Stephanie Berman
Stephanie was born in Dallas in 1966, the youngest of several siblings, including a sister one year older and a brother and sister about ten years older. Her father managed and designed jewelry for Sterling Jewelry Distributing Company, a chain of stores owned by relatives Frances and Ervin, and worked for many years at the downtown Dallas store. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom active in community and bowling who later went into real estate. Her father was born in Missouri, where his parents ran a shoe store and a consignment store, and he came to Dallas to join the family business.
Stephanie attended Akiba Academy through kindergarten and grew up enjoying swimming lessons at the JCC and life among her extended Jewish family. She graduated from J. J. Pearce High School, joined BBYO, and especially loved USY conventions in cities such as Shreveport, Houston, and Oklahoma City. She studied at Arizona State University and Stephen F. Austin State University, married, and settled in Arizona, where she and her husband bought a business. When her mother became ill, the family returned to Dallas.
For a time Stephanie worked part-time and raised her son, later building a career in the cosmetic industry as a trainer and recruiter. At 41 she made her first piece of jewelry and quickly opened her own store in the Shops at Willow Bend, becoming a branded partner with Swarovski Elements before moving to her own studio. Her father proudly helped her open the store. She later married Peter Berman, an electrical contractor, blending their children into one family. She and her husband attend Shabbat dinners and Friday services, and she urges the next generation to believe in themselves, hold to family and tradition, and help others.
Full Transcript
Stephanie 1966 Dallas Texas not that long ago but let's go back when you were a little girl tell me about life when you're just little in Dallas um well I was I went to and I keep Academy I believe I was four and five six years old graduated from there I only went there until I graduated from kindergarten had a big graduation with to the JCC for swimming lessons and basically hung out with my little big Jewish family tell me about your folks what did your dad do for a living well he managed a store called sterling jewelry distributing company incorporated which was a chain
of stores owned by our relatives his sister Frances Stotsky and Ervin Gonski and he managed and designed jewelry and did an unbelievable job with the store downtown Dallas for many many years what about your mom what's your mom she was a stay-at-home mom when we were young she was really involved in the bday breath and she did things like bowling and then she decided to get into real estate when I was a teenager and she went with one of the smaller outfits for a few years and then she was asked to join every holiday until she became sickened and moved on grandparents do you remember
your grandparents of all my grandmother Zelda Cohen yes I remember her she actually made it to my wedding in 1988 wearing her little blue coat in August in the heat not quite with the program but yes I did have some fun memories of her yes do you remember what your grandfather did for a living my father's father Abe Cohen was I believe he had a shop i think he had a shoe store I don't really know that much about it I know that my grandmother had like a consignment store but I believe they were they were fairly successful what they did and that was here
in Dallas no that was actually and like st. Joe Missouri and somewhere you know in that area so was your dad born in Missouri he was he was yes and what was the reason that your dad came to Dallas because Frances and urban were building their their business and he decided to come down and check it out I think it took him a little while before he actually went to work for them but he did he came down here to be with the family where'd you go to high school I went to JJ pearce okay what you guys do for fun there were jungle parties in the in the little wooden areas up the
frankfurt and quite red when that was a grassy area yeah we were we're a bit naughty we did a lot of parties outside and but i did join BBY oh and i did that for a little while and my favorite thing was us why the United Synagogue youth organization out of Sheriff Israel and those were conclaves that we would go on convention weekends where we'd spend an entire weekend in Shreveport or Houston or Oklahoma City and meet all the other kids Jewish kids and just do like the whole Jewish thing and play with each other and you know get all kinds of boyfriends and now
was it when you were young the Vietnam War was going on the hippie movement was going on did any of that mean anything to you then no I can't say that my sister and my brother at 10 years older than me so I did watch them where the you know the flared pants and the wild tops and they were very popular my sister and brother very good looking very popular and always on the trend and so I did watch that happened then I have a sister that's one year older than me so she wasn't really in the hippie movement either she was with me where
you were when elvis passed away I do when Elvis died I remember being at home I was 11 um yeah I was at home and and it was announced on the television and I was sitting there and I was just I remember just stand in front of TV and just looking at it going this isn't real this isn't happening very strange after high school go to workers go to college I went to college I went to a couple of colleges with Arizona State University and my father decided that we were coming back to Texas both my sister and I because we were both in Arizona
at different schools and and so we came back and I met who was going to become my husband that summer and ended up going to stephen f austin State University with him we were engaged and I went to college together weren't you guys settle down and we settled down well when we married which was two years later and we settled down we moved to Arizona we lived there for a while we bought a business and we lived there for a while until my mother became sick about three four years in and we decided to come back here yeah okay and once you get into when
you were here and when I was young I really didn't work that much I was more into my community and just friends and having my son at the Jewish Community Center and and I was a part-time worker and stay at home mom mainly when I was young but then when I was a little bit older and I became single for a while and I did have a career in the cosmetic industry and I I did trainings and I did I was a representative for a company called fresh and I took that from being a small bath company in their cosmetic line to being a trainer
training territories at Neiman Marcus and sex with Avenue and I did that for a while and I also was a recruiter but most recently at the age of 41 i sat down to make a piece of jewelry after designing something in my head and ended up opening my own store and becoming a jewelry designer what tell us about did it go on well um I watched you know years and years and years of looking at the catalogs of jewelry and the Sterling jewelry and cases filled with jewelry and just being so mesmerised by it watching my father design and how he'd wake up in the
middle of the night he'd have some crazy design that he'd have to draw on and go make and then and one day I made this bracelet because I was intrigued by a piece of jewelry that I had I wanted to make something different and so I did that and within two months of making that bracelet and I was planning to open my own store with my own designs I had done a few and shows with my jewelry and it was very successful so I decided to to take it to the level that had always dreamed of and I opened up inside the shops at willow
bend and soon after that I became a branded partner with swarovski elements where you send in your designs and then they accept you or they don't accept you as a designer of their brand and so that's where I am now I actually built an unbelievable clientele while in the mall and I've taken it out of the mall and now I have my own studio that's like a little store you can come shopping in people coming to order everything from crystallized boots Jewelry jewelry cell phone covers I do Jewish logo cell phone covers I do all kinds of things not with your dad's background how proud
is he Oh tote oh he came and helped me open the store and he was so intrigued he would he would literally get on the phone and call my clients that had already come shopping while I was standing there making jewelry in the store and he would say you've got to come right now and see what she's doing this is the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen and I'd be like yeah right dad and he'd be like no really it truly is and there were times when people would like in the neighborhood or around the corner and they would come walking in like 10 minutes
later we couldn't believe it but yeah he helped me build what i have now you're dead in the service he actually was in Korea he was a cook okay in Korea in Korea did he ever have any more stories for you guys did he ever come home and telling oh yeah he did and to be honest with you I don't really remember much about it he did tell some stories though I think you know just hearing some horror stories I kind of have blocked a lot of it out but and yeah he had quite a time in in Korea yeah okay no you're remarried tell
you about meeting your husband fonda chefs are better knew Peter Berman and wanted to introduce him to someone Jewish and asked my sister Sharon Berman and if she knew anyone and she said well there's my sister and so they gave him my phone number and he waited a few months for to make the phone call and he he ended up not making the phone calls because he heard through the grapevine I was dating someone and then and I was kind of interested in going out with the South African but not really sure about it until I went to Israel and that following spring I went
to Israel and I experienced something so completely different and magnificent that made me realize that we're all the same but different and that i should give an opportunity to you know to meet or maybe even date somebody who's different or from somewhere different and that following summer just a few months later and i was with my sister on the July fourth weekend and we were going out to see fonda on her boat where peter had a boat also right next to hers on the same pier and that's how they knew each other and so we were getting in the car that night and I said
jokingly wouldn't it be funny if that guy Peter Berman was there well lo and behold he was there and Sharon and Fonda still introduced us and we never had to go on that blind date which neither one of us really wanted to do and at that very moment when we both saw each other that was it we had an absolute blast we watched the fireworks and and ended that giving me a call that week and that was it we got married seven months later you have your son and he has two children and how does that work together is this new family with three kids
when they all met it was a love affair I mean immediately I love the kids immediately they loved me back it was just I don't know it which is something that was just so comfortable and so amazing and the kids just felt like wow you know what we've been through divorce and it would be really nice to have other kids around that that I can relate to and they really took to each other was your husband do he's an electrical contractor for commercial buildings you have an involvement with the Jewish community today I can't say that I'm heavily involved in the Jewish community I just
have a lot of Jewish friends and I you know we go to Shabbat dinners and we go to services on Friday nights and I can't say I go as much as my husband goes but I do go this is a Shabbat mogen David cup that my mother used and served and when I was growing up and we have a whole set of it my sister Amy now has the set and as a matter of fact we're doing Shabbat dinner and we will be using these cups such a sweet lady was there something that came along that you said Wow too though that in my lifetime
oh yeah I'm a big flower I love wows when the internet hit Wow I remember my sister Amy where she was getting married to a guy Scott gold theme and he ended up very ill with brain cancer right before they got married and the internet had just hit and so we had a computer and I didn't really understand all the things that were going on on the internet I remember sitting down and typing in astro blastoma the type of cancer he had and reading about it and how it was a terminal illness and it just killed me but I just kept reading and reading and
reading and I still do it the internet really made a huge impact on me my sister Amy is remarried and she married his brother interesting yes and so they're together and they actually went to the st. Jude's raffle you know where they give away a house every year in Frisco it was probably about five years ago six years ago they won the house Wow yeah and rabbi block from chabad said the only reason why you won that house is because you belong to my show but yeah they won that house in your lifetime there's been a lot of momentous occasions is there something you know the moon landing when you're a little girl in 69 something good the tragedy of 911 Princess Diana that got killed me with somebody walked up I was sitting at a restaurant my Jewish girlfriend I were sitting
there and the guy walks up to take her order and he goes and Princess Diana just passed away and we just looked at each other we my friend looked at each other look back at him and said what's the punch line and he was like there's no punch line this is real and then they turned on the TV and we saw that we couldn't believe it Michael Jackson dying that's just that was crazy that was a moment of absolute disbelief and the 911 incidents oh my that was beyond anything that I could have ever comprehended watching that on TV and when I saw the hole
in the building I I was on the phone with my father and I said it's a building is going to fall I said there's now nothing to hold that building together and it is going to fall and my father was in disbelief and then the next moment when the next building got hit we were watching TV together and I just couldn't believe it you're still a young lady but what advice could you leave to the next generation just believe in yourself believe in your family stick with your traditions a a lot of the kids today are afraid of religion they see what the world's what's
happening to the world and they blame it all on religion don't blame your religion because your family is part of your religion and you need to keep that close to your heart at all times believe in yourself and always do whatever you can to help other people and give as much as you can stuff you did a great job thanks for you yeah