Patty Traub
Patty Traub's family story begins with grandparents who overcame hardship. Her paternal grandfather emigrated from Russia as a young boy and settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in great poverty, later working tirelessly to win the heart of the grandmother he loved. He built a business in Kansas City that became Michaels men's clothing store, still operating in the same location after more than a hundred years. Her mother's family had German roots, with one relative said to have driven the Pony Express from Kansas City to New Mexico. Her parents, Howard and Marjorie, married very young and remained together for 72 years.
Patty was the youngest of three children and the only girl, sharing an especially close bond with her father. The family belonged to a conservative synagogue in Kansas City, celebrated the holidays, and valued Scouting and community service. Her mother was active in the National Council of Jewish Women and helped establish Head Start locally, while her father supported the Shriners Hospital. Eager to spread her wings, Patty attended the University of Arizona and then the University of Texas, where she met her husband Larry. After a year in Chicago and New York for his work in men's clothing, the couple moved to Dallas, where Larry built a career at the Apparel Mart.
In Dallas, Patty raised three sons, including identical twins, and after divorcing found unexpected success as an event planner, creating memorable mitzvahs and weddings for families she came to love. A member of Temple Emanu-El, she has volunteered with Jewish Family Service, the Federation, and the National Council of Jewish Women. Her family, including the artistic legacy of her uncle Jerry's Judaic paper-cutting and her father's patented Shalom star design, remains central to her life. All three sons and five grandchildren live in Dallas, and Patty counts her devoted relationship with her grandchildren as her proudest achievement.
She also lived through the sorrow of losing her older brother shortly after her father's death, and was present at Village Shalom during the tragic 2014 hate-crime shootings.
Full Transcript
okay good afternoon i'm joe reingold and i am here with patti traub and today is monday february 18 2019. hello there welcome hello thank you so patty tell us what you know about your grandparents your parents where they lived what they did for a living and how life was like in those early days um i would love to tell you all that i know unfortunately um i don't know lots um we'll start with my father's family they were from somewhere in russia my grandfather was the only one of my grandparents that actually came over from russia i think he came over when he was seven years old and they settled in saint paul minnesota he had several brothers and sisters and they were very very
poor um i guess once you come over it's you kind of just have to start again um and uh i don't know what business my great-grandfather was in but um i think that um something happened to him early in his life where my grandfather had to drop out of school to work to be able to support the family although when he was in school he fell in love at a very young age with my grandmother she was a very beautiful woman but her mother wouldn't was not happy about this relationship because they um they weren't rich but they had some money and my grandfather's family
had no money so she did not want them together but it lasted for several years and then when my great-grandmother got very upset she decided to send my grandmother to kansas city away from this station when he left a cute story is that he cut one of his her curls and he put it in his pocket and he saved that and she went down to kansas city with some relatives and they started the cats drug store which was a very famous drugstore in kansas city so she worked there and my grandfather just was so in love with her he just he worked so hard doing
he shined shoes he sells sandwiches he did whatever he could so that he could earn enough money to go down to kansas city where my grandmother was and he knew that he had to prove to her family that he could support her so um he started uh in kansas city missouri at 19th and maine he started um some a little clothing but he had kind of a pawn shop and he also loaned money he had a partner who had the money and he could loan money one day my grandfather was outside of his store and he noticed that there were like prisoners from leavenworth who
would come into the kansas city train terminals called the union station they would walk a couple blocks from the union station past my grandfather's store on their way to downtown to see if they could find a job and they these men did not have any clothes all they had on their backs were the clothes that they had before they went to prison and uh they gave them those closed backs so he thought well if all these people are walking past my store i'm going to get more clothing so he kind of got rid of the pawn shop and and he opened michael's men's clothing store
and uh to this day it is still there in the same location and it has supported many many families since then it's over a hundred years old it's still at the same location and when he got enough money he asked my grandmother to marry him and um they had a wonderful love affair and they were married in kansas city my um my mother's parents i don't know one of her family that came over from europe i do know that they were from germany but they must have come over um many years in advance because i didn't know anyone that um that immigrated my um my
um they they lived in philadelphia pennsylvania and um let's see i'm getting confused my mother my mother's mother my grandmother lived in philadelphia and um my father i believe i mean my grandfather i believe was in um st louis missouri so um at that time my grandmother's father they said go west young man and he decided to go west to santa fe new mexico and he drove the pony express from kansas city to new mexico and back and forth and he has several tales of when um you know indians approached and troubles that they had back in those times and um it was so cold
when he would drive the um the wagon and stuff that one of his fingers um got frozen to the reins um so he lost one of his fingers during that time um somehow and i'm not sure how my grandmother and ended up in st louis missouri they also met in school when they were very young and my grandpa says he remembers the beautiful red coat that my grandma wore to the first day of school of kindergarten so um both of my grandparents were very smitten with my grandmothers again um my other grandfather also had to drop out of school really tough times back then and
um he decided that he would become a pharmacist well of course in those days it wasn't the requirements that you have now um he bought a small drugstore in uh in saint joe and instead of being the actual one that filled the pills back then you had to actually grind the medicine and combine it and do all those kind of things so that's what my grandfather did the store was below the home where his parents lived he had a uh he had a couple sisters that were not married and uh they all lived upstairs and at the end of the day they would come down
like at 8 or 8 30 they would come down to the drugstore and they would all go to the soda fountain where they would have sodas and stuff and catch up on the day um once they got married and my grandfather was you know making a nice living my grandmother would come over to the drugstore in the afternoon and she would help in whatever way that she could after a while they decided that they would move to kansas city so my grandmother and my grandfather moved to kansas city but let's see that was after my um my mother has an older sister that was 10
years older than she was and then when my mom was born her parents were much older and of course her sister was so much older that my mom was kind of a you know an only child but they by that time had means and my grandfather bought his first model t i guess that was one of the very first cars that came out and um my uh let's see so my mom didn't live very far away from where my dad lived in kansas city they um they did not know each other but um my mom knew who my dad was because my dad was very
handsome and he was a uh he was a jock he went uh he played basketball in high school and he played football in high school and he was very good looking um and there was a dance coming up and the guy said to howard um come on why don't you go with us um to this dance and he goes no i really don't know anybody and and this one friend there said well i know a lady her name is marjorie optica and you know i can fix you up with her so my mother was very excited and they went out on this date and they
did fall in love my parents were very very young when they got married my mom was only 18. my dad had just turned 20 but they both they tried to go to school they both tried to go to college they both were enrolled in college and my father was just getting anxious because he knew he wanted to work in my grandfather's store so he thought why should i go to college i know where i'm working i know who i love my mom also went to college for a little while and she just was in love and so she decided to come back at that time they there was uh the war and um all the young men including my dad went down to sign
up to um to go to war and um my mom you know was really upset but my dad said to her if for any reason i don't make it they don't take me i mean there's not going to be a reason why they wouldn't take me and we'll get married so my dad and his brother they went down to register um you know to sign up to go to war and my they said to my dad they went oh my gosh we won't take you because you have a hernia well first of all my dad had no idea he had hernia and second why wouldn't
they take me because i had a hernia so my dad was really very upset it was he felt as though um you know people were looking down upon him he really wanted to go he really wanted to serve his country and uh they said no so he had a very very hard time with that but my mother when she heard that they turned him down she was so excited she goes let's get married so they did they got married i'm very young and my parents were married 72 years they had a beautiful beautiful marriage and um my father worked in the store it was a
men's retail store in kansas city called michaels and um let's see my mother my mother did not work my parents were very uh traditional um from kansas city the man would work and the woman would stay home she loved to cook and um when did you come along or your siblings or whoever yes um i have two older brothers my uh my oldest brother his name is rick he was born when my parents were just living in a uh a one bedroom they rented a place on the country club plaza and they even they had like what's called a murphy bed at that time when
they would walk in and somebody had a coat the closet was behind the murphy bed so they would have to pull down the murphy bed they would have to put the coat in the closet and then they'd have to put murphy bed back up but um so my older brother was born and then two let's see three years later um kenny my other brother was born and they they decided they were gonna uh wait for a little while before having another one but guess what i came earlier than expected and um when my mom found out she was pregnant of course they had to move
and we lived in a very nice three-bedroom home in kansas city and i was born two years later and being the only girl and the baby i was quite spoiled um i had a very very very special relationship with my dad um i looked like my dad one of my other brothers kenny looks like my dad and my oldest brother they always said that maybe he was from the mailman he was real tall and thin and blonde and uh and then my brother and i came along um my oldest brother was very nurturing towards me he never really would accept me as an equal i
was always his little sister so he was always taking care of me but my my brother that's two years older kenny we were very close and we got along really well when we were growing up in kansas city um we belonged to a conservative synagogue and um my uh my dad um was very traditional he um we we celebrated every um every holiday we would always keep you know passover when my father's parents passed away he went twice a day to the minions to pray for them and i just remember i used to love to go with my father to services because at that time
it was a it was a great big beautiful synagogue and we had our names my dad's name was on our seats and i love sitting there i would sit next to my dad and i would play with his talit and it just was very very special times for me my mother was was not as religious which is interesting because her father came from a kosher uh religious home so it's just interesting to me how you go down through the generations and you kind of make it you know work for you the one interesting thing about me growing up is that my father working in men's
retail would have to work late from thanksgiving day all the way through christmas going on to the first of the year um starting thanksgiving the store would stay open until 8 o'clock so my father i never saw him barely from thanksgiving to christmas day so he missed out on a lot of hanukkahs so my father who loved to celebrate um we would have santa claus day on christmas that was the first day we'd see him that was the first day he had off so we didn't celebrate christmas as a religious holiday we just celebrated his santa coming on that day because my dad was home
um let's see were they involved in anything else in the jewish community at that time oh yes um well my father um he's my father worked really hard at the store he would go down you know 5 30 in the morning and it's funny he would call every night when he was leaving the store which was usually at at 5 30 and then when we would hear him coming my mom everybody we would we would go to the door but my dad was very um very interested in the shriners hospital at that time my dad was a eagle scout which was very important in my
family my father my two brothers my son a bunch of us are very active in scouts my father was active in the shriners hospital and every year they would put on a golf tournament at my dad's store and everybody would have to pay whatever price was and my the store would give everybody the same clothes to earth and tournament so here if you went by the meadow brook country club at the devil that day you'd see all these hundreds of men dressed up in the same outfits um but all their money they donated to the shriners hospital and then i believe it started into a
scottish rite now i'm not sure if those are two separate things or or what it is but my father definitely was a shriner my mom was very involved also she was involved in the national council of jewish women she was one of the first people that had we had head start in kansas city which was a preschool um enrollment that you went and you helped the kids start schooling you know before the school age and that was a very um a very important program but she also got involved with the um the gift shop at the um what we call the old age home at
that time she bought and she arranged and she had people working on the gift shop and stuff and that was really her love um the two things a head start and the gift shop at that at the home of the aged and um what's interesting about that is um i also was a candy striper there but in those times when you worked at an old person's home it didn't smell very good so i was kind of turned off to working with older people because of that smell and um it was not a good first experience for me but of course as the times went on
they built a brand new gorgeous retirement home called village shalom in overland park kansas my parents were very selfless and when they were getting older i guess maybe they were maybe 80 or so they decided to sell our big home which we had we had gone from our small home in kansas city to a much larger home in in overland park kansas because the school district at the time kansas cities wasn't doing so well and they were starting these brand new of schools in kansas so we moved over to kansas and um we lived in the the same address on catalina for well since i
was in fifth grade all the way through you know when i graduated high school and longer but my parents decided that they would do um a mitzvah for us kids that they would move out of this house and you know get rid of all the stuff and downsize and everything so that we didn't have to do that and they moved into a villa at the new retirement which was called village shalom this was an independent house from the other house and they loved it my father had a hard time moving because he was a gardener he just he loved growing tomatoes and vegetables and everything
well they found this villa that the land behind them was owned by the menorah at the time and my father went to the board of directors of menorah hospital and he said can i plant a garden back there and they said sure we're not ready to build our parking lot or whatever go ahead so my father he was out there and he just had rows and rows of all these vegetables and um he loved to take little baskets to all the people that lived in the neighborhood they got to have fresh tomatoes and beans and corn and broccoli and he just loved love loved that
so they were very happy there and um but as they got older and as they got sicker um the nice thing about living at this retirement is is that you have first availability to move down to a mother called the big house which was the home that had the different types of care there my father um got sick i think he had he had to have a pacemaker in and then he i don't know but anyway they would go down there for care and um as they got older my father actually started to get dementia and um my mother really didn't know what it was
back then but um he would fall and she couldn't get him up and there was just things that happened and so um it was a very very very rough decision but my mom decided to move my dad into further care and therefore she didn't want to stay by herself in the villa so she moved into another section of village shalom so my mom was at one end and my dad was at the other end actually if you remember the hate crime that happened in kansas city several years ago where a gentleman went to the jewish community center and it came in overland park kansas and
he shot around and then he came over to and he was shooting um he actually there was one person at the jcc that was murdered and there was one person um at village shalom that was murdered i actually was there at that time and village shalom did a quick lock-up um and my um we were at my dad's room but my mom had to go back to her room for some reason i don't remember and the lady was shot right outside my mom's window um so there she lie uh on the ground and um the even sadder part was both people who were murdered were
not even jewish but of course it made um it made everyone very nervous and more security and everything uh was going on at that time so my parents had a wonderful end of their life they were with people they knew they were with people they loved um and you were not living there at the time right no you went to visit exactly okay um my brother and i kenny and i um lived in dallas my older brother rick lived in kansas city with my parents and with he had three boys and i had lots of cousins and everything so my older brother was actually taking
care of my mom and my dad right after my dad passed away um my brother of course was even more important with my mom but unfortunately my older brother who had been sick he had crohn's and and he had a lot of other things um he um he passed away which was very unexpected and when he got sick he called me to come immediately to kansas city so i could take care of my mom because he knew that he would be in the hospital he didn't make it out of the but one of the hardest things i've ever had to do in my life was
tell my mom that her son had died preceded her yes she um ever since my father passed away she was doing pretty good but then she would just say you know why am i alive you know i can't do anything for anybody she always was a giver and when she got old she she couldn't give any more she felt that way but all of her friends loved her my mother was hysterical and she had a really kind of nasty mouth she loved dirty jokes but um but when i had to tell her that my brother died she was totally devastated you know it's why didn't
god take me why did he take your brother and uh it was very hard times for all of us and that last she lived another year after that it was it was very hard times uh for all of us so what brought you here away from that that area um when i was growing up in kansas city kansas city was a beautiful lovely town um i grew up like in an aussie and harriet type home um we all loved each other we um we got along i had a nice jewish boyfriend i had best friends for some reason when i got in high school i
just felt i needed to get away from there i just needed to fly and go away so although my brothers were not able to go away for college my dad said sure honey you can go wherever you want so um i went away to college i first went to the university of arizona because my hair wouldn't curl and then after two and a half years i transferred the university of texas because i knew people that were there and i um i met my husband um my senior year and it was time to graduate so it was time for us to either get engaged or be
over with and growing up in my um and my conservative family i had learned to go to school get married have children and live happily ever after i had no other choices available to me i was never encouraged to you know have a career or to do well in school i was always just patty just be pretty and marry and have lots of babies so this is what i was supposed to do after college it was my turn to get married and have babies so um larry was my husband and he ironically loved men's clothing um he had an opportunity to move to chicago illinois
with heart shafter march to be trained so when we got married we moved to chicago it was really fun we were there for about a year and larry would also have to go to new york for selling season so i would go with him so we'd live in chicago uh two months and then we moved to new york we'd live in a hotel office central park south all expenses paid and then we moved back to chicago and then we moved to new york so it was a very nice fun year but after that um larry could not stand the cold he was from houston and
we lived off of central park south and we'd have to walk up to the end of the corner to get the bus and he just did not like it so he had an opportunity to move back to dallas and he got a showroom at the apparel mart and he began his successful career selling men's hotel clothing so my family was in retail and my husband was in wholesale so everybody got along and talked about men's clothes and everybody loved clothes but me i am not a close person whatsoever but that's okay i want you to show us your artwork here um my father's family um
was very artistic especially my uncle jerry who was my father's oldest brother he was the only one that moved out of kansas city when he was young he moved to los angeles and there he he wasn't advertising for some big big companies he drew but his love was judaic art and he he loved paper cutting so i don't know if you can see but this is actual from hand paper cutting and this is one of his most famous pieces that he did for the american jewish committee and they actually have it up in the jewish museum in washington dc this exact piece so since he
enjoyed that so much when my boys were bar mitzvahed not jason but when my twins were bar mitzvahed he said he would like to do an invitation for us so he asked me what my twins like to do and he came up with this beautiful invitation it's my twin boys it's got the date of the bar mitzvah on there and then in each of these little jewish stars he has the sports he has tennis and soccer and baseball and golf and uh those were the years that we put the kids pictures from the invitations shows up very well actually yeah good i was very very
very proud of that and and uh that was his gift to them very nice and um when my father uh retired from the men's clothing business he had a lot of um hobbies which was great at that time because he uh he retired kind of early he loved to paint um but together with his brother they came up with this patented design which of course is a jewish star but in hebrew are the letters that say shalom so they have that patented and in kansas city at the at village shalom my father has one of these statues that is huge and it's lit and it's
just so beautiful and i'm so proud he really wanted us to find someplace in dallas that would do this i think we missed our calling at temple shalom because this would have been absolutely perfect for them but this is the exact copy this is a metal copy of that design so i'm very proud absolutely gorgeous thank you and you yourself you're modest but you're fairly in a way creative artistic so tell us what you do now well i am so fortunate that um i fell into a job that i just loved um as i told you when i grew up i was not encouraged to
do anything so i never worked and i went to college um of course to learn home economics so i could learn to cook and sew and all those things that i would need to be a wife um i loved loved loved being married and having children i wanted a lot of children my husband only wanted two so when i was pregnant the second time i got really large and my mom says you need to go and find out if there's more than one baby in there so we didn't have sonograms at the time and so i went and had an x-ray and i'll never forget
the little tech one come here patty i'll show you and there in my tummy i could see one baby this way and one baby that way so um my boys are identical which is not hereditary it is just luck that that that little baby split into and that um i have three children instead of two so um i feel so lucky about that um are they all here they all live in dallas my three boys live here and my five grandchildren live here what do your sons do my oldest son he knew what he wanted to do from when he was in junior high he
was one of these little kids that walked around with his video camera wherever he went and he went to uh he went to film school he went to college and he went out to california to be the next steven spielberg unfortunately that did not work out so um on his 30th birthday i got a call from him and he said mom i'm ready to come home can i come home and i'm like no that was my 40th birthday no my 40th his his 30th i don't know anyway i think he was turning 30 and he said can i come home and i said sure i've
been wanting him to come home for a long time because when i got divorced i didn't know what i was going to do with myself it was a time of when my boys were having their bar mitzvahs and i loved my oldest son jason was not a dancer so he said to me mom if you make me dance one time i'm leaving so i knew i had to plan something that was not a dance so we had a big uh carnival which was so much fun with the fortune teller and all the stuff going on and um then for uh mitch and matt's bar mitzvah
which um was after um we had gotten divorced i decided to do since they were twins a double dare party i don't know if anybody knows what that means but at the time there was a tv show called double dare and if you didn't get the question right then they would pour you know like pudding on your head or something anyway um i planned this whole double dare party which was incredible and one of my friends said if you help me with my child's mitzvah i'll pay you and it was like really so i'm so lucky that one person asked me and another person asked
me and another person asked me and i mostly 90 percent worked with jewish people in dallas and when my little kids started to get married the ones that i helped with their bar and bought mitzvos they called me again and they said will you please help with my wedding so it was so nice to be able to go and to help with weddings and something that i had no training whatsoever it just all came from my heart we didn't have contracts it was just uh i'll be happy to do it for you and it was a very very special time in my life to be
in the middle of all of these people's very special happy days of their life that that i've had a part in making it so special so i was very very fortunate so when my oldest son called and said i'm ready to come home i said oh i've got all these mitzvahs and stuff that you can do well that isn't really what he wanted to do but he did come home and he started in that business he is still in that business and he has an incredible business he not only does bar mitzvahs and weddings but he does a lot of corporate things and um he
has been very successful in that he lives here in dallas my twins both live here in dallas they got married five days apart um mitch who was older by nine minutes i think he is in commercial real estate in dallas he specializes in restaurants and i'm very fortunate again he has done very well and he lives in a beautiful home with his wife who lived across the street from us but they didn't know each other at the time they have three children they have noah who is a girl n.o.a they have josh and they have surrey and my other uh twin was matt and um
matt um matt did not want to start a corporate job right away so he kind of had a little bit more of my personality and he goes mom you know what should i do you know and i said oh it'd be so much fun to work at club med and so he he wrote to club med and he got a job down in punta canta and he was the tennis instructor down there and i took mitch and we went down to visit him and then he went to uh copper mountain in the winter time and he taught skiing and he got a little tired of
lurking at so then he thought i'm gonna apply to cruise ships so he had a job on cruise ship and he was i've never been on a cruise because i get motion sick but he was at the pool and he tells everybody what to do and and uh he had such a good time and he met his wife on a cruise ship um she's from warsaw poland and she was working um on the cruise ship and they met there and fell in love and as i said they got married five days after mitch and he has a beautiful home out in plano they live about
a mile apart and matt has two girls he has a daughter named isabelle and he has another daughter named gabriella and they are all beautiful and sweet and i'm just very blessed your family really has grown here in dallas hasn't it yes and you're lucky they're all here absolutely that's wonderful absolutely no question so patty um what else are you involved in yourself i don't know if you're a member of the synagogue yet or if you're in any jewish or secular organizations yes um i grew up a conservative but when my husband and i started to have children we decided it was best to um
belong to temple emanuel so um yes i have belonged to temple emmanuel for years and years and years and since i was working in the jewish population i was at temple all the time i did lots of misfits there i did lots of weddings there i'm very fortunate to be able to work with the jewish people i started volunteering when i retired unfortunately my my body did not hold out very well as i was working i um i had never taken a business class so i didn't know about hiring other people to do things for me in my job so i was the one that
was schlepping tables and putting things up and doing all that and my body paid for it unfortunately so i had to retire um but i've been very active in temple emmanuel i've been very active in jewish family service i've been active in the federation and i've also been active in national council of jewish women since i was a professional event planner they all got my name and i've loved helping um put on these big events because it just is something that is easy for me and that i enjoy doing so i've done that for the events i've gotten my children and my grandchildren involved with
with volunteering um for the past two christmases we we went and we delivered meals on wheels um and i just think that you need to start children out young knowing and feeling that it's good to do things for other people um i am very active in a program called hippie um that the national council of jewish people do um and now i'm in charge of our helping a book launch for the national council of jewish women um they've written a book um about all the different things that they have done in the 106 years of council and it turned out to be a beautiful lovely
coffee table book so we're having a launch for that we're inviting um all the people that supported us for all those years and gave us money so that we could go out and we could do all these wonderful things for for children adults for everybody in the community so that's coming up real soon and i feel very honored to be able to help in any way that i can you've done so many wonderful and varied things with your life but i want to ask you a question it might be a tough one maybe not can you think of something that you are the most proud
of it could be anything anything you like yes i do actually it's it's kind of easy i um i loved being a mom and uh i've loved being a grandmother ever since my grandchildren were little bitty i have taken them by myself for a few hours to spend um just grand time with them and once that they started school since i have five of them after school each day i pick up each one on monday is gabby and tuesday it's izzy on wednesday it's josh and i pick them up after school we go get a treat we do something i take them to their activities
and i kept saying that i would do this until they didn't want to do it with me anymore well my oldest noah is going to be 13 and she still wants me to pick her up after school so i feel i feel like such a special person that my grandkids and i have a very very unique and loving and special relationship that is truly beautiful thank you before we end is there anything else you would like to add to the interview i would just like to say that um i've had lots of ups and downs in my life and um i feel as though um
at the time it was of course very difficult to go through this but i think that i've become a totally different person than i was when i was younger and i think with each life experience whether it's good or it's bad i think you grow and i think you learn and i think because of my life's experiences that um i have become a much nicer and calmer and more accepting person and even though my parents told me to be less than i feel like that i've turned into a very strong independent person that i hope my children and grandchildren are very proud of i'm sure
they are thank you so much it's been a pleasure thank you