Syl Benenson
Syl Benenson was born in 1933 in Lexington, Mississippi, a small town north of Jackson. Her grandfather, born in Lithuania, was sent abroad as a young man to avoid conscription into the Russian army and eventually settled in the tiny town of Chula, Mississippi, before moving to Lexington. There he opened a ready-to-wear clothing store, Cowen's, which is more than a century old and still run by Syl's younger brother. Her mother's family had deep roots in Memphis, giving Syl a strong sense of Southern Jewish heritage. She recalled a happy, safe childhood in a close neighborhood, participating in band, sports, and school activities at Lexington High School, and attending Sunday school at the town's longstanding temple.
After high school, Syl attended the University of Texas, where she joined a sorority, served as its president in her senior year, and majored in speech therapy. Following graduation she moved to Houston and worked as a speech therapist before relocating to Dallas in 1960 to work with the school district. A mutual friend introduced her to Murray, a CPA from Brooklyn who shared her love of sailing and other interests. The couple married, settled in Dallas, and raised two children. Syl taught until shortly before the birth of her first child and then became a stay-at-home mother while devoting increasing energy to community service.
Syl became one of Dallas's most active volunteers, joining the National Council of Jewish Women in 1963 and holding nearly every office before serving as president in 1978. She served on the boards of the Federation, JCRC, Jewish Family Service, and Temple Emanu-El, where she chaired the social action committee for fifteen years. She helped bring CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) to the Dallas area in 1980, co-founded the East Dallas Health Coalition to serve Southeast Asian refugees, and chaired the HIPPY early-childhood education program for decades. Her many honors include the JCPenney Golden Rule award, the Hannah G. Solomon Award, and a Vietnamese Humanitarian Award. She and Murray had two children and three grandchildren.
Full Transcript
so good morning good morning 1933 Lexington Mississippi correct where is that Lexington is a metropolis 60 miles north of jackson 35 miles south of greenwood mississippi all right let's go back there you know around the Depression era when you were born what do you remember what your little girl well my father had a store in fact he had two stores and I grew up in a small town and back in the depression in Mississippi we everyone had servants so I had a nurse whoa we had a cook we had some who cleaned up the house and we had a garden that a the art man
took care of right wow so and I lived in a neighborhood lots of children it was a happy time the pressure affect your dad's business at all do you know I don't think it did I mean it was my grandfather store the store is a hundred and something years old and my brother still runs it well what's the name of it Cowen's well and what did they do it's ready to wear men's women's and children so your grandfather started this business in eighteen eighty something in Lexington well he's starting a little town called chula it's 10 miles from lexington this is my father's father who
was born in Lithuania and his parents were they were middle class it was a green bar for the Russian government and when he hit 17 you were conscripted to go into the army so his parents sent he and his sister and this is timothy where they had family and then he sent for his girlfriend whose father was a rabbi but she came she had family in Memphis as well okay they got married and had several children because my daddy is one of seven do you know what year this was where in the eighteen hundreds okay anyway grandpa had a stomach problem whatever and they said
there's some wells in Mississippi mineral wells that will do you some good and so it there the trains were running so he took a train and it broke down this little town called chula they were Jewish people there and they didn't fix the train for a week and the meanwhile they took grandpa in and he was a good pinochle player and they said after a week and I think he won some money but they had artesian water in chula and celek he was feeling much better so they said Cohen you gotta move here and so he got his fam my daddy wasn't born yet and
so they moved to chula can he opened the store but then they moved to Lexington because it was a county seat had better schools and anyway daddy was born in Lexington and anyway grandpa's store just opened a store and then he owned a block and had seven kids as I said and they all married and lived and we'll take one loop moved to Louisiana and the restaurant in Mississippi watch her grandparents on the other side my mother's mother who I called Big Mama and my great-grandmother who didn't die until I was about 15 my great grandmother was born in memphis during the Civil War and
migrate my great-great-grandmother I guess it would be came to this country and I don't remember the year it's 1850s or something to Buffalo New York and then they came to Memphis and she had four daughters and my great-grandmother was one of them and in fact four years ago we had a reunion in San Antonio I cousin wanted it was his 90th birthday and wanted everybody that had any blood to come from the four sisters Graham we had like 87 people cats and tire now your brother older younger than you younger younger okay so what was it like what did you guys do for fun did
you have take care of it no nurse yeah and you could go anywhere it was safe nobody locks their doors you could go walk in anybody's house and say I'm here you know is it sunny here no it's somebody in my neighborhood and you played yeah we could either walk around our bicycles and we had a little country club that you could ride your bike out to or somebody to take you we had a swimming pool tennis courts and a golf course where'd you go to high school lexington high schoo okay what was high school life like I was fun I was in the band
played every sport because what else is there to do I was added to them of the news about little newspaper miss Claridge of the annual you could just do whatever you want now when you're younger old world war two came out how did that affect you guys oh well we say we had savings stamps we used to say tin foil yep for the right we used to have these mind drives and it was very patriotic yeah so do thank every Friday would think I thought at that time you start getting in community involvement for helping in the war effort when you were young yeah every
we all did and now after high school was a twerker college I went to college okay where'd you go university of texas ok and how from being in a small town in Mississippi did you decide you want to our well I will go back my mother grandmother lived in Memphis had a lot of family in Ephesus so that was sort of my Jewish connection we had a temple in my little town that's a hundred and whatever years old now at a rabbi came once a month but we had sunday school every Sunday they were tuned by my place there were two boys older than me
a girl my age and my brother there were five with my brother because to came from another little town sunday school and the rabbi when I was coming along was from Vicksburg right do remember his name ya rabbi bra Stanley bras ok and Stanley brob had been an assistant rabbi at temple emanuel here which I what didn't know as a child but i'm a member of temple emanuel and when we had the hundredth anniversary of emmanuel rabbi bra came and I hadn't seen him in all those year he confirmed me and I went up and I said rabbi ba this is a dumb question about
that you don't remember who I am he said say again don't say who you are just talk and he said silvio enjoyed it that's great so anyway we had a Jewish every this is a very ecumenical old town there was no anti-semitism I was president a method as you fellowship because that's where you went on a sunday night where all the kids with and we went to the presbyterian church on Wednesday and the Pisgah bell choir sang at temple I get it was it was a healthy yeah my daddy grew up there enough so it was a very happy yeah okay so Austin I Austin
Texas I went to university of two I was first going to to Newcombe Sophie Newcombe but I had hay fever so bad and New Orleans and I think it alone and then I was going university wisconsin with a friend from memphis and she got engaged right out of high school so I had go we're so we knew I knew somebody that went to Texas and I had family in San Antonio in Houston so my mother and they said go and she don't like it you can go somewhere else and I went with another friend for Memphis and I got involved and remained for four years
and as I said I was the same sorority with Pauline but I stayed in fact I was presently sorority my senior year what was the sewer 85 and I was a speech I've majored in speech therapy so I've done graduated I went to Houston it was a wonderful speech therapist and lived with two friends that I moved from Texas and it actually the first yell live with one she lives here now and the second yell live with two others and then i moved to dallas and 60 and was with the school district here and then I'm a mutual friend introduced me to my husband now
and so how was that meeting when you met Marie for the first time well my friend Connie husband and Marie were partners in the same cpa firm so they had us over to dinner and I think I couldn't go the first few times and then Marie was a little on the shy side but anyway he had a sailboat I don't like rock and I love sports and so we did that and he was in a wine tasting group that we anyway we hit it off and he's from Brooklyn and I'm from Mississippi and the first when we called his parents they couldn't understand me and
they didn't ask was i Jewish they want was I white and so I had my Mississippi draw with a lot worse than it is now so what was that first time when you went to New York what was that like well you know I'm not the I'm the kind of person never met a stranger so nobody I was not intimidated and his sister and family they had a gate to meet ya and so Murray's father's side of the family was Eastern Europe his mother's side was Western Europe god forbid they should talk to each other so one was a one side of the yard and
the other was on the other side of the Arts I just look like a ping-pong ball was going back and forth what was it what was the your overall feeling when you saw New York oh I've been in New York oh oh you had been before ok ok so it wasn't much of a culture shock that this was just meeting the family time right ok and then where did you and Marie settled down in our department here and then I got pregnant pretty soon after we were married and then I taught until I was probably seven months and i had my first child and we
move our house a small house and then i got involved with national council jewish women now tell me take us through your service with the jewish community okay well my first involvement here I was with the AFI alum group and we raised money for a facility for the mentally ill and that was narrowing and I knew a lot of people and then a good friend of mine was very active in national council of jewish women so i got involved in 1963 I her was about six months old I think my first job was to take seniors to the oh it was the chef's community center
which is now the JCC every Thursday that was he was in the they didn't have seat belts back then it was he was in a car seat right and I had four seniors one male and the winning fault is it poor man and then I got involved with counsel and I had a second child two years later tuna 27 months later and I was a stay-at-home mother back then I had helped three days a week because it was very inexpensive at that time and which gave me time to get involved in the community and so through NC JW I went through the ranks I think
I was a held every office that there was and became president in 78 and through counsel served on committees of boards of almost every agency in the city and then after I completed my I was on the board of a lot of agents Jewish and commit and general i was on Federation board at one time chase jcrc Jewish Family Service I was on the board at temple emanuel i chaired the social action committee for 15 years which i love what was the accomplishment you've done so much what was the accomplishment her project you worked on that was absolutely your favor well better e ok alright
the first was the Casa for the community of Casa is court appointed special advocates and NCI was president of counsel at the time and the national office got a big grant at that time $300,000 lot of money and it was just the National Council of juvenile court judges did a study which a little section here accounts in Swiss sections not chapters did a study with mental health association here to find out how many times children in foster care were moved and it was astounding or how many times were they investigated to see what was going on and some kids have been moved as many times
as 25 times some had been ignored anyway it was a terrible situation and they needed advocates so we the national organization we applied to get a grant and thanks to my husband who's a CPA we did a three-year budget and one of our members my official anyway who had been a probation officer years ago knew some of the people in the court and we child welfare NCW been working with child welfare forever and so we put the package together we were one of three in the whole country to get the grant and we started in nineteen eighty january nineteen eighty the first cost of program
in this area it was us jacksonville florida and st. Louis and it now casa we I just saw Beverly the other day levey who is the executive director I was the first co-chair of the constant project because I had just finished my presidency and with rosemary and Berg who is deceased and anyway they now got over 700 volunteers and kids who were you oh the abbe your input is just as critical as that they have a guardian ad litem which is an attorney which some are very good and some aren't and the caseworkers some are very good and some overwhelmed because they got too many cases and they can't spend the time so the casa
volunteer is very important and i was a volunteer besides total my office for about eight years look there's only gotten something else then after that I mean it actually was doing that time I was chair of social action at Temple and there was we were looking for a major project and the boat people were coming in from Southeast Asia and it was a terrible problem and one of the people on the social action committee new a Vietnam veteran who happened to be a nurse who had this guilt and he took us down to old East Dallas what most of them were being settled and Pauline
crests it was a friend and I went down there she was on the committee and we saw a grandma the spraying her grant her children grandchildren with the read to keep the bugs off and hear their inhaling anyway and the conditions were just terrible and they had no access to health care because of language and well there wasn't any available in that area and with language culture transportation every berry in the world that and because they were afraid of the police because where they came from and and the Cambodians in particular the Pol Pot had killed anyone who were glasses because they thought they could
read so we decided to take it on and and start a little clinic and I chaired it and we temple emanuel thanks to rabbi klein may he rest in peace who has helped us and wrote a letter to 400 of his best friends and we got funds initial funding and then we went to the general the community to form a coalition with other congregations and we got the city because he needed to be involved that can dr. Ron Anderson who was head of parkland what became a strong advocate and Dean Powell who was head of Baylor at the time because it's in the Baylor area the oldest Alice anyway for this east dallas health coalition and it took us a year and a half to raise enough money i can open a clinic table two nights a week well and then i wrote 60 grant proposals that first year and we got from our code we got here a little here and there and we hired a thanks to dr.
Anderson someone who had been in triage at Parkland who was retiring so she knew the whole system for the low-income and the YMCA YWCA gave us some space they were on Ross and the school district they had a school in fact it was a health special at that time we could use it from five o'clock to nine o'clock anyway then we move the city oh there is a need so they paid for space a few blocks from there in a burned-out building that someone donated to renovate it and then we formed a coalition with maternal health family planning which was a medical school at that time well baby clinic which is the city and the community dental health and we went to three big foundations high blood cell hillcrest and my mind goes blank anyway and they finished out a building for us and we became a one shot one stop shopping and then dr.
Anderson brought in this duct tape dr. David Smith who knew about community-oriented primary care clinics and they looked at us and said so for two years they studied our community and oh we had translators from the very beginning you could you could she can't communicate you can't do anything so we had Cambodian Viet amazingly ocean well and we had volunteer nurses from Baghdad your baptist university they have a some nursing school TWU everywhere well and we dr. Anderson strongly encouraged senior residents and we just paid their liability what was the third project oh okay the other one is home instruction program for preschool youngsters hippie and this was a program I still do it just my 25th year it was researched and developed at Hebrew University my lady name of being the Lombard whose family moved to Israel with Henrietta zol when she started Hadassah Hospital and but she was educated in this country and while she was working on a PhD at UCLA she helped dr.
Ziegler develop head start and she went back to Israel and she thought it was more advantageous to Israel and to the people who needed education to do at home to be headed home based so it it taught the parent to be the child's first teacher and at that time there were a lot of oriental Jews coming into Israel who had little or no education and so that's how it started and in 1970s and NC GA USA paid for the research and in 76 the ford foundation paid to have an international conference for educators all over the country to come observe this program and we try
from 79 to 88 to get DISD to do it we went through there was a difference superintendent every year every other year and finally an 88 we found an assistant superintendent who knew about the program and loved it and we started a pilot in West Allis and it is it is hit all over every it's all throughout the United States man it's throughout the world it's in an international program so and I have chaired it for NC JW all these years and what we when we were piloting it we paid for everything and we pay for home instructor we don't know them anyway the whole
point is to get the parent involved with their child parental involvement is really where it's at and a whole instructor who's apparent themselves with a child in the program but has to meet certain criteria are trained every week by a degreed staff on this 90 week curriculum 30 weeks for three years three four five and but it anyone who comes in role plays the activities with the parent because you don't want them feel bad as they can't breathe and there's usually somebody in the house that can write it's literally and anyway within cjw after the school district is is funding it and I wrote grants
like crazy forever in the beginning we are and locally we have Irving Richardson and Dallas Dallas of course being the largest and we do all the cultural enrichment we go the Dallas Museum of Art everything is parent-child and we go we used to go to fair park to the science place and now we go the Perot and arboretum the zoo whoever and NC JW find our volunteers are there and they don't know that any of these things exist know if we do culture enrichment we pay for backpacks of every kid that finishes we give we do whatever we can do now over the years but
it just lists some of the awards that you've been honored with I won the JCPenney national board the savvy award which was given by Foley's which doesn't exist anymore since we don't have Foley's right through i won nasw Public Citizen of the Year dallas children's champion award Women's Council Dallas County Distinguished Service Mental Health America prism award and see the hannah g Solomon which ncj WKRG Solomon started in CJ go via Jewish National Fund tree of life Dallas reads celebrate literacy East Dallas Weed and Seed Lifetime Achievement the Vietnamese community are really big with them in Vietnamese Humanitarian Award temple emanuel sisterhood Hall of Fame
why I'm ywca's hundred women hundred year's award and during pioneers the National War fence ejw women helping women ma reward the local ncj dedicated an adoring volunteer who is the happiest time in your life uh I'm still happy every day just about now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasions you know you lived through World War two President Kennedy assassination something good in 69 the moon landing of course the tragedy of 911 it was there something that really stood out on the national scene that affected you and you said well well the women's movement and I went to the March for women's lives
in Washington that was only about five years ago and there were million women and not one word the Dallas Morning News not one word I also attended in 1977 the international year of the woman in Houston and that's where the equal rights amendment was passed right and that was exciting yeah good for you well you and Marie two kids three grandkids no great grandkids yet but I know you're waiting what advice do you want to leave through the next generation we all need to pay back and there's always a need and wherever you feel that you can make a contribution my son that lives here
is involved through the temple he was very involved with camp john mark every week there's a difference and he had kids with dialysis that when he did that for years and i think steve and is involving his kids they've done a number of different things rescue dogs catch they worked at the North Texas Food Bank ended do pantry that Syndic Romero anyway I I want them to have of course a happy meaningful life it's some am I saying California they're into whatever also well thanks for doing this day he did a great job well thank you you