Stanley Fine
Stanley Fine's family roots trace back to Eastern Europe and Belgium. His paternal grandparents came from Lithuania and immigrated to South Africa around 1910, fleeing the pogroms in search of a better life; there they built a business that grew from a general dealership into an office supply business in Johannesburg. His maternal grandfather was in the diamond business, moving from Antwerp, Belgium, to South Africa around 1936, before the Holocaust, and became one of the founders of an operation in the diamond industry there. Stanley grew up in Johannesburg, attending primary and high school and then earning his law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand.
Stanley married Lynn in 1982, and having long wanted to leave South Africa, the couple emigrated in 1987 to Los Angeles, where they had friends. After seven years, seeking better business opportunities, they moved to Dallas, arriving on July 4, 1992, and marking their first day with a fourth of July fireworks celebration. They initially rented a home in North Dallas before purchasing a house in the Preston area. Their eldest daughter, Morgan, was born in Los Angeles, and their youngest, Remy, was born in Dallas. Both daughters attended Solomon Schechter and Greenhill, with Morgan later graduating from Brandeis University in Boston and Remy beginning studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Stanley found the adjustment to American life easier because of the community's warmth, staying at first with a family they had known from South Africa. He ran his own company and observed many differences between South African and American business, including labor regulations and social conditions, appreciating the more integrated and equal workplace in the United States. He took a far more active role in raising his children than was customary for fathers in his own upbringing, and the family maintained traditions such as Friday night dinners together. Stanley contributed to a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum education program that trained Texas teachers, helping raise funds for the effort. Above all, he remains deeply grateful for how the Dallas community rallied around his family, including strangers who brought food and support when Lynn became ill.
Full Transcript
today is August 228 2013 and we're interviewing Stanley fine as hard as we roots to boost project for the Dallas Jewish Historical Society good morning Stanley good morning nice to be here thank you first of all Stanley can you tell us a little bit about the historical origins of your of your family where did your grandparents come from okay um on my mother's side my grandmother was born in a place called was tricky dholna which was originally austria and as part of Poland and her husband came from the same area on my father's side my grandparents came from Lithuania and immigrated to South Africa i
would say in about nineteen ten or so somewhere around there and my paternal grandparents left restricted on and moved to belgium antwerp when my mother was born and they immigrated to South Africa about 1936 before the Holocaust the grandparents immigrated in nineteen ten years obviously was before the Holocaust what was their reason for leaving with Wayne well there were the pogroms and they just felt that it was a better life to leave and my grandfather left first and then his wife came a few years later what type of business was he in in South Africa they were in the office supply business in South Africa
it was a general dealer it became an office supply business in Johannesburg and my maternal grandfather was in the diamond business and he was one of the founders of the Darlington South Africa coming from from Belgium in the diamond industry that's what he continued doing so where did you personally grow up I'll grew up in Johannesburg went to school there went to university there and then emigrated in 1987 to the United States tell me a little bit about schooling in Johannesburg and what did what the school system was like and if you can perhaps compare it to the school system in the United States the
school system was very different it was a more rigid system it was a quarterly system where you took a subject at school throughout the year and we tested at the end of the year there wasn't as much interaction I found between the parents and the children is there as there is today and I'm not sure if that's just because of the time frame that we went to school but it was it was much more based on the British system there were your punishments there was canings they were grew very different but it was a good system we went private thought I was in the private
school yes I were actually my primary school was it was a public school but my high school was a private school and then where you went to university I went University in Janice burg to the University of Witwatersrand we call it quits and that's in the city and we are studying for my law degree your logical yeah and then you say did you marry in South Africa got married in South Africa 1984 no I apologize nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty-two don't tell my wife I slipped up on that and what was the reason that you chose to leave South Africa well I'd always wanted to
leave I'd actually wanted to try and study here in the States my parents wouldn't hear of it and when we got married then and I decided that we just didn't see a future in the country not for us more so for our children and we decided to leave and we picked up and we went to Los Angeles and I suppose that most South Africans really gravitate towards a city where they have friends that have left prior to themselves and they to make it down and they feel comfortable then moved to Los Angeles not because it was it's a great city but that was just where
I had some friends and it made sense to beat it so how long did you live in Los Angeles lived in Los Angeles seven years and then we came to dallas in 1992 so he had friends in Los Angeles but chose to move and what was the reason for choosing to move I just felt that from a business opportunity it was a better place to be at the time that i lived los angeles was going through a pretty rough period economy wasn't too good business wasn't good and i decided to move to dallas how did you choose Dallas I had a friend who wanted to
partnership with and we decided to look you know he lived in dallas and we set up the the company here in Dallas where and where did you live when you first came to Dallas and what part of the community did you settle in originally we rented a house in north dallas and we were there about a year and then we we purchased a house or so north dallas preston personal area that were you currently living down what was it like adjusting to the community here in dallas what was your experience it's very easy we didn't know a lot of people we knew a few people
one family we knew from South Africa going back many many years and they were just amazing to us we stayed with him when we initially arrived just to get our bearings and through them we met you know more people in the community and we found that the community was very very warm very friendly so when you came here you're you had your own company yes and obviously been successful when I company and life is good for you here life's been laughs had its ups and downs but it's been good and you're raising children here in Dallas tell us about your children well my eldest was
born in LA and she was two years old when we came here and my youngest was was obviously born in Dallas they started school at solomon schecter and my eldest moved to Greenhill I think she was in the second grade and my youngest started from promote at greenham and they're both graduated from Green Hill Morgan is the eldest went on to University in Boston and Brandeis she's just graduated from Brandeis and Remy has just started at UT in Austin um so when you first when you first arrived in this country what were your impressions of the United States well we've been to the United States
a few times before but being a tourist and being an immigrant or two very different things I've always loved the US but things were done very differently here and it took us time to to figure out that the roadmap so to speak business is different we think they speak the same language they don't it is different life in general is I would say not as open as it is in south africa in the sense of people being able to move from and come visit people just drop in with unannounced things like that which we which we were very accustomed to which is different in the
u.s. you don't really come visit people without telling them or asking him if it's okay it wasn't a big deal it's just one of them one of the differences and it's I think you learn so much when you hear we came from a very sheltered environment very comfortable environment wonderful I bring I can't imagine having a better upbringing anywhere in the world toward we had in South Africa but we were sheltered from a lot of things that we didn't ask about we knew that there were issues in the country but we just went about our our daily activities as if nothing was going on and we
were very very fortunate children and the community in South Africa was extremely powerful and successful community and life was like was great but coming to this country you were exposed to so much more you learn so much and for that I'm very grateful you mentioned that business was different can you give me an example I'm interested to know how his business different here than himself happen it's different in in the way things are done how you pay your employees obviously there were a lot more restriction to labor restrictions and things of that nature overtime restrictions you know I think that it's a lot more regulated
here than it was in South Africa and regulated I'm sure for the good but you've got to learn you've got to learn the ropes and I I was fortunate in that I worked for a us-owned company for two or three years and I learned a lot whereas i would say coming to this country and trying to start your own business from scratch must be very difficult it's always good to to learn from you know people they'd live here so labor laws are different were there any other labor laws or social social mores that you found different between the two countries well obviously there was certainly
no discrimination here in the sense that your your labor pool was whoever was qualified for the job the labor pool in south africa was different in the sense that you still employed whoever was qualified for the job but you didn't really mix i was involved in a corporation south africa that employed most probably about 400 people but it was and it was a wonderful labor force but there wasn't a lot of interaction between the Hadean the blacks and the whites what african americans whereas here everybody's on on the same level and you my father played in my upbringing in the sense that in South Africa
the father was the was the breadwinner and he worked and yes he was obviously interested in the well-being of his kids but he didn't participate on a daily basis in school activities changing diapers things of that nature and in this country and we didn't have any help when we when we arrived here you know we were very fortunate South Africa we had a lot of outside help so you know you can't leave everything to the mom so you learned very quickly and it's good because I think that I had a much more active role in bringing up my children than my dad did in bringing
me up and they did a marvelous job I think but at least I I I saw my children growing from day to day and being involved in the activities and taking them to sports and and sending them off to camp which was very different we didn't really go to camp in South Africa we went on family vacations so those things are different but you know those were the adjustments we had to make but they weren't really adjustment they were just this is what you do um how did people in Los Angeles and in dallas and if there was a difference between the two by the
way react to you as a new immigrant country they were fascinated especially the people in Los Angeles because they could not understand a stood to a certain extent the rationale for leaving but they could not figure out how you could move from a country which was your home and come to somewhere so different where you didn't even know the route to the grocery store they it was it was beyond their comprehension how you could have such an upheaval in your life and go to something that you didn't know whether it was going to work out or not you thought that it was going to work
out but they would prepare to take that that risk but I think that the reason they weren't prepared to take their truce was they never were put into that situation and I meant to think about that risk we always knew that there was something brewing in South Africa especially part of the Jewish community and we always travel we always went out of the country and and I think that deep down there was a knowledge that you were going to certainly try and leave the country at some stage whereas the you know the people from the United States it never entered their into their mind as
to bed leave the country because they thought that he there was a political issue or social issue anything of that nature so for them it was they were they were amazed when you left obviously you couldn't pack up everything were there are certain things that you brought with you that were particularly important significance emotionally or or historically and were there things that you had to leave behind that you're sad to have to have had to leave well the memories and unfortunately contact the memories with you possessions we took what it what we needed the photographs the little silver pieces that may have been handed down
from generation to generation the the candlesticks things of that nature but we arrived with three suitcases so there wasn't alight we then did get a container of furniture that we purchased two to bring over here but you know from from the point of view of the the memories yeah we we live we live quite a bit behind do you travel back often yeah normally go back once a year I still added well I don't have parents any longer unfortunately passed on but Lynn has her parents there and her sister dead so we try and go back once a year have other members of your side
of the family left since you left well my sister emigrated to Australia but she's now back in South Africa because she was taking care of my dad who recently passed on she will be named back to Australia i mentioned next year so outside of outside of my immediate family this is there's nobody so between your family and lens family people are kind of spread around at this point correct moving can you describe some of your earlier experiences during your first years in Dallas some of the things that you remember that we're particularly important interesting notable to you well I remember arriving on the fourth of
July that was when we got to dallas and going to a fourth of july celebration with fireworks that was my first day in dallas which was quite interesting what can i say that's been interested then this so many there's so many different memories of of dallas the kids going to greeny on their first days at school meeting a lot of American people and becoming extremely friendly with parents from my children's grades just seen Dallas Dallas has changed dramatically as far as I'm concerned in the last twenty years coming from Johannesburg which is really a sophisticated City going to Los Angeles which i think is a
wonderful city that offers anything and everything and coming to Dallas it was harder to move from LA to dallas and it was from johannesburg to Los Angeles Dallas to me in the beginning was a very friendly place and i hope i'm not going to fin anybody but it was a waste thing that's why i saw it however i think that what has happened over the last 20 years is it's attracted many people from around the country has become very would say international city but there's a major corporation chance of people are coming from all over the place the restaurant scene has improved there's a lot
that has changed in the city over the last 20 years and the real thing that stuck out to me about Dallas compared to Los Angeles is its easy City to live and from that point of view I install that in the kids and it's very difficult yet because you have fun enough football and you're conjuring you put your kids into an environment where they want to enjoy those kind of things and then you say they can't so it was a bit of a balancing act and in the beginning the kids would call said do you mind if I go to the game tonight and but
they very much understand the meaning of Friday night and the dinner table the other thing that I think they will definitely continue with is we have done it together every evening as a family speaking of foods tell me a little bit about the foods that you must enjoyed in South Africa and whether you've continued with that tradition here yes we have a special for a horse which is a sausage that you barbecue and my kids love it and whenever they come home that's what they want and suck it a little tradition that that we have I like that the dry meat which is people trying
to equate to beef jerky it's I think it's very different I really enjoy that and the candies the candies from South Africa are outstanding especially the chocolates we we must oh so whenever we go back we load up with with chocolates and bring it back those are the foods that remind us about South Africa well now that you're here in the Jewish community can you tell us in what ways you might have been become personally involved in the community itself in what ways I could have or should have or have I have not really got involved in the community as such I've been a contributor
to the community from the point of view of offering my time I haven't done a lot for the community have you been involved in anything in Dallas outside of the Jewish community from a professional standpoint anything the only thing that I really got involved with it for a period of about two years was the u.s. Holocaust Museum offered a an education seminar once a year to teachers from around Texas from public private high schools and universities and I'm and I got involved with that and assisted in that program and it was actually quite amazing to see people coming in and they were mainly non-jewish people being told about the Holocaust I mean there were there were there people educated people that knew absolutely nothing about it were absolutely fascinated and the purpose of the course was for them to go back to their communities and their colleges and their schools and teach this information to their students so from that point of view
that was that was very grateful what was your role in that project I assisted in raising money for the project because we had to bring in the teachers and the some of the students it was not anything that the that the city or the state would would fund so I assisted in raising money for for their for that program is that a program that's going to continue or is it goes from from year to you and i believe it's done about october november of each year wonderful well that's that's terrific well Stanley are there some things that I have not asked you that you would
like to share with us either about your family life your family history traditions your children anything at all that I have not touched upon that you think would be important as a legacy to add to this interview I would say that the specifically told me about Dallas hmm the thing that stands out the most to me is how the community rallied around the family when Lynn became ill and I'm not sure if she had mentioned that to you she did and to this day I am just absolutely blown away by people who were total strangers to us that brought food to the house and inquired
about her and I really think that a bit of southern hospitality if you want to call it whatever it is is endemic to the commute to this community and I'm forever grateful for that thank you so much it's barely been a pleasure getting to know you and having you share your story with us and we wish you the best wish your wife the best Thank You Joan thank you so much for asking me