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you at 1944 El Paso Texas not too far back but let's go back when you were a little girl what was life like in El Paso when you were little El Paso when we were growing up was like Utopia it was the easiest place to be uh safe which is not anymore um you felt like the there was this network around you that was watching over you but you had the freedom to do and be who you wanted it was it was wonderful the um Hispanic influence made it very la la la la la very laidback um and yet it was totally unthreatened uh the
Jewish Community was small uh small enough so that we knew practically everybody uh and certainly my parents knew everybody um we felt a huge amount of acceptance and um camaraderie among our neighbors and friends what did your uh brother and sister and you do for fun what did we do for fun we were um very involved at school we were involved at our synagogue uh my sister and I were way more social than my brother and that probably is because he never had a chance to talk with two older sisters who talked non-stop um we were like I say very all of us were very
involved in at school um we were involved in um bbo uh um we didn't travel a lot at that time we were pretty close to home what grammar school did you go to Mita Mita yeah yeah what did your folks do what did your dad do for a living my dad uh was in business for himself he my my dad actually was stationed in Al Paso and that's how he met my mom um he came back that you know when they realized that this was going to be where they were going to live um he came back and he got a job with a wonderful
family who remains um very dear to us very close ties a army navy store oh and he he worked I mean he had just come out of the service he didn't have education formal education he was as smart as anybody you ever knew uh and um they were just it was actually the family of my mother's very best friend growing up and um they gave daddy the job he needed until he could uh do do something on his own and of course of course then they absolutely championed him in in that endeavor and then he was able to uh by his own business and what
it was was a a subcontractor business to builders he manufactured Venetian blinds shower doors club tub enclosures decorative mirrors for homes and he uh he ran it and worked where did he meet your mom at a synagogue party and he was stationed in El Paso yeah now was your dad in World War II yeah well yes he was he was uh he was a pilot instructor so he really never did a whole lot of combat but he was in Europe yeah so he was over in Europe at the time okay what about your grandparents you remember them at all oh for sure for sure for
sure our oldest daughter is named after my grandmother um my grandfather came with his brothers left Poland before the war left Poland and they couldn't get into the states so they went to South America that's how we ended up in El Paso my grandfather made his way up to from Argentina through South America Central America Mexico and he uh sent for my grandmother uh who presented him with a son that he'd never seen she was pregnant when he left and that was my uncle of course um so my grandfather came to the states not speaking a word of English he spoke polish Yiddish whatever other
languages and Spanish so he um was a street Peddler and um little by little he learned English and he was able he had a very successful um ultimately a very successful Furniture Business Furniture store but in South El Paso because he needed this to be able to use the Spanish cuz his English wasn't that good my grandmother never learned to read or write English she read the forward every morning and she she could tell you labels in a grocery store but she had never actually read English she lived with us after he died she lived in our home now this is your mom's parents or
my mom's parents now let me ask you did your grandfather ever tell you why the decision to go when when his wife was pregnant and he they didn't actually know oh they didn't know yet yeah um and uh they were I think in As Good contact as they could have been uh he knew that there was a boy that there was a child but he he didn't see him until I think it was it it's sketchy but maybe s years that they were apart when he when she finally came to Al pas and his goal was always to come to the United States yes yes
and he couldn't do it this and my my uh his brothers didn't do that uh they stayed in South America and then some of them went to Israel so now what about your uh grandparents and your dad my paternal grandparents I never knew my grandmother because uh she died before I was born and I'm named after her uh my grandfather was um a carpenter in in New Jersey my dad was born in New Jersey and um my dad would bring him to Al Paso often often so you know once twice a year so I did know him um he was uh not as warm and
fuzzy a man as my dad was or as um my other Grandparents were so I wasn't as close to him where'd you go to high school I'll pass so high what was high school life like for you fabulous just wonderful wonderful wonderful like I say it was the same feeling of inclusion total respect for everybody's differences uh total uh enjoyment of everybody's differences it it was marvelous um and I think my sister and brother would say the same thing if you asked them El Paso was a Wonder place to grow up what did the Beatles mean to you when they came into uh the United
States I was impressed but I was never so entran or a group E at all you just past your teen years exactly and I was into working on other stuff and what am I going to be when I grow up and you know so it it was just past my Prime remember meant more to my sister I think my brother you remember the hippie era and the Vietnam era did that affect you at all no I was too straight now after high school was it work or College college and where did you go to school I went to UT my father did not want me
to go um why why was that he didn't want me to leave home oh okay and uh finally we prevailed and I met I went for 2 years and the summer between my freshman and sophomore year I met my husband I met my future husband and I went back to school that year and then we got married that next summer so I finished um at North Texas I did I finished my degree at North Texas so when you when you guys got married you met your husband at UT no no we were he actually the same scenario he was doing his summer camp for the
service at Fort Bliss and we were fix mied up by a mutual friend on a blind date yeah yeah and then you guys got married and where did you settle down here we've been here ever since okay here in Dallas were you um were you wanting to go back to El Paso or were you okay with the movement maybe for a bit we did love the life and Al Paso Jim did too but there didn't seem to be much opportunity there for us right uh so uh we satisfied our urges by going back and forth a lot right uh and of course my mom and
dad came here so um it it wasn't uh ever going to happen I don't think what year was it when you guys moved here we got married in 1964 M and we lived here from since then tell me about your involvement with the Jewish Community when um we got married Jim immediately wanted to join Temple Emanuel which is where he grew up we went to Temple on for services on Shabbat and it was just an In-N-Out experience it wasn't very satisfying for us even though he had strong feelings for temple um and then we were tapped to be charter members to start a new Temple
and that really grabbed us so we are charter members of Temple Shalom we had a wonderful wonderful experience with that probably simultaneous to that we were tapped to be part of a a group of young people in Dallas for leadership training at that time it was called the associate board we were grabbed up by Janice and Arnold site uh and they became our mentors um after the associate board we were they changed the whole concept of this is this is Federation they changed the whole concept and changed the name of this leadership development program to Young leadership leadership development and we matriculated through that we
went we did it the course again and then we were tapped to be chairs for that and in fact we serve twice as chairs for that and it fit I call us the poster children for Federation it was a good fit for us we both had a uh need a a a desire to give back to the community even when we didn't have anything to give um and it was something that we worked on together so that's how how we started I would say that either the temple Shalom experience and or the um early Federation experience there's been so much technology in your lifetime do
you remember something that came along that really impressed you that you went wow how do we ever get along without this a cell [Music] phone cell phone is is probably I mean computer for sure I remember at UT my freshman year there was a building that was the computer building that's the size that the computer system was took up a whole building and we all used to file by file in to look at this is so amazing how does it work um and now look where we are with it I mean you can carry it in the palm of your hand what was the one
thing or maybe there were two things that when you were young that you would do that your parents never knew that you haven't told your kids about yet oh isn't that an interesting question what I did do which um was the only um bit of um Rebellion that I did my parents were concerned that I was dating a non-jewish boy in high school and they forbad forbade me to see him and I snuck out which of course I was found out uh but I just couldn't couldn't deal with the fact that I was any better than anybody else and that's what they were saying they
said uh you're better than him yeah and that bothered me terribly and of course it endeared him more to me because right they were saying no but that's probably the extent of my Rebellion I kind of an open book what was the happiest time in your life I would have to say um when I was real involved with the kids being home when they were young and uh I was always extremely extremely involved with them um that and probably my high school days that was a very fun time tell me about your uh two children are they in the Dallas area no neither one of
them uh our daughters um that was the hardest thing I had to tell my mother was that I was pregnant again or not a year apart in age um and uh Mindy the older one by two days less than a year is in New York City where she met her husband and that's where they make their life our other daughter uh Elise has been a strong political activist and an advocate for her Prof her professional life she lives in Washington DC um she is presently the executive director of Nal which stands for National abortion rights Action League pro-choice America so she has done everything from
hanging uh banners from Rafters to meeting with the president or meeting with president now in her position and she has just recently married who was the first president she met maybe George Bush Le she's had many encounters with President Obama now how have you seen the uh Jewish community in Dallas here grow over the years it was a closer knit uh Jewish Community um I knew so many people in multi-generations and um now I see it as a very diverse dispersed Community because people are living so in so many different parts of the city that I don't see it as centralized as it used to
be um it makes it it's good and it's bad uh because uh both bring attribute the the diversity is wonderful um but then you can't reach everybody it's hard yeah now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions on the national scale we mentioned the Vietnam War the hippie movement of course President Kennedy assassination the moon landing in' 69 something good for the first time there first moon landing tragedy of 9/11 was there something that really affected you that stood out that you go gosh I know exactly where I was the moment it happened all all of the above when Kennedy was shot
um um my roommate at Texas loved the soap operas and she talked me into going to walk I didn't know what I was watching but she said go with me after lunch and just watch Days of our I don't As the World Turns it was As the World Turns so I went in with her and they broke in and she said I hate it when this happens and they told us Kennedy had been shot in Dallas 911 I was actually in a meeting to interview uh prospective exec for The JCC and we were at U Deli up here in Preston Forest which no longer exists
and one of the other people that was with us his assistant called him and said are you around the TV guess what happened so I told I mean yeah every and I freaked because I didn't know where my kids were what the situation was you and James have the two daughters you have two grandkids what advice does Grandma want to leave to the grandkids and the Next Generation be happy for where you are and do everything you can in life to help others be happy you did a great job today thanks for doing this thank you thank you
