Roger Horchow
Roger Horchow was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 3, 1928. His family had long roots in Ohio and Central Europe: his father's parents emigrated from Austria-Hungary to Portsmouth, Ohio, around 1880 and had taught school in Vienna, while his mother's family traced back to Czechoslovakia and a small town called Crooksville. His father was, by family account, among the first Jews from Ohio to attend Yale, entering in 1912, and later worked with the Hoover food relief mission to Armenia before practicing law. Roger grew up in Cincinnati and Columbus, and after his father returned to Army service in World War II, the family moved to the Washington area while Roger attended The Hill School in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Yale in 1950 and served three years in Army intelligence.
After the Army, Roger drove to Houston for a job at Foley's department store, starting in the basement curtain department and rising to become the china buyer over eight years. He met Carolyn, from an old Little Rock Jewish family, through a china salesman who predicted they would marry; after several dates and a visit to meet her parents, they wed in December. The couple chose to build their life together in Dallas, where Roger joined Neiman Marcus as a gift buyer and rose to work in the mail-order division under Edward Marcus. Following a year running Design Research in Boston, he returned to Neiman Marcus, then launched his own venture, a catalog that bargained for the best prices rather than accepting advertising. Begun in 1971 as the Kenton Collection, it was renamed Horchow in 1973 and grew into a great success before he sold it to Neiman Marcus.
After selling his company, Roger pursued his lifelong love of musical theater, producing revivals including Crazy for You, which earned many Tony nominations and awards, Kiss Me Kate, Curtains, Gypsy, and Annie. He served on numerous boards, including the Dallas Symphony, museums, KERA, the Dallas Theater Center, the American Jewish Committee, and institutions at Yale and in New York. Deeply committed to giving back to Dallas, he lent his family name to a hall at the museum, a place at the symphony, and a garden at the temple. Though not strictly religious, Roger valued his Jewish identity and hosted large Seders and family services. He and Carolyn raised three daughters, and he later co-wrote a book, The Art of Friendship, with his daughter Sally.
Full Transcript
today we are doing an oral history with Roger Horchow the interviewer is May Siebel and this is taking place on November the 10th 2011 Roger thanks a lot for agreeing to meet with with you it's a privilege first of all I'd like to ask you about your family your parents your grandparents where you grew up that kind of thing so start at the beginning well I was born in Cincinnati Ohio in July 3rd 1928 and my mother was from a little town in Ohio called crooks ville and my father was from Portsmouth Ohio and his parents came to this country in 1880 from austria-hungary and
my mother's family her grandmother came and her father came from Czechoslovakia but her grandmother had been another generation earlier so they all lived in this small town in my father's side both his father and his wife I mean my grandparents on my dad's side emigrated from also from us be hungry and they taught school in Vienna and they came to Portsmouth Ohio in 1881 so they're all been there a long time and my father had two brothers and he was at first my father was the first Jew in Ohio I think to go to Yale he went in 1912 and then my mother went to
the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and they got married in 1926 and we lived in Cincinnati until I was about 7 and then we moved to well we lived one year with my grandparents and then we moved to Columbus Ohio and then when world war ii my father had been in world one and when he got out of Yale and after that he worked for the Hoover's food Commission to Armenia to starving Armenians that we hear about and then after that he went back to Ohio and he practiced law and after that when world war ii came he went back in the army he hadn't been
in the reserve but he was very patriotic and I remember we lived in Columbus on Pearl Harbor day and he said he was going to go back in so he went back in the army and we moved to Washington DC and where he was and then he went overseas to Italy for three years and my mother lived in Harlington Virginia in the meantime they sent me off to boarding school because my dad thought he might be moved around so I went to boarding school in Pennsylvania the Hill School and from there I went to Yale graduated from Hill and forty-five Yale in 1950 and then
I went in the army for three years and I was in army intelligence and then when I got out of his eye I got in my car and drove to Houston which the reason I went is because I had a job offer and I worked at Foley's department store and I started out in the basement in the Curtin Department and my boss was a woman who was about four feet ten and a year younger than I but a terrific boss and so one day she told me that we wouldn't have the rim that day the next day and all the curtains had to be hung
up and ironed so iron them and the sales ladies couldn't believe that I knew how to iron I said in the Army I had to iron my own uniforms so that was I've moved from the Folies basement to the China Department I became the buyer and then I stayed there eight years and Stanley Marcus had offered me a job halfway along there but I didn't take it but eight years later I had met Carolyn my wife Carolyn was from Little Rock and a friend of ours had told us that salesmen who sold China to me Bob block from New York that had a company called
Rosenthal block and they imported China ba block told me that he had the perfect person for me to marry and I said well that's fine and he said but she's engaged I said well then why did you tell me anyway a year passed and he he was back selling meat China and he said that girl is no longer engaged I said well I'd like to meet her so I she worked at Bloomingdale's in New York she'd graduated from Connecticut College so I went to New York I met her and knew that I would marry earth to the first lady and so we had about five
dates but she wouldn't say yes until I came to Little Rock to meet her parents because her previous engagement hadn't worked out they didn't like him so I passed and we got married in December and I had been living as I said in Houston but decided that would be better for Carolyn to for the two of us to start our lives here in Dallas because in Houston on it was obviously single and I was you know and I have a lot of friends there and I was on all the debutante lists and I had a lot of girlfriends and so I just thought it'd be
better for us to start a new life together so we did and I took the job at Neiman Marcus and I came here us the gift buyer and after a while I got promoted to merchandise man and then I took over I worked for Edward Marcus and the mail-order division in between that I left Neiman Marcus in about 1968 and I'm I was offered the job but of store in Boston called design research so I went there for a year and the man who ran it and I didn't get along he this story had been in bankruptcy a friend of mine had bought it and
put me in as president but the former owner didn't believe that he didn't own that anymore so we had a problem anyway during the time that I was in Boston Neiman Marcus was sold to Carter Holly Hale which meant that I would be eligible to be promoted before you had to be a Marcus to get very high so I was rehired by Neiman Marcus ours came back as a and was happy to come back to Dallas I mean we loved living in Cambridge but anyway I was happy to come back here and the deal was that Edward Marcus was going to retire in two years
and then I would completely take over the mail order after two years I asked him what he would be doing when he retired and he said well I've changed my mind I'm not going to retire so I just didn't know what to do and I but I had always had this idea that somebody ought to have a catalogue of the Neiman Marcus catalog was dependent on the suppliers paying like St Lauder would buy a page or two pages and then they would dictate what would in the cowboy and I kept thinking well it would be better if we could pick because we knew what sold
but the suppliers wanted their name and this enough so I thought of the idea if somebody had a catalog that didn't accept advertising money but just bargained for the lowest possible price to the merchandise and then did a catalogue of all the things that they thought would sell and of course I was presented to Stanley Marcus he said it was a silly idea and so I still thought it was a good idea and in the meantime some friends that I had in New York had formed a conglomerate this was in the like nineteen seventy seventy when everything was conglomerates they had bought Cartier mark cross
Georg Jensen Valentino Kenneth J Lane and they owned olives company so I had the idea that I would make a catalogue of all their entities and that I would just pick all the merchandise that would be easy so they said yes and I said I'll do it but you have to put up all the money and let me live in Dallas because by then Carolyn was pregnant with our third daughter and a third child and I thought we'd better stick around here so I started the catalog and originally it was called the Kenton collection after a year and a half a man named mesh LEM
reckless the Canton corporation started going downhill for many reasons I don't know but anyway mesh limb reckless took it over and he called me in his office and said we're going to close your catalog because you're losing money and I said but serve everybody loses money the first year we're going to make it this year he said no so he said you go back and if you can bring me a million dollars in 30 days I'll let you have the catalog so I thought well I know all these rich people in Texas would be easy so I came back and it wasn't easy but I
found out through a friend at the bank that I could pledge my inventory and I got half the money for that and then I did get money for my doctor and my lawyer many good friends one of whom is from the local family Michael Shannon his family his old family here anyway lots of people and so I bought the company and then Rick was said the chief to change the name so anyway Emily Hexter who's from another old family was sitting here in this living room and I said Oh what are we gonna do we spend all this money making the captain collection she said
well call it Horchow I said no nobody would do that and so anyway I went in to tell Stanley that I was leaving or no I told by then I had left Neiman Marcus Stanley said well who would buy from a catalog called horse you know and I said well they bought from one called Neiman Marcus and he laughed so anyway I started the catalog in 1971 and then changed the name in 73 and went along had a wonderful time cuz we had a great time Carolyn helped and the children helped everybody did all my friends gave me ideas and we kept getting the bigger
and bigger warehouse here so then when I was turned 60 I decided that I should sell the company because with the private company if and I had these stockholders if somebody died they would want to value the stock higher and I'd want to value it lower and that we'd be in the mess with friends so I thought well I'll just sell it and so just at that time Neiman Marcus had in the meantime been sold once again to general cinema and they came to me and said we want to buy you and so I sold the company to Neiman Marcus / general cinnamon there I
was back again and this time I came back and they had us run their catalog so I was the only vice president that left twice came back so then after selling it I sold it for a lot of money a lot more than they paid me when I started work at $75 a week and so I decided that I wanted to do something completely different so I had been very interested in musical comedy and went out when I was little George Gershwin came to my parents house in Cincinnati and my mother went to the concert and he was getting a train to go to Chicago
so she invited him to our house it was near the train station so I mean I don't really remember it too well but it's kind of a family story that George Gershwin played our piano and I was a little boy 6 and I heard it and came down because it's what my mother playing Chopin and I got hooked on Gershwin and so forever I love go swimming when I was at Yale all of the Broadway plutt many of the Broadway plays open in New Haven so I went to everything and and I really liked musical comedy so I contacted this man Cameron Mackintosh and asked
him if he wouldn't do a Gershwin play called girl-crazy and he said he didn't do revivals so I had all that money and Caroline said well why don't you do it and I said well I don't know how to do that but I had invested in someplace so I contacted a woman that was a friend in New York and said I want to do the Gershwin play would you help me so we had to go to the Ira Gershwin's Widow and get her permission and jumped through a lot of Hoops but anyway we've got the permission and then we started this play we changed the
name to crazy for you we rewrote the it was the dump lot ours was even dumber but to me it was terrific and so it was a huge success we got 11 Tony nominations that we won a bunch of Tony's and it lasted for years so I got hooked on the theater completely different from mail order so first I did crazy for you then I did a revival of Kiss Me Kate and then I revived and a one called curtains which I did Kiss Me Kate because Cole Porter my father lived in the same room that Cole Porter vacated at Yale in 1914 my dad
moved in the room so that was the Karma and then curtains was candor and Abin so i'm curtain so I'd wanted to do that and the next one I did was gypsy which they played at our wedding in Little Rock so I wanted to do that and now I'm doing a revival this is of Annie and that'll open this in right after the election in 2012 so that's what I do now I'm in the theater I'm on a bunch of boards I've been on them in Dallas on the symphony to the museum kera in the Dallas Theater Center and I was on the American Jewish
Committee for some years and that's about all that I do here and in Yale I'm on the art gallery board I've been on the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the American Institute for public service and the White House conservation made a lot of different public service things and in the Dallas community I've always felt it was very important to because we made our money here to give back the money in Dallas and so our name is on a hall at the Museum and a place at the symphony and the garden at the temple and the point was not to
brag about our family but to being Jewish it was our thing important to let it be known that we were philanthropic and as far as the temple concerned since we are not particularly good members I thought that would be good do something like in the garden so that's my everything to the present that's wonderful I'd like to go back a little bit so to rewind so to speak and ask you what your neighborhood was like when you grew up and also about any Jewish affiliations during childhood and your parents affiliations well my grandparents who lived in Portsmouth Ohio invited every weekend because they had no
rabbi they invited the men from Hebrew Union College to come there to preach and so I heard all these famous names Nelson Glick and I can't remember the other names but all very famous rabbis in later life used to come to Portsmouth so my father and grandfather and grandmother knew them all and when we were in Cincinnati I went to Sunday school and then when we lived in Columbus my father taught the 10th grade and my mother taught the third grade because I figured they had to take me they might as well teach and my aunt who was Methodist became a Jew and she was
the head of the school so we had a big family at the temple temple it was a bride and row temple in Columbus and the rabbi was rabbi GUP and so we were there until we moved away and then when my neighborhood in Cincinnati was a mixed neighborhood we were in a place which is now predominant but it became mostly Jewish and then it became black and now it's kind of mixed it was called bond Hill but Evan Dale was right next to it and so my parents were very interested in Hebrew Union College and years later living here in Dallas I sponsored a rabbi
at the small temples in the Colleyville from Hebrew Union College we belong look so growing up I always went to Sunday school but I went away to boarding school and so I didn't get confirmed and in those days Reform Jews didn't have Bar Mitzvah so I that was not even an option but I didn't get confirmed because I was away at school and then I went then when we lived in Washington I did go one year to Sunday school but until we moved till I went away to school then I didn't and in Dallas and Houston I belong to the temple and I went in
Dallas we went for a while rabbi Olin was the person that we love so much and also rabbi climb that we just I don't know for one reason or another we didn't go how much time you spend in New York well now I spend about 90 days a year so I go for like a week and then I'll come home for a couple weeks and just go back and forth because I mean this is where I live and two of my children live here all of my grandchildren live here tell me about your sure well the oldest start of Reagan is going to be 50
in December this year and she she went to Hockaday and then she went to Yale and then she went to North Texas to get an MA and she's very interested in early childhood education so she started at school you know Clift and then it merged with another school and so she's always been interested in that she's very entrepreneurial and she's been on lots of bullets planned parenthood and talk today she was the youngest chair person of holiday for three years and so that was kept quite busy she was first married to fellow named Rock Pillsbury and they have a daughter Samantha who is now a
freshman at Yale she's the fourth generation and her family and then she married Jeff Aaron his father went to the Hill School with me that's how they met and they he's a cranial-facial pediatric surgeon and they have twin girls who were on they'll be ten in June so they live here in Dallas Lizzie my second daughter is 47 and she's married to a fellow named Dan Rothman from Birmingham and they have two daughters Regan and Emily who go to Hockaday Lizzie's very active in Hockaday mothers clubs and all things to do with the children and planned parenthood and their children went to Danny goes to
Temple and he's he's religious but the rest of us are not Sally the youngest is six years younger than Lizzie and she was born in 1970 she went to haka days till about the ninth grade she got tired of it so she went off to st. Paul's School for that and then to Yale Lizzie went to Tulane she didn't want to go east so Sally went to Yale and then she worked in New York in the theater and then she worked for Conan O'Brien and then she went to Hollywood because her boyfriend was a writer for Seinfeld so she went there and they broke up she got the job as Steven Spielberg's assistants so she worked for him for a couple years and then she got she's now a freelance writer plus she has a new website my wife used to say to the girls oh that's very good-looking so Sally's site is
called very good-looking calm in which she can write about anything she wants just you know a restaurant or a recipe or dress or and she and I wrote a book together two years ago called the art of friendship which was the big seller and we enjoyed writing it together more about that came about well someone a guy named Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called the tipping point in which he talked about me for a while and a young man in town here had me to lunch as a book agent and he had me tell some of my connection stories and so that would be a
good book about friends and everything so I wrote it but it was terrible because I'm not a good writer and so he said we needed to hire somebody to work on it and it occurred to me Sally's a wonderful writer so I said well how about Sally so that she came in and we rewrote the whole book but it was terrific because we got to it was from her point of view as a young person and mine as an older person so the book is sort of combines our different points of view and it was fun because we both learned a lot about each other
that we would never have learned and you know just talking so she kids me all the time because I violate all the 70 rules of friendship well the one that I violate is don't keep score you're not supposed to keep scored you know somebody does something you don't have to pay him back or vice versa you shouldn't hold grudges and but I do all of the above she kids me well though other rules are like keeping up with friends and don't just because they don't call you you should call them but they're your friend some people are just not good at keeping in touch but
if you like somebody it's your burden to call them which we both do and we have lots of friends both of us you mentioned that you had friends who helped you get started with the Horchow collection and you mentioned the shame and family which of course is a prominent Jewish family here were there other Jewish families involved not in the formation of the company but Emily Hexter and Viktor who are an old family Viktor was one of my early mentors and then as I said Emily's the one who named it the Horchow collection so no those were the two families well I would say that
Stanley Marcus would rank very high as the role model and the other role models were to ministers the father of my hill school roommate was a Presbyterian minister that we are used to visit in the summer in New Hampshire and the other one was a man who was the chaplain of Yale and those two men were very influential and then later Stanley so I would say those would be my role models and my father but my father died when I was just thirty so I missed a lot of that and what was the other thing most proud of well I'm proud of my children I
mean they're really terrific and I have to be proud of my wife who was the key to raising such nice kids anything else that you'd like to add well I just think that dark it's important of being a Jew even if you're not religious which as I said I'm not particularly I think it's very important that you keep your identity rather than like a lot of my friends in New York who intermarried are married out of it and they've kind of disappeared like a one friend who went to bed a Jew and woke up an Episcopalian some he's from a really old New York Jewish
family so I just think it's important to never kind of pretend that you're not Jewish and never that you know just to be known that's what what I was always happy to be in American Jewish Committee actually I enjoyed that Milton told me and got me involved in that but I just I think it's a good idea and my children too because the school that I went to there are only three Jews there and as I said my father was the first one and I was the first you in a certain return idiot yeah so somebody has to be first and I just think that
you shouldn't the message to the children and the grandchildren that they need to know so even though I wasn't religious I always arranged to have a big Seder and so we have a huge Seder well it got to be bigger and bigger and bigger and finally the last one that I out here in this house we had forty people and there were twelve Jews and all the rest of people were just thrilled to come here and so they know more about the Seder than I did so we we do that and then we had this big tree in the backyard and that's where every holiday
I would make the children and Carolyn and I was sit there and I would read the prayer book every word just exactly as it was in the temple and then I give a little sermon and I did that because I really didn't like going to the temple there's too much noise commotion and people talking so I had my own service said they called me Rebbe no I mean I didn't mention that my wife's family from little rocks are very very old Jewish family they came there in 1800 and have been there ever since and now they're I guess everybody in Little Rock was originally some
every Jewish family was related to a cypher her name was Carolyn fight for him everybody's a cousin when I went there to be introduced as her mother his huge part of his relatives me so that they're an old family and her brother gene Pfeiffer is still there and very active in the temple in Little Rock and her father was the president of the temple so we have long Jewish heritage unfortunately I only have one totally Jewish family which would be my middle daughter and her children and husband but that's the way it is thank you so much for agreeing to this is a wonderful wonderful
interview we really appreciate it thank you you