Norma Shosid
Norma Shosid was born in Dallas in 1937, the year of a recession within the Depression, to parents who both worked and were determined to build a life together. Her father came from a Lithuanian background and had worked for a wholesale men's work clothing company that relocated to Dallas because of the city's stronger economy; he eventually became a licensed public accountant. Her mother, Rose, was born in Dallas, worked downtown, and was a singer who performed at weddings and organized a singing group. Her parents met on the streetcar to downtown Dallas and married in a synagogue ceremony in 1935. Her maternal grandparents, Morris and Lena, immigrants from Poland by way of England, anchored the family's religious life.
Norma's childhood was steeped in Dallas Jewish traditions. Her observant grandmother kept a kosher home, hosted Friday night dinners, and even kept chickens in the backyard for ritual slaughter. Her grandfather, who came through Galveston and first worked as an elevator operator at Sanger Brothers before a long career in the women's wholesale apparel business, conducted elaborate Passover seders and led family observances of Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, and Purim. Norma recalled asking the four questions as a young child and the family gathering at synagogues that included Shearith Israel. During World War II, her father repeatedly tried to enlist but was turned down, later serving in the Texas State Guard, while her uncles served in the Navy and the Army Air Corps.
Norma attended Ursuline Academy for three years and graduated from North Dallas High School, then studied at SMU before her father allowed her to attend Barnard College in New York City, which she chose for its glamour. She later earned a library degree at Columbia and built a varied professional life, working as a librarian for Standard Oil of New Jersey (where she learned of President Kennedy's assassination), creating a business library at USC, earning advanced degrees, and teaching sociology and library management at Vanderbilt and UC Berkeley. She moved into market research and competitive intelligence in the private sector, including work in Silicon Valley and at Motorola, before eventually returning to Dallas. A member of Temple Emanu-El, she urged the next generation never to forget how they were raised, saying the traditions, people, and place always remain.
Full Transcript
Norman 1937 Dallas Texas let's go back talk to me about life with you're just a little girl I can tell you that today I came home from the hospital mother tell me it was snowing which is very unusual for Dallas insured and she made ice cream for my mother and I said why didn't you make any for me I went to day camp for a couple of years and this is a picture from the Federation news tell me about your parents what's your dad do my father was from port waters originally he came to jealous because it was the only way to keep this job
he was young man to nova high school and he was working at the time for Marthasville which was a wholesale mens work closed type company and the company moved because Dallas economy was better right away and he eventually became a bookkeeper at an office manager and then through his study and apprenticeship you became a licensed as a public accountant and that's what he did for the rest of his life dad was not terribly acted in the synagogue but he did she was active with the Thai eggs the deferred Israel athletic group this is there softball team my uncle Mitchell played mailed field and first one
on the left is maybe during the military to toe they kept turning him down you know as elder also he joined the Texas State Guard which was up Congress authorized States to raise their own guards because the actual militia was of course a toe activated by the federal government so maybe State Guard served basically the kind of functions that regard normally serves us to say it helped with law enforcement if there was a crawl control problem I remember he rode with the police on the weekends when they needed labor because there was a labor shortage and afforded during the war they sent them out to
pick cotton because cotton was a strategic material he'd had hard jobs as a kid but he said that was a hardest he ever everything cotton in stalis anita focused they also trained they drilled they practice their rifle and pistol shooting so they were prepared if we were ever invaded your folks ever talk to you about how the depression affected them at all I remember kidding around with my dad because me or I was born was the year there was a recession in the middle of the depression and I said that's pretty brave you to get married and then have a child and he said well
we didn't know that was going to get worse before I got better now after my mother worked too so they were two-income family such as the income was in those days and they felt Leo know they were they want to get married this is my parents wedding as you can see a synagogue wedding with both sets of grandparents he was a nineteen thirty-five and this is the bridesmaids and groomsmen from the wedding will tell me about your mom now my mother was born in Dallas her name was rose we offered la you fer the daughter of Lena and Morris law firm she went to clone
you hill elementary school who graduated from Forest Avenue high and then she got a job at Ground silver which was a five-and-dime store large one downtown Dallas and later she worked as a Silverman and a Harrison company my father also worked downtown and they met because he was living with a family about a block over from where my mother lived with her parents and they caught the same streetcar downtown nairobi streetcar and they noticed each other the problem was they had been introduced alleging my mother found a friend a girlfriend who had met him at the home where he was saying and said introduce me
and next time all three were on the streetcar together she did my mother didn't just work and be active organization she also had things she did for pleasure she was a singer and she sang at weddings organizations all that sort of thing she formed her singing group at two Firth Israel not for services because but for other events that thing she and the rabbi's wife were both singers enjoyed that but she also played bridge with friends and she also played mahjong with him and you know part of dallas jewish life among women in the 1940s was playing mah-jongg your grandparents tell me about them my
grandfather morris law firm was born in 1885 in poem and my grandmother Linda laufer was born also in Poland in 1880 she was born in autumn and he was born in Luud's they went to England from Poland and where are their oldest child my uncle Mitchell was born in London and then my grandfather came to America before World War One 1905 my grandfather came in through Galveston and glided there and took the train to Dallas where he went to a crescendo brothers and in a few my grandmother follow him I took Alice with my uncle Mitchell and my grandfather worked for Sanger brothers first as
an elevator operator you didn't need to know a lot of English elevator operator had to be very skillful planning the elevator at the right place and in a department store he had the her she had to rattle off what was on that floor but of course they didn't have to understand what they were saying they just had to memorize him and then later he had other jobs who sang her brother's a major Dallas institution department store job you got eventually the Sanger brothers was to buy tech cells for their hotel operation and he traveled to Mexico and Central America learn Spanish able to add to
his several other languages 0 rd know he spent most of his life was as a salesman in the women's wholesale apparel business in Dallas well 1945 he was a salesman at roos Friedman accompanied women's dresses hotel and I remember visiting him down there on Commerce Street my grandfather belong to different if you looked you would find his picture as a president and you would also find some memorial plaques grandmother was not active in that sense but of course her responsibility was to keep the Jewish home Friday night dinners with family our family gatherings and Thursday was shopping day and we went with my grandmother to
the grocery market on Colonial i believe it was my mother's father had been a butcher in the old country she'd worked in that shop so she thought she knew as much as the butcher did so they had interesting conversations unfortunately and very rapid here dish too fast for me to follow but she definitely got her way and didn't got the bargain she wanted from him and we you know we did the general shopping as well a day at peak and then of course her friday was taken up preparing the dinner and then it dinner of course my grandfather would say could the blessing over the
wine and bread but the holidays I'll just touch on a couple for example Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement my grandfather raising chickens over my head that does not the official name for it while he read the prayers who you would circle a rooster over the men a hand over the women and a little chicky for me and I ran mother's big jar came the next day because he had to make sure the food was prepared Willy of those came back from sit agog and been fasting all day my grandfather spoke excellent english i would say without an accent my grandmother did not leave the
house much she knew enough English to if she had to talk to somebody like at the AAP or you know something like that but egg converse with you know non-jewish you're pushing you but she spoke at home she spoke Yiddish I only spoke English but I understand what she was saying and she understood what I was saying Brody Jenner was not a home effort but we usually drove to where two filters for Weiland cell del Sol and open street and for thurs ovals on ground and we drove not being my father mother I not being observant her my grandfather my grandmother was and she got
upset when she got really upset at the thought driving to the synagogue which of course you're not supposed to do so she said off walking the problem was she was supposed to walk on her own a lot she'd been fed illnesses we had get the car and tracker and find her an urge her to get in the car before she would come but she she was very serious about her observant at one point in Dallas they live too far away my girl my grandfather could only come on weekends and so it was too far in those days on the wagon to bring meat so she
was basically vegetarian for those periods she said she usually bought the chickens in the meat market but she kept chickens in the backyard and so when she decided the time was right for one of the hens to leave us she would call and the Chez gets the ritual slaughter would come by and slaughtered the chicken in the appropriate manner this is my father's towels which he carried it on the High Holidays and this was my mother's Star of David the candlestick holder you see in the background is a candlestick holder that my mother lived on the Friday night services and of course for special occasions
like Passover and I'm using the old Yiddish pronunciation of the Hebrew not the modern Hebrew because that's what I grew up on we would build the hut that you're supposed to eat it Jerry Soto said we would on the side of my grandparents house my father and uncles another man we build it for my grandfather supervising I enjoyed it because was like eating a picnic at home I didn't think then that my grandmother and mother and aunts were having to carry the food back and forth from the kitchen some pastora wasn't at home that's where we silver in the synagogue and we got little bags
of goodies to celebrate the change and what as kids would do is we would get our bag at her visual then we would walk over to what was called the Romania show and get bags from there and it would look like over kubota saw consider guy you can get their bags but fair's fair and they were doing the same thing in reverse the kids were oh hanukkah was of course at home and I helped my grandfather light the candles every year my grandmother made the appropriate food the plan says her own she made the hamantaschen at home prune generally but also some poppy seed my
father he grown up on poppy seed night his parents were from Lithuania and apparently they were into poppy seed not prune filling Passover was the big world the preparations were incredible all the regular dishes pots pans have it away the Passover one taken out cleaned etc and then Mike revenue and maybe just about everything from scratch the horse words from scratch he made the wine in the cellar there during the year it was ready to go everything was described and of course then the Passover ceremony I think I was about four or five my first year in Sunday school I got to ask the four
questions during the Seder weren't part of myself rattling off a Hebrew in English and got through it okay I really stayed awake for the whole service because either the first or second night because my grandfather conducted it yeah we read all the Hebrew he also had most of you in English as well for those who didn't get the Hebrew so that went on a long time now we took a lot of other things too of course not Jewish related we went to Fair Park in the summer no air conditioning for Park had the rides going and you could get fresh air out there of course
we go went to the state fair each year also there's a picture in there of my grandfather all dressed up in his ice cream suit for the 36th centennial but obviously I don't remember that wait family picnics and of course we've had to get this the radio and movies and on patriotic holidays my grandfather would us patriotic holidays mclaren father was always hang a big flag out front because he was very proud of having been a naturalized citizen he hung his naturalization papers in the hallway he was also an active mason and he was very proud of that because when he first came to tell
us the Masons did not accept Jews so when they finally did it he was able to join it became a point of pride with him to be serious about his membership in the races now when you were a young child World War two broke out trebek outlaw as a child how did that affect your family well as I said why my father tried to enlist kept getting turned down my grandfather served as an air raid warden my eldest uncle uncle Mitchell served in the Navy he was able bodied seaman serving our PT boat station in the Pacific my local Honda their second son final offer
served in the Army Air Corps in the medical division analyst station in places like Egypt in Italy we were very fortunate they all came home my aunt Thelma my uncle mitchell's wife volunteered with the Red Cross I was given a Red Cross outfit and taken down the Red Cross headquarters on a day it was being able to being interviewed for the newspaper so this was my war effort alone of course with collecting Oh newspapers and saving the toothpaste tins and helping my mother so to speak when she was handing out the ration books where'd you go to high school went to some other elementary and
junior High's and then I started pima border at ursuline academy and went there for three years and then i graduated from north dallas high after high school it was off to college yes I started college as in you went two years there and my father promised if I stayed at home and went two years she has him you I could go anywhere I want I don't think he expected me to pick bored college which is in New York City in Manhattan and why did you because it was in new york city new york was the movies and the radio and the stories and the women's
magazines and the books it was glamour know so i got that was in my head on broadway and what was a culture shock for you actually it was just so much fun the culture shock was no way the other way around most of the students that were running up the only text i think they're one other one most the students there were from the north I mean New York integers you up and down the Massachusetts up and down because they and I include the Jewish students of whom there were many were stunned to discover not that it water so discovery somebody from Texas then they
got stunned to discover somebody from Texas who was Jewish now I thought that was perfectly normal because as you gather I grew up in the midst of Jewish at Dallas but they were stunned so stunned at one time they were even more stunned to discover that on Passover Jews and Ellis had satyrs so I'd say the shock was on their part at ursuline which was in Dallas nobody was startled at all the discovery was Jewish and nobody was strictly upset when a colleague ER I brought a menorah to the dorm so I could light the candles or but not centering pass over so I could
have lots of dirt and pesto or well actually my classmates did ask me if I could have a taste of the matzah because it would read what it tastes like I didn't have to participate in religious observances it arson but I did have to take the academic religion course because was part of the academics and it's my classmates to this day occasionally remind me you and I you got the religion award and junior it was interesting study the rabbi thought it was interesting too because i was going to confirmation class you understand during this time everybody knows that Sarah thizzle with in class he asked
a question and what are the attributes of God now here's the thing we hadn't gotten to that chapter yet and you know what happens in class when you ask kids about something haven't gotten to yet it's not fair however I got to thinking and I thought well you know the Lord is the Lord so I raised my hand and rattled off the attributes now he knew perfectly well or I had learned those attributes because he knew where I was going to school he is Lexington grinned can it said yes that's right because they are the same tell me about your career now when I left
Barner to come back to Dallas and I worked as secretary that I worked for some PR firms which was a general secretary writing press releases interviewing people for press releases to newspapers in radio and so on then I went to work in the library Dallas public library as paraprofessional because people kept telling me I should be a librarian so I decided to go to library school which I did to Columbia University and because i was finishing up there i went to work as a librarian for what is now X on was in standard Jersey office at their headquarters in 30 rock and that's where I
was when I found her news about Kennedy's assassination then I went to Los Angeles to organize and create a library for the school of business administration at USC I was Southern California and because I know what I was doing I was in my 20s and managing something I picked up of masters in public administration and the course of which I got interested in some of the more theoretical aspects and that's when I started graduate school energy CLA and study at the sociology department Mark Taylor PhD when I was a BD elbert dissertation I joined the faculty of Vanderbilt teaching sociology and then I went the
University of California Berkeley School of Library and Information Management where I taught management marketing and information in society and then I decided to hit enough of academia so I moved into the private sector into market researching competitive intelligence work for market research company international data corp then I worked for several years for venture capital firm in Silicon Valley which was great fun doing helping with the evaluate the business plans from the point of view of whether the business plans were really telling what the market really was likely to be for these products and services and then along the way in between being rift now and
then I did consulting in contract work of similar nature and then I went to the Phoenix area to Motorola in their satellite division again doing market research and competitive intelligence and what they thought might be a new project but turned out not to happen and somewhere along the way i involuntarily became a retired person how'd you get back to Dallas well I had been ripped because they closed the whole division down and it happened in the middle internet bust jobs were not plentiful and I was already at my sexiest which is not a good time to jump on these days nothing was happening that is
getting frustrated and never taken to Phoenix some people fall in love with the desert and some people don't I didn't so we'll see what should I do so I thought I'd going back to the Bay Area San Francisco area which I've enjoyed that always intended to come back to Dallas now that you know this time I'm not moving because I have a job where I'm going to a school that somewhere else I'll go where I want to go so I moved back to the Dallas area and how do you find the Jewish community now as you get back when you were a little girl I
have to say that I have not become very involved i am a member of temple emanuel but i cannot claim to be involved with it of course there are a lot more there more synagogues and perhaps one of the biggest differences is that there are one sided or more orthodox jews but certainly there more orthodox orthodox which you did not you found in private so does because i said my grandmother was but i think it's hard to explain but they will even my grandparents generation was in some place more assimilated didn't you might expect now when you were at UC Berkeley uh-huh the 60s that
was a very turbulent time yes that's true but i did there right after I got there after that when it had become institutionalized so that you'd be walking along campus and somebody would be on the steps of sproul hall which became famous during the sixties and we say whatever they were protesting let's occupy and so there people will go and occupy the thing was everybody was so used to it was just somebody would say living today what's happening and some boats Oh they've occupied spell all again oh I know some people who dinner during the 60s and who had very different opinions among themselves as
to whether it's been a good or bad period you mentioned the Kennedy assassination your vanity was of course in Dallas how do they affect you I was working in the library at corporate headquarters and it's a small library all the week before he and Jerry who also worked there had been teasing me because there's been all these things in the paper about all the bad things that many males sorry been teasing me about how old gallows was going to be mean to Kennedy and so forth it holiday I had come back from lunch Jerry comes running into the office I was in and he says
Kennedy has been shot in Dallas and my first reaction was Jerry you gone too far you've carried it too far I don't believe you and just about then another woman who worked in the library came back and she had been in st. Patrick's across the street from Medical Center and her she was in shock absolute shock and she said they announced in the cathedral the kennedy inland shot and then I believed it and then I went at the shock that word came down were closing for the day and they closed early and the fact that a major oil company closed early the writer huh and anyway but I talked to my father later on the phone of course we didn't have the internet and everything he had been at the Trade Center waiting for Kennedy to a lot was incredibly shocking i wish i had my dad's letters from that time because he won't me a lot of what was going on in and the after-effects what advice would you want to leave to the next generation i got to like putting one foot in front of another and accepting what happened and fighting for what i wanted to happen I don't think you ever forget how we were brought up and whatever it may mean to you when you brought up what you're brought up as the town you're brought up in the people you're brought up with they never leave you did a great job