Peter Vogel
Peter Vogel's family roots reached back to Europe. His mother's family came from the area near Riga, Latvia, immigrating around 1911 to Yonkers, New York, where his grandfather David Diamond worked as a tin smith making roofs and his grandmother Lena Diamond ran a local shop. His father's family was from Austria, and his grandfather Paul Vogel was a baker who ran a small bakery near the subway. Peter's parents grew up on the same street in Yonkers and attended high school together, later marrying during World War II while his father was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. His father served in the Quartermaster Corps and went to Europe about D-Day plus 33, spending roughly a year there.
Peter was only ten months old when his parents, a CPA drawn by opportunity in Texas, moved the family to Dallas in 1948. With no relatives nearby, the family adopted the Fallen family of Fort Worth, sharing holidays back and forth. Peter grew up playing baseball, idolizing Mickey Mantle who lived nearby, and attended Hillcrest High School, where he was active in AZA and served as a regional leader. He attended several colleges before graduating from the University of Texas, then worked as a computer programmer, served in the Army, and earned a master's in computer science before attending law school at St. Mary's.
Peter's father was president of the Jewish Community Center and a longtime auditor at Shearith Israel, and his mother helped create a coalition that founded a shelter for children of homeless families. After his parents were killed in the crash of Delta Flight 1141 on August 31, 1988, the shelter's alcove was named the Vogel Alcove in their honor, and Peter and his wife remain active supporters. He practiced law as a sole practitioner for fourteen years before joining a firm, served as president of the local bar association, taught at SMU law school, and specialized in computer and e-commerce law. Married to his second wife for many years and father of two attorneys' worth of family, he treasures raising his children and grandchildren above all.
Full Transcript
Peter 1947 Yonkers New York but you're not going to tell me too much about it cuz you you weren't there very long no uh my family moved to Dallas uh when I was 10 months old in 1948 okay why was that oh that's a good question um after World War II I think my parents decided they wanted to get out of New York and there was a lot of opportunity here and my father was a CPA in New York City and one of his buddies who had been stationed in Texas at Mineral Wells said come to Texas for a great opportunity so he decided he'd
give it a shot and my family moved here my parents did anyway my brother than me now how did World War II affect your family do you know well um yeah in interesting ways because my uh grandfather my mother's father died uh early in the war and soon thereafter my parents decided they were going to get married so my mother took a train ride from New York City to Washington State to Tacoma uh to get married to my father who's at Fort leis Washington wow and so then you know I think the war had an upheaval on everybody in the 4S now was your dad
in World War II yes he was where where was he St um he was in the Quarter Master and ultimately went uh to Europe um and he was like D-Day plus 33 or something like that and spent about a year in Europe yeah do they have any stories for you guys not much you know kind of interestingly enough as I'm hear my friends today there that World War II group did not really talk a lot about the war not much I mean I've learned more because of friends at all than than he shared with me now your grandparents were they born in this country or
they come from Europe they were all from Europe my mother's family was from Ria latva or just outside in in the in a rural area near latva I mean the Ria and um they immigrated I want to say in about 19 1911 to Yonkers New York uh my grandfather her father David Diamond was a tin Smith made roofs in Yonkers and my grandmother Lena Diamond um sort of ran the local sh around the corner wow for many years and then my father's family was um in Austria and actually he was in the Austrian Army and went home for Passover 1914 and when a Wallen came
to the United States I always found that kind of amusing and so um they actually my parents went to high school together in Yonkers they both lived on the same street neand avenue my uh father my grandfather Paul vogle was a baker and he had a little Bakery uh near the uh Subway and uh my parents went to high school together they didn't date until they were in college my father was a couple of years older he went to Columbia my mother went to NYU during the Depression my father got out in 1940 and then promptly join the Army uh do you know if the
depression affected your family at all oh I absolutely uh I the Depression was something that was just had tremendous uh impact I think on the whole world it wasn't just the US and and in particular I guess I kind of postumus my father got into award from the state Society of CPAs and when I accepted the award I told all the people at the meeting at College Station I said how it was interesting because when my father went to Colombia in 1936 he told his father that he was getting a degree in education because back during the Depression the only jobs you could get were
teaching so he never told his father that he got a degree in accounting so so that was kind of a message about he had to do something was practical and getting into G in accounting during the Depression was not very practical and and the other part is my mother-in-law who is now 98 and I think the impact on her and my father-in-law who passed way already 30 years ago I think was pretty significant now what ever happened to the bakery do you know well that part of neeran Avenue got torn down uh just I guess progress I don't know but but my the diamond Family
House remained for many years last time I saw it it was still standing so yeah now the decision to move to Dallas you know was it a culture shock on your family well I was only 10 months old so it's kind of hard to tell back in those days we didn't have much air conditioning so life was just very different all the way around and we didn't have any family we kind of adopted a family we lived in an apartment uh near what the old delman theater is over on Lemon Avenue near the toll road and we adopted a family they ended up moving to
Fort Worth and so we would all the holidays we'd either go to Fort Worth they'd come to Dallas back and forth and uh that was about the only family we really had we adopted them and he he R this was Eli fallen and he ran the Federation in h Fort Worth and what what did your dad get into in Dallas um well he was president of the center as a matter of fact and I just looked on the sign on the way 1962 64 he was also very active at sherith Israel he was the auditor of sherith I think for more than 30 years right
and um pretty active in the community and actually uh my parent well in 1984 my mother came up with a really brilliant idea I think and uh and that was to create a um shelter for children of homeless families and um put together something called a Dallas Jewish uh Coalition about 30 different groups and started that in 1987 and um actually my parents were killed in a plane crash in ' 88 and they named the this PL the place where the kids were stay the Jewish the Vogal Al Cove uh and actually just moved into the old Dallas City Park School near where the old
JCC was what is the uh alov Center mean to you today well it means a lot U it's kind of a monument I think to my parents but it's something that my mother came up with as an idea to help the community actually not many other cities have done this my wife is on the board we're we're both very active in the alve right um and it's just something that's really special now families that you guys have helped they ever come back when they're back on their feet and talk to you guys at all um they do at the AL Cove I mean we I
I don't spend a lot of time there I mean you know we're more supporters I know my wife does she actually my wife's a speech pathologist and she goes there periodically to help work with the kids so um they don't stay there very long it's just a a time when the parents can get vocational training and get opportunities to sort of move on so they really it's not the children aren't there very long yeah okay well let's jump back now when you're a little kid in Dallas what was fun for you guys what' you do for a good time uh play baseball yeah yeah uh
well and Mickey Manel uh lived here uh not actually a block from Sheriff Israel so he was my big hero um and uh I liked you know watching him on TV and getting to see him around town but I like playing baseball like sports a lot yeah yeah where'd you go to high school I went to Hillcrest what was high school life like um it was pretty good I was active actually High School is kind of an interesting time for me because I was very active with AA and I ended up senior year in high school I was uh Olive gdal of the district 7
so from Dallas well Texas all the way to Florida I had the whole South as my region and got to travel on weekends and it was a great experience yeah yeah and then where did you go to college well I went to three undergraduate schools and three graduate schools I kind of didn't want to stay in Dallas I wanted to didn't want to stay in Texas so I went to school at the University of Pacific my freshman year Stockton California then University of Wisconsin and Madison my sophomore year and then I transferred to the University of Texas where I graduated from okay Peter you mentioned
your folks had passed away in a plane crash can you tell us a little bit about that yeah um they were on Delta 1141 on August 31st 1988 and if you know anything about planes on the back of planes or are flaps on the front there are slats right um plane can take off without the slats being down but the pilot has to know it well they didn't put the slots down plane got off the ground about 100 ft or so and then crashed so about 13 people died including my parents we had a a funeral at sherith Israel and there were thousands of people
I was very surprised by that and I later learned that the funeral was live on CNN and that was in 1988 so that was kind of a big deal at the time I didn't even know that until after the fact ironically enough my brother passed away in 1995 and um some of my parents friends came over to make a condolence call and one of them said that one Thanksgiving they had all gone on a trip to Mexico and uh they were out on a ship and ship hand said you know ship went down here in the storm last week and uh so reportedly my mother
said wow what a great fundraising opportunity when was it when you decided to become an attorney um actually I'd always been interested in studying law but so what I did was when I got out of college um I got a degree in Business from the University of Texas and at the time back in the 60s uh in the statistics course which everyone had to take we had to learn fourth Rand programming and I just fell in love with programming so when I got out of college I worked as a programmer got a and here in Arlington I spent some time in the Army and ended
up in DC and I worked at the National Institutes of Health computer Center in Bethesda got a master's of computer science went back to P work on a PhD at the University of Texas just hated it so I went to law school at St Mary's because I'd always been interested I never intended to be a lawyer at all what I intended to do was do computer Consulting and I taught graduate and undergraduate computer courses all through law school and I when I graduated came back to Dallas passed the bar but I worked as computer Consulting actually my father's CPA firm and after a couple of
years my clients asked me to represent him as a lawyer and I thought well well I'll give that a try so I just hung up a shingle and I was assault practitioner for 14 years and now for the past 22 years I've been um with the law firm of guarder Wis now talk to me about when uh when you first met your first wife uh my first wife and I met When I Was An undergraduate at University of Texas okay and then you got married while you were in college still well we no I married after college when I was in the Army and ultimately
but actually the reason I went to law school San Antonio is cuz she was going Law School in San Antonio I was a la graduate school at UT and in any event um it ended up not working out and I got divorced uh luckily my next door neighbor and I decided that we shared a lot in comment so we've been married now actually as of today which is June 16th uh 2014 last sat Saturday we celebrated 1,969 consecutive weeks and that converts to how many years I don't know you keep it by weeks I love it 38 years you're almost off probation almost but we
I keep track out by weeks it's much more fun now you have two children both born in Dallas now yes uh my older son John Paul is an attorney here in town and he and his wife have I have two grandsons from them they have two little boys one four and one two and then my other son Steven who also went to law school um does uh e-commerce Consulting and web design your children is there anything special you always wanted tell them about your parents oh not I don't know I mean one of the good or bad things that happened with the accident was that
um I ended up inheriting my parents' home so and which made life kind of complicated cuz we already lived in Highland Park and so we lived in two homes so they grew up in two homes and one of them was my parents home so they grew up with my parents things and furniture and books and photos and all well that had to mean something to you then it it actually was very helpful to me every day I work in my mother's study at her desk and her chair and it it's very it's been comforting to me yeah happiest time in your life oh I think
raising children yeah yeah I've really enjoyed that and I've been blessed to have two wonderful children and a a terrific wife and I'm just thrilled that we have such a great family now you were starting your career and in the Army Reserve all in the 6 s really um very turbulent time in the country what do you remember from that era well um it was a it was a very tough time because during the Vietnam war um people who were in the service were not treated very well they were we we you know being in the uniform was not a good thing to do I
mean I know in today's world with Iraq and Afghanistan and all we are very complimentary and very praiseworthy to the people in the service but in the' 60s not it was not pleasant to be walking down the street people would say nasty things and throw things that people in uniform it wasn't it was unfortunate I I it wasn't very good actually when I lived in Washington DC for a few years um I found it kind of interesting because they were having all these protests against the war and there I was in the military and I actually was against the war but I was in service
anyway besides the uh the AL Cove do you have any other involvement in the Jewish Community well I've been relatively active at the temple Emanuel as my wife has as well although I tell you I haven't had as much time to devote to the local Jewish Community because what I have devoted a lot of energy to is the local bar association I was president of the bar in 1994 actually I'm only the second Jewish president that the bar has ever had here um and I've also was chair of the foundation which owns our our barhead Quarters downtown and I've been on the State Bar board
of directors and I was the founding chair of the computer technology section of the State Bar and I for 12 years was chair of a supreme court committee on technology so I've been actually devoting most of my free time to helping the the legal Community now you were a big baseball fan when you were a kid do you remember when the Texas Rangers first came to town what that was like yeah you know it's funny you say that because the last game they played I was living in Washington when they were the Senators and then I came to see the when they started playing out
in Arlington the next year cuz I was back in Texas you remember who was managing the team back Ted Williams Ted Williams yeah yeah he was terrible great hitter but not a manager yeah he was a pretty good ball player though we'll give him a little actually the first major league game I ever saw in my entire life it was the New York Yankees against the the Red Sox and I was out in right field and Ted Williams hit a home run out in my area so oh wow yeah yeah that that is very neat is there an invention during your life time that came
along that you said how did we ever get along without this well kind of I mean I specialize in computer technology and internet things and as a matter of fact I've been teaching I've been an Adjunct professor at SMU law school for the past 28 years and the since 2000 I've been teaching a course on the law of e-commerce and so I spend a great deal of time analyzing and looking at what's going on with the internet and so I think the whole development and evolution of technology is something that is very exciting but this is kind of what I do for a living every
day and intellectually though I find it very stimulating in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions of course you know the turbulent 60s of President Kennedy assassination something good the moonlanding for the first time in 69 uh the assassination attempt on Reagan of course the tragedy of 9/11 was there something on the national scene that stood out that you remember exactly where you were when it happened well I think many of those events in particular I guess Kennedy's assassination cuz ironically enough um you know he was on his way to speak at the Peril Mart and my mother was sitting with Judge Sarah
Hughes waiting for Kennedy to show up and uh US Marshals came to judge Hughes and told her to go home and my mother you know found out about the assassination and then judge Hughes called my mother about 30 minutes before she swore in Lyon Johnson and said turn on the TV in 30 minutes and actually my brother shook Kennedy's hand that morning so I remember I was taking a test at Hillcrest when he was shot now why did your brother get to shake his hand um anybody that could go to Love Field at the time and if you were close enough you got to shake
his hand I mean he just they didn't have such great security back in the 60s you know I think that changed a lot after that your mother was able to be at that luncheon with the judge well she was waiting for for judge for President Kennedy I mean my mother was very active in democratic itics as was Judge Hughes so judge Hughes was the federal judges for in Lon Johnson you and margarit have two children and two grandkids what advice does Granddad have for the Next Generation to try and learn as much as you can and be prepared for the future so um I just
love my grandkids they're just wonderful so I I think one never knows what's going to happen in the future but the more prepared one can be by understanding the past I think learning from history is a very important thing to do and that's as a matter of fact uh I had as many hours in history as I did my major because I think history is an important uh measure of what how to look for things in the future yeah great job well thanks for doing this today oh yeah my pleasure you did a great job man thank you