Rhea Wolfram
Rhea Wolfram was born in 1919 in Newport News, Virginia, the second of four children in a loving and prominent family. Her father's father had been the first rabbi in the community, and Rhea grew up amid a large extended family that included 41 cousins. From childhood she served as the eyes for her older brother, who was blind, an experience she credited with shaping her lifelong sensitivity toward people facing physical or emotional challenges. Her parents were active in civic and Jewish affairs, and her mother helped start Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women locally, at times greeting refugees arriving by ocean liner. Rhea graduated second in her high school class and attended the College of William and Mary, majoring in political science and sociology.
At William and Mary, Rhea encountered anti-Semitism for the first time when she was excluded from sororities, but she remained active in other organizations and formed lifelong friendships. A summer as a counselor at a Hebrew orphans camp in Arden, New York, and friendships with German Jewish refugees gave her early, firsthand awareness of persecution abroad. After graduation she taught school for three years in Elizabeth City County. During World War II she worked for the government, including at the Bound Brook quartermaster depot, where she later learned she had unknowingly carried information connected to the Manhattan Project, and in secret documents and troop movements, while also serving as an air raid warden and volunteering with the Red Cross.
Rhea married Dr. Julius Wolfram, whom she met at a Council of Jewish Women benefit dance, and followed him through several military postings before he was sent to Dallas. She joined him there with their infant son and soon fell critically ill, surviving thanks to an experimental drug and blood transfusions, including one given by the son of Rabbi David Lefkowitz. Julius became a cardiologist and clinical faculty member at Southwestern Medical School, while Rhea threw herself into community work with the National Council of Jewish Women, Hadassah, the American Jewish Committee, and many civic bodies, and became a pioneering college admissions counselor and co-founder of the Texas Association of College Admissions Counselors. The mother of three sons, she lived through the Kennedy assassination in Dallas and remained devoted to family, memory, and a rich life well lived.
Full Transcript
my husband called and said that he'd gotten orders that we were going to be transferred and I said where and he said um Dallas Texas you know anything about Dallas and I said no I just know there's a store there named Neiman Marcus and it so happened that it was um Ed Marcus uh who was in the Adan General's Department who had given him his orders and when he did um he also gave us the names of um several people in Dallas to get in touch with and so this is how we had our first stationing in Dallas my husband was here I work for
the Red Cross and met some of the leading Jewish members of the community because we attended Services uh at Temple Emanuel in South Dallas and one of the persons that Ed had referred us to was leis lefkowitz um who was a very prominent attorney and the son of Rabbi David lewitz who was the rabbi of the temple and they were wonderful in embracing us while we were here in the service Ria 199 Newport News Virginia the depression baby that's right what do you remember when you were just a little girl the second born my older brother was totally blind and from the time I could
walk I was his eyes until he passed away just 3 years ago my parents were very um hospitable and during World War I uh my dad who was a Clothier very frequently if he had a Jewish customer uh in his store he would invite that serviceman to dinner and one night he had a captain in the medical core for dinner the doctor was playing with the baby and noticed that he was not following and suggested to my parents that perhaps this child was blind and this is how my parents found out that my brother he was um maybe less far less than a year old
and of course this was very traumatic and then I can remember throughout my early years and through my teenage years they carded him all over the country every time there was a new opthalmologist especially the specialist from Germany in the country uh they would take my brother to have him examine and it really wasn't until he was a teenager that uh they really accepted the fact that he would always be blind and nothing could be done U to give him any kind of sight he attended um the Virginia school for the deaf and the blind in Stanton Virginia and that used to be our vacation
taking him to school and it was U it was very atic it really was just for me as a child to see these children who were blond living in an institution but my brother did become um bar mitford and my parents raised him as if he was a cited child um and I never had a date without taking him until I was 16 years of age took him to the beach as I said I was um I was his eyes but it was a very meaningful experience I don't ever remember resenting it but I do think it had a lot to do with the fact
that I projected and have a lot of sensitivity and concern for people who have aberration of any kind whether they be emotional whether they be physical and perhaps that reinforced my um contributions in terms of community service I remember being brought up in a very loving family with a handicapped child of course I had a younger brother and a younger sister who came along um I went to the new high school I graduated second in my class and did not go to Teachers College where most of my friends and relatives had attended College um I wanted a liberal arts college my mother a baltimorean um
was very much interested in galure college for me and I did win a scholarship there for you but chose to go to the College of William and Mary MH in my community my father's father was the first Rabbi and we were five generations eventually we were he was one of the first Jewish residents in the city and so my dad had sisters and brothers and all of their children there so I had a very large extended family right um all of them very active as a matter of fact I grew up in a community where I had 41 cousins by the time some of them
had married wow and wow it's something I miss terribly to say the very least very few of them unfortunate Ely are living but um there were about seven of us who were within five years of one another and we had a very good time as a matter of fact I could never do anything wrong at any party because it always got home to my mother before I got home to say the very least but I did go to William and Mary where I carried 21 hours for 4 years wow I graduated with honors and and um had majored in political science and sociology and had
a minor in education I had the Good Fortune of having had as a professor one of John Dewey's disciples and so I was soal one of the more Progressive um teachers fortunately in contrast to many people I did get a job uh teaching in Elizabeth City County I had just turned 20 and my first class consisted of 55 boys and girls two of whom were with were with six months of my own age uh but having been brought up in the Progressive method I had them all divided into groups so I was really teaching three U skill level groups uh within one classroom taught every
including music and I had a terrible time with that pitch pipe my music supervisor came around every Friday and every Thursday night I spent trying to get the right note and practicing for him I was terrified of him I uh was very active in college in a number of organizations it also was my first encounter with anti-Semitism I'd always been very much accepted and very active in high school as a matter of fact I won several Awards uh upon graduation including um school spirit and service when I went to college however um they had sares but they did not have a Jewish sority and I
wasn't aware of the fact that I would be black baled because I was Jewish I lived with a very dear friend of mine at the College of William and and she was very embarrassed being rushed knowing that I couldn't be uh but I had a very good experience there I was active in other organizations and I compensated for it very well most of the Jewish girls who were there were from New York and Connecticut and I made lifelong friends uh it was an eye openening experience for me um during during my summer of my junior year there were three or four of us who wanted
to spend the summer together being Camp counselors so we wrote to various PO boxes in the New York Times advertising and ended up ironically at the Hebrew um home for Orphans summer camp in Arden New York all four of us and this was was um a turning point in my life I had never known children who had come from broken homes I had never experienced children who had a parent uh in jail I had never experienced youngsters who had been on drugs at that time but being a sociology major I got a lot of information for term papers that I wrote as a senior um
the um Camp ironically or interestingly I should say was started by the Warner Brothers of Hollywood because when they came to America's orphans and this is where they were put they were put with um families and started this orphanage for Jewish uh orphans or children who who had one parent um uh when they made their money in Hollywood it was quite an experience and um as I said it was very traumatic but by the same token um I learned a lot was my first exposure to an unprotected environment to say the very least my roommate campmate I should say at Camp happened to be a
young woman who came a very prominent German Jewish Family whose family had been very successful and own leading department stores in Berlin and of course um their businesses were destroyed they immigrated to um New Jersey and so I got a firsthand report at a very early age of um what it was like to be persecuted by the I also had the experience living on the coast my parents were very active in civic affairs uh I grew up with that role model um and my mother who started hadasa in Newport News and she also found in the National Council of Jewish Women the women would go
out to the boats and carry supplies and I can remember as a child going out in the little boats to the ocean liners because these refugees were not allowed to debark in um Nork Virginia this this was um my early knowledge of something going on in Germany but we didn't know exactly what it was until the arrival of a number of refugees who settled in new new and unfortunately I have to confess people were very snobbish and were not welcoming in the early days as they were later on when they understood the trauma of these people had endured uh my mother's family was from Baltimore
and I can remember visiting um often I didn't go to Galer because uh I knew I would be swallowed up by my mother's um family and also I wanted a co-educational school rather than um Single Sex um in Baltimore I became aware of um various groups of within the Jewish Community who did not socialize or communicate with one another there was the German Jewish Society there was the Russian Jewish Society there were refugees and so I had an experience of meeting people from all three groups in my community everybody went with everybody we didn't have any social demarcation but in Baltimore uh I used to
hear stories that if a German Jewish boy married quote out of his mure uh the family would practically disown him and vice versa uh so I grew up at a time where um there were were very definite clicks uh I had not experienced that as I said in my own home Community my father and mother were both very active as were many of my relatives and uh I was accepted U however U there were friends of mine I know who were barred from certain organizations because they were Jewish I didn't think at the time it was for that reason I thought it was just they
just didn't make the membership meet the membership criteria but later in life I found out there was anti-Semitism in my community as well certainly there was segregation um and I grew up um in my teen years in a home uh where the head of the Virginia Klux Clan was our next door neighbor and across the street was the leading Baptist minister so I did become aware very much aware of the fact that there were people who didn't like Jews um I personally as I said before hadn't encountered that my father was uh um a member of the board at the bank he was a leading
uh Clothier very active in the Merchants Association and I had a number of cousins who were in The Professional community and very well accepted let's go back a little bit tell me about your grandparents I never knew my grandparents uh on my father's side and I had a grandmother in Bal I never knew my grandfather on my maternal side my maternal grandmother had been um a lady in waiting to U one of the courts in Austria um she was a matriarch to say the very least one of the reasons I didn't go to gouner but um she was well cared for until she died the
age of 94 by two daughters who never married and a son who never married and so family was inscribed from a very early o age to me of being the highest priority your duty and responsibilities of your family came first now did the uh Depression affect your family at all uh yes I grew up where the new new ship building and dry do company after World War I um really went kaput practically and hundreds thousands of people were uh laid off uh I as a child saw the bread lines the people standing in line to get a loaf of bread or to get a cup
of coffee and of course my family had a lot of financial reverses at that time as well right um and we were very much aware of um the depression in World War II now how did the War affect your family well I lived in a community of 34,000 people as a young child starting in 19 3738 we were getting an inflex of the Navy and Military we were situated on the James River and the Hampton Roads near the Atlantic Ocean so we had many of the most important strategic military bases within a 30 mile radius we had the Naval Air Station we had Fort Eustace
we had Fort Monroe uh and we had the CBS camp in addition to that we had the national advisory committee at Langley field uh which was a part of the aircore as well um so we became acquainted with many many um service men right as a matter of fact my whole social life practically was uh going to dances for the Uso when I came back to newer news after graduating I taught school for three years and I met many servicemen and offices and what have you married someone that I met at one of the dances and he was in the service no no no um
in my area there was also the kikan hospital and I happened to be at a Council of Jewish Women benefit dance on a Sunday night um at the Hamp Rose country club with u one of the young men in the service that I'd been dating and who was about to ship out and it was at that particular dance I met my future uh husband um I did not know at the time that he was a doctor because I wasn't interested in um dating doctors because we had a number of them in the family and I knew what their wives went through I married um a
year after I met my husband moved to New Jersey at boundbrook New Jersey and I went to work uh for the government I went worked at the Bound Brook quartermaster Depo uh I was a chief administrative clerk as I reflect upon it I can't believe how naive I was um I used to sent into New York with a number of the officers who were going in on business because the Commanding General of the depot one of the civilians to be in uniform the same way the soldiers were and we did not have women in the service at that time um I um on frequent occasions
was asked to to deliver packages to a certain place uh and then I was assigned meeting with various fashion designers to get a uniform for the civilians which I did little did I know until after the war was over that I was carrying information to the Manhattan Project in New York City wow correct um that's where my destination was all these packages that I was asked to deliver um now before I went into work for the Army uh I had gone through Military Intelligence um had all kinds of questionnaires had all kinds of Investigation it was while we were in New Jersey soon after we
were married that uh my husband husband got his um ass assignment to join the uh United States Army and I returned to Newport News Virginia when he went to Shenango quarter mastered uh Shenango Training Center where the medical Corps uh was being trained um when I went to Newport News I received a transfer and I worked in secret documents troop movements in addition to that I was an air raid warden in addition to that um I frequently went with the Red Cross to serve coffee and donuts uh at the railroad station the troops would come in from Fort Eustace and they would come to the
CNO railroad where they boarded they left the train and walked maybe a 5 minute walk and boarded the ships when I was working at the Port of embarcation I also had the assignment and was picked up at all hours of the night and don't forget I told you we were in Wartime so everybody had their Shades drawn every night all the cars had the headlights um half covered in black paint um and frequently I would have to be on duty having to check the soldiers as they stepped off the train before they marched to the boat and unfortunately had the experience of meeting and encountering
not only college friend friends but many people that I had known and a lot of the young men with whom I had danced and had a very good time at the Uso parties it was a very very demanding um job because I was scared to death I was going to talk in my sleep my mother went up to visit her mother because her mother had need for her services at the point and while she was there my mother had a heart attack uh my younger brother um was in the service he was in the Infantry uh and we didn't know exactly where he was with
the 29th Infantry Division and it was when the doctor didn't think my mother was going to live that um we were notified to try to get in touch with him through my command General I found out that he had sailed and was on the high seas at the time and of course had to keep that information to myself I took care of my blond brother cuz my father had departed for Baltimore by going up on a bus you know we were not um able to travel very often by train because all of the troop movements took place the CNO railroad the destination of news was
a very very busy termination Point um you and Jules are up on the East Coast what brought you guys down to Dallas I joined him in an arba Michigan where he was stationed it was there that I was Chief Clerk of the officer candidate school for the Judge Advocate General's department and little did I know then that the people I worked with were going to be on the chief tribunals and attorneys um at the nurenberg trials it was there one day as I was processing a new class on a Saturday morning that my husband called um Dallas Texas then he got sent back to Ann
Arbor um and during that time sent temporarily to um Walter Reed hospital for training to go to the South Pacific did not get orders to go to the Pacific but I um ran into some health difficulties there and it was advised that I'd be shipped home I landed in norol Virginia I did give birth birth to our first son in Newport News my husband was been shipped back to Dallas to the fifth fairing command where he was chief of medicine I was in Newport News for 10 months while he was in Dallas and he got out of the service in um Dallas and had been
invited to join the faculty of the newly created medical school here which was Southwestern Medical School at the at the time and I joined him here uh with a 10-month old baby had quite an experience flying out because one engine caught on fire in route from nor and we turned back to Washington but we finally made the trip after 14 hours I arrived with a 10-month old baby in a house that wasn't furnished knowing very few people and 10 days later took critical ill and was hospitalized and I wasn't expected to live and it was finally found that they were using a new experimental drug
called athy at mckin hos Army hospital and this is what saved my life when I was so critically ill Rabbi David leftwood's head heard that I was in the hospital and I needed three blood transfusions and his son was one of the people who gave me direct blood PR fusion and he also persuaded two other people to do so well now Jules became a cardiologist here in Dallas he went into practice and also was on the clinical faculty of the medical school and you got very involved with the Jewish Community yes tell us about it once I got well uh well I had always been
very active in um a junior Council that's so I joined Council of Jewish Women I became a member of hadassa and I became um active in The Sisterhood became active in the auxiliary to the Dallas County Medical Society and the American Jewish committee and Persian where my children were at school uh and also when they moved to St Marks I was active in the St Marks parent group I also was a member of the board United Nations I um later became an officer in many organizations including becoming president of the friends of the Dallas Public Library he also was on the White House conference on
Children and Youth the Dallas city council flood control committee and the Dallas City Council drug committee I was a member of the Dallas Symphony League when I went to work became very active in professional organizations such as the American Association College admissions counselors I was the co-founder of the Texas Association of College ad missions counselors and was President elect I um chaired many seminars I went to work um without ever looking for a job while I was bedridden for so many years with a bad back many people asked me since they knew I was from the East and knew about colleges and universities elsewhere um
if their kids could come over and that really was is the beginning of what became professional um College admissions counselor I am a life member of the board at the Winston school I joined the um independent Educators counseling Association known as ia uh from which I have received um a national award I also received a state award from uh the Texas Association College admissions counsels for my contribution to the field of College counseling what was the happiest time in your life meeting my husband I told you we have three sons right um one was born in one was born in Newport News and two of
them were born uh here in Dallas all three are um attorneys they pursued their Legal Professional interest one is in California one lives in Paris France and one lives in Connecticut now your husband was a cardiologist yes my husband was a real Renaissance Man medicine Was His Highest priority in life he loved music we had a wonderful relationship not only as husband and wife but best of friends and we had great respect for one another's professional in rity U naturally telephone calls came into the house but I never repeated who he took care of and he had the same respect for my professional Integrity even
when I went into practice privately and I offic at home now you've lived through so much in your lifetime is there something that really on the national scale that really affected you the Kennedy assassination I had just seen the president and his wife in the motive Cade on Lemon Avenue I had had the opportunity to go to the luncheon but had a responsibility to accept the invitation of a very dear friend whose birthday party was being celebrated and so I gave up going to the market Center and went out to the Colombian Club on arrival heard that he'd been shot and the waiter said Mrs
wolam you want it on the phone and it was my husband who was at Grand rounds at Parkland Hospital who said I guess you heard the news don't say anything to anybody but he's DOA Dead on Arrival go pick the kids up uh it was a very traumatic time because there had been a build up in this mure of hate the um John Bur Society was very active in my neighborhood there were a lot of um polarization of people politically and all of us were very apprehensive about the arrival of Kennedy I picked the children up at school my oldest son was a freshman in
college uh but I picked one up at St Marks and one up at Persian and for the next four or five days we had our um recording the real recording recording everything on um TV on TV um I was chair of um words that change the world exhibit which was two years in the planning of the Dallas Public Library uh it was to open on a Monday um that Sunday I was with my husband and the children at the symphony in the afternoon when Lee star president of TI geter had a little radio turned around and told us that Ruby had shot Oswald we remained
till the end of the concert and went home and of course I didn't know who Ruby was none of us knew anything about Oswald at that time uh it was a year really of mourning where our desire was just to be with one another and appreciate one another followed with a great deal of interest of course later on the Warren um commission and I happened to be in the hospital again at the time that John Curry who was chief of police was brought into the hospital the night that he collapsed from uh a lot of stress and strain so in lots of ways um it
touched my life in ways that was more than just the significance of the killing of a president my father at the age of a 100 was um questioned by the FBI because he had gotten rides home from sherith Israel congregation uh he had been visiting me uh living in an apartment with my blind brother and i' pick him up every day and take them and after a while he said you don't have to come and pick me up and bring me home there's a very nice man who's offered to do it it turned out that man was Jack Ruby oh you have the three sons
and eight grandkids two great grandkids what advice does Great Grandma want to leave to the Next Generation life is to be lived and um if you don't have those active one onone um encounters you don't have memories and I really think because I'm so allergic to medication I think it was my holding on to my memories and my experiences that provided me with my greatest strength you gave us a lot of information you did I have I've had U when I was very ill very ill and um they were trying to get hold of the doctor and they my husband was in a medical meeting
and they couldn't reach in they couldn't Rabbi Olan and Rabbi came into town and Rabbi Olan um so I was in a lot of pain cuz I'm one of those 5 perers who can't take meds and he said don't worry Ria he said don't worry about dying he said I'll put on your Tombstone here lies a poor woman who led a rich life I did a great job today