Seinwil “Ito” Perl
Ito Perl was born in 1934 in Brownsville, Texas, the last of his mother's children. He was named after a great-grandfather from Austria, though his family Anglicized the name; the nickname Ito came from Spanish-speaking neighbors and stuck for life. His father, Sam, was born in Austria and came to the United States around age ten, settling in Galveston as part of the Galveston movement that redirected immigrants away from New York. As a teenager, Sam helped Rabbi Henry Cohen settle new arrivals. Sam and his brother later bought a men's clothing store and moved to Brownsville around 1928, where Sam became a prominent merchant, radio personality, and civic supporter. Ito's mother was born in Indianapolis to immigrant parents from Central Europe and Russia.
Growing up on the Mexican border, Ito was largely raised among Hispanic neighbors and spoke more Spanish than English as a child. His father ran Pearl Brothers, considered the best men's store in Brownsville, and Ito worked there as a reluctant salesperson. He recalled the Depression, when his father bartered goods for suits, and World War II, when the border town saw blackouts, patrolled beaches, and quietly circulated stories of German U-boats near Brownsville. He attended local schools, played on the high school football B team, and decided early to become an engineer. He went on to study at Texas A&M, graduating in 1955 when the school was all-military.
Ito's engineering career took him to Corpus Christi, Bishop, Houston, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and New Iberia, Louisiana, before he settled in Dallas and joined Texas Instruments, where he stayed for 35 years in the government electronics group, working on guidance for missiles including the Paveway. He met Marion at Temple Emanu-El and married her in 1960; the couple celebrated 55 years together and raised three children and four grandchildren. He witnessed President Kennedy's motorcade pass the TI Lemmon Avenue plant shortly before the assassination, a moment that stayed with him. Active in Dallas Jewish life through Temple Emanu-El and later Temple Shalom, he offered the next generation simple advice about commitment and marriage.
Full Transcript
sign well Edo pearl correct well we don't go by sign whoa no what's the story with that name well it's a long story but I'll tell it okay I was named after a great grandfather who was born in Austria who lived to be a hundred and four his name was on bone zan viel which is derived kind of like Israel Zhang will means head of the household eldest son and that sort of thing but my folks said well we can't name him sogndal and live in the United States we have two anglicize it so they came up with this cockamamie name Simon s ein WIIL
Simon and my dad was named Sam and I grew up on the Mexican border so he was thin your son well Samuel and my name sounded like Samuel so the Mexican folk said you must be somewhere little the diminutive of some well are the small so I couldn't say it all is a child and they would say they would ask me what my name was and I said me llamo ito my name is Ito and it stuck yeah and then I got to the first grade and my first-grade teacher said Summerville sunnyvale has anyone here whose last name is pearl I raised my hand and
said well how would you like to be called Sonny and I said just call me ito time passes I register for the draft I'm nmi no middle initial we look at my birth certificate and the way I've been spelling this sign wall they were different my mother had to sign an affidavit having to do with fixing it and so she put in the fact that we had left out my middle name Ito and so my legal name sign will eat dope ro and you go by ito i go by ito alright you know 1934 Brownsville Texas let's go back tell me about life when you
were just a little boy well the first thing I did is I won the big baby contest I wait 11 and a half pounds of birth how was the last child to be born to my mother life in Brownsville was kind of interesting when I was born the Jewish community in Brownsville consisted of about 25 families the town was maybe 20 mm for good 50 percent at that point were Hispanic I guess in fact I was pretty well raised by Hispanics and it's why I'm bilingual I speak Spanish as well as English and in fact as a child I spoke more Spanish than I did
English but it was a you know semi-tropical climate there were grape fruit trees and orange trees and lemon trees and and now it's terrible down there you know the border is much different than when I was growing up what does your dad do for a living my dad was a merchant he had pearl Brothers Pro Brothers was a men's store it was the best men's store in Brownsville and my dad had a weekly radio program the the boys that the fashion Pro brothers we do love everybody kind of thing and he was a big he was a big supporter of the city in fact there
is the bridge to get across to Mexico his name SAMCRO Boulevard so they named it after him Wow now was your dead born in this country no my dad was born in Austria he came he came here when he well there's a little controversy as to what what age but about ten years old and he ended up in Galveston he was raised in Galveston graduated from ball high school in Galveston now where did he come from little town called Padilla's Austria he came with his mother his father two brothers yeah did I ever tell you why they came or what the story was or how
they got here well the reason for Galveston was that at the time the whole Galveston movement if you if you know about that they wanted to there were too many immigrants coming into the port of New York and they redirected folks to either New Orleans or to Galveston Galveston was a port of entry in fact when my dad was teenager he helped Rabbi Henry Cohen who was pretty famous he helped settle a lot of the new immigrants that showed up there dad was kind of a traveling salesman at that point and then one day his brother saw an ad for the magic Valley and they
saw that a gentleman wanted to sell his men's clothing store so his brother and he bought the store and moved there and I believe it was 28 1928 did he ever tell you what it was like being a young kid coming through a country half a world away he told me a little bit of Yiddish story he said it's a golden doll on a golden land Essen sloughing and metre essent which i think means eating sleeping and eating again I think he got acclimated pretty quickly too how did you know his parents you know your grandma I know my grandfather grandmother passed away where's your
grandfather do my grandfather was also a merchant I think he was a peddler first and then he opened the store in Galveston yeah and did you ever work at the store as a kid I did what was your job I was sales person I hated it I had I had no patience for for the customers you know when those days we sold Wembley ties and there were $1 apiece and we had a box of like 200 and the lady said can I look at the ties and so she was looking through all 200 and she said don't you have any more ties and I said
no we did but did she buy one I don't believe she did but no I didn't have the patience to I became an engineer yeah tell me about your mom my mom was too stay-at-home mom unfortunately I guess she was she was a depressive and I guess she had a kind of a hard time of it but but my dad was the outgoing one and she was pretty restrained I guess you'd say was she born in this country she was born in Indianapolis Indiana okay and remember your grandparents on that side I do I do were they also Indianapolis no no they were my grandmother
was born in Czechoslovakia Hungary they didn't know where the border was in those days they'd moved back and forth right and I believe my grandfather was Russian he was a tailor and where did they live when they came here they first lived in Indianapolis and then they moved to Houston and my grandfather was a wandering jew he he he left the family he loved to gamble he was a good tailor evidently he could make some money when he worked but he pretty much abandoned the family and my mother and my hand and my uncle all on my mother's side they all worked to support their
mother yeah now Jefferson see your grandfather in later years yes I did did he ever say anything that ever regret leaving the family we never discussed that but he stayed and he was in in the nursing home in Houston and he went missing one day he'd caught the bus to Galveston to go play the horses now you know you were born after the depression did your folks ever talk about how it affected them though my dad said he that while he was in business he used to barter soon I mean he'd take chickens and trade for a suit or something new and since we lived
on the Mexican border both during the Depression and really during the war the shortages that affected a lot of people didn't affect the folks they're much like you could go across the river and get sugar when sugar was rationed in the States and people bought food my folks never bought meat over their foot but that you could yeah yeah I've been World War two affect your family yes well one thing was a lot of people didn't know but actually there were German u-boats that came up and turned around in the port of Brownsville in the turning basin and there was a Norwegian ship that was
sunk right off the coast my dad was in the clothing business and he outfitted the crew that was saved there with clothing was it was this well known about the youth oh no I don't think so in fact there was a beach there Boca Chica and Padre Island you know at night he had no fires on the beach and we had we had blackout in at home you know blackout shades and blackout curtains no fires no lights and they patrol the beaches because they were concerned that that perhaps there might be you know a boarding party come off of maybe a u-boat or something never
never happened and that was kind of kept quiet though yeah it was in fact they sunk a number of ships off the you know at the mouth of Mississippi I don't know whether that was known much but a lot of merchant ships that were sunk by a German u-boats you have an older sister right what's her name Frances Goodman what did you guys do for fun when you were little well in those days you could go out and play I used to I used to go down to where the train yard was and walk on top the freight cars my folks didn't know about that
no did you ever write it they did you ever write out no no the rule in those days was just be home for dark and right and how would we we played all over the neighborhood my sister had you know a bunch of girlfriends and that sort of thing where did you go to school where was where was elementary school his golden law seven us the end the Ebony's heavenly trees crew down there and and then that's cool high school is brownsville high school played any sports in high school I played football and I was on the B team because I wasn't very good I
was a tackle dummy for the 18 but sat on the bench most of the time during the the varsity games yeah that was it in high school you decided to become an engineer I was yeah and then after high school was that on to college or on the counter where'd you go to school I went to Texas A&M is that where you met Mary Ann no no about when you met her I met her at temple Emmanuel she was sitting in front of me and rabbi Olin was giving a sermon and she was talking to her girlfriend it irritated me but I noticed her I
met her afterwards it's a good friend of mine introduced us and then I asked her out on a date six months later she said what took you so long and I jerking Lea said well I had to work my way down the list but how'd that go how'd that go over huh pretty well she was concerned that I was younger than she was and she wasn't sure she wanted to marry me well it finally got around to it now you and Mary Ann got married in 1960 Ryan you told me that you had to convince her to get married what's the story about that well
she she learned that I was younger than she was and and she thought she shouldn't marry me and she told a good friend of hers and and the friend said oh poor Marion you you know you're always looking prison for something to punish yourself with said you just you just need to go marry the fella if you like him and he's a good guy we'll go ahead and get married so we're coming up to about 56 years now right 55 years we just celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary thank you for your long probation huh yeah that's perfect happiest time in your life I guess when
our children were born you have three good kids now are you and your wife were were you you know when you settle in Dallas did you get involved with the Jewish community yes we did there was a group of young people I can't remember the name of it but it was sponsored by the Federation young people's group and we were active in it and then we were members of temple Emmanuel and when Temple Shalom was formed a number of the younger people went from a manual to Shalom and we waited about a year and then we went to Shalom and then we rejoined Temple Shalom
and were there for many years let's go back to college like for me to tell me about am life at a.m. a.m. when I went there it was all core it was all military and you ended up with with the Commission and M had there was a lot of school spirit and they would one of the first he call it a pep rally but it was it was not really a pep rally there the sophomores would get up and haze the freshmen and they said you know if you don't like this place well and get the hell out you know and a lot of lot of them quit Wow and then you know you'd see you'd see kids with foot lockers on their shoulders head in the early
part of their freshman year but it was good and then after anm where did you go I went to Corpus Christi my first job was Corpus Christi with a consulting engineering firm and they had a job at in Bishop Texas at the Celanese plan and what year was this when you graduated in 155 55 ok 55 I thought I'd go right in the service but they said they had run out of money so they said go get a job and we'll let you know later on and this was just after the Korean War yeah okay and that's what the army ran out of money that's
what they said they said they didn't have money to and they said go ahead work for a while and then you can make your commitment later on right I went to work in in Corpus they sent me to Bishop Texas into Sonny's plan from there I was recruited by the former chief engineer who had a company in Houston and I went to work in Houston for southern industrial piping company and I did piping design pressure vessel design there and then they sent me to DeWitt Arkansas as an office manager for a pipeline and they also sent me to to Pennsylvania and spent the winter in
Washington PA terrible winter and then the my last job with with southern nostra piping they sent me to New Iberia Louisiana and we were doing a gas recycling plant there and it got very lonely because I was a foreigner in my own country because I didn't speak French and all the French folks looked on it says a foreigner and I'd go back to you stand on the weekends and finally I just went in the chief engineer and said you know I like my job fine but I get terribly lonely and I quit went with my folks down New Mexico for a short period of time
and then went went to Dallas to look for a job and I interviewed for a job with Cohn Daniel air-conditioning and with Texas Instruments and I took the job at Texas Instruments stayed with them for 35 years now a TI was there something that you worked on that would amaze me today I mean so many great things have come out of Ti so I'm just wondering if there was something that you could say this is what I worked on it pretty cool how it's with the government electronics group and I used to say people that asked me and said bombs and rockets death and destruction
but I worked on the paveway missile and I worked on some side-looking radar and I think it was a watch they called it there were gunships military gunships that were used in the Vietnam War they delivered a number of rounds killer planes you know and we made the guidance for these guided missiles paveway and some of the others is there an invention in your lifetime that came along that you went Wow how did we get along without that well I kind of grew up in the computer and and I work also we had we were early users of computers at at ti and in fact
we even built some but I guess the computer yeah yeah yeah thing now in your lifetime you've lived through so many remarkable events there's something that just stands out in your mind that affected you what had happened I guess the thing that I remember the most was the Kennedy assassination I was working at the lemon Avenue plan protects us instruments and the motorcade came in front of the plant and we saw the president go by and then as we did in those days we'd go out to lunch and so went out to lunch to a little dive that had a television set and they announced
that the President had been shot and it was just amazing to us because we saw him go by in the motorcade and then within 45 minutes after that we saw that he'd been shot and then he was killed and I went home we left port went home you know it was just a very moving experience yeah yeah now you Maryann have the three kids four grandkids right what advice does granddad have for the next generation don't be so quick to dispose of your husband or wife if you stick it out it'll all work out you know this is the disposable generation I think you know
everything disposable and a lot of people get divorced early on in their in their marriage well thanks for doing this today you did a great job you