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May 18, 2015

Monty Herson

Monty Herson was born into a family shaped by immigration to South Africa. His father, who rarely spoke of the past, came over by boat with a talent for cutting hair and worked cutting sailors' hair before opening a combined haberdashery and grocery store in a small country town roughly 20 miles from a larger city. Monty's mother came with her father and was, in Monty's words, a capable homemaker who cooked, made noodles, and produced by hand whatever she could not buy. The family later moved so Monty's father could establish a home for them, and Monty attended Hebrew school as a boy.

Monty first tried studying another field but found it beyond him, so he turned to pharmacy, where he was happier and eventually succeeded. At pharmacy college he met Naomi, who was a year ahead of him. A shared carpool to a pharmacy meeting brought them together, and they married soon after she qualified. The couple settled and raised their family in South Africa before deciding to leave, a move driven largely by Monty's unhappiness with the racial conditions there and his desire to be near his children, who had already settled in the United States.

In Dallas, Monty chose not to pursue a full pharmacy license, which would have required extensive requalification, and instead took and passed the exam to work as a pharmacy technician, a job he found and settled into. He and Naomi returned to South Africa regularly to visit family, and he maintained close ties with friends who had scattered to Canada, Israel, and Australia. Monty found the local community somewhat cliquish and hard to break into, partly due to age differences, but over time he grew very happy in his life in Dallas. He counts marrying Naomi as the highlight of his life and takes joy in his children and grandchildren.

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