Robert Behrendt
Robert Behrendt was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the baby of three siblings alongside a brother and sister. His family had deep roots in the city, which was a center of Reform Judaism. His father ran a chain of small hamburger shops with one of his brothers, using an anglicized version of his mother's maiden name for the business. The family belonged to a Reform temple, though Bob describes them as more secular than religious. One of his closest boyhood friends was the son of a noted archaeologist at Hebrew Union College, where Bob spent many afternoons and evenings.
In 1954 the family left Cincinnati when his father took early retirement and moved to Miami Beach, Florida, where Bob finished high school. He went on to attend Tulane University. After graduation he was recruited into Merrill Lynch's junior executive training program, training in New York beginning in November 1960. Around this time he met his future wife, a nurse in training in Shreveport, and after a whirlwind courtship they married in March 1961. Wanting independence but proximity to family, the couple chose the Dallas branch office and moved to Dallas in May 1962, where he remained for the rest of his career.
In Dallas, Bob devoted himself to community service. He volunteered with the Vickery Food Bank for some fifteen or sixteen years, watching it grow from serving about twenty families to hundreds, and he worked as a reader and editor for a taping service for the blind. His deepest involvement was with Temple Emanu-El, which he joined in the early 1970s after briefly belonging to Temple Shalom. He chaired the Budget Committee, served four terms on the board of trustees across four decades, helped launch an emerging leadership program, and in 1984 helped establish a pension plan for temple employees. Inspired by a Wise Aging program, he undertook this oral history to leave a lasting legacy for his family.
He values the philosophical legacy of integrity and honesty passed down by his parents.
Full Transcript
okay this is the oral history of Bob Baron conducted by May Siebel on January 10th 2019 good afternoon Bob how are you hi good afternoon so happy that you are allowing us to conduct your oral history what do you know about the early history of your family early history of my family your family and huh that's a good question they were basically all from Cincinnati Ohio I was born in Cincinnati and my brother there were three siblings my brother my sister and myself and I being the baby of the family and my father had two siblings one was involved with painting coincidentally commercial painting and
his second brother went in business with my father and he started a chain of hamburger shops similar to McDonald's I wish they were like McDonald's but he called them drinks my mother's maiden name was drokken burn dr ACH EMB ERG so he anglicized in making it drinks and at one time he had five of these little hamburger shops and he was dying for my older brother to go into the business but he opted out he didn't want to be in the hamburger business any event that was probably 60 or 70 years ago and it did not evolve into McDonald's and my mother's father I didn't
remember his name was of course drunken bird and he became widowed I never knew his first wife but he did remarry and so I didn't remember my step grandmother and she moved to Indianapolis and had a family in Indianapolis my family left Cincinnati in 1954 so it's been a while since I've been back I've lived in Dallas longer than in Cincinnati but my mother had two other siblings one was a internist a doctor in Cincinnati and then she had a city and sister who likewise lived in Cincinnati they in turn had two children and one was an ophthalmologist who lived in New York and the
other was an optometrist who lived in Cincinnati and unfortunately tragedy struck he was killed in a robbery of his shop in Cincinnati this again many years ago so I have no longer have any family in Cincinnati and my sister still lives in st. Louis she's widowed and my brother passed away about 10 or 11 years ago so it's just the two of us let me ask you this Cincinnati being pretty much the cradle of reformed Judaism in America what were your family involved in temples there and Jewish organizations well you're correct about Cincinnati being the trunk of the cradle we were members of Rockdale temple with at Rockdale and wise temple or the two major temples seventy years ago and both classical reformed and actually one of my closest friends growing up was a fella named Charlie Glick and Charles father was Nelson Glick who was the Hebrew Union College
and a very noted archaeologist and Hebrew Union College was on as a street called Clifton Avenue and the city in Cincinnati was known as the city of Seven Hills so one of the hills being were Hebrew Union College was located and they have provided a residence for the president so there a number of evenings and afternoons I would spend over at the Glick residence and that was really the only connection you know that we had my family was really secular more than religious but we did participate and I'm embarrassed to say that my mother gave me a choice back when I was maybe 9 or
10 years old either attend Sunday school or piano lessons while I opted for piano lessons or were they involved all and Jewish communal activities such as content active just members they hand in all temple you mentioned that they left in 1954 where did they go well my father took early retirement he sold his business it had some health issues and my mother's older brother had retired to Miami Beach and so they moved to Miami Beach Florida and I'm probably the one of the few people you know who graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School so I had my junior year and senior year in Miami
Beach so I was down there from 50 but when they were there from 54 to 58 I went off to school in 56 and so and then the interim they left Miami Beach and relocated to st. Louis whereas I mentioned earlier my sister lived and so in my 57 and 58 I would be going to st. Louis not to Miami Beach and when I graduated from college they were like why still living in st. Louis so I went back to st. Louis but I was only there for maybe six months and then I got a job I went to work and so where'd you go to college where did I go to college I went to Tulane and has you know Milton and I one of my favorites although Milton was considerably older I teased him all the time so what brought you to Dallas my wife when I graduated from college it was really just kind of purely coincidental one of my fraternity brothers lived in Pensacola Florida and I went to visit him and his father said to me what do you plan to do after graduation and
I said really I hadn't given any thought and he said well a good friend of mine is the manager of the Merrill Lynch office in Pensacola and once you go down and visit with him I said okay name was Jimmy lang so I went to see Jimmy and during the course of the conversation he said to me we have a excellent training program called the junior executive training program where you're hired out of New York you go to New York and take formal classes and then on-the-job training and then you can relocate to any city in the United States or you can stay in New
York if you prefer so I said well that sounds interesting and that was the end of the conversation and then I went back to st. Louis and I made it a point to go down to the Maryland st. Louis office which was down at the time and so I met the manager there as well and we discussed this training program again and he said why don't you make application I said fine so I made application there in st. Louis and I'd say within about maybe two weeks they contacted me and said that we'd love to have you come up to New York for interview so they flew me to New York for the day you know I had some interviews with the various people in the home office and I'd say within a couple of days they contacted me and offered me a job and in the training program and so that was the only job I applied for and the only job I accepted and so I went to New York in November of 1960 in the interim I had another fraternity brother who was marrying
a gal from Alexandria Louisiana and so I was in his wedding and I was in the family and so I went to the wedding and during the course of the festivities and I became enamored with a nurse and so the nurse was taking training in Shreveport so after the wedding concluded I drove up to Shreveport to visit her well the first night I get into Shreveport I contact her and she was busy so I I was turned down so I was staying with another fraternity brother and so we were going out that night he said why don't you call this gal who had just got
back from a she might Dale as you so why don't I call her see if she's available and I called her and she said well she was busy that night but thanks for the call I went back to having dinner the phone rings about five minutes later my wife-to-be he was on the phone she said my date is late and if you're still available I'd be delighted to go out we went out and as it turned out I spent the whole evening with her I had to bring the car back to the fellow I was staying with because he was going to summer school classes
and centenary and he needed his car plus my father-in-law to be was waking up so I had to return the car so bottom line is I left Shreveport we had maybe 14 dates over about a four or five month period became engaged I was in New York in the meantime came back to Shreveport we were married in March of 61 and of course went to New York she we had our honeymoon at the Astor Hotel on Times Square which is no more and at the end of the week I had sublet an apartment from another fellow in Brooklyn Heights she packed up our belongings took
a cab to Brooklyn Heights and I took the subway that Monday to go to work because the office was down in the heart of Wall Street so that was March of 61 and we decided that I didn't want to stay in New York nor did she and we wanted to go back to one of the branch offices I didn't want to settle in Shreveport but I thought Dallas being a hundred eighty miles away was close enough and yet far enough which would give us a little bit of independence so we selected the Dallas office then we moved here in May 1962 and I've been here
ever since so what how what are the changes that that have most affected you in in Dallas over the years you've lived here a long time what changes have you seen that everly the changes of the city's unity changes in the city yeah well that's very interesting of course we first visited I first visited Dallas and 57 two of my fraternity brothers were very nice to extend an invitation for me to come visit them Gary Marsh our and Milton zuman and so I came here by myself in 57 and I remember it very well because they were just building North Central Expressway and either it
was still under construction or just completed but it was right and then period in that that was a mammoth change you know and so that and of course Garry lived on South Southwestern Boulevard at the time and Milt lived on Brookshire I knew if I thought long enough I could come up with the street and that was far north you know there wasn't anything much beyond Preston Hollow you know at that point so I guess one thing that's been so impressive is how the simin the city has expanded so you know dramatically and have multiple centers etcetera you know so and I courts the second
item that comes to mind rather quickly was banks you know were major major employers major centers and of course they all fail you know back in 89 and 90 I remember that vividly it's you have the First National Bank Republic back mercantil you know you name it they all went under so that was a major change and of course banks of residents have resurrected you know here in the last 10 or 20 years but those are the two major items that come to mind how have you been involved in the general community and the Jewish community since you've lived here well the general community I've
probably been more involved in the Jewish community than I have in the general community but in the general community I was involved really the two major volunteer areas I've been involved with the Vickery Food Bank for probably 15 or 16 years as long as it's been existent and I remember it starting a number of years ago over there in an apartment building and the police had a substation on the ground floor and back then there were maybe 20 families would come in and you took and put the food in a brown bag and they would just simply pick up a bag so it's a spa
Exodus it's evolved pretty significantly they've moved twice now their overall Walnut Hill and they serve now I've been at least three or four hundred families as opposed to the 20 and the other area that I had been very interested in and I was very sad to see them closed was the reading resource taping for the blind I did that for a number of years and I was kind of a jack-of-all-trades I did some reading and I was an editor I had one of these jobs where he sat in front of the computer listening to someone recording and making notes when they made a mistake or
you know miss bounce the word or whatever and turn that in and then occasionally they needed someone to give the news and so once in a while I get commandeered to give the news you know on one of the broadcasts and then I also did editing you know when I would come in at 7:00 a.m. in the morning and have the newspapers in front of me and you think have a scissors and clip out the articles and and determine what the newsreaders you know would read so those were the two principle community projects you know that I was involved with as far as Jewish activities are concerned it's probably primarily been the temple I've not really been involved you know in I've been a donor you know with some of the other activities but I've really been more of a secular Jewish family as opposed to religious but interesting back in the early 70s we hadn't been a member of anything when we
moved here in 62 and I guess what stimulates interest is when you have a family and we became very good friends of Doris and Larry bunters and Larry twisted my arm to join Temple Shalom and this was pregnant just after they were founded I want to say 671 maybe 70 right in that period any event we in deference to Larry and Doris we joined Temple Shalom but we made a decision after about a year maybe that it wasn't the right fit you know for us so that we joined temple Emmanuel and I want to say that was probably about 70 to 73 and I thought
this would be a perfect way to give back to the community at least the temple community is to be active in the temple so the first thing I got involved with was that I became the chair of the Budget Committee and that was probably about 1974-75 and Catherine Bower was my right-hand person and Catherine is a very astute brain woman and very helpfully so she and I ran the Budget Committee for probably about three or four years and I guess they decided they need a body on the trustees so they commandeered to serve on the board of trustees so I've been on the board of
trustees four different times I made I made every decade so I was involved in the 70's 80's 90's and 2000's and I was on the executive committee and I think they changed the ground rules because I had served on the executive committee for eight years and I think they now restrict you to four but rosemary and Berg and Howard Kleiman think that there was a whole slew of presidents that I had the pleasure of serving under also Joe Rosenstein and I were active in starting a program for emerging leadership and we got one of the rabbi's Peter Berg to be involved from a professional standpoint
and one of one of our success stories was Mike said you know who's now the president of the temple the other thing that I'm very proud of is that any Daniel Stewart Marse and I started the pension plan in 1984 the temple employees they never had one before that and we also funded some of the professional staff who did not have a pension so the practical way we could do that is by doing it within the budget so we had the temple set aside funds within their end budget to pay for the staff who were not covered hi Cantor was one that was involved in
this there are about five or six and I was also involved in the search committee where we selected Debbie Robbins and then I also was involved in the EC EC this was back when they were creating them preschool and this was a number of years ago so I'm very happy to say I have I have participated you know in a number of things not about the pasture well you put in your time that that's a lot of volunteer work for temple and I know it's appreciated what legacy do you feel your parents left for you I wish I could say they left more I guess
philosophically that would be my best answer my father died at a relatively young age he was only 61 my mother was I want to say 79 and she started in declining health you know in her later years neither you know we're that religious but I'd say philosophically you know they left mark you know in terms of integrity honesty you know all the attributes that you would like to have you know I think that would be my best answer honesty what legacy would you like to leave for your children probably this I had you know it right yeah you know I think it's just healthy to
have those saying characteristics that you can impart on them transparency you know honesty conscientiousness and you know so all different the buzzwords that you'd like to impart no question about that is there anything you would like to add that we haven't gone over i know we've covered a lot of ground no I well as I told you maybe you know before we started the taping I did participate in the Hawaii aging program that the temple offered recently and one of the items that I did glean you know from that program was trying to leave a permanent legacy for your family and so that's what got
me thinking about the oral history and so I know that you've already told me that I would will receive one copy and so and that would be very cherished and so that would be one the major thing that I would like to leave them I'm also thinking about the letter and that was another item that they discussed in the wise aging and I think the thing that most people don't realize is they don't give that any thought you know and and so they don't leave any permanent legacy photographs are becoming passe now you know nowadays everyone uses the digital you know their iPhone and typically
most of that doesn't get transposed into into a permanent picture and so I think that I'd like to see more and more people do that hopefully they'll have a chance to reminisce you know and look at look at the tape its own future particularly the older ones because very likely they wouldn't have distant memories but it would only be memories well thank you so much for sharing your story with us today we appreciate it very much well it's my pleasure you