Sam & Ann Kesner
Sam and Ann Kesner were both born in Dallas to immigrant parents who arrived in the early 1900s. Ann's father came through New Orleans and opened a bakery on Caroline Street near Turtle Creek, in the area then known as North Dallas or Little Mexico, serving the Jewish community around the local shul. Her mother and older brother had been stranded in Poland during the war, and the family was reunited only after her father saved enough money to bring them over. Sam's father and uncle walked across Europe from Russia, worked their way to a boat, and landed in Galveston with only a few dollars between them before the Jewish agency helped bring them to Dallas, where his father drove a jitney on Elm Street.
Sam and Ann met on a blind date arranged by his cousin around 1937, though the courtship stalled when Sam failed to call her back. A year and a half later he saw her at a New Year's Eve party, remembered the blue dress with the white collar, and told a friend he would marry her. They wed on March 3, 1946, after Sam completed school and served overseas. Sam grew up in the country, one of the few Jewish boys who picked cotton, and received little formal Jewish education until his family moved back to Dallas when he was about eleven. Ann, by contrast, grew up near Shearith Israel. In later life Sam studied Torah and davened daily, finding in it a deep inner peace.
Sam graduated from Texas A&M and served in World War II, taking part in numerous invasions across Africa, Sicily, Italy, southern France, and Germany. He earned the Silver Star for leading a specially trained platoon ashore ahead of the assault wave in southern France, and the Bronze Star at Anzio for teaching Ranger soldiers to use flamethrowers. After decades of heart problems, Sam received a heart transplant at Methodist Hospital, becoming one of the oldest recipients. In gratitude, the Kesners endowed the Sam and Ann Kesner Heart Center, dedicated September 24, 1999. Devoted philanthropists, they helped establish a family foundation, underwrote the Dallas Coalition, launched the Profiles matchmaking program to address intermarriage, and created the Count Your Blessings benefit that shared proceeds among Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish causes.
Full Transcript
Sam and Ann Kessner to interview the two of them. Today is August the 16th. The tape is on now. The tape is on and we're beginning this interview with Sam and Ann. How long have you been married? We've been married 53 and a half years. We were married on March the 3rd, 1946. And she's the only girlfriend I've ever had in my whole life. That's wonderful, wonderful. And you're both Native Dallasites? Yes, both Native Dallasites. Tell me about when and where you met and your family backgrounds. There's a story in this paper how a cousin of mine had set up a blind date when I was a freshman, I guess at SMU, sophomore, whatever it was, and had a date with her and I didn't know enough that I was supposed to call her back.
so I waited a year and a half and she got upset because I didn't call her back but that was the first date and then a year and a half later I saw her at a New Year's Eve party and I can remember the dress she was wearing the blue dress with the white collar and she stood out so she was with somebody else so I hardly talked to her but I fell in love that night And when we left, I walked home with a guy by the name of Bill Walensky. And I said, Bill, I'm going to marry that girl. And he said, you're crazy.
You don't know her. I said, you just wait and see. And that's the way it turned out. What a lovely romantic story. You remember that too, I'm sure. I sure do. I remember the dress. She still probably has the dress. I might have the dress yet. But Sam and I, as far as our background, Sam and I were both born of immigrant parents. Our parents came to the United States and to Dallas in the early 1900s. And Sam father wasn here too long before he got drafted into the Army and served in World War I My father opened a bakery He had a bakery with partners in Beaumont and he had worked in New Orleans He came through New Orleans, and he opened a bakery here in Dallas.
And that was in 19... well, it was right after the war, I'd say. My mother wasn't here yet because she had gotten stuck in Poland. They were married in Poland. They were married, and I had a brother. I had an older brother, and my mother and my brother were in Poland. And my father had come to America to make enough money to bring them over here, and then the war broke out, and so they didn't see each other for a good many years. but as soon as he had enough money, he was able to bring her after the war while she came here with my brother to Dallas.
And I was born soon after that. So my family consisted of my mother and father and my brother and myself. Where was the bakery? The bakery was on Highland Street. It was what they called North Dallas at the time. It was right around... Little Mexico City, I guess. Yeah, Little Mexico, and that's... what highway is that? Oh, Stamins. Close to Stamins? No, not Stamins. No, it's... Not Oklahoma. Cedar Springs? Yeah, that's where you live. Yeah, right around... Caroline. It was on Caroline Street, Turtle Creek and Caroline Street, right in there. And who were their customers, Ann? All of their customers were naturally Jewish because the whole area there was consistent of all...
The Shul was there. Was it Shareth Israel? No, no. I don't know what the name of it was at that time. It was just a North Dallas Shul. Was it an Orthodox, you think? I don't know. Everything is more or less Orthodox. Orthodox. Actually, Willie Waldman's father worked for my father and he delivered the bread and the bagels out by horse and wagon And I always teased that I was born behind the ovens there but actually we lived a few blocks away from there The funniest story about Willie Waltman's father was he was delivering bread one cold day and Willie was about six years old and riding on the wagon with his father.
And suddenly the horse stopped. It was cold. So the old man got out and took some of the papers and built a fire under the horse. And so the horse pulled the wagon up, and the fire was under the wagon. The old man got out and was beating the fire and cussing the horse and cussing the horse and beating the fire and everything. And Willie, in his usual fashion, describes that, and it would bring tears and laughter to your face. We can picture that. That is right. Especially when Willie Walton would tell the story. Well, that's very interesting and fun to listen to. How did your families get to Dallas?
Your family came from Poland, Ann? Yes. And Sam, your family? I had an uncle that came earlier, Uncle Harry, came here and he spelled his name K-I-S-S-N-E-R. A few years later, my father and his brother Joe Kistner from Russia walked through the various countries. They would work for a week and get a little food and then they'd walk for another two or three days until they got down to Germany and France. And they worked there until they could save up to $50 and get a boat ride here. they landed in Galveston a cousin Barry Solomon went down to Galveston a few years ago and got the manifest to show that when they landed there between the two of them they had three dollars on them and the Jewish agency helped bring them up to Dallas they came up with what year was that do you know about what About 1910 or something like that, before the war.
World War II. Then Dad drove a Jitney here in town, up and down Elm Street and things of that nature. For those who don know what a Jitney is why don you kind of describe it A Jitney was sort of like a taxi except it would drive up and down Elm or Main Street for a nickel you could go from one end from Lamar all the way to the railroad track at Central Tracks About how many people do you think could get on one of those? Four or five, whatever you could put on. It was like an open air taxi. It was an open air taxi and it would cost you a nickel to ride and then they would turn around and go the other direction, whoever they picked up.
So it would go up and down Elmer Street? And your father met your mother when she was working for her brother on Elm Street. She was working for, that's right. When he got out of the army he met her. And how did, and you met, and what year did you meet each other? Yes, 37 was it. My cousin set up a blind date in the summer. And then we didn't get married until 1946 because he was in school and then he was in the Army and he was overseas for about three and a half years. And then when he came home, we got married. It's a good time to talk about your war experiences.
You graduated from what school? Texas A&M. I got my degree Friday night. I commissioned Saturday morning on the parade ground. and Anne rode with my folks on Sunday morning to Perry and Field where I reported for active duty and went through the indoctrination and immediately shipped off to Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. There I was assigned to the west coast where I was trained to go to Panama and then they started planning for the invasion of Africa so they shipped me back to the east coast with the company I was with and we made the landing in Africa. And from that we went into Africa, Sicily, Italy, southern France, all the way through Germany.
On the wall of the Kessner's Den, where it was sitting, is a plaque with several medals of honor that Sam received. Sam, why don't you mention a few of those medals? Well, the one with the white and blue and red stripes is the Silver Star, and that was awarded me for volunteering to lead a special platoon that I trained into southern France. Before the assault wave. I was wondering by the war room one night and I was hearing them planning for that, but they were scared of the casualties because somebody was going to have to go in before the assault wave to try to give them protection.
and I pointed out how I thought it could be done with smoke coverage, and they said, well, who's going to do that? And I said, if you'll give me a chemical tune and let me train them for a few weeks, I think I can pull it off if we go in on rubber rafts. And they thought I was crazy, and I said, well, let me try and see. And so we trained for six weeks, and we pulled it off with just the minor casualties. The story of that is in the paper that I'm going to give you. also with the other metal the bronze star is from Anzio when we went into Anzio we were caught in there just south of Rome the Germans encircled us and we're trying to probe our way to get out of it and no one there knew how to use flamethrowers.
Well I'd learned about flamethrowers at the chemical warfare camp the year before and so I worked with the Ranger Battalion to teach them how to use flamethrowers and for that I got a bronze star and all the others are for the seven or eight different invasions that my outfit, that our outfit made and everything like that and for being stupid and trying different things. Well, we might call it bravery instead of stupidity. I think you obviously had some very... You had a lot of courage early in your life. No, I've been the most blessed man, not only with the wife and the children, but the good Lord has looked out for me, not only in the army, but in life and with this operation and business and everything else, honey.
You don't know anyone that's ever been more blessed than we've been together. Sam, do you want to talk a little bit about your surgery? Sam had a pacemaker, not a pacemaker, had a heart transplant. How long ago was that? About a year and a half ago and it was performed right at the end I had been fighting heart problems serious heart problems for over a year and a half I been having heart problems for 20 years I had bypass surgery I had a massive heart attack I've had a little of almost everything, and we were running out of all options, and trying a little of everything.
Medicines, I wore a ribidivine pump, I believe that's the right name for it. It was supposed to last 11 months or so, and after about a year, I noticed it was going down. And I was laying in bed one Saturday afternoon. We tried all the hospitals, and people were reluctant to talk to an older person because the risk is so much greater with an older person. And we checked all the hospitals. my doctor at that time sent the papers to St. Paul and they thought he was kidding they sent the papers to Medical City and they didn't believe that he was serious they tried Baylor Baylor wasn't interested and so we made some calls friends tried the hospital on the west coast in Houston and another friend tried the revisit with somebody from New York and he said don't try it your age is against you and one that doesn't like to give up easy and we kept working and we contacted somebody at Methodist he said first you're not ready for it and a couple of years later he said let me see your papers again so we had paper set up and he said you're ready now but unless a heart shows up there's nothing can be done and then here late in the game I called one day and he He said, well, send me the new papers.
And so we sent, had Presbyterian Hospital send the papers to him. And he said, now you're ready, but a heart has to show up. And there are just not that many hearts. They put you on a list. They put me on a list. And I was laying in the bed one Saturday afternoon, wondering and thinking and everything, and just about gone. And I get a call saying, Mr. Kester, be here in 15 minutes. and and will tell you my heart went to pieces she went to pieces we called our daughter we go over there and they said now wait a doctor so-and-so is flown down to Victoria Texas they going to pull a plug on somebody down there and if he takes the heart work he gonna fly back up and we work on you tonight After a couple hours we get a call get ready so they kept me and ran me down and their own it's been a struggle and it's been uphill and I'm trying to do kind of go forward.
And you're looking very well, and thank God. Thank God. While we were there, we noticed that they were, after Sam got feeling a little better, we noticed that the bunch of rebar coming up out of the ground, and we noticed that they were pouring concrete and everything, and we started asking questions. What is this going to be? And they said, well, they're planning for a new emergency. center and also they were planning a heart center. So we'd see this every day and watch the progress of the building. And then one day, a few weeks later, I saw a big article in the Dallas Morning News about this new heart center.
So Sam and I started talking about it and we decided that society had been so good to us, the good Lord had been so good to us, and this is something that we had to be a part of. And we actually wanted to do something and be connected with this Heart Center. So we talked about it and decided to give some money to the Heart Center, and they were so elated that they decided to name the Heart Center after us. September the 24th 1999 there will be a dedication of the Sam and Ann Kessner Heart Center of which we are very very proud at where?
at Methodist Hospital how beautiful, how wonderful we have invited the mother of the girl whose heart I have to come and either stay with us or stay at a hotel And she will be a speaker also. Because it had to be traumatic on her to lose a 21 daughter out of a clear blue sky like that And this is just another effort and it an act of God People ask me why there is no explanation. I'm one of the oldest, if not the oldest in the world to get it. Why it happened, I have no explanation. It has made us, not just me, but us, deeply, deeply religious.
not only that we're blessed with each other but blessed with magnificent children God did something very special but this is something out of the clear loose guy when everybody said no you can't get it and it's the end of the world and that was it like the head of the hospital said I probably had four days to live or two weeks to live or whatever it was and then this showed up what a blessing that is for you and it is a blessing for the community and your family and everyone who knows you that y'all are able to continue all the wonderful things that you do.
We've been very lucky or blessed to have grown up in homes that have been very, from parents that have been very, very charitable. And we saw that at an early age. even to the blue boxes, the tzedakah boxes that our parents had that they would throw all their spare change in whether they could afford it or not. And this has been engraved in our minds and we've always tried to give back to society for that, for our blessings. and we're very proud to have been one of the underwriters of the Dallas Coalition. We gave them whatever it was, we gave them a handsome check, and not only were we satisfied with doing that, but Sam went to the Torah class at Temple Emanuel and also shared Israel and gave them a challenging grant.
For a couple of years in a row. And said that we would match everything that was raised for the coalition. And we did that, and we have supported them throughout the years since then, and we're very proud of that. We also started the Community Foundation. I mean the Jewish Welfare Federation Foundation with a grant, I guess, 10 years ago. We had to send off to Cleveland to get the papers and we had to pay for that and go through all of this. And that is part of our charity. And the reason we did this, Doris, is that we try to keep things low-key. And we try to set an example for the community here.
we've set it up in such a way that whatever we give to that foundation our children can give out so it doubles whatever our children give if any of our children give $100 they get the foundation gets $200 so they give $1,000 the foundation gets $2,000 and we match their grant and it's made all of our children very charity that actually gets the charity charity gets it not sure It comes out of the foundation. You match what your children give. With all four of our children, all ten of our grandchildren give. No matter what the charity is, our organization. It can be Jewish, non-Jewish, whatever it is.
Whatever it is. It's to teach them to duck it. And it is work. We match that. And ours was the first foundation. We paid to have it done. Is that why? We established the first foundation. And you know the Dallas Jewish Historical Society is a part of, well, the Federation is now going to have this expansion campaign. I know what they're doing. And we are one of the seven agencies, seven or eight agencies, that are going to be a part of that. So we're very thrilled about that. And I wanted you also to talk about how you got interested in a wonderful program that you've established in the city in the Jewish community is Profiles.
And can you talk a little bit about that? Yes. Ann and I talked about that for a long time. We were alarmed at the rate of intermarriages. We saw what it was doing to the Jewish community. And I talked to rabbis around the country, Colorado, Carolina, and elsewhere, and tried to figure out what we could do about it. And we figured that this would be a solution to that. So we set up a program here in town We agreed to underwrite it for three years We gave them so much the first year and said we furnish everything there the equipment the help and everything and inside of, I don't remember whether it's three or six weeks, it became the biggest success that the centers had.
It was a moneymaker inside of six weeks. In fact, several of the mockers in this community have come to me and said, somebody in Carolina wants to do that. Somebody in Colorado wants to do that. Will you underwrite it there? And my comment is if people in Colorado and Carolina want it, certainly there are enough rich Jews there to where they can do it, and I don't feel that I should go all over the country doing it. And I almost resent that, and I've tried to work with others to get them to do it. To help them get it started. It's one of the biggest blessings that we've had.
We attended a meeting at the center a few weeks ago at which we sat down next to a Russian refugee lady who'd met her husband there. and while we were sitting there her daughter came up with her husband they had met through this and they came up with a 20 year old baby and there were 90 something weddings and 60 something children born through the profile program and of all the things that's one of the proudest programs we've had you know I serve on the Community Foundation I serve on a bunch of things but of all the things we've ever worked with, this is the one that I think Ann and I are the proudest of.
I know you both were very involved as young people in the community. Can you talk about a little bit about what it was like then compared to what it is now as far as Jewish life is concerned? Here's where we differ. We were both born in Dallas and grew up in Dallas her whole life when I was five or six weeks old my folks moved to the country I'm one of the few Jewish boys that picked cotton as a kid really the only real exposure I had was my folks would close the store every holiday to come in for services we would eat meat when dad came into town to buy meat so every three weeks or a month we would have meat The rest of the time we were vegetarians I grew up in the country When I was about 11 years old, my folks realized that I had no real formal Jewish education, so we moved back to Dallas.
Ann had grown up right near within two blocks of Sherry Fizzle and had a good education. I had none of that. I'd been making it up. I'm not ashamed to tell you, and Ann is here and she'll vouch for it. I get up every morning between 5 and 6 and study Torah and daven here at the house, and before I go to sleep every night I do that. I'm still learning, and it gives me an inner peace that nothing else could give me. I don't care how successful business or the children or anything. This gives me a peace with my Maker, and it lets me justify my being here.
What a beautiful statement that is. This is not rehearsed. I mean, this is off of the cuff. I had no idea what we were going to talk about. Beautifully said. When I stop and think of having gone ashore, probably the first man to hit the beach in France on the southern side and pulled something off like that and a few other things, and then to be married to the most magnificent woman I've ever known, I have to have been blessed beyond the wildest dreams. And that's on the tape. Beautifully said. You can't take that. Right. For posterity. For posterity is right. Well, this has been wonderful.
And if there's anything else you'd like to say, we're just more than glad. I don't want to tire you. And it's been a wonderful interview. And it's been a pleasure. Sam and Ann were honored at Sheriff Israel in June of 1993. Whatever that date is. Yeah. And Laura Miller wrote, there is a whole edition of the Dallas Business Journal that is dedicated to them and has wonderful stories of some of the things that Sam and Ann have touched upon. And this newspaper called Dallas Business Journal will go into the archives and with stories of Sam and Ann and their families. And also this is from the Methodist Hospital Foundation did a beautiful story about salmon And Methodist Hospital is where the Kessners have made their memorial a gift.
And the heart wing, the heart facility is in their name. And so this story will also go into the archives. Thank you so much, Sam, and it's been a pleasure. Now cut it all over. I thought our interview with Sam and Ann Kessner was over, but off the cuff they've been telling me some wonderful stories, And they're very appropriate in that we're talking about how Sam and Ann interacted with the non-Jewish community. And they have wonderful experiences. So we're going to go on and talk about some of those. Many years ago, Ann and I used to take food from her brother's bakery on Sunday afternoon when he closed it and took it to a little Catholic church on Singleton Boulevard.
And we got so closely involved with them that when I had Sherry Dizzle put on a counter blessing program, we made them the recipient for a couple of years in a row. Plus? Then we came along with the stew pot program when Harry Brown started it at the First Presbyterian Church and worked with him to the extent that the ladies at the First Presbyterian Church couldn't understand why I wouldn't join that. Except I explained to them that it was Jewish, and they would say, well, we've had a Jew here. And I said, yeah, and you nailed him to a cross, and I'm not going to take a chance on that.
And that usually stopped that. And then we started the profile program at the Federation or the Center, and we've done work throughout the country for Jewish causes. And we've always tried to downplay it. because we learned a long time ago that if word gets out, you get hit by everybody under the sun. We have been hit by so many charities that it was almost becoming irritating. Why don't you explain about the Count Your Blessings program and just what you did there? working in Sherry Dizzle. I was the first president of the Brotherhood there. It was about 1954. 1954. I started it. I started it. Dallas, at that time, had, on Sunday, they had what they called blackout, where the entertainment at the hotels and everything wasn't allowed.
I mean, it was... You may remember that. They did not have, if you... The mural room and everything was closed. Was closed. Yeah. And, of course, the entertainers were here in Dallas. So Sam got together with Tony Zoppe and decided to have a Count Your Blessing program. Got together before Tony Zoppe got involved. I had Joe Reitman help me with it. And we put on all this entertainment that was available They gladly gave us their time. We underwrote everything else, the tickets and all of that business. We personally underwrote all of that business. And who was the beneficiary? We divided every penny that came in among the most worthy Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish organizations we could find in this city.
I can remember once going to a Protestant little church out in West Dallas that had been washed out by a flood. And I called them and they said, what's the catch? We said, there's no catch. Come and see. Well, they finally reluctantly came to see it. And when they came to the program that night, these half a dozen men broke down and cried. They didn't believe people would do what we did for them. And we wrote them a check. It was the largest check they'd ever gotten. All the proceeds were divided that night. Everything was taken in. They...