Pauline Graivier
Pauline was born in Dallas in 1934 to Regina (Gina) Hart Graivier and Lee Graivier. Her mother was born in Texas in 1898 and raised in College Station after her own mother died in childbirth, cared for by an aunt everyone called Tanta, a cultured Berliner who memorized the works of Goethe. The family later moved to Forest Avenue in South Dallas, where Regina and her sister Rose became well known in the community. Pauline's father, Lee, was born in New York City in 1900 into a family of professional musicians; his grandfather was said to have been a court musician for Franz Josef in Vienna. Orphaned young and raised partly in a Hebrew orphanage, he later rode the rails, served in World War One, and eventually found his way to Texas.
Pauline grew up in the warm, always-open household on Forest Avenue, where German refugees fleeing Nazi Germany sometimes stayed for weeks or months. Her father built a successful and innovative oil-well log services business in Texas, prized for his reputation for integrity. She lived on Forest Avenue until age fourteen, then moved to North Dallas and graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1951, where she was among very few Jewish students. She studied at the University of Texas and later at Northwestern, pursuing radio, television, and drama. In Chicago she met Len, a medical student, whom she married in 1955 at the Baker Hotel in Dallas. They spent about nine years away during his training before settling back in Dallas, raising three children, Lisa, Miles, and Tracy.
Pauline was a lifelong Reform Jew, confirmed in Rabbi Levi Olan's first confirmation class, and her parents were active at Temple Emanu-El, where her mother served on the board for decades and her father was an early Boy Scout leader. Her greatest professional pride was the pioneering coaching and communications business she built with partner Gloria Hoffman beginning around 1964, teaching confidence, listening, and presentation skills. What began as a small YWCA class grew into seminars for executives and international audiences, plus published books including one translated into Chinese. She traveled and taught worldwide for decades. Pauline also treasured a colorful piece of family lore: a distant relative, Anthony Wolf, is remembered among those who died at the Alamo.
Full Transcript
today is December the 19th I'm interviewing Polly Polly and Revere and I'm Nancy Ungerman tell me a little bit about yourself where you were raised and if you were raised in Dallas if you were born in Dallas I was actually I was born in Florence a Nightingale Hospital which was a part of Baylor and do you want the year October 23rd 1934 uh-huh so I'm 77 then and I was born on my mother's birthday which was always a source of great pleasure for us and my mother was named ringing appears she was Regina heart and she was born in actually mahalia Texas but at 3
weeks of age she and her father and mother moved to College Station her father was a cotton broker I'm not sure if come and throw up by her cotton broker and so his fortunes went up and down with the economy and all I know is that they moved there and then later on she moved to Dallas and that's a whole story in itself but so she was born in Texas yeah yeah College Station uh-huh is where she was raised which of course is where Texas A&M is and the only thing that her beloved daughter ever did to disappoint her was I never dated to Texas
Aggie and she wanted me to go to the dances because she had such a wonderful time there she had a little sister who was 11 or 13 months younger named Rose and then a little brother and the mother and the child died in childbirth so Papa was left as a single parent with two little girls because I think mother was maybe three the sister was maybe one and a half and then that's it and so he's left with these two little girls and we she moved into a boarding house and then I'm not sure what the year was he took both of these children put
them on a ship with him and they went to Berlin where his sister was living and his sister was married had no children I think she was already divorced this is really interesting people didn't she wasn't her name was free to Kaiser and she was of course a heart before that I think that's the name I don't think it was changed and and she after my mother and sister had come home and then a year or two later went back and spending here in Berlin and came back when my mother was like six and aunt Rosie was maybe maybe for Nana and they came back
and taunted came and moved to College Station to raise the little girls and she was she was the ants so she was called tanta when they came back and mother was six I think she spoke English and German and the little sister only spoke German and my mother tell told the story of going to pick up tanta when she had made this oceanic voyage is then taken the train from New York City to Bryan Texas and Grandpa like her father rented a carriage and horse and they went to pick her up at night in the middle of a rainstorm and she said can you imagine
this cultured Berliner had the works of Goethe memorized and who was truly an intellect she steps off the train onto a wooden platform with wooden sidewalks a few of them and outhouses and steps into College Station Texas so she raised these daughters these little girls and then when my mother was in 1919 mother was born in 1898 and in 1919 I guess mother was 21 they meaning tanta and her brother the father and the two girls moved to Forest Avenue in South Dallas what we call South Ellis which was down the street from the State Fair it's now Martin Luther King and it's one block
over from South Boulevard which of course is now a historic landmark and there were these two girls and they were the Belles of the ball they had been the Belles of Nepal in in in College Station very fugitives but whatever Jews there were at Allen Academy and Texas A&M and later on an army base during World War one all gathered at their house along with the hello directors mr. mrs. topping house and they so they all came to Dallas and I I'm born now in 1934 my mother and dad med and I've forgotten exactly where they had a long courtship because daddy was totally bro and I'm tell you about him in a minute and they eventually married and moved to Milwaukee she immediately got pregnant with my big brother Leonard thing but back to Dallas they had the baby and eight years later I came along in 1934 which was two years before the big centennial in 1936 on two years old and that's what I remem was people flowing into her to come to the Centennial
and as I grew older what I remember mostly were the German the managed German refugees who were getting out of Germany and they would there was so many friends that tantas and they all came flowing into our house and sometimes would live there for weeks and months at a time and we had a big him you know sort of a rambling house on Forest Avenue meanwhile is this getting too big too much do you want to know the asking questions go on this is fascinating meanwhile my father is born in 1900 in New York City and he was the youngest of four boys the two
older boys were born in Vienna Austria and his father was the court violinist for Franz Josef apparently concertmaster or conductors on Joseph's Orchestra Wow and Len has done some my husband has done some research it turns out that all of them were musicians going back generations all professional musicians and still some of them are although this information is secondhand from maybe a distant distant distant cousin who really has done his research and so anyway there are the two boys and they're small much I don't know how old they are and apparently according to my father the parents were very cultured and remember the story of
my Erling with Prince Rudolf and his paramour he was married and he had this woman he madly loved but he couldn't marry cause ships a commoner and they used to meet at my grand their grandmother's home to have their some you know dinner parties or whatever and eventually they went off to my Erling which was the castle and they had a he double suicide it's a very very famous story date on that yeah you know I need to look it up anyway they came to the United States where he was the first orchestra leader of the Waldorf Astoria and I've tried to get information on
that but the world herbs didn't keep records at any rate then two other boys were born my father being the youngest and his older brother was a two years older they were Orthodox my father always resented the fact that later on his mother would hire Shabbos for the weekend and later on when my father and mother married he was very happy to become reform but at any rate so they're in and they're living in where apparently all Jews live Lower East Side and apparently his father died in what was probably the big flu epidemic of 1902 and leaving his mother and four children and the
mother was as he said an aristocrat she was cultured she was educated and she had never turned to work and so she the two bigger boys were not through high school and they went out to me to work the two little boys were put in the Hebrew orphanage and they were little and they stayed there through a couple of years of high school and rabbi Lefkowitz who was temple manuals rabbi for so long was one of the proctors he used to walk the little boys back and forth to school and a while I was studying that's the way he made money at any rate the
mother then turned and she ran a boarding house this is what Len Lenny was able to turn up and she also my father didn't talk much about the boarding house but he did talk about the business deal she would make she apparently traded things and and that's the end of all I know about that but she did was living and he said that every other week she would get on about three streetcars and she would ride to the orphanage and she would bring each of them an orange and that was a tremendous treat a tremendous treat he left the orphanage in after about one or
two years of high school and he too moved back home and he went out to go to work which was I don't know what he was doing but I'm not sure that all of it was totally you know any way to make a book he was always very honest but I don't think he cheated anybody but he made a book in a lot of ways when he was 17 he enlisted in in the Army in World War one and he got out in world at sea and and as he says I found myself on the streets of New York City my mother had died my
brothers had disappeared the family friend had family friend had stolen whatever money or keepsake she had he says I find myself on the streets of New York with $40 in my pocket and the uniform on my back and he had always he hadn't been bad memories from New York City he hopped the Train he rode the rails like a hobo this is 1919 so it's just maybe a little younger earlier than when mother moved to Dallas and he rode the rails and he had a fascinating life or no a few years he came down to Texas and he was a border guard on one of
the Rio Grande now here's a man let's know education just a year maybe you're an absolute high school and he he talked himself into that he was a sheep herder in Arizona for one night he couldn't stand then when he was out to Los Angeles and there was some a boyhood princes brother was friends with Samuel Goldwyn and he got a job as some as an extra and he got out somehow to up to Milwaukee where he was and this was all on the railroad or hitchhiking no I'm not sure I know the railroad you know it was very dangerous those if if you got
on the train and there were hobos on the train they could easily murder you or throw you lobster train and tell you very dangerous so I don't know how much he did that but he hitchhiked a lot and he ended up in Milwaukee who was selling oriental carpets and crystal radio sets in Chicago and it was selling carpets and he said the reason that he outsold everybody is that he spun a tale about each carpet and how it was made you know there were whole families who worked on these things so he said he embellished it a little bit but he's and he was very
charismatic meanwhile he had come down to Dallas and had gone on the road selling as he says much as he was selling stuff and he's what he got a car somehow I guess he paid on time or whatever if they had that and he traveled the roads and I get mixed up about whether he was I think he didn't turn I know before he and mother were married he was a roughneck in the oil fields a roughneck is you know for people who may be watching this that's that's heavy work it's also dangerous dad was about five foot nine and and stocky and very strong
his wrists were enormous his neck was big and he was very strong and one time when he and mother were courting he would ride he didn't have a car then he bribed the trolley to see her and one time he got off going home I think he was living in a rooming house and a car came along and knocked him down and the car went over his chest so I can see it here's his head between the wheels the car both wheels go over his chest the other car wheels did not and he got up and walked home now the cars were not weighing what
they weight now but still looked like and the next day he told when he came to see mother he told her and she says I don't believe you and he took off his shirt and there was the tire marks across his child but he was like a bull and he very very strong and he was a great fisherman he had learned fish somehow cuz he's a city boy I don't know where he learned it but when mother met him he was already going fishing and that's the way I remember growing up how did they meet they met when she was a Sunday school teacher for
temple Emmanuel and he was the first Boy Scout leader and they met and apparently fell in love and never dated anybody else and I don't think they married for at least seven years so because she was not really young she was in her thirties when they married I think and dad too and then of course she had Leonard very you know right away and there was a stillbirth somewhere in the middle and then me eight years later and she was a hundred just past a hundred when she died that makes three centuries well if she had lived six more days I would have lived in
three centuries because she's born in 1898 mm-hmm and she died at on December 24 Oh 1999 and she was trying to hang on and she was still for those people who knew her and there will be a history of her because I found it there'll be a history of her she was just as bright and smart and with it as she ever was until about three months before she died when her body just wore out the mind just slowed just slowed you know it was never dementia she just was her body just worn and so she died just before three centuries but a brilliant just
wonderful woman and Regina Pierce she was on the board of Temple emanu-el for about 60 years truly maybe more I think she went in on which was the Sunday school teacher never went off but she was always being asked to host the welcoming committee or the committee to meet people because she was a great introducer she'd if somebody was new she take them and introduce them and she did that all her life not just for the temple but she wanted her friends to be friends with all of her friends and she was hospitable and warm and and growing up in this house with tanta and
Papa that's what I call my grandfather my mother and dad Leonard and me and then who knows who was at the table some were living with us and some not and I was always welcoming friend's home at the last minute for dinner I never knew how many people were going to be at the table and it was a wonderful warm hospitable way oh you're you're here I've just mentioned well come to dinner right away just come with me right and of course with all the people from Texas my father eventually did I've become a land man and that's a whole other story I want to
tell you about too because that's so interesting and he does not have a record he died at the end of 1978 during the great ice storm here and he died as dramatically as he lived he was very dramatic I just finished with mother because she lived til it's a very beginning of this century so that's not very long ago that's only 11 years so it really kept your father here was your mother because he would have he could have just been that is right nothing he was wanderer exactly because exactly he didn't have roots till he met mother and he loved tanta and and Papa
got ill I think he had dementia and he died when I was 8 so I really don't have very firm memories Tonto was the power and the intellect and the the head of the household who cooked and sewed and she made mothers and Aunt Rosie's dresses and to they were adults and a wonderful cook but she never taught them to do this she was always in a hurry as you can well imagine you there was no room when she moved there to Texas there was no refrigeration no electricity no talent well there was a party line I think outhouses everything had to be done by
hand and she loved these little girls and they adored her but she did not but let me let me put it this way she did not understand how to well let me I think it I can send this up she once said to my mother when she was about eight years old or nine years old or ten or something Rosie's a year and a half early as she says Gina my mother was named Regina with a heart she and everybody called her Gina Gina she says Rosie is beautiful but you're good and my mother never forgot it and she really wasn't she was on the
plane side she had just awful hair that she never could do anything with Rosie younger had big blue eyes and golden curls and there was a considerable difference I've got a picture of her as a young girl and you can see and my mother had that within her but Lee my father was a handsome dude and he fell madly in love with her and she's the one who ended up being the most attractive and and I guess you know there's dynamics in every family you know but she's the one who really lived the great life and after years of penny-pinching and years they said of
really not knowing where they were gonna have the next meal coming from my father finally found a business that he started so can I take a breast for him and then I'll tell him about my dad absolutely okay so here they are but let me rewind just a minute because as you as he said to me in the break I am the amalgamation of my my parents and I was incredibly lucky to to have this my father I I don't think I can hold a candle to my dad as far as charisma goes when my dad walked in a room man I'll tell you you
knew my father was in that ready he just exuded energy just exuded and I tell people that without any education that I think he was probably the smartest man I've ever met he was so focused and read and educated himself and unfortunately it was one of these guys who never really understood art but and he would say I know what I like and that that's fine there are a lot of people but he loved music that's pretty obvious why and he had a really good ear but after he hopped on that train and he came around and I don't know how and when he traveled
on the road I know some of it was with clothes and some of it was in the oil business he was a land man comes pre war World War two man he was working for was as to take on a big government job my father found him selves as himself as he says this is 1943 in with $10,000 which was more money than he had ever had in his life 43 well yeah 43 is 43 years old and he has $10,000 in his pocket he has a wife two children tanta had just passed with and I know means doing anything and he started a fascinating
business and many people have said to me do you know what your father contributed to the oil business and when I tell them what he did they are amazed my father began the oil services of the log services in Texas an electrical log is like a cardiogram of the what's down in the earth and you don't drill a will at least from the 1930s I guess without it Wells well logs were horse traded you give me yours I'll give you to it mine and come the middle of the war they just needed a lot more information in order to find oil and my father had
heard about this he started the log services in Texas and it started in the bedroom of my parents home you used to get oil all well logs that looked like on blueprints and they looked like long they'd be 12 20 feet long and you'd have to slice them with very long scissors and you'd and anybody who did would get burns from the paper just terrible paper cuts and then they would take them and roll them up and put them into canisters and send them away the concept was sold by my father who had the reputation for total integrity and he went and and to all
the independents and most of the big ones and he said to them let me have your well log libraries I will keep them and let me have access legally to every well that is drilled and when one and then when somebody needs them they can go to the library will facilitate matters will aid the war effort and we'll get this thing off the road and but I won't use any of that information till you give me legal access to it and it was because of his reputation for absolute integrity that he sold that and so I'm very proud of him and a lot of people
have said Wow just as an aside just did your children are you inherit any of this musical ability I did I did I have unused my violin teacher I took violin for five years I took piano for - but then high school came along and I had other things I was doing and I lost it but my teachers used to say I had perfect pitch I don't know if that's still true I do know I know once when somebody hits the wrong note or it's a little flat I know that for you not in ears yeah on forests I want to get to you on
you lived in forests until what age I was 14 mm-hmm and that neighborhood which was classic South Dallas it wasn't Oh cliff South Dallas it was on Forest North Forest Martin Luther King it was only three blocks from Fair Park and the neighborhood was beginning to change and most of our friends were going to either to mostly to Highland Park High School mm-hmm and there were still some who stayed in forest at Forest High but we decided to move and we went to Woodland Drive which is only three streets north of Northwest Highway right off of Preston and we and that man that I went
to Hillcrest High School I could have got transferred and gotten to Highland Park somehow but I chose not to my parents also said you can go to Hockaday again I chose not to instead I entered Hillcrest High School as a sophomore in the middle of my son for a year and I stayed there for two and a half years my graduating class had fifty people in it mm-hmm five Oh mmm at Hillcrest High School oh is that amazing and I graduated in 1951 I was the only Jewish full Jewish person there there in my class and then it started I had another girl who had
a father who was Jewish and a mother was not and never really associated with the Jewish community and in a grade below me I had a boy was there any anti-semitism it that you experienced it didn't express itself at all as anti-semitism but for another reason I really wasn't welcomed in now we still need this little group there's still a 12 or 15 people who will get together and we have lunches twice a year do I know these people you know these you would not know any of them and they have it was not a religious thing at all there was another reason and I
don't really want to go into it here but it was a very personal thing with the other half Jewish girl who I had to debate with and she saw what a happy life I did and she I had and she made it very difficult for me from then on jealousy it was and we were debate partners and she had been with the same group for many years and so she was one of these really good-looking girls and I was gunky and skinny and I didn't mature until I was 16 and I just never really fit in but they nowadays as adults they have no memory
of it mm-hmm and that's fine you know but I did I spent a summer at debate camp at University of Denver and that changed my life and my senior year was great because we used to have the Jewish kids would have dances and remember you weren't here and when you weren't here but in high school there with all the sweet 16 dances and most of them would be at leap arc you know with the the Arlington Hall Lee park on Turtle Creek and we'd have all these dances and the invitations would come you were invited to so-and-so and then it would say your date is
ha ha and it was wonderful because I got dates that way because I I really was not developed I went into hop to college at 16 turned 17 but I really was very very slow so I had that wonderful year summer that I cruel in and then I had my Jewish friends from Highland Park and all the you know just the surrounding area and some even had them from Forest I did I did do you keep up with them oh absolutely there's a whole group of as a matter of fact forest people need all the time but I don't go to those reunion but oh
I know so many people here so why some names because that's always fun with in this I will well there's Ethel Frankfort Nestle silver gold Frankfort Zeile mm-hmm was one of my best friends when we were in grade school mm-hm she used to she she didn't have a daddy and she used to come over and spend the night with me and we were on Forest Avenue and and we had one full bathroom and then one little toilet on the back porch and she and I were just little girls we used to get in this big claw-footed bathtub and take bubble baths together my mother poured
a bottle of bubbles and we still talk about that yeah oh there's a gully I wish I had thought well my distant cousin is was Jane Rutland Rae and she still lives here and she's about a third cousin we grew up together though because she was on South Boulevard and she had a very interesting family her uncle was John Rosenfield the famous critic for The Times I mean for the Dallas Morning News and Oh golly of Dallas people re Sussman was in grade school and part of high school with me and he was always number one in class and I was number two or vice
versa and I knew Arnie sweet and oh I just don't get there was a whole gang there were gangs from Hillcrest and there were lots of people from Highland Park that's when I met Barbara Schwartz Silverberg Silverberg I knew Myrna and - appreader Hauser yeah and I'm I knew my brother's friends I knew Dave Andrus when I was a little girl I say a little girl because he was my brother's age that's eight years difference and doesn't matter when you're grown up but when you're young that's a lot of difference well you talk about being this skinny shy kid that doesn't sound like you were
at all falling well accumulated high I didn't have a very good social history until I got to college I I wasn't shy mm-hmm I in many ways I was unsure of myself socially with my friend always good with my parents friends I was a debater of one first and stay and debate with my partner I could get out on stage I could do those things but as far as feeling confident going out on dates and then somebody reminded me I had this boyfriend and I had this boyfriend so I guess it wasn't as bad as I saw where did you go to college yeah I
went to college at two my first two years at University of Texas and I pledged a fight and I lived in Scottish Rite dormitory and the women I grew some of them Oh what am I talking about there's Janet Janet Koren bless Hirshman she was my very best friend growing up and she and I were born two days apart and Lawrence Nightingale Hospital and we have remained close friends ever since and I was maid of honor and her wedding and vice versa as she's here that's Hirshman and there's just all kinds of people like that my Janet and I were both the same age my
parents had said go to Texas first or Oklahoma or Sophie Newcombe stay close and then you can go wherever you want it and I wanted to see the world and I wanted to go to New York and work and I wanted to go into theater or television or something and I wanted to go to London and I wanted to live there but so what happened is I went to Texas lived in SR de viii I house was just a firetrap there was a whole group of us who did not go to the sorority house and we're fine for it consider what our people in the
house we all lived in SRD we have all remained friends and that's really nice and at and I was an orange jacket I was in radio TV and drama and I made so many of my ting friends I wouldn't give anything for that experience and then I wanted to go a buddy as I had been promised so I went to Northwestern and that had you know a great Google of speech and I got into the drama class the one of the internationally famous drama coaches Alvira Kraus and that was quite an experience and it it made me turn from being in drama to of radio
TV which was I felt a much more down-to-earth approach businesslike it was a strange world to be in the drama world and I'm glad I didn't stay in that I lived at a firehouse I met LAN on it wasn't yeah I guess it was a blind date fixed up by one of my roommates and he was a senior in medical school in Chicago and I'm a junior in college at Northwestern and he lived his parents lived a short trolley ride away they were at the edge of northern Chicago off of Devon area and then and the lake and Here I am in northwestern which is
Evanston just touched that so it was a 10-minute car ride and I don't know how long on on the streetcar but he came up for a coffee date and walked me back to the house you know we had hours still and he walked me back to the house and I went upstairs and I said to my roommates at the ripe age of 18 I said I've met a man I think would be the first one I've ever met that I could marry just like your mother just like your mother and father I guess yeah except I never wanted to get married then I don't want
to get married till I was Oh dirty I mean that's what I wanted to get ahead time yeah but you know what happens you I was dating another guy off campus by that time I it was already very clear that boys my age were just not mature enough for me I was dating a guy who was an attorney turned out they've gone to Illinois at the same time as Lynn they didn't know each other but once an attorney once the physician by the time Lenny and I got serious with it at the end of my junior year and he proposed at the beginning of my
senior year huh and and we got married after I graduated I didn't even go to my own graduation because it wasn't the cool thing to do and I got married I got married in June and I got married July in Dallas in Dallas that's the old Baker hotel and it's now torn down it's where it's a crop cata corner from where the Adolphus is now we had in the Crystal Ballroom and it was beautiful it was a beautiful wedding and I had pictures and Janet was my main matron of honor by that time and I guess I had five bride other bridesmaids one of which
was my dear friend and still remains my one of my dearest friends Lois Kay Willard who is a woman who is Catholic and devoutly so and I met in the washroom lady's room of a restaurant in Chicago and we talked I was on my second date with Lynn and we talked and her date thought she had loved him and Lennie thought I'd skip down talked for 45 minutes made a day to meet each other for lunch she was already had her master's degree and was working in Chicago we met the next Saturday for lunch and downtown Chicago and almost a year and a half later
she was in my way and flash-forward many many many years and at and she soldier the nine about Lenny's age and at age 70 I was matron of honor and only attendant in her first wedding at age 70 and she had always said I would be her matron of honor and I was and it wasn't for lack of being asked she just didn't issues anybody else and she was very very significant part of my of my life I'm gonna go from Chicago took back to Dallas what were your religious affiliation I was always a good reform - I was not the most observant person I
guess I was confirmed you know when I was growing up there were very few boys who were Bar Mitzvah in really very food certainly my brother wasn't and nobody that I know of who was in his age group that's Mort Prager was in his age group he was not Bar Mitzvah that I know of and but they all the boys were confirmed and I've had a confirmation class at 10:00 as a matter of fact I was in Rabbi Levi öhlins first confirmation class he had just come here and he had become very good friends with my mother and dad and I had a relationship with
Lee rabbi Olin that was very special you know there was he was brilliant man and a wonderful teacher but there were many people who found him off-putting as a warm hey Monsieur rabbi exactly he but to me and my parents peopled us and I I really loved him and enjoyed him so much so that was that and I was you know I always went to services many organizations that you I was I don't think there were temple teams and I did not join bBYO you don't know this Nancy because you didn't come here to later but most of BBY Oh was from the conservative community
oh not from the reform that's most of them now Marilyn Goldman Marilyn Coleman Goldman was was in one and there were all kinds of people who were reformed but nobody took me by the hand nobody said oh I want you to join no I just but did make a difference all of us reform kids used to go to our services and then we all go over to shares Israel were your we're your parents active in the Jewish community yeah my mother was always in sisterhood and my dad did different things stayed in the Boy Scout community for a long time Alvin Goldstein was one of
his first Boy Scouts oh I'll tell you who was one of my mother's Sunday school pupils was the man Henry s Miller and when he was invited to mother's 95th birthday he sent her roses and again on her hundredth birthday he sent her Rosa maybe on her 90s - we had 90s 95th and hundreds and so he remembered it was very sweet all kinds of people were dad's Boy Scout leaders or mothers or mothers Sunday school I want to get to my favorite topic having to do with Pauline Revere tell me about your line of careers because there's been a few of them I'm sure
that because they're fast actually gets my daughter Tracy who has had a line of careers even more than I oh I started out I had a radio show in Evanston it was a children's radio show but it gave me experience and then when I graduated Glenny and I spent the next nine years away from Dallas so it's 13 years and all and where were you in Chicago we married and Lynne was supposed to go into the service immediately and as a physician he was just through with one year of a rotating internship they don't have them anymore they were like but it would be called
a residency a surgical residency in his case it was rotating and he was supposed to go in the service and he had been put off had any rate we were supposed to marry and immediately go in to the Air Force and go overseas and he was supposed to be a flight surgeon in Germany and they put him off and put him off and put him off until finally he had to get a job and after a wonderful honeymoon we ended up going back to Chicago and he got he's waiting had to turn down his residency and he got a job just in an industrial clinic
wasted a whole year and we lived in the basement of one of our friends parents old houses the parents lived on the first floor this big old converted house our friends lived on this one daughter and family and children lived on the second floor the other daughter who our friends lived above a five car garage they were in the Coach House Lenny and I were in the servants quarters because we needed a place to live yeah it was like doctor we're calling in another six weeks we're calling you in another eight weeks and so and it was like my sister Eileen where you your eyes
were on ground one time we had a flood and Lenny had the mumps and I wouldn't let him out of bed cuz we didn't have children and so he stayed in and the water those are the experiences they finally got called we went into the service I got pregnant but meanwhile I had started to again two years and he ended up in Oklahoma in Midwest City Oklahoma and he was an obstetrician that year of rotating internship gave him the experience so it was disappointing but the best of it you make the best of it and we ended up having a great time and I was
doing some freelance modeling even when I was pregnant wearing loose jacket and that was fun you know this sort of idiot work but it was fun and then we spend another six years on his residency he came back to Chicago to Cook County Hospital and I was having more babies and he just wasn't making any money twenty a hundred and twenty five dollars a month more four and a half years and then he went that was general surgery at Cook County and then Pittsburgh Children's for a year and a half and during that time I'm having babies and I am doing some freelance work and
conducting classes in charm thanks that's really how many jokes how many 3 3 we had Lisa when I was I'd say she came we married in 1955 and she came at the end of 57 and she's now an attorney and has been an attorney for many years in st. Louis and then we had miles 17 months later and he is a surgeon in a plastic surgeon in Atlanta and he has two children and all happily married and then Tracy came along three and a half years later so that gave and she is the one who lives in Dallas she lived in Montreal for many many years married to a Montreal man and divorced and remarried another man from Montreal who was happy to move to Dallas and she had one child with first marriage and two children now and she and husband and two children live here in Dallas thank heavens I've got one everybody's very
closely vacationed together and they're very close and all love each other so I've got three six children counting married in and savate grandchildren seven seven two two and three - oh okay your your other daughter bride and they range in age from 3 to 25 are you a grandma I my grandmother I mean a great-grandma no no not yet the 25 year old is was her first child Traci's first child and thank heavens he's not married and he lives and works and in the New York City and that is Lee my father's name was Lee Pierce mm-hmm he legally changed it from Herman Leonard I'm
trying to think what the original name was guten plon guten fun and he changed it to Ashlee Pierce and Traci's first son is named Lee and her second son is named Pierson go on its is it it's time to stop and then I just real quickly go on with your career that you've had for 25 years well once when I moved back to Dallas my mother said you and Gloria Hoffman need to get together now I have it's ten minutes worth of telling you this quick story about this career do you have time on the day no because I want to ask you one more
question okay well I do that in that shorter time it is at ten minutes can you use another day Nancy you asked me about career and I guess aside from my family do I consider my products the thing I'm the most proud of is the career that I carved out along with Gloria Hoffman and Gloria Hoffman I don't know whether she ever did one of these I think so she and I carved out a career together neither one of us could have done it by ourselves glory passed away seven years ago but I must include her the story really is it's a good one after
all these years of training that Lynne had in a way we moved back to Dallas my mother darling Rickey a Pierce said you and Gloria she'd always said when you come back to Dallas you and Gloria need to have a doula career together Gloria had created a television show over and Fort Worth named charmingly yours with Gloria Meyers mm-hmm and I of course had a children's show and had been teaching charm you know all of these things that one teaches young people and adults anyway Gloria called me one day I was busy building a house had these three little children and she said do you
want to go on the board of the YWCA with me Neumann was starting and we ended up doing that we weren't interested in charm at all but the idea of joining in something and programmed together my mother had put into both of our heads she was good friends with Gloria and we realized that the world meaning our Texas Dallas Texas world there were so many people in her volunteer world because she was living here in volunteering who would not take a position of responsibility because they were afraid to make a speech and so we started a little class and the first one we called cultivating
courage of fear and a reporter Mary Brinckerhoff from the Dallas Morning News called us on the phone didn't even see us called us on the phone and interviewed us for hours and was fascinated with this idea of teaching people to have confidence in spite of fear a photographer came out found two women who were used to being on television and were hams and I get really excited when I tell you about this and we're hams and takes pictures on a Saturday morning we open up the paper and there on the front of the variety or the women's page whatever you want to call it were
four pictures of the two of us half a page and half of the next page and the title is helps on the way for terrified stalkers helps on the way for terrified stalkers and underneath that was cultivating courage and two days later in a very small Church in Northwest Dallas 79 people show up now that's a lot of business to learn how to speak these four groups Gloria and I were of the tape of the date on this part of the date oh that was 1964 okay let's say you just moved back 1964 and we Perpetua fide believed our teachers but we quickly regrouped we
we had those people in smaller groups right way we took every advantage we went from there because you can't get that many people every time for the boy oh why course we went to El Centro we put in a conversational communications course we realized you have to have listening in order to communicate it's not all talking like I'm doing here you need to listen and interact with people all of that's my mother's training and my father's training and we went into the business world we parlayed it we took every advantage we just looked for advantages people were mentors to us I became both of us
became professional platform speakers as we progressed we're working more and more in the business community we ended up hiring 20 people they were all over the world doing seminars short seminars at meetings and conventions we're doing a lot of work in the in the world of executive training and long story short here we are and I keep saying weeks that was Florian too and working with the top executives in the country and doing work globally and just doing the whole thing and I'm still doing it I here at my age of 77 there's no reason for me to retire because people are still coming to
me and you love it and I love it every day is different every person is different I teach short seminars I take larger teach longer seminars and I'm turning people into not only great speakers but as many of them say I changed their life and what better way is there to to learn to live a life and that's my life you're a fascinating woman mrs. groovier and this has been a pleasure thank you me too when else do I get to talk oh we have a lot of do to Polly's last interview some very important components to who she is and her family good afternoon Pauline hello thank you so much okay I want to start all over do you understand okay tell me tell tell us about your your history and your you left out something that goes back hundreds of years sorry and thank you for the opportunity to continue this yes well the black sheep of the family and probably my claim to fame is my great great great uncle
and Natalie Ornish in her book pioneer at Jewish Texans this is just a Xerox copy of the front I couldn't have find mine I couldn't find it so this is old it's in the family notebook but I want to read you quickly in this one paragraph that says in an interview 1987 with my mother routine appears she talks about her great-great uncle a wolf a for Anthony wolf who was killed at the Alamo he and Billie Jean Lafitte in his encampment and went from New Orleans to Galveston he was the black sheep of the family nobody wanted to talk very much about it and as
a child growing up and I've already discussed that I heard about him on my mother's side my mother was flora wolf including my mother that's my grandmother who married David Hart my mother was born New Orleans circa around 1870 and my father came to America to work force uncle in Athens Alabama and he came on down to be a cotton bride a buyer in Bryan Texas and so anyway best marriage contract which I have is a very interesting anyway the information I received I thought the information I received from my mother's brother David wolf of Galveston was that Anthony wolf had been the part what
I just told you and that he was killed at the Alamo when New Orleans chase Lafitte and his troops on New Orleans they went to the Isle of Galveston and that's when the call came to go to the Alamo that's where he went now the archives at the Alamo in the Texas State Library show that he was acting as an interpreter on a scouting mission to the Cherokee Nation and also he showed up at the Alamo and this is what I have done from other research he showed up at the alum at Alamo as my mother said he was a scallywag but as you can
recall all of the rogues came to the Helen mo and her not such a high-class group of people according to the records he was had been married to a Mexican woman who was at the Alamo with him along with two small sons it is unclear whether she's one of the women who begged for mercy but what is clear is that he had two sons with them and the three of them were killed at the Alamo and if you look on the big granite sign a Anthony wolf is the last name so my claim wonderful exciting well I'm just curious tell me what made scalawag in
those days why was he the black sheep what made him obliged to use the pirate even though when the stage almost eight was supposed to have been Jewish his name was supposed to have been lucky toe and who knows what his history was he did come from England that that was the background it was England and Germany where that side of the family that's the extent of what I know but it's pretty exciting because in the pan-american exposition we went down to San Antonio went through the all of the big show for the Alamo and there he was and it talked about him being they
only do what they get one mo so that's pretty exciting to over it certainly is certainly is thank you thank you for letting us come back and review some important things but I am eyeing over here several books about three books and what do you have to do with these books well these are books that my partner my late partner glory Hoffman and I wrote and that's the other thing I left out and I really wanted to talk about what other people had said was my inglorious contribution to the cause of business women so so to speak exactly there are a lot of business women
today and I was fortunate enough not to have been born 20 years earlier when those were the real women pioneers those were the women who struggle to get a job as a lawyer you we have many several women here in death we're brilliant that took them forever to get a job as a lawyer and not a paralegal or a secretary I didn't have to make those kinds of intense forays into the world of men it was much easier however however that said the idea of becoming a coach for men who were successful executives was not a very common thing when Khloe and I started we
were very fortunate we were blessed with publicity everywhere we turned somebody wanted to write an article for us and it really was the Dallas Morning News and then later on live in Casselberry at the Dallas Times Herald who really pushed us out into the forefront we began we were both had radio TV backgrounds never taught a course in our lives never ever had any business experience so to speak we were we were performers of one kind or another and we started a little course for the YWCA that my mother has suggested she was a friend of glorious already they were both founders of the Brandeis
University National Women's Auxiliary and they became really good friends and mother always said when Polly comes back to Dallas the two of you have to do something do something I think what she thought was a charm class something like that that we can each talk before I am to Chicago and Gloria in Fort Worth anyway we got together and we thought of an idea for people who were afraid to take volunteer jobs of any note because they were afraid to make a speech and so we taught we came up with this little course it was going to be for one hour lessons given for the
YWCA in a church in North West Dallas and the whole idea was that we would if we had to literally host his hand we would hold somebody's hand and get them over there fair enough to control it and to be able to use it to make a presentation that was the concept of starting and we opened up the Saturday paper before and Monday class in the Dallas Morning News and Mary Brinkerhoff have written this column called and this huge I should have brought it out and shown it to you but if you can imagine the newspaper this big and half of it with coffee and
half of the second page and four pictures of the two of us splattered I mean who could buy that and it says helps on the way for terrified talkers there was nobody to answer the phone at the Y this was a Saturday they didn't have classes and it was just you know just a concept and we walked in and there were 79 people waiting for us to take this course I I have to tell you that we both panicked now later on when I was writing a column for the Dallas Morning News on business and such I wrote about this after Gloria passed away and
I made it sound as though she was the only one who was confident but the truth wasn't we were both scared out of our minds so we faced these people we realized that we had to break it up we got through the first hour somehow from panicked as we were and it was a great success we had speakers anonymous classes all kinds of people who you would know and some in the Jewish community including Patsy nation' were amongst our first students and we had speakers anonymous and it was great fun chlorine I wanted to do more it was clear that we couldn't depend on the
Y to custom get us business so we marched ourselves down to El Centro which was the very first junior college and we said here we are and they said oh we want you we want you for our adult education and after we had taught there for a little while they said and can you teach a conversation course conversation sure we can do that you know this is what happens when you're not very knowledgeable they would say and so we started that and the more we looked into it we realized that the basis of conversation and therefore the basis of the majority of communications is listening
skills so we went looking for books on listening and they were all full of technical things you know what the ear and the ear canal does and so on and there was almost nothing out on how people listen and what they learned from their listening so Gloria and I really just just we wrote our presentation skills we did it not from an academic background because we didn't really have any we did it from what we thought would work and how one needs to put it into writing and into seminars well it took off and was very exciting in them and we did their conversation course
we warped into communications of all types including the presentations and the interpersonal I didn't know any other name for it along the way all of a sudden boom we started to grow I guess that's what happens we were very blessed with the timing because it was very easy to get an appointment two women coming to see the CEO of a major firm will of course come right and so we made our picture Center and we have two days seminars and all of a sudden we've got and we are working now for as consultants for university computing company and LTV education which are just realizing that
one has to have management and executive film and courses that that is a very important thing so here we are we caught the wave and as they say timing is everything and we feel very strongly that the timing can be there but the person has to be ready to grab it when it passes by and that is actually amongst the first things that we've written in our Hornet book which was published back in the 80s but the nice thing is these languages success the nice thing is is that it was published by putnams we wanted the caveat of a major publisher we were very fortunate
to get it and if they called it bestseller and it went into paperback with Berkeley paperback presley's and apparently not only were these in bookstores around the country but these ended up in kiosks in airports and all over the place and they kept selling out of these I don't know I think they did a couple of printing of the hardcover and then it went into this and I would end up we'd end up getting getting calls from people who had it in college how much classes were using it I look at it now and you know what it's a little dated we decided on our
concepts of organized listening that was the premise you listen and you divide your listening into various categories so you don't go in and just have a funnel going into your head if they haven't you supposed to listen you go in and you say I'm going to be listening for a person's name I'm going to be listening for points of agreement this person is a little difficult to work with I'm going to do points of agreement or I'm about to say something fair that has to be with a change but the change has to happen in a certain way you don't just walk into somebody and
say you're thinking this way I'm thinking this way we have to go this way no it's the strategy of how you think ahead of time and the strategy of what you say and then the ability to switch at a moment's notice so the listening went firm eleven concepts of organized listening - seventeen concepts of work a nice listening which it is now so all of a sudden it seems like all of a sudden but it was over a period of years we find ourselves dealing with business executives and nuclear engineers and I mean it went from going to a dr. pepper plant in Ohio but then billing us as P Hoffman as G Hoffman and Peake Revere because they didn't think anybody would come if they knew it was being taught by women to paly prepare Hoffman we soon realized we shouldn't teach together so we each taught separately but we taught the same thing however in different ways when we were asked to go into the convention leading business and to shorten versions of our seminar we realized we could not do it ourselves and we begun other people they were always women they were always charismatic and we ended up with about 20 people who were working for
us I don't think there were ever at twenty at one time but there were maybe six or eight at one time and then people wouldn't morph off because nobody wanted to do anything but teach they didn't want to go out and sell it it was fun we were traveling all over the world I have really taught in some of the most beautiful and incredible places in every resort type of situation we have taught our seminar to english-speaking people in Austria Japan Morocco Canada on board a ship pump up at the cruise ship I mean you name it Mexico Hawaii and so on many times for
very large large conventions we've been part of the American Bar Association for which they give credits the same for accountants we you know you name it I think I'm worked with I can touch somebody's business no matter what they do so you name an engineer any kind of engineer I've worked with him every that and and so the way the business has marked is that we after a very long period of traveling my health began to suffer was harder to travel and to do these kinds of cemeteries I was also a keynote speaker and it became harder and harder and we began to close that
part down for a while I was a lot of surgery and then we began to to also at the same time we were approached by a literary agent who dealt with China and this is the translation of speaks the language of success and the translation into Mandarin this was for Taiwan and it was and it's all it's all Mandarin Chinese the only thing that says speaks the language their success is right here and it is then it went into a second translation for mainland China which as you know does a simplified language version and that got sold out totally and when I was in Japan
I mean in China about 70 years ago I went looking for it all the bookstores had it and there less but they were sold out so that was that so it has been a terrific ride this is the it just you know the audio version so that's where I am now and I have to say that even though I don't feel it people refer to me as an icon or a trendsetter or a trailblazer or whatever it was but all I can tell you is that glory and I as partners had a fabulous time we kind of fabulous experience and while I never walked into
a seminar and say hello there I'm Jewish there was no question and if anyone ever said anything that I was afraid that they would be embarrassed by like to marry I want her to marry a good Christian man or or she had good Christian values then in the gentlest of ways I would iceman you be an ethical person and not be Christian and so you do that kind of thing without embarrassing anybody but I think it's nice to say that as a Jew I was a standard-bearer well you definitely are a trailblazer and a great credit to Dallas as well as our Jewish community and
I'm so glad you let some of this information drop days after the last interview so thank you so much you