Nita Mae Tannebaum
Nita Mae Tannebaum was born in St. Louis in 1933 and moved to Oklahoma City about six weeks later, where her father worked in a department store. Her paternal grandparents, whom she called Bubba and Zeta, emigrated from Poland in 1903, fleeing pogroms; her Zeta was delayed by smallpox and traveled separately, while her Bubba crossed in steerage clinging to the candlesticks Nita still uses at Pesach. Their family name, Liss, was changed to Levy at Ellis Island. Her maternal grandparents were born in St. Louis. When Nita was about six, the family moved from Oklahoma City to Ponca City, where her father ran a shoe store and her mother was president of the mothers' club.
In Ponca City, a small town with few Jewish families, Nita loved high school, sang in the choir, was active in Rainbow Girls, and joined her Christian friends' youth groups while her family traveled to Oklahoma City for High Holidays and her confirmation. At age fourteen she attended Camp Bonim near Lake Dallas, her first experience surrounded by other Jewish people. At the University of Oklahoma she pledged Sigma Delta Tau and began dating Sam Tannenbaum, who had been in her first-grade class. They married in 1955, a week after graduation, and moved to Dallas, where Sam, an accounting major, became a CPA and Nita, an education major, taught in the Dallas Independent School District.
In Dallas the Tannebaums joined Temple Emanu-El, where they have been members since about 1957, and Nita taught for eight years in the Jewish Community Center preschool while serving on its board. She was active in the Temple Emanu-El Sisterhood, the National Council of Jewish Women, the PTA, and the Federation's women's division. She helped create a monthly WFAA television program called Covenant, reaching Jewish and non-Jewish audiences in small Texas towns. She traveled to Israel three times, beginning in 1973, describing a deep sense of peace on first arriving. Nita and Sam raised a son, Joel, and a daughter, Marilyn, and have four grandchildren.
Full Transcript
Nita Mae, 1933, St. Louis, Missouri, but you weren't even there long enough to go see the Arch. I wasn't there yet. Oh, I wasn't even there yet? No. Well, that's why I didn't see it. That's why I didn't see it. Six weeks. Six weeks later, you guys moved to Oklahoma City. What? Talk to me about growing up in Oklahoma City. Well, I was in Oklahoma City until I was six years old. and my dad worked in a department store. I went to elementary school, went to kindergarten and first grade, and the most important thing about what happened there was that also in my kindergarten and first aid class was a man named Sam Tannenbaum, who I never saw again until we got to college, and then we got married.
So your future husband went to first grade with you? Yes. And you guys didn't really know each other all that time. That's interesting. Why is it that your folks up and left St. Louis to head for Oklahoma City? My dad was working for a company called Wool Sheet Company, and they wanted to expand. It was the Depression years, and my dad was willing to go just fine. He was happy to go there because it was very difficult to find a job. and it was a big enough city that my mother would be involved with the Jewish community. Right. And we left. And my parents belonged to the synagogue, conservative synagogue there.
And I would go, we would go there all the time. And it was just sort of the center of our lives, the synagogue, when I was a little girl, little girl. Now do you remember your grandparents at all? Oh, very much. Tell me about them. All of them. All four of them. Okay, good. Tell me about them. My babu and my Zeta came from Poland, and they came in 1903 and escaping the pogroms. And they never knew where the border was going to be between Poland and Russia, because it depended on who was taking over that part of the country. Anyway so they left and they came and my dad was born in 1906 and my mom later in St Louis 1907 But the interesting thing that I am so proud of I have my Bubba candlesticks that I use for Pesach every year that she clung to when they came over because my grandpa got smallpox and didn't get to come on the ship with her until a few months later.
And so she had to go on that ship in the steerage, praying that her brother-in-law would meet her, which he did. And they stayed in New York, in Brooklyn, for a long time until Zeta, he knew that in St. Louis he could establish a shoe repair place, which he did. And Bubba was very orthodox. Did they come together? Yes. Were they already married? Yes. They had just gotten married. Okay. And they took their meager belongings. Okay. And Zeta had two brothers in Brooklyn. and so they decided they needed to. So they already had family here. And did they leave their parents? They left their parents and other siblings.
Did they ever talk about that travel to you? What did they say about it? Zeta was very quiet about it because he had to stay, I think it was in Scotland, until he got rid of the smallpox and could get on another ship. They were always so afraid that if Bubba got on the ship she was supposed to get on, that they might not see each other again. But his brothers in Brooklyn were able to get him on a ship when he was ready. And they got to Ellis Island, and their name was Liss. But the people there changed it to Levy. My maiden name was Levy.
Now you're, did you ever find out why they changed the name? It wasn't their choice. It was the people on Ellis Island. Just came up with that decision. They decided it was I don know but I don really know why And the interesting thing that for our family always has been is that my mother maiden name was Levy So she was a Levy and she married a Levy And yet one family was from Poland Russia The other family was from Germany They never could find out that they were ever family or anything. It was hard. When Bubba came over by herself, they put her to work in a factory.
And if you had ever seen my little Bubba, she was probably 5'2", very, very frail looking. But she went to work because she had to pay her way. And they lived in a tenement house, all the stories that you've heard. And then when Zeta got there, he liked working with leather. And he would go up into the Catskills and get leather from the people that were slaughtering animals. And he would come back and he would make shoes. And she sewed and he made shoes. And that's how they did it. Now, your other grandparents, were they born in the United States? Mm-hmm. Yes. Grandma Mary, they were born in St.
Louis. Grandpa Louis, his mother even was born in the United States. One of the fun stories in my family is that Grandma Becky was a friend of Bernard Baruch in Baltimore. Bernard Baruch was a financier and he was very active, very powerful in the government of the United States in many different ways. Right. And friend of presidents. And if Bernard Baruch lived down your street and you grew up together in your schools and you could say, well, Bernard Baruch was my friend. And we played together when we were little. That was a big thing. Yeah. And my grandmother, my mother's mother, we had a great time together, and she had five brothers and sisters.
And so whenever we would go to St. Louis, I was just part of all this family. But my grandma Mary had a stroke when she was 57 years old. So I spent the summers in St Louis and the school year in Ponca City Oklahoma We moved there after we left Oklahoma City to Ponca City So my grandpa had passed away when he was 42 years old. Grandma Mary's, this was my mother's. Mother's parents, okay. My Bubba and Zeta are my dad's. Okay. My grandma and grandpa are my mom. That grandpa, I knew his mother and his sisters. my great-grandmother I knew them all until grandma Becky died when she was in her 90s and so I grew up knowing all of these grandparents and anyway so after eight years in Oklahoma City my parents moved to Ponca City and that's where I grew up and I lived it was a small town and very few Jewish people and my dad had a shoe store downtown and my mom was president of the mother's club she was always very proud of that and I was very active in the school my brother name was Lewis he was almost three years older than I and I idolized him he was president of this of the student council he was he was an attorney he died very suddenly about eight years ago but he has a number of children that I see and so that's how we got to Ponca City but my parents loved Oklahoma they really did Oklahoma is like one big small town when it comes to the Jewish community when we needed to go for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we went to Oklahoma City and we had friends there that we stayed with and in fact the girl my age that we stayed with is coming to see me.
Now your dad, coming from New York then to St. Louis then to Oklahoma, did he ever talk about the culture shock for him? No, I think it came from New York, first to Staunton, Illinois, where another one of my Zeta's brothers had gone to. and they lived there for just a short time and then they moved into St. Louis. My Bubba and my Zeta had a very strong Jewish home. So I think... My dad's name was Henry. My mother's name was Ida. And my dad had a sister named Rosie, who was my mother's best friend after they moved to St. Louis. But they weren't a part of the, I mean, Daddy would go out to work.
But as far as culture shock or anything, their life still revolved around St. Louis, what was happening there. but it was the Jewish community. When my dad got to Oklahoma City, he got very involved in the general community. I never heard them say it was difficult because they had a very large Jewish group of friends. I have pictures of them all. Do you know how your parents met? They met at a youth. My Aunt Rosie became a friend of my mother's, and Aunt Rosie was my mom's age and my dad was two years older. Two years older, I guess. Anyway, and so Aunt Rosie, they were all part of the same group and Aunt Rosie made sure that my mom met my dad.
And it was where they were. Was your dad in the service at any time? No. No? Okay. In the Second World War, when my dad was 38 years old, and I remember as a little girl, my dad telling us all goodbye. He got on the bus or the train in Ponca City, went to Oklahoma City, and tried to enlist because he really wanted to defend the country, and they wouldn't take him. They said he needed to go home, take care of his family, be well, and support the war effort. What high school did you go to? Ponca City Senior High School. And what was it like for you?
I loved it. What did you guys do for fun? We did, you know, Ponca City was a very small town. The downtown where my dad's store was was only like three blocks long. So, you know, we could walk downtown. We went to the movie on Saturday. My friends went to church on Sunday. I would meet up with them and we would go to another movie on Sunday afternoon or we would go over to somebody's house. On Sunday nights because all my friends were Christian they all went to their youth groups on Sunday nights so I went with them And I went to MYF BTU all of those Christian CYF all of them And I was just with them and all of that, and we were just all good friends.
and we went to each other's houses. The girls, I had a big brother, you see. He was very good looking, and so they really wanted to come to Nina May's house because maybe Louis and his friends would be there. And we went to all the football games, all the basketball games. We watched track meets. I was a member of the Rainbow Girls, which is like a Masonic. Right. It was the junior Masonic group. Right. I ended up being worthy advisor, which was like being the head, the president, and would go to conferences. I was in the choir. I sang a lot. So we would go to other towns around.
Yeah. And we sang there. We would always get on a bus to go with the football team, wherever they were going. Now, during high school, did you re-meet Sam from first grade? I did not meet Sam until we went back to college. Okay, so now after high school, you went on to college? I went to the University of Oklahoma. Okay, okay. Sam was from Oklahoma City. Right. My parents knew his parents from all those years back. Right. And the difference, the reason I didn't meet him, and all during high school, my friends in Oklahoma City would say, there's somebody we want you to meet. We think you'd like him.
And I'd say, oh, no, I'm having a particular time in Ponca City. Well, they were Reformed. And we were conservative to Orthodox. So when we went to Oklahoma City for services and things like that, we never went to the temple. We always went to the synagogue. Right. And so I never met him until we got to college and in my freshman year I pledged Sigma Delta Tau and he pledged Pi Lambda Phi And I got to meet a lot of other guys We all got to meet a lot of other guys And he called me one night and said that they were having a party in December and could I go with him And I barely had met him.
And I said, oh, sure. Okay. and that's what happened. I still kept dating because we didn't start going steady until our sophomore year. Did you both finish college then? Yes. And then you got married after college? Got married a week after we graduated. Okay. And then what did you guys get into and where did you settle down? We came to Dallas. We knew we were moving to Dallas. Sam was number one in his class. Wow. I wasn't, but... But he was number one in his business class. And so he was recruited to come to Dallas. He was an accounting major, and he became a CPA.
And I was an education major, and I got a job teaching in the Dallas Independent School District that first year. And we just started our lives. What year did you get married? 1955. 1955. Graduated high school in 51. And your children were born here? Oh, yes. They're Texans through and through. Okay. And did you get involved with the Jewish community at that time? Immediately. Okay. I was confirmed in Oklahoma City, and I used to get on the train every other week from Ponca City to Oklahoma City, and I was met by friends and spent the weekend and went to the synagogue for my confirmation year.
And the rabbi there invited me to come, and I did. And Sam was always involved in the temple. He was involved in ACA, and it just seemed the natural thing. was we got here in 55 and about that time most of the we had three synagogues, three temples and synagogues Emmanuel Sherath and Teferath and they were all building new buildings and so having grown up conservative to Orthodox and reform we thought we would go check them all out and see which ones we liked the best Well none of them had a building They were all in different places And the first high holidays that we had there was that Temple Manual had one at a state fair music hall And I cried the whole time, the whole 10 days, because I'd never been away from my parents.
And we didn't, I think we, I guess there were 4,000 people there. Yeah. And we didn't know any of them. Yeah. And we got a hotel room across from Fair Park, because I had never ridden to services or anything like that. and the hotel went to go to sleep that night, had bugs. So that's when I decided God wouldn't mind if I drove. And so anyway, so we've been members of Temple Emanuel since 50, 57. And then you would do work at the Jewish Community Center. I did. What did you do here? Well, I was on the board the first few years. first few years, but I taught here in the preschool for eight years.
And then, and while I was doing that, I was taking, I was very active in the Temple Manual Sisterhood and the National Council of Jewish Women, and I was very active in the PTA at my children's school, and just a lot. In the Federation, I was very involved in women's division. What was the happiest time in your life? There are just so many. There are just so many. I used to just love walking across that campus at the University of Oklahoma. Yeah. Because that was like I was there. I had a reason to be there. I was making a lot of friends in the sorority house.
and then I was very, very happy when my children were born. Yeah, of course. And Sam and I, when we got married, we had gone together for almost four years before we got married. We went together all through college. Yeah, yeah. And then a week later we got married and it was neat. In your lifetime, was there an invention that came along that you went, wow, how did we ever get along without that? Television. Television was a big thing. It's interesting because my mother wrote a paper one time. My niece wanted her to say, what are the three things in technology that happened in your life?
And so now you're asking me the same thing, but television was a wonderful thing. long distance telephone. I went to Israel. We went to Israel in 1973. And my kids could call me wherever they were. They were here. But to be able to call like that was just very exciting because they were teenagers. And that was great. And one of the happiest times, most happy times, was when we went to Israel. I've been to Israel three times. And that was when I was young. One of the happiest times in my life was coming to Camp Bonin, which was a Jewish camp outside of Lake Louisville, Lake Dallas.
And my mom and dad looked for a Jewish camp for me to go to when I was 14, I guess. And I came here, and that was the first time I was ever around a group of Jewish people or Jewish teachers or Jewish anything. And it was wonderful. And what was the feeling like when you went to Israel the first time? It's very hard to explain, but I had wanted to go to Israel since those years at camp. And it was the most, I don't even want to say exciting, it was the most deep sense of peace that I finally got there. Yeah. And I wrote my parents that night, and I went to bed, everybody else had gone to bed, and I went downstairs at the King David Hotel.
and I wrote my mom and dad and I'm getting very emotional about it about thank you for helping me get to this point not not I don mean financially but helping me understand Because they had been there two or three years before And it was wonderful Talk to me about the TV show you were involved in here in Dallas. The name of it was Covenant. And I say, Ona Balaban, Linky Seltzer, and I were the three. I had always done a lot. I've always done a lot of public relations and teaching. I'm a teacher. And so it just kind of went together. And they decided that they would approach WFAA about doing a television program or doing some kind of outreach.
Well, the outreach was not just at Dallas, but I really wanted it to reach to the small towns because I knew what it was like not having any input growing up in a small town. So they were all for it at WFAA, and we had the most wonderful. Those were in the days of Mike Shapiro and Travis Lynn, who became a very, very good friend of mine. I mean, they all were. But anyway, we did it once a month. We would do a plan of what we were going to do. We would do a script, and then we would decide who we wanted to do this.
Right. And every congregation got to do a program. Every JCC, we did all kinds of programs here. We did the Israel dancing, and that was Israeli dancing. That was fun. And, I mean, we got it down to WFAA and they, oh, anyway. And this was back in the 70s and 80s? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we went to Tyler. It went to Longview. It went to Waco. It went to Fort Worth, of course. And a lot of the smaller community, Sherman, you know, because television, you know, to small towns, They got an awful lot of, a whole lot of non-Jewish and Christian that they, you know, that was there, but they didn get anything of their own religion or their own not even a religious thing But all the rabbis We did a lot of music when ADL had a program here when Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
Anyway, that was what it was about. You know, Nancy Brinker that started the Komen, she was one of our narrators. one of our moderators and she just did a wonderful job for us and I mean I can go on and on about the different people that came and I felt so privileged and honored to be able to do that Now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions some good, some not so good of course when you were a little girl the wars President Kennedy assassination here in Dallas something good the moon landing in 69 for the first time. We sat and watched it.
We never moved. Of course, the tragedy of 9-11. What really stood out that you really know exactly where you were when it happened? Oh, I know where I was when a lot of things happened. But the Kennedy assassination was, and still is, one of the most tragic. I was at the beauty shop, and my husband was downtown. on his office was on commerce at Main Street really and the anyway the motorcade had just gone by and he called me he knew I was at the beauty shop and he said I just got to see President Kennedy they just went by and then all of a sudden while I'm on the phone with him somebody came into his office and said get off the phone now and he got off the phone and he called me back in about five minutes and said the president's been shot.
You don't ever forget that. You don't ever forget that and Mr. Zapruder family, good friends still all of us, but we were all very, I sold poll taxes so they could vote. People could vote for Kennedy. We went to churches to make sure that they didn't mind him being Catholic. You know, I mean, we did everything to get him elected and then there it went You mentioned the Zapruders family friends of yours Of course he had the famous film What did they ever talk about with you thinking on that film Did they feel that Oswald was the shooter? I mean, it's such a famous film to all of us now.
What did they think? I can't say what they thought because Mr. Zaprudy really didn't talk about it. And so because of the anniversary this year, they were all very involved. There was a new movie that was made, and I think that was a grandson of Abraham Zapruder. And anyway, all these people, they had a really hard time with it. But other than that, they don't really talk about how they felt about it. Well, you and Sam have one son, Joel, one daughter, Marilyn, and four grandkids. What advice does Grandma have for those grandkids in the next generation? Well, yesterday in my house, we had a Seder for the three younger.
I have one grandson that lives in Florida. He's 30. And these three little ones, I say they're little, they're 10. They're twins that are 10. And a little girl that's nine. and we had a Seder yesterday because they don't live here and so they were going to be here now. And we went through all of this and I want them to always remember that no matter what happens in the world, there's a core within them that it'll work, their lives will work. I want them to know that. But the other thing I've told them, and I've really told them more than one time, is I believe that they're going to get to go to Mars.
And just to remember that Grandma was always excited about Mars, and I am. I'm very excited about Mars and the exploration and the way they're doing the food for it and all that. And I said, because I got to see this space and the moon landing, and I hope they get to see the Mars, you know. Well, you did a great job today. Thank you. Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.