Full Transcript
all rights Adele 1932 brooklyn new york that's me let's go back what do you remember when you're just a little girl I remember moving to Texas when I was seven years old we had Texas roots going back to the late 1800s my mother's uncle moved to Fort Worth and my mother sister settled in Fort Worth so when I was seven things were so bad in America at that time after the depression we moved to arlington texas now your folks what was your dad doing he worked in the garment industry in New York making about thirty dollars a week of which my mother would send money
to Europe where her parents were well yes so we moved to arlington texas in 1939 and it looked like Gunsmoke the wooden sidewalks with the overhead hang overhang 5,000 people lived there and we were the only Jews that came in they bought the grocery store in arlington texas your filter yes we lasted six months there because the farmers were poorer than we were they would come in and buy groceries on credit but they were never able to pay their bills and I remember going with my mother out to a farm to try to collect money the farmhouse had holes in the walls and pigs and
chickens were walking through the house and this is my mother who was an immigrant from Russia with a Jewish accent it was horrible so we moved to Fort Worth for another year and a half and then went back to New York okay and your dad stayed in the grocery business while you were in Fort Worth yes okay so how did he decide to leave the garment business to go into the grocery business opportunity there before he came down some opportunity my mother's sister lived in Fort Worth she went and scouted out and found this losing grocery store in Arlington and that's how we got there
so now you go back to New York how old were you with nine okay so was it a culture shock for you when you came down to Texas you know at all no not at all i had my cousins here my brother and it was very nice so now going back to New York was that exciting or you're glad to do it we lived with the fam of my mother and father we had to split and go live at cousins and aunts and uncles because we had nothing so they found a candy store after a few months and bought a candy store in bedford-stuyvesant and
we were in that store for 13 years okay Oh your grandparents tell me about do you remember your grandfolks at all I had one grandfather that I knew that was my father's father and he had come to America to make money to bring his family and my grandmother was back in Russia and she had a stroke one famous night when the Cossacks used to come through and kill the Jews and she had a stroke in her 30s and he finally brought her to America and she even had a baby after she got here so there was six of them and the only grandparent I knew
was that grandfather because my mother's parents never got out of Russia another they'd stay in contact with them were you know my mother used to write to her parents she and her sister actually had made out papers to bring the parents here in the 1920s and they were ready to come and my grandfather decided you can't be religious in America or whatever other reason he had you know they lived a life there like fiddler on the roof they lived in a little village you know and my grandmother and great-grandmother used to sit and roll cigarettes and sell cigarettes while he used to study the Talmud
and they never left so he died a normal old age and my grandmother got machine gun to death by the nazi killing squads or yes we found this out after the war one of the linesman came from their town in 1947 and he played dead in the pit and he came and found people from that village which was in defiance a movie about these two thugs two brothers they were gangsters in their little villages and when the Nazis were coming for them they ran into the forest and they brought people with them and the people started coming from all directions and i'll never forget i
was watching that movie and Fort Worth with my brother and these people come into the forest and they were asked where are you from and they said horrid eesh I nearly fell out of the seat that was my mother's hometown horrid eesh in Russia and these people survived in the forest and that's how I found out about my grandmother I put a plaque up here at the j it's in the holocaust museum downtown with her name on it she they just literally went into her town you would shoot people like every other town I found out what these Nazi squads were they actually grow drove
from town to town they made you dig a hole in the middle of the town and then they machine ganju and in what town was rumors hora dish in belarus belarus yes so that's my grandparents so your grandfather was lost to know he had died he had a long life yes I'm for okay did your family have any other involvement in the states with World War two at all I used to keep the honor roll in the window of the candy store any time a young man was killed I used to put a gold star next to his name now I was like nine years
old ten years old how did you work in the candy store then like an adult I still had the pain in my legs now you said that you had it for 13 years yes you folks decide to sell it retire what would one know they sell the store when they got me through college okay so where did you go to high school Samuel J Tilden high school in Brooklyn okay what was high school life like for you it was a migratory it was out of my neighborhood and I used to take a trolley car to school and I didn't really make friends in the neighborhood
because I didn't live there I was essentially I was bust right right now you know there's a lot of sportsman in the Brooklyn in New York were you a fan at all of baseball or football back then when you were small the Dodgers I used to go to their double headers in Ebbets Field you remember some of the players oh yeah all of them not all of them but a bunch of it yeah so tell me some of the players that were playing back then well was it yogi berra was he on the act he wasn't he was on the enemy he was only a
QC I get the them mixed up Pee Wee Reese he was always hitting the back wall yeah do you remember when Jackie Robinson came out and play bedford stuyvesant became a black neighborhood when the Second World War ended I mean everybody was pouring in New York and when the war came everybody got jobs the men went off to the server and the women were the Rosie riveters and the neighborhood turned black and Jackie Robinson lived a block away from our candy store whoa and when he would come home from a baseball game the streets would fill up with hundreds of people well I never forgot
that you ever walk into your candy store not that I know he probably would have been mobbed to death yeah well you should run out there with candy for him did you ever see him up close though well yeah I was part of the mob and after high school did you go on to college or you go to work I went to college to NYU and because of my love of sports i became a physical education teacher where'd you teach in the New York City school system whoa yes how long did you do that five years no when did you meet your husband I met
him on a toilet patrol in the school which leaves which means the principal told me that twice a week I had to go downstairs and guard the toilet in this junior high was it okay and I met the speech teacher who had an office next to the toilet and she invited me to a party and lo and behold there was my future husband okay in and he became a doctor but he was an intern at the time yes up in New York and then you guys when did you get married in 1956 and so what brought you to Dallas my fort worth family we had
all this family in Texas he did not want to stay in New York and I said well we let's look at texas since i have family there my brother had gone to TCU and he was married my parents had moved to Fort Worth to my brother got married no no after I got married they didn't deserve me yet and we got married and came and look at looked at Dallas I knew the Fort Worth was too slow for me right right so you're you had almost suit all your family was down here a lot yes okay now his family was up in New York yes
was their resistance to you guys up and leaving know whatever the doctor son did was just fine with them okay so where did you settle it a downs and mesquite was y'all fit unbelievable we rented a house in mesquite and these people had never seen a Jew in their life so whenever they got sick they would call Marie to come to their house and take care of them so we got a dit there in a year yeah yeah the disorder house on North Haven and then built a house in brookshire Park notice you get involved with the Jewish community at all oh yes yes when
we moved to North Haven Road which is right up the block here I joined a national council of jewish women and pioneer women to not just get involved but to meet people your children were they all born down here no my oldest daughter was born at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and how old was she would when you guys came down eight months old okay so eight months so she does remember New York at all no just when she went back to live there for a little and then my daughter the second daughter was born when we lived in mesquite and my son my
son was born here when we were on North Haven Road okay yes who's the happiest time in your life happiest time my life when I became a mother yes I should say when I got married but basically it's when I became a mother right how did you did you work in all are we a stay-at-home mom when the kids were coming oh no I was at home yeah I was at home for 22 years and then I became a stockbroker really yes that's true this family came here from Washington DC and he was a vice president for Beijing company I guess I used to talk
business to him because he wanted to make me a stockbroker back in 1967 and I said are you kidding how could I do that have three little kids and their father is never home there's no way well that later on in the 1980s we went up to washington to visit these friends and he asked me again and this time i jumped and got the job Wow and are you still in that business today just for myself no I was a broker for about 12 years yeah yeah somebody once asked me I love this line how did you go from being a gym teacher with derision
in her voice to being a stock broker and I immediately said oh I just went from Braun two brains that's great but no that's a good I love that line that's a good comeback so as a stockbroker what is the most unusual thing you might have seen I basically left that first firm because there were some sleazy characters in the back of room and I just didn't like the atmosphere right and actually a few years later the manager who I loved he was such a smooth guy neat guy he was called up on bad business practices yes yeah and as you go to another firm
then yes where did you I was wooed by a headhunter which I found very funny because I've been in the business a year but I didn't realize that headhunters made money if they got somebody in a job and i participated in their production I didn't know any of that I was so flattered and this guy comes and places me tells me lehman brothers well lehman brothers if you're from New York was the upper echelon of finance in the world so I was quite honored to go with them I was 49 years old when I became a stockbroker I was 48 so that was the most
exciting part of my life now coming from New York theater stars all the time you know going through that city you ever remember seeing any big stars or are you kidding i used to cut school and go down to the paramount theatre to see Frank Sinatra yes it was exciting no it was just you would see a movie the Paramount did he'd see a movie and then you'd see Frank Sinatra you didn't realize how extraordinary that was that's not because that's what it was it was accessible at all to the to the crowd with the horses on the sidewalk no not very so what was
it that you did when you were a kid that you would have just died if your parents found out what do I have time to do I came home from school and went behind the counter and worked I was very visible we used to smoke Oh for you about nine or ten and then what happen when he got caught I don't remember getting caught you just gave it up i hope i did i did i had the candy store had access to the cigarettes your lifetime did an invention ever come along that you just said how did we ever get along without that well at
that time was television yeah we didn't have anything close to it you remember when you first got a television I remember existing getting it I was in college at the time and I saw some of the stupid shows that were on and I really didn't feel that we should be sitting there watching this stuff you were investigated at all about the concept of television I was that did fascinate me like iPhones fascinate me and tablets all of that fascinates me yeah but I don't participate in every one of them now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions you know you were born
difficult times of the depression that you talked about there was World War two told us about your grandparents your grandmother President Kennedy assassination war the turbulence 60s in general something good the moon landing for the first time in $69 the tragedy of 911 was there something on the national scene that came along that really had an impact on you I would say the Second World War was the worse because everybody was involved it wasn't as if you just got in the Vietnam War because you were in a college student the Second World War everybody participated yeah I used to collect scraps for the war effort
what was your dad in the service yeah okay now you and Marie had three kids uh-huh eight grandkids yes what advice does grandma have for the next generation of course the first thing is they all knew they had to go to college they just have to and in a Jewish family that's not unexpected let's face it yeah yeah so I am now coming upon the two three the third college graduation tell them what I told my son when he got married I told him don't ever try to change your wife you're marrying her as an individual and you love her as that individual don't ever
try to change her and that's what I would tell my grandchildren well thanks for doing this today oh yeah I enjoyed it
