Ruth Kahn

Full Transcript

Talking to Ruth Cann. This is Lawrence Cann. It is February the 14th, 1977. Now Ruth, how long have you lived in the Dallas area? Well, I came to New York in December of 1923. Immediately after my marriage. I really, I married in 1923 and I really I suppose I should say that I came to live in Dallas immediately after the first of the year in 1950, 24, 1924. I had visited in Dallas before but even at that time I was already engaged to be married. My family was acquainted in Dallas but I really had never been here. I was in school at the University of Chicago and I met my husband, Billy Hexter, there and we became engaged but did not announce our engagement until after my graduation from University in June of that year.

What was your discipline? What did you major in at the University? I majored in the social sciences, minored in English, and in those days the University of Chicago was pioneering in such a major as that of the social sciences. It is a very general background with just a little bit of everything and many people would feel that it was maybe too general but now as I look back on it I feel that it gave me an understanding and an insight even though on a very elementary level perhaps of things that were very useful to me all through my life We had I had an ethics course under Dewey and Tufts Mr.

Dewey at that time was the man who was best known for progressive education ideas, and he had initiated those ideas there at the University of Chicago in the lower schools connected with the University of Chicago. Then I had anthropology under a very famous man by the name of Frederick Starr and I had sociology and city planning under two very fine professors. I remember professor Thatcher particularly because he was interested in boys gangs at that time and Chicago was a very ideal area to study such a phenomenon if you want to say but it was a budding time for being aware of the threat to society I may say of young boys living in a city without proper and adequate outlets for all of their energies and without sufficient job opportunities and at that time they did go around in packs and gangs and vandalized.

Of course they're still doing it. I suppose that hasn't changed very much, but at least at that time this sociologist was aware of it and he was making a study of it. And of course we had history and English. Also at that time the city of Chicago was revitalizing the lakeside and building what has now become the outer drive one of the really beautiful areas and one of the most beautiful outer drives of any city and they had accomplished that by using a landfill made up of from the garbage dump and all of the refuse was used as a base for reclaiming that land. We're still, we're now even in the throes of environmental use of our refuse, and even though that was a very well demonstrated activity.

They seem to think they still have to be searching to find out what to do and how to do with our refuse. Are you a first-generation Dallasite or did your parents happen to live here at all? My father had lived here as a young man and really thought he might make Dallas his home. He came here I think about when he was about 19 years old. About what year would that be? He had, well let me see, he was born of 64. I think that was around 1883. He was here with his older brother. They lived here for a while, and then my father signed up with the Texas militia, went down to the Mexican border when there was some disturbances down there, I imagine.

And I don't know exactly how long he was in that, but he always considered himself a Texan thereafter, though he was born in Hungary and came to this country when he was about 16 years old. How did he happen to come to Texas? He just wandered the United States, I suppose, because he started out in New York City and early decided that he didn't want to live in the city and began to move west as people considered it at that time. And he had probably stopped at various places in between but decided that Texas was for him And well he lived in Dallas quite a while and he told me that at one time he and his brother had the cigar concession for the State Fair of Texas And he said it was at the time when Mr.

Alexander was the president. Then he and his brother and a third brother who came and joined them later moved to Bonham, Texas. and they lived in Bonham quite a long time as I don't know the number of years exactly but they had a liquor store there and I can remember many stories that my father told me such as the fact that they they used to send their liquor in barrels they used to store their liquor in barrels in some of the ocean-going tugs or I suppose not tugs but what do you call these? Fraters? Fraters or something like that who were glad to have them as ballast in there and that was their method of stirring their liquor.

Also he said it was a very fine way to age it. I thought that was an interesting thing. Yeah he and his brother became interested in Oklahoma at the time of the opening up of the territory, the Oklahoma Territory. It used to be Indian Territory and a certain amount of land was granted for opening. So he and his brother drew lots to decide who would go up to the run for the land, as it was called. And my father was always the more adventurous of the two, but it fell to my uncle to go to investigate and see what to do about making this run for the land of an Indian territory.

My uncle tells the story that he drove in his gig up to The camp, a very long camp, where many, many other people were waiting for the signal when the time came when they could go and make a claim for their land. Each man could have as much land as he could stake off within a certain length of time. My uncle tells a story that when he drove up to this so-called camp, it was just one long dirt road, quite long, and on either side were camped. The roughest looking people he had ever seen in his life. The men were bearded and had side arms.

They lived in tents and covered wagons and straggly children were everywhere. And dogs and a more unseemly lot he had never seen. But he was there so he drove down this road. And on either side of the road, people were camped quite close together, just there waiting for the signal and the time when they could make this run for the land. And as you may know, those who jumped the gun, so to speak, and went in under cover of the night and went in farther into the territory and staked their claims were the ones who were called the Sooners. My uncle went down this road, he said he went all the way to the end of the camp, and he turned his horse's head around and he came back on the road.

Didn't improve any, he said, as he came back and he looked from the side to the side, and when he got to the end of the camp, he said, you know, I just kept driving. So he never stopped to make the run for the land. But a few years later my father did go up into what was Indian territory and liked it there and decided that he would stay there So he first went to Muskogee Oklahoma which was then a very small town And nearby was a little town of Eufaula, which he thought was really better situated. It was between the fork, the two forks of the Canadian River, the North and South Canadian Rivers, and but there were seemed also to be a little bit more activity up into Muskogee in a business way.

The land he liked I think around Eufaula because he thought it was more fertile for crops and for planting. But since there was a little bit more business in Muskogee he thought maybe he'd try to establish himself as a a merchant in Muskogee. There he ran into a Ku Klux Klan situation and was told that they didn't want any Jews in their town. My father didn't want to go where Jews weren't wanted either and he decided he would go back to Eufaula which I think about 30-35 miles from Muskogee and establish his business there which he did in well I remember that the sign on the on the store which he afterwards built said 1901 but just when he established his business I don't know this was the building that he built it was called Brown Brothers for him to and his older brother.

So in about a year he married and brought his wife to Newfowl Oklahoma He had met his wife through a Mr Wolf with whom he did cotton business He had by this time had established himself as a cotton planter as well as a merchant, and he sold cotton to Mr. Wolf. He had occasion to go to St. Louis to buy shoes for his store, and Mr. Wolfe lived in St. Louis at that time so he also got in touch with him and Mr. Wolfe invited him out for dinner and had him meet his niece who afterwards became my mother. Her name was Josie Mayer. She had been very popular, very beautiful young woman who couldn't make up her mind to get married.

She was having a very good time and had many admirers. But my father evidently persuaded her that he was the one. However you can imagine when she came from the town of St. Louis, which was then considered quite a big town in the West, to little Indian town called New Paula, Oklahoma where there were less than 3,000 people I met and there were no, as she tells it, there were no streets and there were no sidewalks and there was no electricity and there was no running water. My father had built a house for his bride and he had built into it the only inside bathroom that anybody in New Paula had with running water which he had arranged for from a windmill and a well on his property and The townspeople thought that they were really living in luxury, but they didn't know my mother because it was not...

she soon began to change things around there and in the end Toshi went around as she said in boots and got a petition to have sidewalks built in this little town Thereafter they had streets, but they had the sidewalks first, she was very proud to say. Then she got my father to arouse some of the other businessmen who got together and formed an electric light power company. had a light company. And thereafter, your father began to have some of the amenities that she felt were absolutely essential. She was active in the schools and she was active in club work. She became active in the National Federation of Women's Clubs.

She was the first president of the League of Women Voters of the state of Oklahoma. She had lots of energy and many, many good ideas. And she was a very beautiful and very persuasive woman. At the time of my mother's death, I must say, I got so many letters here in Dallas where she had lived for a while before her death, and from St. Louis and from Newfala. And they began almost invariably, I remember the first time I saw your mother. She was that kind of person. So then I grew up in the little town of Ufollow until I was ready to go to high school, which was when I was about finishing my 12th year.

So we moved to the then even bigger city of Muskogee and I did go to high school there. And there in that little Indian town of Muscogee. I feel that I had a better education than my children afterwards had in the big city of Dallas. I remember my teachers of that day who were exceptional. My Latin teacher afterwards came to Dallas and became a teacher at both the Hockaday School for Girls first and later on at St. Mark's school. She was at one time invited and did serve to write exam, examinations for the college, the National College Boards in Latin. And of course when she lived in Dallas she continued to be my very good friend and she always considered my children as her grandchildren because she had never married herself, had no children.

I had an excellent English teacher and her name was Miss Fink. She was very strict and when you got on your feet to speak you had to know what you were saying before. If you started out by saying I don't think, she said sit down. I don't want anyone speaking who doesn't think. So we had a little ditty which ran like this. If you say I don't think you, don't take English from Miss Fink. I had an excellent mathematics teacher. Miss Neff was her name. She was also very severe and very demanding, but I enjoyed mathematics and so I worked very hard for her and she wasn't very hard on me.

I had, of course in those days I took, they didn't give you very much history. I had American history I think. That was about all the history that I had in high school, but I did take four years of Latin and two years of French and two years of German four years of English And my mother had always been ambitious for me to go to Smith College because she had wanted to go to Smith College herself She had never had the opportunity. So she told me that she had enrolled me in Smith College when I was born so that she just determined I would go there.

However, that was not to be because in one summer we spent the summer in Chicago on the lakeside which was the way that people very often did to escape the heat of Oklahoma. They went East or whatnot. And there I for the first time had a great social life. Up to that time I suppose many children were reared the same way but we didn't date and we couldn't go on single dates. We could go with a group to the football games and whatnot, but even to the dancers. I remember my mother would drive us to the dancers and pick us up afterwards, so we never had even any single dates.

So Chicago was a great revelation to me in meeting people and getting to go out with young men. So when it was suggested that I ought to stay in Chicago, there was, I I would certainly like it better there than going to a gold school up in Massachusetts. And I was persuaded that I would like it very much too. I didn't know what Smith was like anyway. And so one day I was persuaded to go out to the university and make an application and send a transcript for my records back to my high school. and much to my surprise I was accepted at the University of Chicago.

So my mother gave in and I stayed there and for the next four years I was a student at the University of Chicago You mentioned that your father had been in Oklahoma and had a store in Oklahoma Is it possible that he traded with the Indians as part of his business? Oh yes, yes. Where he lived, that was as you know Indian Territory. had been Indian territory and he knew a great many Indians and he had a great many Indian farmer sharecroppers which was the way of of tilling the soil in those days as well as a lot of very poor whites and blacks who in those days didn't even try to buy the land they simply would share crop.

I was going to tell you that at the time of my father's death the University of Oklahoma was interested in his records, his business records for the names of Indians who had lived in that area in those early days and that was one of the few places that they could go to find out even what these names had been and they then formed at the University of Chicago, University of Oklahoma. They have a in the library there and I must say I never have seen it myself. They have a Philip Brown corner or I've forgotten exactly what they call it which contains some of his history and the names of these Indians who lived there.

Is it possible that he came, one of the incentives to come to the United States were that the time that he came or period of time that he came was there war in Europe No it wasn because during a peaceful time was there a conscription Yes he came about as I say in about 63 You know 1870 was the time when France and Germany were fighting And, no, as a matter of fact, the Jews in Hungary, where he lived, enjoyed a great parity, as he said. they didn't have that oppression. As a matter of fact my grandfather was a man who reared horses and he furnished the Austrian army with their remounts as as they call it.

He didn't want his sons to go into that business and he had intended that my uncle and my father would be rabbis and had sent them you know to be so trained but my uncle, my father's older brother, was no student whatsoever so my father, my grandfather had to content himself with my father as a student and kept him in the hater from the time he was seven till he was nearly 17 years of age. And then my father rebelled and he did not want to do that and stay there. And my grandfather, as I afterwards heard the story, was determined that this boy was doing going to do as his father told him to do and he actually flogged him with a rope and the very next day as the story goes my father left home so then he had to work in order to get enough money to come to the United States, which he did, and he said he finally got to Glasgow, Scotland and came to the United States on a banana boat.

But no, it was not. In fact, my grandfather was like the other country gentry in that area. And it was beneath him to work. And while he had this animal husbandry, you know, he hired people to do that for him. and they the Hungarians were all very proud and had really futile ideas about life. One of my father's proudest memories was the time that he was able to tell his father that a man was appreciated who worked for a living, who didn't have to depend on who his father was or what his father had given him, but that what he did himself and what he made of his life himself.

He thought that America was the most wonderful country in the world. And years later when he took his family back to visit his father and mother some 27 years after he had left, he told them, or Or rather, I think he used to say to my mother, You see how it is over here? They have nothing as good as we have it in America. Everything was better in America, according to him. Where was his port of entry? In New York City. He went at New York City. And do you happen to know what brought him to Texas and how he came to Texas? He said when he landed in New York, of course, he didn't know any English.

So he spoke three or four Slavic languages, as so many of the Hungarians do. And he also spoke German. And he found an uncle who lived in New York And I remember his saying that the first job he had for which he got any pay was holding the heads of the horses as they drove up to a certain restaurant so the people, when the people got out of their carriages. So he stayed in New York but he didn't like it. It was a very very big city and he was from a small town and he didn't feel he could go farther because he couldn't didn't know the language so he stayed in New York until he learned enough English that he felt he could just start out and so he said he as he used to say well in those days you just started out on the road selling things the one way or another.

And that's the way he started out. And he hadn't any specific objective as he went out, but he did want to see the land and wanted to see the country, and that was the way that he did it. I don't remember his elaborating too much about how long it took him to go or when it was that he finally did get to Texas. But he was only 17 years old when he did arrive in New York and I've often heard him say that he served in the Texas militia when he was 19 so that somewhere in that span that in those two years he had been testing life in the United States according to his lights but also after that he had already sent back for his older brother to come to this country and meet him and the two of them did then settle in Dallas and they used to drive out to the countryside.

They had what he called a gig, a horse and a gig, and they lived at a boarding house of Mr. and Mrs. Grodwell, well known in Dallas in those days and Mrs Grodwell was their mother and their banker and their general supervisor She doled their money out to them They had to give her their earnings, which she took care of, and she gave them what she thought was sufficient expense money for them to live on so that they were able to amass, you know, but win savings, a little money. And I remember my father saying that he and his brother had the first cigar concession at the Texas State Fair and that they had arranged with Mr.

Alex Sanger to have that cigar concession there. Do you happen to know where they live with Mrs. Godwell, which area of the city or perhaps the address or the street and about what year would that have been? Well if he was 19 or 20 years old and he was born in the Let's see, 84 I think he was born. He was born in 1884. So he was, that was about, not 1884, I mean 1864, wasn't it? 1864. Well that would be, yeah, about 1864, so that could have been about 1884. That would be about. That was when he came here. Came here, yeah. That would mean about.

When he lived here. It was somewhere in South Dallas, as everybody knows. and probably in the Akard Street area down below that, wherever the Jewish people lived. Yeah, I've heard many people speak of living there. In fact, all the young brides and grooms first lived at Mr. and Mrs. Grodwell's because there was no hotel in those days and there were no apartments and no places to, until they got settled and found themselves a place to live there. Was that generally the situation where they would have many rooming houses or boarding houses? That was the way people lived. Because that was all that was available for single people or transient people or newcomers There really were no hotels as such And so people lived in a boarding house If they were able to get into a boarding house and live that was something extra If not they had to have rooms in maybe one area and then board in another I think you've probably found that that's the way it was with other people that used to come here.

Yes, there have been some that have mentioned it, yes. What about Jewish education and the extent of Jewish education that you had and then the Jewish education that was here when you came to Dallas and set up? Well, that's such a wide area that you're asking me about because I came to Dallas after I married, you know, And the Temple Emmanuel on South Boulevard was then a comparatively new temple, and Rabbi Lefkowitz was already the rabbi there, established as the rabbi there. And I think at that time, if I remember it, Herbert Marcus was the president of the congregation then. What year was that? About 1923, 1924.

Where did you live when you came to town? On South Boulevard. Where was it? With Mr. and Ms. Hexter. That was the Jewish section of Dallas in South Dallas, South Boulevard and Park Road and Forrest Avenue was it? And then Irvey Street in that area. Do you happen to remember the address? Was it closer to Irvey Street or was it... It was on Irvey in Atlanta, no 2534 South Boulevard, Atlanta, the corner of Atlanta and South Boulevard. And there were mostly two-story houses along there, but I think the Hexters house, which was one of the very first of the cottages built on South Boulevard, or bungalows or something as they call them, and was built by the architect Roscoe DeWitt.

And there are other people in the bungalows where the Bowes family lived On the same side of the street as the Hexters, across the street from them were the Jake Cans, the Sangers, the Charlie Sangers, Mr. and Mrs. Felix Goldman, Dr. and Mrs. Lefkowitz had a home down the street from them, and the Metzgers. Were they Jewish? Yes, some of them were. You're saying some of them. Is there intermarriage in the I don't know the whole family exactly but there were and the Stars and the Tobians lived further down and the Baums lived there and Atlanta but still on the South Boulevard. The Henry Brombergs and Mr.

and Mrs. Bromberg who originally came from Mineola and the Ike Sangers and the Marcus Levi's. Across the street from there Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Marcus and the Siegel family lived directly across from Mr. and Mrs. Hexter on South Boulevard in Atlanta. And I can't quite remember who lived further down the street there. Blossom Meyer and her husband later on the Juanita Kramer Bromberg bought that house. The Kramers also had a house on South Boulevard there. Those are the ones I remember, you know, immediately. Can quite think of who some of the other ones were Oh yeah the Rosenfields Max Rosenfield Parents, well Max Rosenfield Sr.

lived there and their children were, you know, Max or John Jr. they called him, Max who was really Max Rosenfield Jr. and Jonas Rosenfield was his brother and Rabbi Lefkowitz's secretary who was Ms. Rosenfield's daughter. I can't think of her first name now. They all live right across the street there. John Rosenfield and his wife lived with the Rosenfields there when they first married and I was when I first married I lived with the Hexter just across the street. Was that fairly usual that the young Marys would move in with the adult family, with the senior family? Well it seemed to be at that time if they were very young people.

Oh I remember the Mallinsons also lived there on South Boulevard and I remember the Reba Almondson who married Ernest Wadel, they lived there across the street for a short time and the Gacha Levi, well not Gacha Levi, but Marcus Levi family lived there on South Boulevard. They all had very beautiful homes there and that area as you know has now been designated as a historical area so that those homes will be preserved. John Rosenfield, is it John Rosenfield that was the critic for the news? Yes. That's the John Rosenfield you're referring to. And his mother, Mrs. Rosenfield, was a sister of Arthur Kramer. That was that family.

And there was another Kramer family that lived even further down on South Boulevard and all the way down on the very corner of Irby Street in South Boulevard where the Lins family lived and across the street from them the Dreyfusses lived at that particular time So, yes, as far as I know, it was, the families were very young and unestablished, they did that, but it was also difficult to find places to live in Dallas at that time. but he just didn't move to town and find an apartment. I think the Stoney Hotel was built at that time and I believe maybe Maple Terrace was built at that time too.

But there just weren't that many available places when you first came to Dallas to live. About up until what year did you live on South Boulevard and where did you move to afterwards? Oh, I lived... Was this part of the pattern as far as Jewish community was concerned? No, not necessarily. Shortly after, or rather maybe during the time that I was, they were already moving out to Swiss Avenue I remember that. The Marcus's had already taken a house on Swiss Avenue or built a house there and Mrs. Neiman and her sister Mrs. Rosenberg was there? They lived together and they had built a house on South Boulevard there and I don't know if it was exactly at that time but I know maybe it was just a little bit later, but Estelle Goldstein Shaw had a house on that street there, and then later on the Turbians sold their house on South Boulevard and they moved out on Swiss Avenue and they still live there.

Yes, well that was I believe in 36 or 37. Not maybe when they lived, but they weren't the first ones to move there, you see. They were living in South Florida when I moved there, but I'm saying that was the trend then. In about two years, we, I think we lived at the Hicks' for two years and then we moved out to a little cottage on Lipscomb Street Is it East Dallas Lipscomb Lipscomb was just off of Gaston Avenue and very near to the country club Lakewood Country Club out there. Also not very far from the Lipscomb School there. so the trend was already among the newer comers not to settle in South Boulevard but to follow the expansion of the city.

But there were still people going to school that I remember at some of the young Jewish families I think were going to school at Forest Avenue High School that was still in that area I think. Oh yes. And then there were many people that still lived on Park Row back there. There was there there were a series of apartment houses I know on Forest Avenue and some people lived there but those were good many of those people around there were those who belong to Temple Emanuel and the though there also was I think a there was a shul on Park Row what was the name of that shul I think in that was Andre Schreier that was on Park Row that was the remaining shul which is originally had been the Austro-Hungarian shul a little bitty one that little smaller No, I wasn't thinking of that one.

It was a larger one that really up until the present time it had been there. I think maybe it's not there now. Well, the Ferrethes were built on Grand Avenue at the end of the 30s, like 3940. Well, it may have been the Ferrethes. Then there was a Goodasachem that was on Forest Avenue between Irvey and South Harwood. This wasn't on Forest. I think this was more over on Park Row as I remember it. around Park Road near, near Irby Street maybe not right on Irby Street but further into Park Road. Was it close to the library or the railroad? I don't remember, but it was a very beautiful architectural, very beautiful architecturally I remember.

I can't remember which one it was. Yeah, I remember that one. But as I say, that isn't the names of all the people that were living, you know, right around there, but they're the ones that I recall just at this moment. But that was the time when we had just started the sisterhood of the Temple of Emmanuel. Mrs. Lefkowitz was the president and then a little bit later they started. Well I think maybe the Council of Jewish Women was started too. I think they're celebrating what their 60th anniversary now? Is this their 60th? It's going to be on March the 1st. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Well this is just... Anyway, Mrs. Hickster was... organized in 1913 and federated in 1915 and incorporated in 1948. So I don't know what exactly what figure they are using right now. Maybe I think they're calling this their 60th anniversary probably. They're not talking about Dallas particularly in this in these figures I don't think. But so that was naturally I was involved in the sisterhood work right away because my mother-in-law the very following year became was president of the sisterhood and I also when I came here though I had I was already already a member of the AAUW American Association of University Women and I transferred my membership to the Dallas membership here and in that way I became acquainted with a number of the community women the Christian women in the community who were also members of the AAUW.

And I continued that affiliation for many, many years. What about other organizations and Jewish organizations besides the Temple Sisterhood? Well at that time, I wasn't very much interested in other organizations. My children were coming along at that time and I was interested in their care and I did service as a volunteer for the community chest. At that time Henry Levy was the director of the community chest, if you remember him, and He was married to Amanda Hexter, so it was something of a family interest at the time, and I volunteered to be one of the solicitors for the community chest. But it wasn't a particularly usual activity for the young, my young contemporaries at that time.

Were there a lot of people, a lot of Jewish people involved in the community chest as well, or is it just accidental that... I don't, well, I don't want you to say a lot. I mean in the support of the Community Chest, why, of course, many Jewish people were involved. They always were. But I was just talking about as an ordinary solicitor and as a young woman just moving to Dallas. But I was interested in education and I was interested in so-called progressive education and I was asked to... well my children, well they were quite young. I was looking for a kindergarten really for my daughter who was about four at that time my son was two and there was a very good school at the...

there was a kindergarten at St. Mary's and I went to observe that with a view to having my starting my daughter there and I took my two son along and well as a matter of fact I thought perhaps I might even go to the nursery school first but when I did visit the nursery school I found that was really too young for my daughter and I went over to view the kindergarten that was a good place for her since I had stopped at the nursery school the teacher there had impressed me and she asked why didn't I leave my son at their nursery school and I said well he's only two years old and she said well we have one or two two-year-olds here we're not taking them this is a preschool before they are pre before they ever get to kindergarten so I thought well I will leave him here for a day or two and let you see how he gets on.

And so the upshot of that was that when I entered Joan in kindergarten I entered him in the nursery school. And that was a very shocking thing to do in our community to try to put your two-year-old child in any kind of a supervised school. that nature but I was familiar with this type of nursery school and the teachers there were had very good training in progressive education. Being a church affiliated type of school did that bother you or have any were you concerned at all about that since it was outside of the Jewish community? That wouldn't have concerned me because I that's the way I grew up.

I grew up We have been an entirely Christian community and went to Sunday school every Sunday in the Christian Sunday school because there wasn't any where we lived. In fact, we considered ourselves very, you know, the fair-haired children. Everybody was eager to have us come and go to their Sunday school and you follow where we lived. Did they try to convert you? I don't remember that they tried to convert us, but I do remember that we were aware that the burden of understanding was on us since these people were not going to understand what we knew We would simply have to understand their belief while preserving our own We didn have any conflicts about it I remember in fact I remember having a feeling of superiority that we were the ones who, while we were making the concessions, we were the ones who had to make, had to be the ones who understood.

So no I didn't, I do remember though a very funny incident, you want this and I, they did ask me at St. Mary's if I objected to having Joan go to the assembly when the children went to the assembly. And of course with my background I didn't object at all. But at one time my mother was in Mineral Wells and I was taking the children down there to visit them. We took the bus to go there and And we took a bus that terminated at Mineral Wells, and we were sitting in the back of the bus, and when we stopped at Mineral Wells and everybody got up to get out, while Joan shouted at the top of her voice, Stand up for Jesus!

But that was probably what she had learned in the... I never observed that that had any particular effect on her Jewish affiliations or her attitudes. What about the kids' religious training here, you know, growing up near the temple? Well, they didn't grow up in that temple. No, here in Dallas, though, they were growing up in Dallas. Yeah. You were active in the Temple Sisterhood dynasty. Did they go to Sunday school, religious school at that time? No, I don't remember that they...let me see...oh yes, of course they did. Yes, I went to the Sunday school there because, in fact, Joan was confirmed there in that temple in South Boulevard.

they did go and and so was Victor let me see if Victor was coming yeah Victor was confirmed there too were there youth groups that sounded around Temple in those days did they have Jewish social social groups perhaps they did but I don't remember that that they did center around the temple so much. Was there any type of overall federation activity at that time, Jewish Welfare Federation, or any Jewish communal service at that time that was active? I didn't become interested in it until the wartime, until the time that we had a USO and we worked with the soldiers at the Jewish Welfare Federation. I don't remember doing very much.

Of course I personally did work with the, which wasn't Federation then, it was the, what did we call it, Jewish Welfare Association, wasn't it? Something like that. No, it was really. No, Jewish Welfare, it was not, because it was not really primarily fundraising. That was our social service commitment there. That was a big thing because I remember when we had our, I remember one of the first guys of the Federation that the total goal was $40,000. community. That was the total monetary goal at that time and that included some funds for the USO. Do you happen to remember the year or about was it during the early years of the war was it during you know post-war rehabilitation?

Yes sure that was in the war that was around And, well, the USO, of course, came around 1941, wasn't it? 1941, at that time. What about United Jewish Appeal in those days? Was there any type of joint collection or joint venture, or was it a special drive separate and apart from the community services? I can't remember that it was separate. Was it a separate at that time? I don't remember that it was. I think when they attempted to raise money, they came down to the existing welfare federation and immediately cooperated with them to raise funds at that time And it seems to me that that turned out I can to be one of the unifying forces in the in the Jewish community whereas so many of the different synagogue groups had their own separate social life, their own separate interests, their own separate things that they supported and the they didn't seem to unify on or to unite on any particular programs as they did during the war and I remember of course right away when we began to try to take care of refugees I remember being active and trying to get people to sign affidavits to help to bring people to this country because of the war and try to and it's interesting to remember Are you on?

Even sign an affidavit because they didn't want to be held responsible. Even though it came to the time where the Federation would assume all the responsibility, but only because of the legal technicality of having to have a signature of an American citizen in order to really rescue and admit to this country somebody from Germany. We didn't even, we weren't very successful at that time in getting a great many signatures then. And my husband and I at that time had brought first a young woman from Germany who was a distant cousin of mine and that was even before the war and immediately after the war started we had already negotiated to bring her younger sister and then we were at war and that was became a long procedure in order to get her out of the country and get her here even after war had started Were you able to do that?

Oh yes. Did she come during the war years then? Yes she came immediately after the war had started. In fact it was in September when she was supposed to leave from Hamburg, I think it was. She was supposed to catch her ship at Hamburg and leave. And two days before she was supposed to leave, and two days before the war officially started, she received word that she would have to proceed to France, to Cherbourg, to catch the ship that it was not going to call in Germany. So something was known by somebody so this ship did not call it Germany. That was before the first of September when Hitler marched.

In 1939 then? Yes, in 1939. And so when she got this directive why that meant then she had to go back and try to get a visa to get from Germany into France in order to go to Sherberg to catch a ship and borders were closed so she was unable to get to Sherberg. So then we started a whole long series of contacts and manipulations in order to get her out of the country and finally arranged to send passage money. We didn't want to send money anymore anymore but send passage money for her to Amsterdam and had to leave it to her to get to Amsterdam some way and we were able to get papers to her in Germany which that she could show she had passage out of Amsterdam but she didn't have any money and we hadn't sent her money because we were afraid to do that and we'd only sent passage we had paid for the passage over here and she was to pick it up over there and here she was a 17 year old girl she had to leave in the middle of the night all by herself from Mannheim Germany and get to Amsterdam and it was on a Sunday and everything was closed in Amsterdam But it seems she did know someone to telephone and call to that she could stay with overnight in order to report the next day to the shipping company and get her ticket to go to come to this country.

And so she did come and after that we of course then tried to get her twin sister and her mother over here. But before we were successful in doing that, her mother and sister were among those who were, I think some 9,000 who were moved to the Palatinate out of Germany and we lost track of them. Later on we found they had gone to Camp du Couris in the Pyrenees and there was there's a real long saga about how we finally were able to get them to this country. We got the passage for them again on the ship which threw highest, threw highest, and in the meantime they found out through other people in Marseille that they could get on a vessel that was going to Martinique, to get on a ship that was going to Martinique, if they had so-and-so much money, and my husband cabled them so-and-so much money to get on this.

No, we had to send money to somebody in New York. We didn't even know who the transaction it was. It was some kind of a hidden thing that had to be sent to somebody who just Joseph was the name that we knew, and we had nothing further to go on. It was all real cloak and dagger. But when we heard that they were going there, we then contacted HIAS and asked them to transfer the money that we had deposited with them for them in France to Martinique, to a bank in Martinique, so they would have to be able to get that money. Well, They never did get to Martinique.

Their boat was stopped by a Dutch man of war. And all of the people on this ship then, of course, not knowing who had stopped them, they all threw all their papers away. So they had no papers and they... but the Dutch man of war took them to the, I forgot, Cartagena I think it was, no to Trinidad, took them to Trinidad and put them in concentration camps there, till they could sort the people out and identify them and see what, who and what they were, they then were able to get some communication to us in the United States and we then sent identification and passage money for them to get out of Trinidad to come to the United States.

What year then did they finally arrive? Do you remember? So they came, this was about about 41 I think when they came. 40 years. Yes, it was about 41. Okay, now then when they were signing, when the Jewish community was having other Jews in the community sign affidavits in order to get Jews out of Europe, was that then during the period before the war that you made reference to? Yes, that was. That was before the war. That was a short period of time before the war. You see, when we were aware, that's why I mean when you hear people say now they didn't know what was going on in Germany and what was happening in Germany.

It was known. Certainly was known. Because we were certainly trying, we were getting people out of the country before then. Now, part of the difficulty was to get some of the Germans to move. They didn't believe that it was necessary to come. You know, they... So it was difficult on both sides. Some of them got left too because they didn't come when they could have. And families got separated that way too because some of them did come and some of them remained behind. Well now was the UJA or what is now known as the UJA or Jewish Welfare Federation here in Dallas trying to do some of that work Yes, we did that.

I don't know whether it was...we didn't call it Federation then. So it seemed to me that was a...maybe we did call it the Jewish Welfare Federation, but I don't think so. We called it something else. There was a Central Welfare Fund. Jewish community something or other. And yes, because we had a social welfare. That was what our service was, was a social welfare service. It was mostly for taking care of the poor Jews of the community. It was, and it had was starting to be something of a center, but it was only when we began to take care of the soldiers at this center and called it the Jewish USO, you know, the USO for Jewish soldiers, that we had very much activity at the community center that I remember.

Well there was the YMHA in the 20s and there was Jewish activity and there was Jewish community center. Way back then, yes, way back then, but that wasn't a very active thing as I knew it I mean at that time I mean I didn't know any in fact it was that was on one corner and the Columbian Club was down on the other corner on Pocahontas and far as I know the never the twain did meet wasn't that so and on Park what was that the old park well Sheriff Israel is it was at Park and Eakin at the time, at Pocahontas, the corner of 1870 Pocahontas is where the center was.

The center was and down on Irving in Pocahontas was the Colombian Club. While you're talking about the Colombian Club, how long did the Colombian Club remain there? Do you know? Well it burned. It burned and so then they went about buying some property and moving out on the Garland Road where they had what they called a country club but it really was just a social club. I don't think they even had a golf club out there did they No I don think they even had a golf club It was just the old Colombian club moved to country quarters Do you ever know about what year that was that they moved I'm not sure exactly.

Yeah. Was that about the 40s? It was in the 40s. I think it was the same. No, no, it was earlier than that, I think. It must have been sometime in the 30s when that was out there. Sometime in the 30s, I think. Well, now let's talk a little bit about the center and federation and post-war years when they started coming, you know, bringing Jews into the United States after the war. you comment on some of the things and procedure and funding? Well of course that those were the years when all of the national organizations began to take on great responsibilities. The JDC for instance was very active in taking care of refugees and the highest was very active in taking care of refugees.

In those days they a good deal of their work overlapped. The highest of course had been in business well I guess they're about 90 years old now aren't they or even more and I think it is going to be their 90th birthday this year and so they were very active in meeting the boats in New York City and taking care of refugees and the JDC of course had the responsibility of the migration of the Jews all over the world wherever it was they could find refuge for them and of course they were very active in trying to rescue Jews after Hitler and sent them on to Israel even before it became Israel to Palestine and so whatever our activity was here was through those cooperation with those organizations It didn become such a well thing until later years I think after the State of Israel was really formed, that we had a real structure for taking care of it.

Have you only and always been a member of Temple Emanuel? Mm-hmm. What about the wartime and just previous to war? What was the stand of most of the people there as far as the idea of Israel and Zionism? Well, the... I would say, you know, there became a very active group here called the Council of Judaism and they recruited among the more prestigious people and I think they had quite an influence on the community and they did especially on that community and because they did concentrate on trying to get to their point of view the people who were in leadership in the Jewish community and who had money in in the Jewish community so that they built up the anti-Zionist movement and I can I really credit that organization with being as divisive or causing the divisiveness that existed in the community because I think these people who belonged to Temple Emmanuel had roots back in the old country just the same as those who were more sympathetic with rescue and the state of Israel.

These, that isn't to say that Temple Emmanuel people weren't interested in the rescue. They were, many of them were, but they did. I think they were influenced by the propaganda that Zionism was divisive and that there was a dual loyalty involved in trying in being a Zionist and being an American Jew and I think that's where that particular idea stemmed and for a long time they were but very very influential. But it's interesting to know that when I worked with, and in the early days when I was working with the United Jewish Appeal, that the biggest contributors to United Jewish Appeal came mostly from the temple.

That isn't so well known, I don't think. But these people who happened to be among those who were more among the wealthier people in the community. They did support the, with their money, the Federation or the welfare group. And I found that even in working among the women, because we had, we were able to recruit and to get money more from some of the women of Temple Emmanuel, then we were able to get money from the Jewish women that belong to the other temples. I should speak about the women who were Temple Emmanuel members who with their families probably considered themselves non-Zionists if not active anti-Zionists.

They felt it was not necessarily to be a Zionist, quote, in order to help Jews and to help refugees and to give the kind of social services that they felt they were entitled to. Many people felt that they had escaped to this country, their forefathers had escaped to this country for a new kind of life and they didn't want to be ghettoized and they may have seen in the trend and the idea to establish a place where all Jews might be sent to a homeland as a kind of ghettoism of another sort and that was one of the things they were opposed to. Did you feel this worked?

No I had no difficulty with that at all myself. I was, well I didn't see the necessity either of becoming a Zionist In fact I learned that it was better for me if I were being active in soliciting for the benefit of the Federation of Jews that I could say, well, I wasn't a Zionist myself. That wasn't my particular thrust, but that I was for the rescue of Jews wherever they might be and the resettlement of Jews in Israel because they weren't able to be settled anywhere else. We couldn't settle them over here. We couldn't get enough visas to get the people to come into this country, even if we wanted to.

And I certainly saw the necessity of a place of refuge, and I could support it. There was a matter of, I think, definition in the early days as to what Zionism meant. And I think that the people who were in the more conservative congregations and the more orthodox congregations were more oriented to an idea of Zionism. and they had an interpretation of it that was in their background and in their history. And when they said next year in Jerusalem, they really literally meant that. Whereas in the Reformed congregations, that wasn't an ultimate ideal. when they said next year in Jerusalem, that was a euphemism really.

It was a ritual, but not one to be literally acted upon or interpreted. So I think there was that basic difference. Have you always had the same affiliation as far as Temple over the years? Have any of the members, have any of the family been a dual member or had dual membership or has it solely been a temple membership? Well oh yes I sure in the early days you know the when the conservative congregation was formed many of those people had originally belonged to the temple and then they belonged to the conservative congregation Some of those afterwards came back to the temple but because Temple Emanuel is about 25 years, at least 25 years older than the conservative congregation, I think.

It's 104 years old and what is this? Sheriff is 75? No, Sheriff is 90. It was formed in 1886. Sherrath was founded in 1886. I believe it was founded as a Orthodox congregation. Oh, was it? Mm-hmm. Well, anyway, I know that the older congregation was the Temple Emanuel and that many of those in Temple Emanuel who intended to keep their Temple Emanuel affiliation nevertheless took out membership in the other congregations. I think Mr. Hexter did. I think Mr. Cann did. I think Mr. Mittenthal did. Mr. Mittenthal afterwards, I think, was a president there at the temple. And then later on, their children then came back to Temple Emmanuel.

On the other hand, I know some Temple Emmanuel families that moved into the Sheriff Israel. And that was really a matter of individual choice, I think. what they happen to want in education for their children or in observance for themselves. Do you remember some of the temple families that moved into Sheriff Israel because of these reasons? Not way back at that time, I don't. I really don't. What are your affiliations now with Jewish organizations? What are the Jewish organizations you're now affiliated with? Well affiliation is one thing and being active is another you know the and I for many years tried to really limit my affiliation because I found as soon as I was affiliated then I was expected to be active and really not only be active but to take responsibility and I tried to limit myself in my responsibilities and so my active memberships were really the sisterhood and the Temple Emanuel and the Council of Jewish Women And I wouldn't become an active member of Hadassah, though I would support them financially, any more than I would become an active member of the League of Women voters or I would support them financially.

I said as soon as I get in your yearbook somebody's going to be calling me and I'm going to have to explain over and over again that I don't want to be active and have to turn people down and I don't want to have to do that. But when I did take an active membership, I took some big responsible job and it was but in the Federation. I've had, I've been on almost every board that we have in the Jewish Welfare Federation. I've been chairman of the Women's Division or co-chairman three times and that met on the fundraising committee and I have been on the Board of the Golden Acres and the Board of the Jewish Family Service.

I'm now on the vocational services board and I have been on the secretary of the whole federation and most of my Jewish activities have been of late years funneled in that direction. I found that took enough of my time to do that. So then I had various community activities. I've been a member of the Dallas Women's Club for over 30 years and I have been on their board of directors and I have been active in the garden club of the Dallas Women's Club for a number of years and on their better board of directors. And I considered that a form of community service really, just as I did as belonging to the Women's Symphony League, some such thing.

And that was, in other words, a balance to what my Jewish service was. I never did, in late years, do anything more active in the community chest than just take cards for some, for the drive or something like that. I thought there were enough people that did that. I didn't have to do that too. But I find myself really... I've just completed being the collector for the heart fund in my neighborhood because well and then the muscular dystrophy fund in my neighborhood and several other of the funds which are not included in the United Way fund drives. And so I tell my neighbors whom I have to collect from that the reason that you're hearing from me again for this drive is because none of you will do this in this neighborhood.

And that's the way it has become. It is very difficult to get people to do this kind of service. And then you're active, well you're president of the Brandeis ladies I understand, and certainly active in Israel Bonds, an American Jewish community, committee I believe, no? Are you not? Yes, well I thought you asked me about women's clubs that you're, that's what you had been asking me about. Well, you know Jewish organizations generally and then women's club service organizations. Well, I did take on the presidency of the Brandeis at a time when they were desperately in need of some leadership and I've been interested in Brandeis University is something that I think all Jewish women have an obligation to support.

I think that supporting a library such as the libraries at Brandeis University by supplying books and the Brandeis women are the sole supplier of books and supporters of that library that it is a very significant demonstration of what Jewish women can do for a for education and for a really excellent university. You had mentioned at one point a gentleman by the name of Albert Decker, well Alfred Decker in reference to signing for affidavits. Yeah, you want to hear that little story? Well when we were talking about affidavits I said later on I learned that Mr. Alfred Decker of Alfred Decker and Coen, manufacturers of men's clothing, had signed whenever he was asked an affidavit to bring to rescue someone from the Holocaust from Europe or whatever till it amounted to some 500 individuals that he had signed for and he was at that point prohibited by the United States government from signing for any more refugees but he said that of all that number and he kept in fact he kept a secretary who kept a record of these people who came here that there were such a few numbers such a few of them who did not become independent or who in any way imposed upon him after they got to this country or after they got a start that it was a real demonstration of what could have been done on a smaller scale by many many more people in the refuge.

And that was during the period of 37 and 38 Yes. Yes. Where people were gotten there. Now you had mentioned that you moved from South Boulevard to East Dallas. Where did you move from? was it Tremont, Lamont? From East Dallas address. To Lipscomb. To Lipscomb. To Lipscomb. Yes, to Lipscomb and about what was the year that you moved and where did you move to? The year I moved to Lipscomb Street must have been well about 1925 I moved to Lipscomb Street and then about 1929 that I moved to Gaston Avenue to a bigger house on Gaston Avenue. And from Gaston? And from Gaston. Well, Well, I became separated from my husband about that time and I went back to Chicago to go to the University of Chicago and take some education courses.

And so I stayed there for nearly a year until I came back to... Now when you came back, go ahead. When I returned to Dallas, I wanted my children to go to the Lipscomb School, and I was able to find a house on Lipscomb Street again. in fact one right next door to the house where I had lived previously and we lived there until my marriage to Lawrence Cannes. What about the people in the area at that time were there also other Jews in that area? Well this whole area was part of Munger Place. In fact when I lived in Gaston which was near and lived near Fitzhugh that was just the beginning of what was called Munger Place and it went from there were really two blocks like Gaston and Swiss Avenue known as Munger Place and there were other friends of mine who had well who had really moved there even before I had like the Henry Jacobus's and Estelle Shaw and her family and Blossom Meyer and her family and the Tobians lived there and they still live there as a matter of fact and in fact when I was on Gaston my neighbors were Mr and Mrs Arthur Kramer and Mr Tights of Tights Gettenshire They had big old homes there that have since been torn down and replaced with apartments.

Where did you move from when you married Mr. Cant, Lawrence Cant? I took a house out near White Rock Lake. And what year then would that have been? That was in 1936, I think. 1936. And from there? And... Let me see... We bought a home in University Park on Turtle Creek Boulevard. And that's the same home you live today? That's the same place where I live now. Now when did you buy that home in Highland Park, in University Park? About 1936 or 1907. Were there other Jews also living in Highland Park or were there any type of Jewish community outside? I wouldn't call it a Jewish community, but the Fred Florentes had a house there in my particular neighborhood.

No, I wouldn't call that a Jewish community. It seems by that time they were beginning to move even beyond University Park and Highland Park, go out into North Dallas more or less at that time. I know the Pollocks moved from south of Dallas and took a house on Deloach and Preston Road, a big home out there. And the Ellick Weisbergs built a large home very near to the Pollocks, and the Leslie Jacobs built a very large home also very near to the Pollocks. And that was in... And that was in Dallas. that was two miles beyond where I lived in University Park and that area of course has since built up and beyond a great deal.

In fact, but what I would call the Jewish community among the younger people moved even farther out than that. Not exactly at that time but those who were coming along did move even further. And my children went to the Lipscomb School until Joan got to about the sixth grade. And then she went to Hockaday School for Girls. But Victor continued to go to the Lipscomb School there and we found that a very good school and later on after we moved to University Park Victor went to the lower school in University Park and then started high school and went through his sophomore year well that at that time we were at war and it looked as if maybe some of our boys were going to have to go those going to the service might not even have any college education and so I sent Victor East to school to Andover.

What year? Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. That must have been like 40 five or six I think something like about 45 or six and so he did go for two years to Andover. It may have been earlier than that no it must have been about was before the war was over so it must have been about 42 that Victor went to and stayed there two years, 44. And then he, that's about right, he was entered in Princeton and was then able to have a full year at Princeton before his 18th birthday and before he enlisted in the Navy. Then he had, that's just about right, So then he had a year or a little more in the Navy, but never did get out of a training program by the time the war was over.

And then of course he did go back to the University of Princeton But I had thoughts about the First World War That was when I was in the university And that was in 1918 19 and by 1920 good many of the soldiers were coming back to go to school because they had the GI Bill of Rights could go to school and whatnot they were all very much older than the regular students in the class you know but I knew at that time the people that did come back and did take advantage of going back to the university were very few in number and many of them just got out of the army and never completed their education.

So that was my reason for sending him away to school. He was very unhappy about it because he loved going to High School school and he was doing very well and he didn't see any reason why he had to go away and leave his friends and go to the winter weather in the East. He always hated that part of it he said the only good thing he said the only good thing you can say about it up here is you learn a lot. So we always tease him about that. So now it's interesting to know that his daughter is in Princeton and about to get her degree from there this coming year.

I was always interested in education as not as a teacher but in the philosophy and development of education and method and I was very much annoyed by the Dallas school system which I felt was very backward and having been under the influence of Dewey at the University of Chicago naturally the progressive school idea was one that I was interested in and that was like a dirty word in areas out here It meant permissiveness to most people and inability to spell Those were the charges that were but the idea of having a fear atmosphere in school where young six-year-olds weren't put behind the desk and asked to learn things by rope and all of their individuality was crushed and leveled.

I remember one time when with some other people I went to visit the superintendent of schools here and asked him if he wouldn't be interested in putting in a more liberal program for the elementary schools to start there and to liberalize their program, their rigidity, and so he said well why should he?" And I remember saying to him, well we like to preserve the individuality of the child and so that we wouldn't be turning them all out like Ford with similarities and just like Ford cars. And so he said, well if I thought I could turn out my students with the uniform excellence of the Ford motor car, I would be very happy indeed.

So we continued to turn them out, you know, on a rigid program, and that went on for very many years. There was a new so-called progressive school started here, a private school, and of course was quite expensive. I was interested in it. I didn't consider it a really progressive school, whether it was more progressive than what he had in Dallas and I was helpful to them. Mrs. Trout was the headmistress of that school. Do you remember the name of the school? Country Day School I think. It was It was the Country Day School. Wasn't that later St. Mark's? No it wasn't really. No, that was where the ideas came about you know and it really wasn't maybe because that dissolved and they did create another school and they may have called it a Country School Country Day School too but it wasn that one And it really wasn exactly I don think that St Mark was even dedicated to the idea of being a progressive school I think they were dedicated to the idea of being a preparatory school for boys who wished to go to the bigger eastern schools to be prepared for those colleges where they thought they couldn't get the preparation in the public schools.

Do you think that was it? I think that was it. Now as back to the houses, the type of housing you've had, in all of the years did you live in apartments or single family? No, no I never lived. There were a very short time I lived in an apartment when I came back from the University of Chicago while I was looking for another house and that was for a very short time and I never really did live in an apartment and I am opposed to living in the by myself to this day I see my friends now going into apartments condominiums being forced into buying even apartments and condominiums and I'm putting off the evil day myself.

What was your family structure like over the years? When you were young did you have an extended family? Grandparents lived with you? Oh no nothing like that. Relatives? No, no not as we were growing up. We didn't have the... see the first place we lived in this small town of Newfowla, Oklahoma and And, well, I will take that back a little bit. I think one year my father brought over a nephew from Hungary. And for the year that he was learning to speak English, and he went to the high school there, that year he did live with us. That's about the only thing I had a brother and a sister and we had no other family here But we were very oriented to the idea of the helping Jews from overseas.

My father came from Hungary because it had been many many years and years that he had come but he kept up with his family in Hungary. And I remember that my father wrote to them every week. And when the war came, and we did then visit them. In the... Before the First World War, before 1914, we visited them in Hungary. In fact, I was quite young then. My father and mother went back for their tenth wedding anniversary and visited his family and then my parents traveled on the continent. We stayed with then with some of my mother's relatives in Germany. and that was the beginning of a contact that we kept up with so that when the war came along we, of course we were separated from the prisoner of war, we were separated from it.

But after the second war started those many many years ago and my mother and her family had always kept very close contact. My grandmother was something of a matriarch and we all, she kept up with all the family. We all went to her birthday no matter whenever it was. She used to say you can't don't have to come to my funeral so we all had to go to her birthday. And so I believe that without knowing at that time but that was the beginning of my real feeling of interest for the plight of the Jews abroad and and it dated long before Hitler and the difficulties there because in the First World War my grandfather and grandmother and their families were overrun by the Russians and in fact and they had to flee to the mountains and my grandfather got pneumonia and died before they ever got back you know to their homes there and so my father family consisted of there were four boys and two girls and eventually all four boys came to the United States and the two girls married and lived there and never did come to the United States, and they were finally victims of the Second World War and it was and they that is his sisters and probably some of their children I can't remember which were were victims in the Second World War but One, some of them did get to this country.

One boy in particular got to Israel and then eventually, and he married a Romanian girl there, had two children whom I met when I visited in Israel. then they finally came to this country and then that man died at the age of 50 leaving his wife with four boys. They lived in Houston and so of course I kept in close contact with them and they're now 22 and 21 years of age and going to school in Eugene, Oregon. One of the boys got a scholarship to the University of Eugene. He went there and then his mother followed with the family and they settled in Eugene.

And I just visited him this summer for the first time. Did any of your relatives, others, you know, through your years or through the years live with you or have occasion to other than you know when you were a child? No not well then later of course then later on this that's why I said that we kept up this contact so then in the the Second World War and shortly after I married Lawrence Kahn and after we had moved into our home on Turtle Creek I had one of my cousins one of my Zacharias cousins who was one of the German cousins came to this country and lived with us And then when World War II broke out that was threatened at the time, of course.

They knew something was happening. Why, we succeeded in getting her younger sister come to this country and she lived with us and went to school and then became a nurse at Baylor Hospital and had two daughters of her own. Lived in Arkansas, Ashdown, Arkansas where she still lives. This is when I'm telling you that's coming to see me today. Both of her daughters coming from this little Ashdown High School. Ashdown's about 18 about 3,000 people I guess about 18 miles from Texarkana. Both went to college. One graduated from Sophie Newcomb and then took her master's degree from Tulane in psychology. The second daughter went to University of Texas and graduated and then went to the University of Northwestern, got her master's degree in journalism and communications, and both of the girls got fellowships there.

And I've just heard from this from Joanne Kaufman, the younger girl. After being in Cincinnati for three years working with Procter & Gamble, doing very well there. In fact in the spring she was promoted to a managership and had there. We thought she was doing so very well and she bought a house in Cincinnati. Then I hear just this past month that she was moving to New York. She was going to the Ted Bates advertising agency and she all she had to do in this coming week was get a place for her dog and a place for her cat, sell her car, sell her house and find an apartment in New York.

So they that was of course was a very happy arrangement in our family Naturally we kept a very close association since then. Very interesting. What about your father's occupation and you know what he did from what period of time and if there were any changes in his occupation over the years. I think I told you something about his early life didn't I? I mean, earlier you think? Yes, well then he was a student. No, my father was not a student. When he left Hungary. Oh, well, when he left Hungary, he was running away from, as I told you, from being forced to become a rabbi because his father had ambitions, as all Jewish fathers did then, for one of his sons.

Well his oldest son had no aptitude for books at all and so he gave up on him and it became my father's lot to have to go to prepare for the rabbinate which he didn't favor either and but the only way he could get out of it was to run away waiting home, which he did. And so he had, well that's another whole saga in itself you know. He didn't like living, he got to New York but he didn't like living in New York and so he came south and after many, after the custom of the times I think they after and after he learned English because when he came he didn't know English so he knew about six other languages.

He knew German and two or three Slavic languages and of course Hebrew but he didn't know any English. New Hungarian and so he finally got to Texas where he was a itinerant You know Peddler is so many of the young men coming. He was 17 years old at that time. Then he got all the way south and joined the Texas militia and served in the Texas militia on the Mexican border until he was about 19, I think. And by that time he had sent for his older brother to come to this country who joined him. and then they lived in Dallas for a while. He said that they used to live with Mrs.

Mr. Ms. Gradwall who in those days had the the well-known, what they call it, it was a it was a boarding house but they also they lived there everybody didn't live there but they the two boys lived with her and she became their really their foster mother that she took care of their money money and doled it out to them told them what they could spend and what they couldn't and he said they he remembers that he got the cigar concession for the State Fair of Texas from Alex Sanger. What year would that be? I don't know exactly what that would have been. It was, I think he came here and he was born in 60, you can kind of figure it out, he was born in 67 I think and by 87 he would have been 20 wouldn't he?

so it would have been about between 87 and 1890 that he was here in Texas And then they moved to Bonham Texas because Bonham seemed to be a more promising and wide town to them at the time So they moved there and they opened a saloon there. And then the Oklahoma territory was opening up, the Indian territory was opening up and so my father and his brother decided they might like to start a business up in the territory and especially since there were many enticements because they could have land and you just had land for the taking. You just had to go there and stake it off.

I thought I told you that story. Did I tell you that story about my uncle? My My father was really the more adventurous of the two brothers, but they must have drawn lots for it because my uncle was the one who decided to go up and see what this was all about in Indian territory. And as he tells us, he got in his gig. was just a, you know, a one-horse carriage and drove up to the, up to the, what they called the line, where the run for the land was going to take place. Went there a few days ahead of time to be ready.

They were, it was, as many have seen in Cimarron, in the story Cimarron, that there was actually a shop fired and everybody ran to stake off the land. And in that I tell the story that some of those who slipped across in the night and staked out their claims before were called Sooners That how that name came in Oklahoma But my grandfather my uncle drove up to this to this uh to Oklahoma. And he came there. He was appalled at what he saw. on either side of this long dirt road there were bearded men with guns slung over their shoulders or on their hips there were covered wagons there were tents there were countless children and dogs and the roughest looking people he had ever seen in his life all camped on both sides of this road and he drove on down further and drove on.

Same thing obtained until he got to the very end of this long long road. And so he turned his horse's head around and came back this road looking on either side and getting more and more discouraged about what he saw. And when he got to the very end, he said of this encampment. He just kept driving. He never even got out of his gig. My father who as I say was a more adventurous type he might have taken a chance but my uncle was very fastidious man who didn't like to get his shoes dirty much less his hands dirty and he was not about to contest with these bearded and armed men that he saw there.

So it wasn until 1901 that my father moved up to Oklahoma or rather 1900 that he moved to Oklahoma and settled in Newfollow Fall Oklahoma and opened up a what they called a mercantile establishment store bought some land and from then on grew cotton and had tenant farmers which is the way of the world in those days. They had Indian tenants, black tenants, and the worst that they had were the poor white who were the worst tenants who really were very low on the scale in education, in motivation, in morals, and anything else. They were very low-class people and interestingly enough when my father died he got a call from the University of Texas to know if his books had been maintained because my father had as I say Indian tenants and they were in those days you supported your tenants all year long they came to the general store and they got their clothing and they got their side of bacon and their flour and their canned foods.

My father was appalled. He always was trying to get them to grow their own food, but these people didn't want to grow their own food even. And he let them have the animals, which he kept in a barn in town during the winter because he wouldn't even trust them to feed them and keep them on the land.