Ron Weiss
Ron Weiss was born in Chicago on Christmas Eve, 1930. His mother died of scarlet fever a few months after his birth, and his father died shortly after, so Ron was adopted and raised by his mother's parents, whom he always considered his own parents. His grandfather, born in Chicago to Russian immigrants, ran an auction house and had worked in a butcher shop and shirtwaist manufacturing before losing everything in the Depression. His mother's younger sister was legally adopted as his sister. Around 1935, the family loaded everything they owned into a car and drove to Houston.
In Houston, Ron's father went to work for a relative's furniture company, and Ron grew up in a modest but lively Jewish neighborhood of fourplexes. He attended San Jacinto High School and became deeply involved in AZA, rising through its ranks to become Grand Aleph Godol, the international president, in 1950. He credited AZA and his mentor Harry Popkin with shaping his life. Ron attended Rice on a full scholarship, then came to Dallas to attend SMU law school while directing AZA and BBG in Dallas and Fort Worth, earning a full scholarship there as well.
Ron met his wife, Ray, on a blind date arranged by their dear friend Merna, daughter of Abraham Zapruder, whom Ron knew well. He served in the Navy after law school, stationed in Green Cove Springs, Florida, then returned to a Dallas law firm. Deeply engaged in Jewish communal life, he chaired the BBYO youth commission, served on the boards of the Federation, family service, vocational counseling, and Golden Acres, helped found Green Family Camp, and served as president of his synagogue. He and Ray raised three daughters and have two grandchildren. His guiding advice: keep your balance and stay connected to your people.
Full Transcript
Ronnie 1930 on Christmas Eve in Chicago right it's when you were born yep let's go back whole town was celebrating how long were you in Chicago for just 5 years do you remember anything at all yeah I remember the we lived near Jackson Park and I remember being in the park and I lived uh we had a a very large family and and cousin and aunts and uncles and I remember being with them and living close now it was unusual because you were adopted yes what is that story well my parents my mother was very young they loed and got married I was born a
year or so after my mother died of scarlet fever they think um about 3 months after I was born and my father died a few months later and my mother 's parents adopted me and I was raised by them so I never knew my parents their influence has always been over me a strange sort of atmosphere that I've carried do now did you know anything about your biological pars like what did they do I knew their families and I saw the pictures and I grew up in in families that uh very much considered them you know they were part of those families so I grew
up in the same family amilies they had lived in well tell tell me about your grandparents that raised you uh well obviously they were older than all of my friends parents a generation older they were a um middle class Chicago family uh um and lost everything in the depression MH and we moved to Texas uh in about 1935 or six now now was it the depression yes that uh what was your grandfather doing at the time before the depression H he owned an auction house I think at that time he had had a couple of businesses he was not an educated man he had to
take over to support his family the usual he was born in Chicago MH um do you know what year I don't know off hand his parents came to Chicago from Russia and um his father then died he had to take over supporting his family which he did in a butcher shop took over his father's butcher shop for a while but uh about the time I was born he had uh gotten into the auction business I think that's it he was also in the shirt waist manufacturing business for a while and I'm not sure which came first now do you know what your uh grandparents on
the other side did you know I don't know what they did for a living no I remember them um that's your dad's parents yes do you have any contact with them I had some uh after we moved to Texas very little but occasionally when we'd go back to Chicago I would my I called them my parents I always thought of my grandparents uh as my parents they always made sure that I visited the other side but it was very hard for them and um uh so the contact diminished their children who would have been my uncles right um I saw them occasionally one of them
I was particularly close to and in the last few years I've reestablished contact with a first cousin in Chicago yeah whom I find uh to be uh a very compatible guy yeah very nice very nice now do you know what what your dad died from when you were no I really don't okay we've always said it was a broken heart I would yeah so I've said heart failure but I now you moved to Houston do you remember that move at all I do as a matter of fact very little but very vividly I remember we all got into a Model T Ford which contained everything
we owned a model uh physical and uh and intangible there was nothing in the world that wasn't in that car and my sister and I uh now you say your sister explain your sister my sister was my real mother's younger sister okay so she was actually my aunt but by adoption she became legally my sister and I've always thought of her as my sister right right so you're all in this car now a Model T Model T and we're driving to Houston that's all I remember and this is like about 1934 five or six I remember you don't remember anything of that drive no you
know no you have pictures still of that car no all right so you guys get to Houston now what did your your grandfather or your dad you know what what did he get into down there he uh my mother's sister had married a man from Houston who owned a whose family owned a Furniture Company in Houston and my dad went to work for them ah okay and what was your life like as a young kid in Houston what do you remember well I remember being very much affected by the depression I I didn't feel that but looking back I recognized that we were we we
had uh no excess uh buying ability let's put it that way we were a poor family and we lived in a fourplex and um we lived in uh in 1935 to next few several years in Houston without air conditioning without a attic fan it was uh I remember my Early Childhood as being spent in short pants with no shirt no socks no shoes running as bare as you could possibly get um but always running right right and living in that kind of a community where you live we lived in a fourplex there was a fourplex next door fourplex next door to that most of those
people were Jewish right and so I surrounded by Young friends always back and forth to each other's house it was a very active um rambunctious sort of life and it was fine talk to me where'd you go to High School San J which every Jewish kid in Houston went to and what was high school life like for you wonderful high school life was wonderful for me because AA was wonderful for me that was my high school life it was the high school life of all of us who are in AA in Houston at that time is this when you started thinking about your future and
thinking what you were going to be uh or is high school still fun a fun time for you well I got I got very active in AA and went up the uh the U chairs and uh became very act interested in Social active um causes in a sense I became uh I became Grand Alo of ACA right and um I'm still very close to a lot of the people whom I met at that time and uh it was a great place to make lifelong friends lifelong friends and tendencies um so I I felt I was probably going to uh be involved in a community and
some way but I didn't know career-wise what I what I would end up doing I I um considered social work very strongly as a matter of fact later jumping ahead here but when I went to law school I was working my way through law school as a social worker to see which one I liked okay well now after high school um you're still a little bit young for World War II I take it oh yeah no I miss World War II yeah yeah um but the war is going on uh are you going to go to college go to work what no I'm going to
college okay and just assumed it okay I never thought about how I was going to college there certainly weren't funds available for that but I always assumed I would go and when the time came a friend and I was thinking well I guess I'll go to the University of Texas my parents knew nothing about college and I mean my dad hadn't finished high school right right um they gave me absolutely no suggestions or Direction they they really let me just live and grow uh and so I assumed I'd go to the University of Texas because that's where people went and a friend of mine said
Ronnie you can't go to the University of Texas your folks can't afford it rice Institute now Rice University is free and uh you've got good enough grades you can get in and go so I had never thought about it and I went over rice and boom I'm going to Rice completely free 4 years rice was an endowed University it was free for everyone there was no tuition at Rice until decades after I graduate or sometime after I graduated even today rice is so wealthy that while they CH they they charge a tuition if you don't have the money and you're good enough to get in
you don't have to worry about it they find ways to take care of how was college life for you oh it was it was fine um it it it wasn't socially uh it was a small school uh social life wasn't uh wasn't very active but it was a wonderful School a wonderful school and I was active on in various activities on campus all right after you you graduated now you're going to go on the law school yeah okay and and where where do you wind up in and how are we paying for it well I figured I'd go to University of Texas where everybody goes
and um because of my involvement in AA Benet Bri came to me in the form of the district director Harry Popkin who was uh my early mentor and one of my one of the men who had more influence on my life than anybody else and he was the director of this District of of benab benth Youth Organization who operated out of New Orleans and he came and said Ronnie we want to set up a um part-time worker to direct AA and BBG in Dallas and Fort Worth and we figured you could do that in Dallas and Fort Worth while you're going to law school at
SMU well I'd never even heard of SMU law school and he arranged for me to meet a couple of Dallas lawyers who assured me that that's it was an acceptable law school and this was a good way for me to cuz I wasn't sure if I wanted to go to law school or be a social worker and I thought this would give me an opportunity to work as a social worker in some respect and get a feel for that while attending law school but after the first semester in law school I did very well and the school came and gave me again 100% scholarship wow
and so I decided you know this law is really neat and that's what I did where'd you meet your wife here she had uh she moved here from shareport and uh was this after law school it was during law school my last year in law school okay well tell me where was that meeting the meeting was a blind date arranged by our still Mutual dear friend Mna Reese who was then Mna a Pruder the daughter of ab a Pruder and um she fixes up on a blind date and she's still a dear friend of ours and uh tell me about the blind dates Is This
Love at First Sight or uh no it was almost we'll never see each other again uh but um but we did survive that and then tried it again it worked out very well Ronnie you have three daughters and two grandkids what advice do you want to give to those grandkids in the Next Generation the most important thing to do is keep your balance I study the Greek philosophers in college and decided that the most uh realistic philosophy is not theirs but is rather tus um it's to if you you're going to spend your life as a fiddle on the roof and you better keep your
balance change is the only constant we all know that and change is accelerating its us I don't think you can make a a a solid plan for the future other than to keep your balance remain flexibil flexible prepare yourself for the widest possible range of activities and uh be alert to it because the the the the world you're going to live in is not the world you're going to be trained in great advice tell me about your involvement with the Jewish Community it started in AA and uh couldn't have been a better introduction AA was My Teenage life and I became uh very active and
became president of the chapter and then president of what was then Texoma region Texas and Oklahoma and then president of uh the district district 7 which was those States and the other five to the East and then in 1950 I became U International president or as we say in ACA gr Olive Cad and uh that was the most significant uh event of my youth certainly one of the most significant events of my life it proved to have an enormous impact on me I uh toured the country speaking to Grand lodges and chapters and meeting with the chapters all over the country and making friendships that
lasted till today um I met uh over the years at those different levels with the national executive committee members who became my dear friends and who with whom I shared uh the idealistic passion of youth we were going to all save the world and do what we could and it was a sincere uh wonderful bunch of young people to be associated with I'm going in December to a reunion mhm uh there are five of us from those uh national executive committee uh groups who still meet annually and they are still my dearest friends and they're just wonderful wonderful one of the congressman roads Scholars psychiatrist
all a wonderful group of people how have you seen the community grow over the years here in Dallas the Jewish Community I'm surprised it hasn't grown even more than it has I one of my dear friends in this group is from Atlanta one of them is from uh Los Angeles and the growth in those communities has uh outstripped us the additional synagogues that we have certainly speak uh speak of numeric growth um I don't I don't know that I'm qualified to really take it the early years I was very active in the Dallas Jewish Community I um first came back and I chair the Ben
brith youth commission I was on the boards of all the local Federation and the family service and the vocational counseling service and Golden Acres and I won U the award for young leadership from the U Federation um and all of that relates back to AA to the training and exposure I got then it it just it it it taught me how to be involved it gave me tools for being effective and uh it worked it really worked is there a key message that you'd like young people to know when they think about getting involved I I don't think of any one thing to do except
that it's worthwhile um involvement as enormous purpose uh I can't imagine having lived the life without it I do think it's a huge part of the satisfaction of living is being part of uh this community um and increasingly as I get older this doesn't directly relate to your question but I find I'm more and more proud of the accomplishments of the Jewish Community overall just the fact that the of its accomplishments its history I think is the most amazing history in the in the history of the and I stated active um I was on active at founding of the Green family camp and I was
president of my synagogue and but all of that relates to those beginnings of uh Community Ronnie now we're at part two now okay um and we left off uh when you were just talking about going to SMU law school tell tell us a little bit about that again I went to SMU uh because bbo AA had offered me a job here in Dallas as a part-time director of uh bbo in Dallas and Fort Worth worked my way through law school mhm so I took that job and uh started in law school and trying to be the reason I took it is I was trying to
decide whether I wanted to be a social worker or a lawyer right and felt that this would give me the opportunity to taste both so I started law school and at the end of the first semester I had done well in school and the school came along and offered me a full scholarship so at the end of the year I decided that I would stay with law seemed that I had some aptitude and um so I went on and finished uh law school at SMU where did you meet your wife now I met my wife while I was in law school she's from shareport and
she had moved here with her sister and we met on a blind date fixed up by our very still very dear friend Mna then merna's auder Abes aer's daughter of whom all of us know and um she stck with dear friend AB zuder took the famous footage of the Kennedy assassination was that rough on them because he had that footage it was uh it was rough um Mr Zer was a wonderful man Mr zuder I I I used to have uh meals at their home while I was going through West law school and M and I were dear friends and um he was a wonderful
man they're making a movie now uh Paul jimani I think is playing him and um they've invited the family belatedly to make comments so I'm hopeful that he'll be well portrayed but he was a terrific guy and he was very strong in his feelings loved Kennedy and um while the whole thing worked out very well ultimately it was very difficult uh trying to know what the right thing was to do and how to deal with it and he did the right thing and what was that was over decades that it it took a long time to work things out and a lot of different things
happen I'm not really the one to uh to Chronicle that but uh well one of the things for example uh I know he gave generously to the Widow of the policeman who had been killed that day and tippet officer tippet right he was a good guy and a passionate passionate immigrant did you get married right out of law school yes the end of that year and um I was subject to the draft I could have been drafted at any moment so there was no real po possibility of finding a proper career anybody who hired me knew I might leave the of the day or the
week right right nevertheless I did find a um it turned out to be a an excellent position but uh with the knowledge that I might leave so instead of waiting and waiting to be drafted I finally joined the Navy right what year was this 5 well I actually left in 56 where did you spend your service well I went to OCS in Newport Rhode Island and then my wife joined me and we were stationed for all 3 and 1/2 years or so in green Co Springs Florida and so then when you came back uh uh from the service you know fortunately you were just after
Korea so you didn't have to go overseas right did you come back to the same position actually yes okay I considered several others um but yes I came back to the same position now in part one you told a story about when you were a young child moving out of uh Chicago to Houston and you know you're talking about the family this very very old car yes and you just threw out there a Model T and I guess you're afraid that I would think you were so old that you would have a Model T well since then I have that has resonated with me and
I realize I can't possibly be correct that has to have been a story that grew in the family and stuck uh someone said it was a very old car was a Model T and everybody picked up on that it could not have been because Henry Ford was the most prominent anti-semitic in America at the time perhaps in in American history with father cogin and there's no way my parents would ever have owned a Ford vehicle so we drove in a very old car but I don't know what it was probably a Chevy in your lifetime was there something an invention or something that came along
in your lifetime that you really looked at and went wow I suppose it would be the uh the computer in the internet and I didn't touch I had I had a computer on my desk in the law firm we all did I was with a big firm I never touched it I never turned it on I retired at the age of 65 and when I retired I picked up a book and said I got to learn about this computer thing and I read the book and I sat at the computer and I've been on it every day since it is a wow it is a
while you and Ray have had three children tell me about your kids well they're all good kids um one is a uh script supervisor in Los Angeles in Showbiz uh which is very hectic one is in historic preservation with the state of New York in Albany New York so I have one on each Coast which gives us good visitation and one is an artist here in Dallas and she has our two grandchildren here in Dallas now you've lived through so many momentous occasions in your lifetime of course there were several Wars uh President Kennedy assassination uh something good the moonlanding in 69 assassination of Martin
Luther King uh tragedy of 911 what stood out and really affected you affected me well all of it has affected me uh I'd have to say the earliest was The Depression yeah I was born in the depression and I think people who grew up in the depression are as a lawyer I learned that my clients who grew up in a depression were different kind of people than those who never knew a depression right they their their whole Psychology was different no matter what they had there was always that fear and that insecurity so having lived through the depression I think affected all of us even
those who don't realize how it affect World War II although I was too young to go uh my brother-in-law flew many missions over Japan and we were all very much involved we those who've lived through later Wars and didn't know World War II don't understand the impact of that war we all lived that war every day however young we were and that memory and feeling uh stays with you forever and it affects your love of country I still get choked up every time I see a flag and uh um huge impact now your brother-in-law did you know him at the time oh yes okay so
then what was that like well for me of course as a teenager it was it was exciting for my sister yet had to be living on the edge of fear every morning did he come home and tell any stories about his service no Ronnie what advice do you want to leave to those grandkids I have developed a uh kind of a philosophy of what I I think is uh the answer to uh getting along no no amazing Insight but uh I've finally settled on the word balance you know I studied a little of the Greek people and rice and I loved it and so forth
but I think that have you beyond that you're a Fiddler on the Roof you got to keep your balance and I think balance in in life is is enormously important I also do believe that belonging to something and to me it's the Jewish people is is enormously important because uh because I think we need other people in our lives and there's no more compelling connection to me than that amazing history yeah yeah well thanks for coming back and doing part two for us but