north and we bought that and we sold that and i decided that was a lot better money than that than what i was doing i was in a used car business had a shared a lot on ross avenue with someone the rent uh my rent was 62.50 a month the lot was 125 and i took half of it and
you really didn't need any money just going to use carbs you could buy junk cars at the time for believe it or not for 125 so you know right now tires cost more than you know tires cost well if your first house all together came to 19th house that's all it cost well it was still one of the finer houses it's still there and it looks it looks wonderful if though it was one lot away from saint jude's and the north west corner of saint jude's and north haven was a very large lot it was subsequent to that it was subdivided i want to backtrack
okay absolutely um tell me where you lived when you first came to dallas and you're in the first school when we first came to dallas we lived off of matilda two streets one the morning side and one good women goodwin was a duplex and we lived there and then of course my parents were very concerned about us growing up in a jewish environment and there weren't too many jewish people living off of matilda so we they moved to south dallas and south dallas was an unusual place because there was a train track going through the middle of south dallas now south dallas was at the
time south of city hall when you talk about south dallas now they include oak cliff but south alice was really just south of city hall between the trinity and fair park and that's where we lived and there was a train track going through there we lived on south boulevard two houses down from the train track and um as uh and kind of across the street from temple manuel and um we could always hear the train running and my memories of city of the train track was a big ant hill with red ants and you'd go by there and look and you know as a kid
and um went to grade school a school was not there in mall called colonial hill in fact saturday night we went out with some friends of ours all grew up in dallas and um um ethel frank ethel sale now um her maiden name ethel silver gold she went to colonial and um a lot of jewish people went to colonial and then we moved on the other side of the tracks which was still south which was the other side of the tracks the tracks ran north and south south boulevard ran east and west and there was really an area on south boulevard that if you live
on the west side of the tracks was less affluent than living on the east side of the tracks there was uh there were some parents who would not let their daughters date a jewish boy on the other side of the tracks wrong side of the tracks that is right ruth have you ever heard that okay and then uh we i then i went to a school by the name of john henry brown where we lived on south boulevard it was a great place at this point how old were you well i was probably around school was six so i started at six i think my
mother fibbed a little on my age because you had to be six by september the first i'm not so sure i was six when i started so she wanted you out of the house yes well my mother worked and you know one less person at home you know you had you did what you had to do to get by at the time you know my parents were not any different than a lot of parents my father was in the grocery business he left very early he left probably 4 30 i never saw my father he left around 4 30 in the morning went had a
pickup went to the farmer's market bought fruit and vegetables and my mother fed us in the morning and took a street car to the store and my oldest sister gave us um supper if she could catch me you know you know whatever and um my parents closed the store and probably came home around 7 30 or 8 o'clock at night after they close the store so it's no different there are a lot of i mean we weren't uh isolated and we were not unique there were so many jewish families who both parents worked for their children oh yes and and that was you know that
they wanted the best for their children what they could afford you might not have been unique but you were all amazing to be able to do that and um um it's um i wouldn't trade south dallas bringing up for anything in fact we were talking saturday night ethel and myself um that um it was absolutely amazing growing up it's in south dallas you knew everybody you knew everyone there i mean you knew everyone and we had a place we played baseball called the lot lot it was next door tomorrow to the deck where the becks lived um do you remember the vex no you remember
well i know that jay oh jay yes and um uh that's right we live next door there in fact um i see jay all the time because the fellows or people who grew up in south dallas myself and another fella started about 20 something years ago we meet the last friday of every month at luby's there's around 20 of us who show up uh we we get together just once you grew up in south dallas and what do we do we sit around and tell lies that's exactly what we do and let me tell you there's all types there's others doctors lawyers merchant chiefs and
people have been to jail and there's people who sent people to jail freddie people people who have been to jail you know unfortunately that person has passed away and uh there's all types of people who come there they're great we grow up together i wouldn't trade that for anything you learn to hustle on the street believe me you learn to hustle hustle what you learned to make a living you you learn you you learn street smart been growing up in south dallas what did you do on the street hustle what did you hustle well first i did we had a a p and a safeway
there and i i what did i do i went there and asked people if i could carry their groceries home they'd give 10 or 15 cents for you know if you carry you know i targeted little old ladies and asked them can i can i carry your grocery so i mean a little boy and how much you charge whatever you want to do you know so you know what i you know they weren't exactly the greatest tippers but but you know then um we went to the there are two movie houses there the white and the old the old old forest theater and you would
go in saturday morning it was for a child it was nice since you stayed there you got out in the afternoon and it was so sunny you couldn't keep your eyes open and they also had during the war there they had um where you could buy excuse me they had contests for savings stamps do you know you're too young you know what a savings stamp was i still have a couple of my books um saving stamps is a paper book you got during the war to help for the bond drive you fill them with stamps that you bought for a quarter and when you filled
it up you could trade it in for a war bond and of course i never filled it up is never had that much money popcorn was a nickel there was a man at the old white theater by the name of pop and if you were nice to him he would fill up your bag of popcorn my wife lived right across the street from me her maiden name was black she lived across the street maybe 200 feet to the east and we went through the first grade together and that's how i met that's how i met my wife and um but south dallas was um just
a great place to grow up it was i wasn't traded for anything people lived in highland park we didn't even know that place existed we um we went to a movie and we saw someone scheme in a movie we thought that was for kings and queens and friends and princes because we didn't know we didn't know what that was it was a great place to grow up everybody knew each other and um nobody kept their doors locked no one kept their doors long never afraid of anything growing up in south dallas yes at colonial and uh more so at colonial hill which was a little
bit less a fluent school than brown yes you were jewish and i got in a lot of fights there's no quest there is there's a place behind colonial school where an alley tease in there and that's where we got in fights there and i got in plenty of fights there so uh that's just for being jewish yes absolutely there's no question about it absolutely colonial hill did not have uh the populace of brown in uh jewish population at colonial hill it was a little bit lesser closer to lamar street and got the people who were a little less income earning than the people who lived
on the um east side of the tracks but a great area i wouldn't trade it i wouldn't trade it for very i grew up who was my best friend there joe rubinette do you remember the name rubinette brought you um was a character i still talked to him he's retired of all people here's a man now here's the fella who um uh we all we didn't know what to think of joe he was just great all the rubinettes always had a smile on their face oh did you ever meet any of them huh did you ever meet any of the rubinettes always had a best
friend of dave's was the um name the names babe kenneth norman kenneth always had a smile on their face and he grew up and went to college and um taught at long beach long island high school spanish for 32 years he is retired married a librarian not a jewish lady he would never tell his mother he was married to her because he told me would break her heart so he never told her he was married and um he told me that and um still uh it's um i i just i i love south dallas i thought it was just a great place to grow up
then i graduated from hillcrest high school but how did i make money the my first really trying i uh with joe and several other people i uh scout tickets at football games and made fairly good money um you know uh it was a way to make it was a wait for a third 12 13 year old boy to make 150 dollars that was a tremendous amount of money and what else did i do i i ran the fireworks stand on the corner of commerce and industrial boulevard on the north on the north west corner where the jailhouse there was a fireworks stand because that was
the outside of city limits i got paid five dollars a day for that and i worked there um one summer uh during you know the holidays and he paid an extra five dollars if you spent the night over there and uh i spent the night over there i don't remember if it was a cod or the floor or anything because he didn't want to pack up and move everything so they and i used to scalp tickets in front of the baker in the office hotel during texas ou weekend myself and joe joe and i also went on accurate street toward ross avenue where there was
a novelty company and you could buy these wind-up um toys and we stood in front of the baker hotel toward the um east side and nobody ever ran us off but we would sell these uh walking people for like 65 cents we made about a quarter of peace on we'd have them walking on on the sidewalk it was great we sold tennis there and people our policemen never shoot us away and we made some dollars and um that was uh yes tell me so you moved when did you move to north dallas so we moved to north dallas um i'm guessing i i'm guessing about
around 1950 i'm guessing 50. um we live so by that time you're about 15 14 yeah 14 15 years old learn how to drive um always took my father's car when he didn't know about it my father bought his first we bought our first car our family had first car in 1950 that's when we had the first car because my father had a pickup truck and i learned how to hot wire the car and i took the car and uh but that was when you were able to get a driver's license at 14 if you showed a hardship and uh of course it wasn't always truthful stories we told the
people and and who did you go to who made that decision but um kaplan who had the printing company um not chairman no not sherman his name was um i forgot his name great man um his daughter had two he had two girls and a boy one daughter married a leave he fell on here i forgot uh i forgot his name passed away very very young cancer and she was like 95 when she passed away i just can't think think of his name but he owned a printing company on anchor street and um that was it you know everybody grew up in south dallas can
name the street that they live with almost every person and it sounds like you have the same friends as you no no you know those were friends that i had um growing up but when you move you get acquainted with with new friends uh you know your high school friends and people you grow up or i think are your friends for life you know they they're there you're from you just don't forget about those people and unfortunately some have passed away some have been in a terrible automobile accidents and have been you know just went to a funeral ten days ago fell i grew up
you know he was a couple years older than i was and um great place to grow up as i keep repeating myself name some of the first names and last names of the people from high school or the few from south dallas that you're still in touch with well um there's so many of them i mean edwin siegel freddie thyme tommy otto do you know tommy oda tomioda was not jewish he's an italian fellow but he grew up with us and tommy's from an old italian family in dallas and he's in a real estate business now very successful tommy odo um the friedman boys arthur
and nathan dennis and um tommy spiegel uh peter fonberg who's a partner of mine and some properties and i'd go on an ethel uh silver colors and um you know yes we still see each other yeah yeah that's great so um after high school what did you do did you go to college no i did not uh it just was i just barely got out of high school more interested in in cars and worked at various jobs and then i went to the army on our side oh thank you uh uh went to the army took basic training at a place called fort chaffee camp
chaffey which is right outside of fort smith and you're about 20 at this age i was um i was about 19 or 20 yes and then the army sent me to brooke general a brook hospital in san antonio and i was a medic what we call the pill pusher so i took medical training at fort sam houston and my wife went to university of texas so i would sneak off sometimes over the weekend and go visit my wife and then i got out of the army i was still in the used car i was starting a car business and made a living and my wife
worked she gradually university of texas and 59 and um first was offered a job as a dietitian for methodist hospital but the first job was um she had to be there at 11 o'clock at night and we were just married and it really wasn't for us but then she got a job for working at white motor company on irv street and then she got a job working for cst collection agency run by stanley fakin my cousin okay she worked for called cst and she worked for him for two or three years and i think she was making about 250 275 a month and we had
her first child and we lived at the prestonville apartments on factory and northwest highway the rent was 85 a month and it was 250 more in the summertime if you wanted an air conditioning unit so it was 87.50 for um prestonville apartments you probably don't know um the um the assisted living is there now and i forgot the name yes why did we forget our name did that what is it alzheimer's not just it's called uh the edge mirror oh the edge mirrors the edge mirrors there that's not but it used to be um a apartment complex that was built right after the war started
for the shortage it was built in 1945. and we moved in we got married in 59. so you know partners were only 15 years old that was pretty good that was that was where we live um once more give your why and let me uh rito rita her name is black the latt she has a sister by the name of maryland okay and uh maryland married a loved their lovely couple married a fellow from corpus christi or gauss and i forgot i have two two daughters one is married to dr mark fletcher here and the other one lives in new orleans um so you're a pretty famous man in this part of the world well you are uh tell us what what
evolved after after uh you got out of the army well then you got married and then you were in i was in the used car business and there was a friend of mine who i grew up with never forget his name was buddy sussman came to see me and he said why are you doing this he said you need to get out of this business and he talked me into leaving the car business and i was extremely extremely lucky that before that i um i um we had gotten married and we had a little money we got some persons and we had twenty five hundred
dollars and it was um there was a lot for sale on raw seven i figured out getting to have my own property so the gentleman wanted to sell it he was willing to carry the note for five thousand dollars down but i only have twenty five hundred dollars i talked him into selling it to me for twenty five hundred dollars down and twenty five hundred dollars in a year i had no idea where i was going to get that twenty five hundred dollars in the year no sooner had i bought it a couple of weeks later mike duran calls me from dorian chevrolet he wanted
at least a lot he said i was looking at it and i was going to make a deal but you just beat me to it and i leased it to him for 600 donuts i don't even know how i for 617 i mean 675 a month and um leased it to him and somebody said you know you can take that lease and go to south and life insurance company and borrow it on the lease you got so i went there and i borrowed enough money to get my 2500 back and pay off the mortgage on it and my payments were 6 17 65 and i
made enough so i said and then when buddy sussman can i say this car business is not for me so i started uh i want to get into to the real estate business i figured hey i could this this looks wonderful but it you know it might look wonderful but there's a lot of problems too so i started going around door-to-door absolutely door-to-door and uh off ross said to knock it on every door and ask if they wanted to sell their property and that's how i got stuck that's how i got started and um um door-to-door what shops were there i don't know shops they
were residential properties and um and uh some had some little shops you know you're not from dallas but a lot of people had um a store and they lived in the back you know there are still some of those structures off of columbia where you could go and see where there was an old grocery store or um or dry goods store and you would go in the back and you'd see the house in the back you know just a structure and they're still around in in dallas off of columbia and east dallas they're still there dallas has got some great history and if you like
it but unfortunately um that doesn't exist today there are some schools that don't even teach history anymore that's just amazing so um uh progressing on your real estate ma'am so that's how i got started in the real estate business and um just been like then i started building homes when i built that first home then i started building homes and started building homes um west of excuse me right around welsh road the lots around hockey school the loss were around six and i could not get financing so i went to dallas north lumber and the man said if you buy the lumber from us i'll
give you the financing and that's how a lot of homes all over the country all over the united states were built in the 20s 30s 40s the lumber company as long as they sold all the material you gave them adida trust which is a mortgage and they finance it for you so i started i started doing that by now we're in the 70s no i was in the early 60s 60s late 50s late late 59 or 60. and i started building homes and i was selling homes in the hockey day area for thirty seven thousand dollars and still making three thousand dollars on and then a lot uh apartment house lot came up off of webb's chapel honest treatment a hilt alcohol and i got the app and a couple of partners and um we bought a lot and that's when you can get 100 financing but i never i kept the apartments and operated them and i sold all of the apartments at one time it was a big decision and then i moved over here on metal road and built a lot of units over there on meadow road on the on the west side of central expressway and i sold all the units to one company and i kept one unit close to henderson knox and sold them out and then i started buying small little retail sites but i never sold them and kept all of them and um i sold my last multi-family unit in um about five years ago which would be 2007.
now 2010 probably 2008 or nine no probably 2008 sold them and the money i got from the last unit that i had i paid off all my debt that i had on all my properties and um that's what i still do still um still building and still as an equity partner some projects and that's what i do got a lovely family lovely wife great the only thing about her when we got married she weighed 99 pounds and she stood after 53 years um she still weighs 99 pounds hasn't changed so you were like you were seriously dating since you all were 15. i dated yes and uh there was a couple of other ladies i dated and still see them but believe me i picked the greatest one that she is just great she is just a great girl tell you've had some extracurricular um i think you could call it from professions tell us a little bit about what you've done well i hope uh there's not in married life i know what you mean i got involved um uh i got involved probably 20 years ago somebody asked me to sit on one of the commissions and i did i got it involved in it which commission uh the very
first one was the board of adjustment and that was probably 25 years ago and then my predecessor her name was donna bloomer one of the most ladies people of integrity i've ever met she was my predecessor in the city council she asked me to sit on the city plan commission and i did and then with the work on the city planning commission and working out the north park expansion that was i was able to work that out with both sides and it came came down to a thursday night meeting we weren't going to work it out and i told him better work it out i'm
going to do this this and this able to work it out and donna bloomer asked me and my wife if i would consider running for city council and i talked to my wife and my kids and decided to run had the dallas morning news never never you know an editorial page when they recommend they'll still say who they recommend then they'll say well you know joe blow he's not ready or he's got this or he's got they never even mentioned by name because the mayor just the mayor at the time in my opinion just did not want another conservative person from district 13. there was the mayor at the time was ron kirk um anyhow it was a very my competition was a fellow named jim graham he was president of the park board and he brought the world soccer team to dallas and reed and i were very active in we ran one of the polling places for six or seven years and the first election i ever had was for election judge in our district which has a run that had around 1600 voting and i got 89 of the vote which is absolutely unheard of and um then donna asked me to run for city council and i did and
jim graham um it was very a hard-fought campaign i had no idea going into that saturday night who was going to win had absolutely no idea i worked my fanny off we had 37 or 38 precincts i won all but two of the precincts one i lost by one vote i lost um mel shire states by one vote so when you hear read in the paper that elections are won and lost by one vote it happened to me i won um 30 i think i have we have 39 precincts i won 37 out of 39 precincts but i lost mel shire states by one vote
it was unbelievable and uh it was uh had no idea going in there i was even campaigning um uh went out to a couple of the evolving places and what i think really helped is i had around 29 or 30 or 33 uh people who gave uh little cocktail parties for me which we invited you'd send out 500 invitations and you'd get 30 people there but the word spreads i put out 1600 signs 1600 signs spent 127 thousand dollars and um contributions came in and uh contributions came in uh in fact i have a letter here somewhere for a man who sent me wrote me
a letter and he said i want to give you fifty dollars but i want to give it to you ten dollars a month yeah i think i still have the letter here never forgot that and uh it was um i did win about 59 percent of the votes kirk was the very first man person who called me paper never even mentioned my name uh but i was the very very first one that ron kirk called called sunday morning about 6 30 and i get up very very early and he said i want to congratulate you let me tell you about ron kirk he never never
returned a telephone call in office he would immediately leave his office and come to your office he was unbelievable he was he he would not he he wanted to see you face to face i thought that was great i served under four mayors um served under four mayors in the city of dallas i had eight years there of my last i ran unopposed all the other times and have a great consideration great people constituency great area district 13 is a great area from preston center northwest valley north to lbj and from preston road or hillcrest westward to webb's chapel great great area and as i
said it won almost 60 percent of the vote and at the time as more people cast their votes when i ran i think than all the other other um council places put together it was as i said we didn't know until um saturday night who's going to win and the newspapers never the newspaper well um let me tell you i have in my office yes newspapers editorials numbers change but they did write an article about me when i left and when you go out to see it in the hallway you know every thanksgiving i don't know if you know but the editorial staff tells my
news does a toast to certain so they did a post to me and they uh very sorry that i left about the money i saved there and you'll see it on your way out i had it on the wall i thought it was just a very great editorial it wrote and when i left i had around 170 000 left in my campaign and i sent out 1033 checks back the dallas morning news wrote it up i sent all the money i had left uh i kept track on everything so i sent out 1033 checks with refunds they're pro people got probably around 45 or 50
percent what they gave me or send checks in some of the checks i got back they had moved can't find sent one to one of the big banks in dallas they sent it back they said we can't find we gave you money so we're sending it back to you so i ended up with about twenty thousand dollars and uh figured who in the world should i give it to you so i wanted to should i give it to my synagogue which would not be right thing to do with people who contribute so i ended up giving it to a a a great organization i gave
it to global alcove because they treat everybody you know and that's who i gave the funds to um government alan gold came to my office and i gave him a check it's amazing some people moved no forwarding address but the biggest one was a one from a bank who it was it was um they didn't take it they sent it back it showed a lot of integrity on both sides yeah great write-up in a dallas morning news they couldn't believe it and uh they uh they sent it back and um they sent it back they wrote an editorial because of the five or six people
who just got convicted for malfute for taking bribes in office of dallas city council and um they wrote an article that it's great that i gave money and in what has happened at city hall hall and um one of the um it's a shame what happened um at city hall one man got 18 years for um or trying to build some developers out of money you know he did the wrong wrong thing terrible um i this is fascinating i i want to jump back and hear about your jewish education and allegiance from the very beginning what you belong to i was um solicited by fred
teicher in 1959. excuse me uh i was switched by fred tycher a building on park project i don't even know what i gave but i got interested in them then started working campaigning at the jewish federation of greater dallas i was president of jewish family service national vice chairman of the united jewish appeal young leadership cabinet and was on the board of the united jewish appeal you know united jewish appeal doesn't exist anymore than the israel uh 19 times was captured with another fellow by the name of elliot zolin who worked for united jewish appeal by the jordanian army we had a friday afternoon off we were through
soliciting i was always in charge of solicitation and we were captured by the jordanian army trying to cross over the allenby bridge and take it to the army post under guard and that's when there were not diplomatic relations and we were sent back to israel and my passport is stamped the port of entries and allen b bridge port of polka and um got involved in jewish always all kinds of activities with the jewish federation jewish family service and got involved in sheriff israel and my father was on the board and i was elected president 10 or 12 years ago served as president of our congregation
and our son was president up to a couple years ago and one of our sons now president of the jewish federation of greater dallas his name jeffrey rozanski jefferson uh his twin um they're both attorneys practicing attorney our oldest boy went to school in philadelphia university of pennsylvania and he's in a business i don't know it's a computer business you don't see a computer here i don't even have i don't even have but i do have a red berry i don't have a blackberry i have red berries and i haven't seen a red berry uh i've had it all through a city council where they
all know what my red berry is this is my red berry right okay this is my red berry show it to the office no i don't have my red berry here all my appointments i have my red berry that i have used for years for four years i can go back to years i go back years and show you all of all these are filled with appointments in the past wonderful oh and this let me tell you i don't i have never never never never taken my cell phone out of my car i make i keep it in my car i call my office every
15 minutes but i don't have a computer i go home and i read a tremendous amount a tremendous amount and i collect old cars i can tear one of my car engines down and put it together in within three thousandths of an inch but i don't i don't know hey i don't know how to use a computer and i don't want to we get along the girls work for me have computers you're probably up at uh until 12 o'clock at night on your computer so are you on these chat shows aren't you yes you are no no i don't play this game that i mean
yeah well i have better things i have not better things too because that's what you like yeah i like to read i only read history i like to read and i do work on my cars a lot i was in my garages i sleep about three and a half to four hours a night everybody who knows me i um that way for 40 years i was in my garage this morning around 4 30 working on one of my cars and um that's it where do you live now live on a street by the name of ursula oh we have a three-car attached garage and a
15-car garage in the back and it's full is there any particular car that you like uh there's a couple but you know that's something else go to shows with the cars when i'm invited and sometimes take the cars when invited to shows or overseas who um who are your role models if you over the years uh my father was and my mother they're they're hard hard-working people anybody in the grocery business worked worked hard hard hard they were my mother-in-law was a great person and my father and my mother-in-law was some wonderful person uh there's only one name for her one letter for her and
that's a four-letter word she was just a wonderful well not i can't but she was just great she was just um she was a great um lost my mind there's a four letter word i always called her and great that as now but there was love yeah maybe it was love but it was she was a great person she was a great person as far as politically no i don't have any role model uh particularly and i'm extremely conservative as i said been in israel 19 times uh used to be vice chairman of the national cash collection committee for united jewish appeal and it was
elected four times in the dallas city council papers finally turned around as i said they always called me and i still have several council members always call me now every once in a while well thank you so much wonderful interview well i don't know about that yes i don't know you