Susan Schackman
Susan Schackman's family history spans two immigrant journeys. Her father's family came from Poland, with her grandfather arriving in 1913 through Galveston, working first in Fort Worth before settling in Waco in 1919 as a tailor. Strictly kosher, he famously poured a bucket of water over himself to wash off the blood from his hog-factory work before entering the kosher home where he boarded. His family followed in 1920, enduring a difficult passage during which young Susan's father had the measles and was quarantined for the trip. Her mother's family came from Romania in 1903, eventually settling in San Antonio, where her mother was born, before moving to Dallas, where her grandfather worked as a carpenter and bus driver.
Susan grew up in a small, close Jewish community, moving between San Antonio, Austin, and Waco, where her family was active at Congregation Agudas Jacob. She was involved in Young Judaea, loved acting, speech, and debate, and remembers a tight-knit conservative group of young people. Her parents were her role models: an easygoing father who rebuilt his life after bankruptcy, and a focused, principled mother who taught Sunday school for decades. Her father served on the committee that arranged for Lyndon Johnson, then vice president and later president, to dedicate the Austin synagogue's new building, and a plaque there bears his name. Susan attended the University of Texas and married Joe Schackman in 1965, discovering that their great-grandfather and grandfather had known each other as carpenters.
In Dallas, Susan and Joe built a life centered on family and faith. They raised three children while Joe worked variously as a stockbroker and in the scrap business, and family life revolved around weekly Friday night dinners with her in-laws. Susan started Susan Schackman Catering around 1981 and ran it for 28 years, jokingly noting that her earnings passed straight through to her children's spending money and college costs. She helped found Family Outreach, a child abuse prevention effort, and was active with the National Council of Jewish Women, Shearith Israel Sisterhood, AJC, AIPAC, Jewish Family Service, and the Dallas Arboretum. She counts two trips to Israel, one led by Jack Milad, among her most meaningful experiences, and treasures above all her close, enduring family.
Full Transcript
i'm joe reingold and i'm interviewing susan shakman today and it is still june 12 2020. hi susan good morning good morning um so tell me a little bit about what you know of your family your relatives from way back whatever you know about your grandparents your parents where they lived where they grew up what they did for a living etc okay my father's family came from poland um my grandfather came in 1913 on the casal ship he left from bremen uh he came in through galveston from there he went to fort worth and it was funny i didn't hear this until much later on in my life he worked he lived in a rooming house and he worked in a hog
factory and my grandfather was strictly kosher so he would come home and the house he lived in was a kosher home and she would leave a bucket of water outside for him and then he would come home from work he would take the bucket and pour it over the top of his head to get all of the blood off of him before he could go in the house oh boy now that was in 1913 and then he moved to waco uh in 1919 and uh he was a tailor by trade he and that's what he set for my grandmother and my uncle aunt and my
father and they came in 1920. how did they pick waco do you know uh he had a friend that he knew from that from this town that he lived in and so that's where he went okay um and that's all i know there may have been other reasons but no one's ever my grandparents really didn't talk about anything later on whatever we would ask the answer was always we live for today this is our life now okay um but my the story that my aunt all told about when they came to the united states they were on the amsterdam and they left out of rotterdam so i asked how they got
to rotterdam and she said well they walked or they got on the back of a cart that was going as far as they would go and if they got to the ship right before it was ready to sail and my grandfather had sent them a ticket with for an actual room on the uh cabin on the ship which they've gotten there so late that um they've given it away so they said you can either go on and go steerage or you can wait two weeks for the next ship and my grandmother said no we're out of here they got on and immediately they realized that
my father had them had the measles they put them into quarantine in a cabin which lasted the entire trip and he got better than by the day before they landed at ellis island and my grandfather met them there and then they came back to wake up and then 10 months later they had their last child my mother's family is from romania they came in 1903 and they went to they came through ellis island they went to saint louis why they went to st louis i don't know and then from there they went to san antonio which is where my mother was born when they came
from romania they were on the rio i believe the rio negra was the name of the ship and um there they ended up in san antonio where my mother and two of her sisters were born in saint louis i think she had two brothers that were born there and then the others were all born in uh romania there were nine of them in all from there they moved to dallas my grandfather was a carpenter and uh he he had a workshop out in the back of their house they lived 3500 cleveland was one of the houses in south dallas and the other one was on
colonial uh the one on cleveland assembly when i actually remember and he also worked for the train station uh no not trained the bus station and so he he drove a bus also um my mother taught sunday school at uh temple emmanuel although her father went to the old remaining social in south dallas mother said it was all they were always scared to death of it because they had to go up dark staircase to it so they all joined the temple and um that was there you know then when mother and daddy got married they lived in waco and then they met my father well
i guess when they first got married they moved to port arthur and daddy worked for glaciers a liquor company they moved to san antonio and that's where my sister was born and then to austin which is where i was and then they moved to waco back to waco which is where we lived until i was 16. and then we moved back to austin what was his life like where where you were growing up and what did you do for a businessman had a very small jewish community it was very close jewish communities so all of our friends really were connected with the synagogue um i was active in young judea we did not think i've had young judea and the temple had temple toons and never the twain should meet so we were really a very close conservative group of kids um and really i didn't know many of the kids from temple until i went to college uh but uh there was one
or two that i was friendly with because by then my father worked for levine's and there were several of them whose parents also worked for levine's it was a really close-knit group of kids uh we there were a few of us so we all just kind of hung out together um you know nobody knew that he's there you know those who were wealthy those who were not just kind of did the same things um what did you excel in when you were growing up no golly i was always doing acting on the front porch i put on many plays one of my favorite subjects in
school was speech i was on the debate team and those were my favorite things to do so tell us what did you do after high school after high school i went to the university of texas and then i got married i was uh i only went to texas for a year i was in the sorority of sdt and then i got married in 1965 i graduated high school in 1964 and i got married in 1965. but the funny thing about when joe and i met we had a blind date in dallas i was here visiting relatives and when i told my mother that i had a date with um somebody called joe shachman and she said joe shackman i wonder if he's any kind to old man shackman i had no idea who olan shachman was so i asked him the next night when we went out and he said oh well that was my great grandfather it turns out that his great-grandfather and my grandfather were both carpenters and were friends and my grandfather actually died very young and after he died old
man shackman tried to date my grandmother and she she would take all of her children and hide in the closet when she would see him coming down the street i said well it was a good thing that they didn't get was together family uh a member of any other organization growing up or were you involved in anything else growing up the main thing i was involved with was john jediah and a couple of things at school uh mother and daddy were very active at uh goodness jacob which was the synagogue in waco and then also in austin uh i wasn't because i was like 16
we moved i was in the end of the sixth tenth grade when i moved there and then uh i was uh your daddy was active in the day breath mother was active in the neighborhood women um my father was on pretty and also very active at the synagogue a goodness awesome in austin uh when a godzilla moved into their new synagogue on [Music] bull creek they had arranged for vice president at the time vice president jock lyndon johnson to come and dedicate the synagogue he and jim novi were very very good friends and jim was president of the synagogue at the time of course when
he was supposed to come was the weekend that lbj and jfk were in dallas and then they were going to go to the ranch and then johnson was going to come dedicate the synagogue in austin of course things changed after kennedy was shot here and but president johnson came as president and dedicated our synagogue and my father was on that committee there's a plaque at the synagogue in austin with daddy's name on it uh about the in this you know uh about him being on that committee wow that's exciting it was it was it was very exciting actually tell me about your early married life
where did you guys live what did you do did you have a job or what you know what was your active activities like when you were early moved on in an apartment on spring valley i worked as a secretary associates discount corporation and joe was still in school and also worked after school at sales um and i always laugh i said i we had like 50 cents left every month at the end of the month in our bank account the kids were laughing one day i was cleaning out some stuff and they said why do you have old checks to seven eleven dollars every week
and i said well that was our money for the weekend yeah that's what we had to spend every weekend we would cash a check we would do whatever we could do on ten dollars but uh it was really a nice life uh we had several friends that lived across the street uh then joe went into the army reserves uh i went away to basic training and i moved in with my in-laws never thought about keeping the apartment i guess it was just a different time so uh did you have any children at that point no no we didn't we hadn't even been married a year
okay uh then when he came back i quit my job with him to virginia for his supposed to have been four months of schooling it ended up we were only there about six weeks but it wasn't very interesting we did a lot of traveling around the country there um just you know sightseeing one of the interesting things about that and shows you how naive and young we were um i used to take him to the base every day because we young and stupid we didn't think to bring the registration for the car and all of that stuff was here in dallas that in the safety
deposit box didn't park on the base so i would take him every morning and then come back and pick him up every night but it was interesting one day waiting for him to come you know be through and this young man came and knocked on the window and he said i apologize i'm really not trying to pick you up to be from waco do you and i said yes and he was a boy that i had gone all through elementary and junior high school with and he was getting and the next day and he said i've seen you sitting here and every day i see
trying to get up enough nerve to come see if that was really you oh you were here that's nice yeah it was kind of a fun thing and then we came back to dallas after that and um our first child was born in 1967. um joe was working as a stockbroker then and then he went back to work for zales for a while and then into the scrap business our second son was born in 1970 we moved into this house and uh and then our daughter was born in 1972. i helped to start during all that time israel um and also very active in the council of jewish women the richardson branch and we started um and the matter of fact i was co-chairman of the thing that started uh family outreach which was a child abuse center with uh child protective services in dallas is that what is involved in to casa or is that something different well i believe there are still a couple of family outreach programs still around i'm not positive story my mother and father were here visiting and uh and we were planning trying to think of a good name and thought well
we've had some kind of a contest within the high schools so i had left a message with for roger starback and see if maybe he would donate some tickets to dallas cowboys for the winner and mother and daddy were here visiting all of a sudden the phone rings and i was doing something daddy answered the phone and he comes back into the bed where i was and he says and he's pointing to the phone and he's mouthing after strawback so my my uh esteem went way up in daddy's eyes that roger strawback was calling me i saw him at a um i guess an ajc
meeting not too too long ago and and we talked about that yeah i remember doing that so that was kind of yo that took up a lot of time what achievement or project are you extremely proud of in your life well that for one thing the family outreach thing the other is i started a business in 1982 i believe it was 81 i think uh susan shachman catering which i worked at for 28 years so i was very proud of that and mainly i'm very proud of our children and our family we have a very close-knit family uh how about joe and i were both
raised that way family was very important it still is we are still very close to all of our first cousins uh and so i think that's really probably the thing that i am most proud of is the way our family sticks together no matter what that's wonderful tell me how is your family grown i understand you have some grandchildren around we do our uh excuse me our oldest son has two children a daughter 22 our one and only granddaughter uh then he has a son that is 18 and just graduated from elderly belle high school and is going to university of texas in the engineering
department and hopefully school will start in fact he just sent me a uh a text the other day showing me his new schedule for the fall and as i sold him i certainly am glad that you taking it because i have no idea what these classes are um then our second son has two children um a son who is 17 and he is a sikh could be a senior at green hill and a son who is 14 who is in the ninth grade at green hill and then we have a daughter who just got married last june in fact her first anniversary is coming up
on the 22nd and they have no children yet um best thing about all of that is that they all live here i was just going to say that you're quite lucky in that regard we are we are happy of living here my next question is about dallas in a way what was dallas like when you first got here and how has it changed today and also the jewish community what was it like when you first moved to dallas and has it changed now currently well when i moved here um of course i was working and so i wasn't as involved i mean we belong to
sheriff israel and i belong to the sisterhood i also belong to my in-laws and my husband's grandmother and grandfather were very active and save a life so i was which would say which was city of hope so i was also a life member of that but mainly it was involved with working and we went to services sometimes we uh everything was filtered around my in-laws we had friday night dinner at their house every friday night um until after the kids got older but it was there again it was a fairly close-knit community most of our friends in fact almost all of our friends were friends
that we that i even knew from college or joe knew growing up and i knew from college which i think is unusual now and i'm not sure it's still the same in today's world people that we are friendly with now or people that were still that were in our wedding um so i think that's one way things have changed dallas has become more spread out i don't think that they are quite as close as the jewish community used to be but i guess that's part of of not living everyone not living in close proximity as they used to that's true if somebody was going to
consider moving to dallas at this point in time what would be some positive points that you would tell them about huh positive i love dallas um i don't think i would really live anywhere else uh i love the atmosphere i love there's uh there's this can-do attitude that has always been around in dallas that i are or so i perceive um people are friendly i am not sure it's quite the same as it was when i moved here i mean the synagogue was involved become great big and now there was you know sheriff israel into ferris and temple manuel and that was about it um
now there are so many and i guess actually because there are so many it may be easier for people to make friends in a smaller congregation so i think that's kind of a plus also but i i think the housing here the affordability of housing here the job opportunities here i think are um it's one of my favorite places we all we've traveled a lot but we're always glad to come home what organizations are you involved in right now that you strongly support well uh dallas jewish historical society i'm on the board of that i am a life member of sheriff israel's sisterhood um also
not necessarily we're also members of american jewish committee aipac but also i'm involved with at the dallas arboretum i do i did do until the pandemic came a lot of volunteering out there we are we also were very active at jewish family service um so we keep busy yeah i was gonna mention the arboretum if you didn't i love it's one of my favorite places and that is something that i always tell people too it is a wonderful place to go and forget all of your troubles yes go and just relax and enjoy the beauty okay so here is a cerebral question for you um
who do you think if anybody was your role model growing up i guess my mother and father probably my um it was it's interesting my mother and father were totally opposite my father was very easy going if ever i had a problem that's who i went to my mother was much more focused and rigid in things uh but they both were extremely good people and lived and lived that way there was the right way to do things and that's what you did and and you and i they they were very interesting people my father had gone bankrupt and yet he worked very hard and came
back from all of that my mother uh even though she was working a lot also was very active she taught sunday school up until raleigh i guess probably in waco she did the whole time that i can remember and in austin she did even till after i got married so um you know again their faith in each other and faith in our religion and and in the community at large wonderful this question everybody a lot of people say family and that's fine but if there's anything else let me know what are you the most proud of hmm you can say family but then you can
say anything my family really and like i said helping to start this family outreach child abuse thing was really big uh i mean we were in the paper all the time it was a really wonderful organization did you did you ever you said you were thinking of naming it but did you ever specifically get a name for it or what was it called family outreach that was the name and what we did with we had this contest in the school system the high schools and kid through the art department and they came up with a logo and the one we picked it was a hand
and it was family it was a the hand was a symbol of the family okay and uh and they did get to attendance to cowboy games from trojan but um i think those were probably in my business as i said before really i was very proud of the fact that i always used to laugh that my uh money that i made for my business kind of went through my bank account and waived as it went on the way to i was our kids spending money and money is in college that's great so um yeah it just kind of waved at my checking account and kept
going it's still something to be very proud of it is i am yeah uh is there anything else susan that you'd like to add that we didn't cover or that you want to tell us about um i guess another thing that i really have enjoyed was our two trips is that we have traveled a lot and we've been very fortunate in that regard and i guess my two favorite trips were totally different both to israel one was we went with jack milad it was the only time he took an adult group and there were only 10 of us and we were actually in israel for
two weeks and living it through his eyes as someone who grew up there was one of the most amazing experiences and i think back about it all the time is and i talk about it all the time as one of i guess reinforcement of my belief in israel and it's how important it is for israel to exist the other trip back to israel was through federation which was also a wonderful trip but totally different and i you know those were two probably have two of my favorite trips that we have never taken but i shouldn't say favorite they're my most meaningful trips that we have
taken fantastic jack mullah by the way i interviewed him and he mentioned that trip did he really yes so fond of it yeah well it was a great great trip and it was a really neat there were only two as i say there were only 10 of us and it was really a fabulous fabulous well i thank you so much for your time it's been wonderful and very interesting from the eyes of someone who grew up in a small town coming to the big city we really appreciate your perspective thank you very much i enjoyed it also okay take care bye-bye